Philibuster

The universe is way too big a place to have only one little speck filled with life. Even if we are some sort of cosmic accident then the universe is still vast enough that the same accident should have happened elsewhere as well. I just can’t believe that our little solar system is unique enough that there isn’t another star with a similar setup. That’s also assuming that the conditions have to be exactly like ours in order to produce life. I’ve read a lot of articles about how life might be so different from us that we fail to realize that’s it’s actually alive.

This concept intrigues me.

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So the Kepler telescope that is currently high above our heads searching for exoplanets that might harbor life has a blind spot. One of the chips that hold two CCDs has failed. This puts a nice big old blank spot in its’ field of view and since the spacecraft rotates around that blind spot travels as well causing problems around a larger area of space. It’s not the worse thing but it sucks and I hope that NASA is able to fix it. Don’t really want a planet to pass in front of its star during a blind spot. It might take another year for it to show up again.

So the future is going to be crazy. This just in some researchers have discovered how to disrupt someone’s moral centers of the brain using high power magnets. When subjected to the magnets the subjects found that it was less morally wrong to cause harm to someone. That’s crazy. Here let me hold this magnet up to your head, good now go kill your mother. Ok.

Yeah scary but all the fear about this being misused aside, I’m sure there will be some downright amazing things to come out of it. Number one a mindless army that I will someday use to take over the world but you didn’t hear that from me. Two all kinds of drugs to help people who suffer a variety of psych disorders. If we can study how and which parts of the brain control moral concerns then we know where to concentrate on in order to help people out. It might one day led to a better way of dealing with people who have no regard for others. Oh I see that according to this scan you will one day become a serial killer with no love for life, here take this pill twice a day and enjoy your new lease on life. Hurray!

I found a webcam on NASA’s site that shows the James Webb telescope being built. If you know me you know I find this stuff very cool. So go check it out. It’s not a video webcam just a picture that updates every few seconds.

Well yesterday Obama outlined his new plan for NASA. I took a look at it and I have to say that I kind of like it. The Constellation program got the ax but I’m not unhappy about that. Like you probably heard it was over budget and behind schedule and really wasn’t very impressive anyway. I favored the alternative program that was being designed by a group of scientists. I don’t know but don’t think that that has replaced constellation. It looks more like instead of trying to rework and slightly improve the old tech we are going to branch out and try to strike ahead with all new stuff. The alternative program called for a lot more reuse of the shuttle tech.

I think this is a good direction. It breaks NASA out of the hum drum that it has been in. NASA should be making the ground breaking stuff and the rest should start to fall to the private sector. The more people involved in space flight the better and if NASA can lead the way with private enterprise pushing and following up then things will start to take off.

There is also a lot more money in general for science. This makes me happy and the main reason why I like Obama. He understands what science is and why it is so important. These days with technology ruling so much of our lives science is the driving force behind it. The more we understand about the world the more we push our tech to the limit, in space travel, atoms, particles, etc it spawns a host of other possibilities that work their way into our everyday lives. It boggles my mind how people don’t see the connection between these things. “How does smashing atoms together and learning about particles so small they defy logic and reason affect me? What does that have to do with my life. How does making a 100,000 powerdrill to work in a vacuum and wide ranging temps?” These people are small time people they don’t see the big picture. If you push your tech to the limit of what it can do and design things so outrageously complex and crazy it WILL improve anything that has anything to do with it. Magnets, MRI, superconductors, data storage and transmission. Want an ipod that stores even more stuff well that is being pushed not only by the demand of the consumer but also by the scientists that need to store and transfer amounts of data that dwarf even college music libraries.

Politics has for the last 8 years demeaned the expert instead of revered them, they have attacked the person who dares imply they know more than the common man just because they have devoted their lives to pursing and understanding concepts that the average person barely understands. The politics of the last 8 years has been one of the small picture person. The person who can’t see any benefit unless it is explicitly dictated in clear easy terms. Something that you can’t really do much because the benefits are sometimes so far reaching. This is why I support Obama and this is why I like this plan. It’s a big picture plan that aims for the future.

Ah I like a good smack down of stupid claims. This one is a pretty good side by side of the 2012 garbage about the world ending. It lays out a few of the many unadvised claims about what will happen in 2012 and on the other side it shows actual information backed by evidence and facts. But you know don’t take my word for that or the chart’s either. Go look it up yourself, and if you go to any quack sites to find your information verify what they say.

Found via BadAstronomy.

The shuttle Atlantis is launching today at 2:28pm and everything looks good for launch. I’m watching at Night Sky Observer because Nasa TV is blocked.

The LHC has started up again after the problems last year. Nothing crazy so far and they haven’t really started doing any science in it yet. They’ve just inject beams and then dumped them shortly thereafter. By mid November they hope to have the first full pass of the beams around the whole ring and shortly after that starting collisions. There will be a burn in process where they calibrate the sensors and get used to the various quirks of the equipment but hopefully we’ll get something interesting by the time the shut down next fall.

Yay thank you weather for delaying the test flight to a time that I can watch it.

Today Nasa launches a dummy Ares 1 rocket to test various components. Currently the launch time is marching along the day getting latter every few minutes. I’m watching the broadcast online at Night Sky.

Wait scratch that the launch is scrubbed. I had to take a call (I am at work) and right after that I flipped back to the broadcast and saw dark clouds everywhere and thought to myself hah there’s no way they are launching in that and sure enough that’s the case.

So read this on io9 today. Russia plans on sending probes to Venus. Hell yeah. Nasa can’t be everywhere, esp with all the anti science clap trap that is in this country which isn’t helping them get funding. So this is cool news for me. Mars has been getting a lot of attention and it will be interesting to see what can be done/found on Venus.

Venus is pretty harsh and stuff doesn’t last long there so the missions will be short lived but hey if we can design something to live for a longer time on Venus just think about how that tech can be used here on Earth. People don’t understand that the knowledge we get from exploring space isn’t just in learning that Mars has water or whatever. It is also with the designing the equipment to do so. All of that filters down into our every day life. So when I see that they are wanting to build a craft that can fly around on Venus constantly for as long as it survives, I say HOLY CRAP AWESOME! for several different reasons. One: hey, duh they are going to build a plane, send it to a different planet 23 million miles away, and fly it around non stop while gathering all sorts of data. And two because designing something so outrageous like that is going to push the boundaries of what we are able to do as a whole. Possibly new light materials for aircraft making them more efficient, new and better and tougher solar panels, maybe better communication equipment seeing as they will have a delay between the planet and us. As better autopilot programs since well again that delay between us and it. And so on. Believe me I could go on for a lot longer.

Hell yeah space stuff is always interesting to me. A pity the first of the several probes will only be sent in 2016.

and BBC

Via io9 and BBC