Really Rocket Science

Of all the cool robot contraptions I’ve seen and blogged about lately, I haven’t come across one that sound like something I can actually use in my every day life. Until now, that is. That’s in part because I have a secret phobia: runaway shopping cart. When we go shopping on weekends, I fear a runway shopping (or one hastily abandoned, rather than being put away) cart will "ding" the car, or that ours will slip out of control.

But now that some University of Florida Students have invented a kind of Smart Cart, I may finally be able to shop for groceries without fear.

It looks almost like any other shopping cart, except sensors let it follow the shopper around the supermarket and slow down when needed so items can be placed in it. And it never crashes into anyone’s heels.

"The immediate thing that jumped to my mind was all those times as a kid when my sister would accidentally hit me with a cart," said its inventor, Gregory Garcia. "It seems like the public would really want this, since everybody shops."

Sounds like a good idea to me. So I gotta respectfully disagree that the Smart Cart is a sign that we’ve become irredeemably lazy. (If you ask me, the advent of the Segway and the self-flushing toilet long since heralded that human reality.) It just means I no longer have to fear runaway shopping carts.

All I need now is map of the grocery store and I’m all set.

That was quick. Just days ago Sebadoh brought news that Pluto might be on its way out of the solar system, at least as far as being considered an actual planet is concerned. Now it looks like Pluto may get some company and keep its out at the far end of the solar system

The tally of planets in our solar system would jump instantly to a dozen under a highly controversial new definition proposed by the International Astronomical Union.

Eventually, there would be hundreds of planets, as more round objects are found beyond Neptune.

The proposal, which sources tell Space.com is gaining broad support, tries to plug a big gap in astronomy textbooks, which have never had a formal definition for the word "planet." It addresses discoveries of Pluto-sized worlds that have in recent years pitched astronomers into heated debates over terminology.

• The asteroid Ceres, which is round, would be recast as a dwarf planet in the new scheme.
• Pluto would remain a planet, and its moon Charon would be reclassified as a planet. Both would be called "plutons," however, to distinguish them from the eight "classical" planets.
• A far-out Pluto-sized object known as 2003 UB313, currently nicknamed Xena, would also be called a pluton.

It’s not a popular idea, but it’s an interesting one. Should someone start a contest for the best mnemonic for the new solar system? "Mary Very Easily Makes C_____ Jam Saturday Unless No Plums C_____ X_____"?

We found NASA’s Picture of the Day on Sunday to be particularly fascinating.

This Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) image shows dried streambeds—martian gullies— in the mountainous central peak region of Hale Crater. Some scientists have suggested that the fluid which carved these gullies was liquid water, and that it either resulted from ancient snowmelt or from release of groundwater that percolated to the surface in the intensely fractured rock of Hale’s central peak. In either case, the gullies are dry today, and dark sand can be seen as dunes near the right/lower right part of the image.

Elementrary and high school students may have to come up with a new mnemonic phrase for remembering the planets, depending on the outcome of a debate taking place this month at the International Astronomical Union’s General Assembly meeting in Prague:

At a 12-day conference beginning Monday, scientists will conduct a galactic census of sorts. Among the possibilities at the meeting of the International Astronomical Union in the Czech Republic capital of Prague: Subtract Pluto or christen one more planet, and possibly dozens more.

"It’s time we have a definition," said Alan Stern, who heads the Colorado-based space science division of the Southwest Research Institute of San Antonio. "It’s embarrassing to the public that we as astronomers don’t have one."

The debate intensified last summer when astronomer Michael Brown of the California Institute of Technology announced the discovery of a celestial object larger than Pluto. Like Pluto, it is a member of the Kuiper Belt, a mysterious disc-shaped zone beyond Neptune containing thousands of comets and planetary objects. (Brown nicknamed his find "Xena" after a warrior heroine in a cheesy TV series; pending a formal name, it remains 2003 UB313.)

The Hubble Space Telescope measured the bright, rocky object at about 1,490 miles in diameter, roughly 70 miles longer than Pluto. At 9 billion miles from the sun, it is the farthest known object in the solar system.

The discovery stoked the planet debate that had been simmering since Pluto was spotted in 1930.

Some argue that if Pluto kept its crown, Xena should be the 10th planet by default — it is, after all, bigger. Purists maintain that there are only eight traditional planets, and insist Pluto and Xena are poseurs.

"Life would be simpler if we went back to eight planets," said Brian Marsden, director of the astronomical union’s Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass.

 What do you think? How should a planet be defined? Should our solar system have eight, nine or ten planets? And if Xena becomes the 10th, what strange jam will Mary have to make?

In the annals of rocket science, there are few names that loom larger than James Van Allen. 

Van Allen, who came to national prominence with the launch of the first U.S. satellite Explorer 1 in 1958 and who "made the first major discovery of the early space age," died yesterday in Iowa City, Iowa at the age of 91.

A geiger counter developed by Van Allen was attached to Explorer 1, and data sent back by the counters indicated the existence of two belts of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field — which became known as the Van Allen Belts.

The Telegraph has more on this remarkable man:

The Van Allen belts were discovered by instruments designed by him and carried into space by Explorer I, America’s first satellite. The success of the launch of the 31 lb rocket gave America’s space mission a badly-needed boost after the Soviet Union’s propaganda coup with the Sputnik programme, and Van Allen was featured on the front cover of Time magazine in 1959….

An entire academic discipline, that of magnetospherical physics, owes its existence to Van Allen’s discoveries.

 From the beginning, Van Allen had been keen not only to ensure that rockets were successfully launched, but that they should provide information about aspects of the Earth. In 1950, in conjunction with the British geophysicist Sydney Chapman, he originated plans for an international scientific study of the planet which culminated in the International Geophysical Year (1957-58) of which the satellite programme was the most visible and successful element.

Explorer I’s launch in January 1958 was followed by two further rockets in March, carrying a cigarette-sized "magnetic tape recorder" devised by Van Allen. Explorer IV followed in June, and confirmed the existence of a radiation band 250 miles above the Earth.

He then supervised the Pioneer 10 and 11 rockets, which studied the radiation belts around Jupiter in 1973 and 1974, and went on, five years later, to do the same for Saturn, work which he described in his book First to Jupiter, Saturn and Beyond (1981). He continued to survey the results of the Pioneer and Mariner programmes over decades.

He was also a significant force in the interplanetary missions to Venus, Mars, Neptune, Saturn, Venus and Uranus, contributing to the Voyager programme and the Galileo spacecraft. Much of the knowledge which we now have of the electromagnetic forces, plasmas and radio signals in the solar system derives from the instruments which Van Allen devised and supervised.

 Additional news stories and obituaries can be found here.

Astronomy buffs who use Google Desktop to organize their computers can now download a cool plugin that delivers an Astronomy Picture of the Day. The plugin allows users to easily share the daily picture with friends using Google Talk:

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

If Google Talk is installed on your system, you can share the sheer beauty of our universe with your friends. If neither Google Talk is available nor any friends are online, the service and its button are unavailable.

With eye candy, transparency and smooth animations for your viewing pleasure. Undocking recommended!

Click here to download the plugin. 

Today is Bastille Day, commemorating the flare-up of the French Revolution in 1789. In that sense it’s kind of like our 4th of July, except that where we supply our own fireworks le soliel got supplied them for Bastille Day in 2000. It was called the Bastille Day Shock.

A transient flow system containing several streams and shocks associated with the Bastille Day 2000 solar event was observed by the WIND and ACE spacecraft at 1 AU. Voyager 2 (V2) at 63 AU observed this flow system after it moved through the interplanetary medium and into the distant heliosphere, where the interstellar pickup protons strongly influence the MHD structures and flow dynamics.

Um. Yeah. Just what all that means, I don’t know. But I do know that it looked really cool, thanks to the pictures and videos accompanying this somewhat simpler explanation of what happened when the sun celebrated Bastille Day.

On July 14, 2000, an enormous x-class flare was observed near the center of the solar disk of the Sun (a-b).

An x-class flare is the most intense flare recorded and, like smaller flares, is thought to be the result of reconnection at the base of the solar corona.

The Bastille Day flare may have been produced by a larger, more violent and active version of the reconnection event being shown in this movie (c).

An amazing photo showing the aftermath of a 2,000-year-old star explosion reveals something never seen before: astronomers believe the blue dot at the center may be a neutron star, less than 20 kilometers wide. Space.com reports:

Embedded in the heart of a supernova remnant 10,000 light-years away is a stellar object the likes of which astronomers have never seen before in our galaxy.

At first glance, the object looks like a densely packed stellar corpse known as a neutron star surrounded by a bubble of ejected stellar material, exactly what would be expected in the wake of a supernova explosion.

However, a closer 24.5-hour examination with the European Space Agency’s XMM Newton X-ray satellite reveals that the energetic X-ray emissions of the blue, point-like object cycles every 6.7 hours—tens of thousands of times longer than expected for a freshly created neutron star.

It is behavior that’s more commonly seen in neutron stars that have been around for several million years, researchers say.

We hope everyone enjoyed the long holiday weekend.

The big non-event of the weekend was the expected near-miss between 2004 XP14 and Earth on Monday:

A large asteroid hurtled harmlessly past the Earth early Monday at a distance of about 269,000 miles – slightly farther away than the moon.

Residents with telescopes in the United States and Canada had the best view of 2004 XP14, which appeared as a streaking dot in the northern sky.

Astronomers tracking the space rock’s path since its discovery in 2004 had determined that it would pose no risk to Earth during the encounter nor in the next 100 years. Judging by its brightness, 2004 XP14 was estimated to be a quarter-mile to a half-mile wide.

An asteroid that size, if it smashed into Earth, would probably cause regional destruction. Scientists have said it would take a mile-wide or larger asteroid to cause widespread devastation that could threaten civilization. 

The big event that finally happened– on July 4th, no less–  was the successful launch of space shuttle Discovery yesterday:

The liftoff, right on schedule at 2:38 p.m., was the start of a 13-day flight that is the first in a year for the diminished shuttle fleet as NASA continues its efforts to resume more frequent human spaceflight.

The Discovery is to rendezvous on Thursday with the International Space Station, where it is carrying equipment, supplies and a fresh astronaut for the station’s crew.

But this is also considered the second and final test flight for the shuttle fleet since the loss of the Columbia and its seven astronauts in 2003, and the Discovery’s ascent was scrutinized for the kind of liftoff debris that caused that disaster.

At 2 minutes 53 seconds into the flight, an onboard camera showed numerous pieces of debris appearing to fall away from the external fuel tank. They fluttered away and did not appear to strike the shuttle, carrying a crew of seven.

N. Wayne Hale Jr., NASA’s shuttle program chief, said the pieces had fallen "after the time we are concerned about," after the air becomes so thin that debris usually floats harmlessly away.

A piece of debris that broke off later in the ascent did appear to strike the midbody of the orbiter, NASA officials said. But they added that it probably did not do any damage.

In all, officials said, insulating foam broke away from five spots on the external fuel tank and a solid rocket booster, some with several pieces of foam.

We’ll be bringing you updates of the space shuttle’s 13-day mission over the next two weeks. 

In other Hubble news (see the post below), a pair of small moons orbiting Pluto, first photgraphed by the Hubble Telescope in 2005, now have official names: Nix and Hyrdra.

"Nix and Hydra are roughly 5,000 times fainter than Pluto and are about two to three times farther from Pluto than its large moon, Charon, which was discovered in 1978," according to the official Hubble website.