CelestialFamily » astronomy

Awesome

Michael — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:08:00 +0000

The White Mountain from charles on Vimeo.

Let the Robots Do It

Michael — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 11:59:00 +0000

I am a space nut. As a kid I built models of the Apollo lunar landers. I was too young to remember the Apollo project first hand, but I do remember Skylab and the Apollo/Soyux missions. I even got permission from my folks to skip school and watch the first shuttle launch and landing. I also remember quite vividly the first pictures sent back from the surface of Mars by the Viking lander. I remember thinking how lucky I was to grow up in a time when the Voyager’s grand tour was even possible. I watched the first raw image returns from the Cassini missions live as they came in from Saturn in 2004. Every day I check multiple Astronomy websites and I make a conscious point to look up in the mornings as I walk to the car and see if I can locate the planets that are currently visible.

So with this introduction you might find it odd that I applaud the announcement to all but kill NASA’s manned space flight program. I don’t have a problem with manned space flight in particular. We just need to look at it honestly and objectively and see what kind of return on our investment we’ve gotten on manned space flight when compared to robotic missions.

While Voyager was taking pictures of Jupiter and all its moons Apollo Soyux was just trying to see if we could get Russians and American’s to shake hands. While Cassini Huygens was taking the best shots of Saturn ever manned missions were trying to figure out how to not burn up another shuttle during re-entry. While Mars Pathfinder more than doubles its life expectancy and continues to send back data from Mars manned missions are trying to figure out how to rescue a shuttle if tiles get damaged on the shuttle. While Hubble continues each day to amaze us with images from the extremes of the universe the ISS is trying to figure out how astronauts can process their own urine and re-drink it. I could go on and on with these examples but my only point is that while the robots are doing real research and doing a bang up job in the process the manned missions are quite literally doing little more than trying to figure out how to stay alive.

I’m not denying the political chest thumping advantage of being able to say we are the only country that has ever set foot on the moon. But let’s not deny that that’s all that it really was. The science was at best and afterthought. We only actually put one scientist up there and he was bumped up to an earlier mission when we realized that we were going to be discontinuing the program. If we feel we need to thump our chest again to show how great America is let’s do it after we’ve taken care of some issues much closer to home. But let’s just not disguise it as a scientific pursuit.

A few years ago when Constellation and Orion were announced I was more than a little annoyed. Why were we spending so much money to rebuild 70’s era technology to do something that we’d already done? So I’m actually glad that the current budget is choosing to cut it. Let Richard Branson, Burt Rutan and the rest of the private sector spend their own money to figure out how to make a toilet that functions in zero-G. Let’s invest our tax dollars into something based on science and with a cost effective return on our tax investment. The robots have proven that they can do that exponentially better than any manned mission.

DragonCon with Aaron

Michael — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Last Saturday, Aaron and I went down to DragonCon. It’s a science-fiction, fantasy and pop culture convention. As I grow older I don’t enjoy crowds nearly as much as I used to. So I have avoided these types of scenes for quite sometime. (I’ve been more claustrophobic at a movie theater than I’ve ever been in a cave.) However, a few years ago I got involved with an online community of skeptics, critical thinkers and rationalists. Piggybacked with all the actor autograph sessions, how to make cool costume classes and Dungeons and Dragons game sessions they a have a science and skepticism track too. This is only the second year for it and I wanted to get a chance to meet and talk with some of the folks I’ve been emailing, blog commenting, facebooking, listen to their podcasts and otherwise internet stalking for the last several years. So I braved the crowds and the chaos and Aaron and I went down.

I could only manage to squeeze in one day of the lectures so we were running back and forth to make sure that we saw the ones I wanted but I also had to make sure that Aaron didn’t feel like I was forcing him to sit through something he felt was boring. So I had to throw in several hours of shopping for costumes and looking at mangas and comic books. That was actually very fun too, but I was pleasantly surprised that Aaron had such a good time hanging out with me at the skeptical events and lectures.

The first lecture that we attended was Seth Shostak from the SETI institute. I’ve been listening to his podcast, Are We Alone for a few years. I’ve seen him on Colbert Report and so I knew that he’d be entertaining. Seth did a great job of explaining the “real” search for aliens and really showed that science and reality can but just if not even more interesting than the science fiction being show in neighboring rooms of the same hotel.

Next we saw Richard Saunders do a great little presentation targeted at teaching kids how to be critical thinkers. They did a live dowsing experiment and Aaron actually got to participate. I was very impressed with the relatively simple way that they showed the importance of making sure that any tests and experiments are blinded. Then they showed the added layer of making the test double blind. Saunders did a great job of making skepticism seem fun. All too often skeptics get portrayed as being cynics. Saunders and everybody else did a great job of debunking that notion.

Between lectures I was able to talk to the folks at the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. I would have loved to have stayed through Sunday to have seen their live taping of their podcast but I just couldn’t fit it into my already hectic schedule. I thanked them for saving me from talk radio. I like listening to news and information rather than just listing to music while I work and years ago their podcast was one of the first that I found to fill the void after I started boycotting the noise, illogic and repetition coming from talk radio.

The last lecture before we heeded home was a panel discussion With Seth Shostak, Joe Nichol, and Phil Plait that was moderated by Pamela Gay. Each panelist talked for about ten minutes about their own area of expertise and then opened the floor for questions. The questions were the most enjoyable part of the discussion. A few folks from the regular DragonCon crowd had wandered in and I’m not sure it was exactly what they expected. The phrase “alien hunter” was in the lecture description. All the members of the panel did a great job of explaining that it’s not that we don’t believe, belief has nothing to do with it. We just haven’t seen enough evidence to convince us that flying saucers are real.

Shostak made the comparison of aliens visiting Earth to Spaniards visiting America. 50 years after the Columbus everybody in America had mounds of evidence that Spaniards were here. It’s been 50 years since the first flying saucer and alien abduction stories jumping into the culture. Why don’t we have a comparable body of evidence? I thought the analogy was perfect and actually rather funny.

I knew that I would enjoy the skeptic events, but I was again, really surprised how much Aaron enjoyed them. Victoria and I have always been science geeks. We hardly watch any TV and the shows the kids really like are educational stuff on PBS. We check out Nova videos from the library. Even the few fiction series that we watch have a high level of science and rationality to them. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised that Aaron would enjoy it. After all he’s been hanging out with me for the last 15 years. I guess I just didn’t realize that so much was rubbing off.

My Review of Death from the Skies

Michael — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:04:00 +0000

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction. I particularly like stories where the science is as correct as possible. Don’t get me wrong, Star Wars was fun but it’s hardly scientifically plausible. The best you could call it would be science fantasy. My favorite science fiction author is Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke’s stories are rooted in hard science. In his stories you understood the rules. He didn’t defy the laws of physics to tell his story. He worked with them. Rather than being a limitation his strict philosophy made the stories easier to understand and added much more depth than if he had just invented magical ideas like warp drive or light sabers to tell his story. I’ve heard some friends criticize Clarke saying that the science got in the way of the story. I couldn’t disagree more strongly. In Clarke’s stories the story was just a way to express his love of science. With Clarke the science was the ultimate goal.
I’ve just finished reading another book that reminded me a lot of Clarke because of the strict adherence to real science. Death from the Skies by Phil Plait Ph.D is not even disguised as a fiction book. Phil is a real astronomer and the proprietor of one of my favorite blogs, badastronomy. The book is a real science book. Phil goes chapter by chapter to describe the myriad of ways that the universe is out to destroy us and he does not miss a single detail.
The thing that made me think of Clarke as I read it was the interesting vehicle he used to introduce each new concept. At the beginning of each chapter Phil adds a three or four page fictional story of the world as we know it coming to an end. Each story is different from the next and unrelated to the previous. In one life on Earth is destroyed by a solar flare. In another it’s aliens. In another it’s a gamma-ray burster. It was really a fun way to grab your interest and keep you reading through the rest of the details.
Phil is a great writer. His funny personality and childlike love of astronomy comes across on every page. Nowhere does the book become tedious.
In spite of the doom and gloom title this is a very upbeat and positive book. Yes all of the dangerous events described in the book are theoretically possible, however most are extremely improbably. And the most probable scenarios may even be preventable and he goes into great detail how we could do it. You won't finish this book and be afraid to go outside. On the contrary, I felt even more of a desire to go outside, stare at the stars and ponder the possibilities.
I really enjoyed this book. If you’re considering picking up a science fiction book please consider Death from the Skies. No question the science will be better and you’ll be educated and entertained as well.

Please also check of Phil's blog.

Look Up

Michael — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 01:59:00 +0000

túrána hott kurdís by hasta la otra méxico! from Till Credner on Vimeo.