Big Picture Science

A review of SETI and its weekly podcast by ANDY FLEMING.

Are We Alone? The age-old question, eloquently answered by Ellie Arroway’s dad in Carl Sagan’s book and following 1997 movie Contact “well if we are, it’s an awful waste of space”.

Over the last fifty years, more and more scientists have stepped out of the closet to seriously confront this most ancient of all questions, shunned for centuries by serious scientists, fearsome of professional ridicule. Both Frank Drake and Carl Sagan risked their professional careers by engaging with both the public and the scientific establishment in trying to have both exobiology and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) taken seriously.

The former of course went on to formulate the famous “Drake Equation” which ostensibly estimates the number of intelligent galactic civilisations, but in reality reveals the immensity of what we really don’t know. The latter’s PBS series Cosmos ponders the question of extra terrestrial intelligence several times when the late NASA astronomer asks what are their politics, religions, and how different are they from us?

Regarding exobiology, now termed astrobiology, Drake, Sagan and others succeeded. It’s a subject that has finally come of age. The majority of serious scientists today are now minded to the consensus that life is common in the universe. Some of it may be lurking within our own solar system – in sub-surface Mars or in Jupiter’s moon Europa’s subterranean water ocean. Many reckon it’s only a question of time and political will before we find it – the technology already exists.

Indeed, with projects such as NASA’s James Webb Telescope (that depending on the US Congress may or may not be launched in the next ten years), and its Terrestrial Planet Finder project, we may, through spectroscopy of their atmospheres, have gathered evidence of the signature of life on planets orbiting other suns before evidence is forthcoming from Mars, and certainly Europa. However, most scientists take the view that when we find these critters they are likely to be primitive – microbes, bugs – lichens and algae if we’re lucky.

The scientists at the SETI Institute in Pasadena, California stick their heads out further than this though. They’re willing to spend their professional time and careers scanning millions of radio channels to see whether ET has mastered the art of propagating electromagnetic radiation, or even discovered the power of lasers. The search started with Frank Drake at the Green Bank Radio Telescope in the early 1960s and has, with new technology, quickly developed since then.

From scanning one channel at a time, SETI astronomers can now scan millions of frequencies at once. They’ve even enlisted the help of some of the world’s largest radio telescopes, such as the gigantic Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, and had (albeit for a short period) the help of full scale NASA involvement. They’ve even enlisted surfers to participate in a most ingenious project called SETI@home, where wide scale distribution and processing of Arecibo data on individual personal computers globally circumvents the need for expensive supercomputers to process the masses of radio information. Drake and Sagan even sent a message in 1974 via the Arecibo dish to the globular cluster M13, in the hope ET will hear us (a reply via radio would take 46,000 years to reach us, so don’t hold your breath!)

Despite direct NASA funding for SETI being withdrawn in the early nineties, and despite the lack of a repeated independently verified signal from ET, the SETI Institute continues to thrive and gather respectability. Evidence for this comes from an increasingly respectable list of sponsors including Sun Microsystems, Equallogic and a massive donation from Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft who has provided funds for the Allen Telescope Array (formerly the One Hectare Array) – a kind of Socorro Very Large Array on steroids purely for SETI.

The organisation’s public outreach initiatives include a superb website at http://seti.org/, public lectures in the United States, and the now weekly Big Picture Science SETI Institute Radio podcast, formerly entitled until a few weeks ago, Are We Alone?  I have had the pleasure of listening to this programme for the past couple of years. Whatever your feelings on SETI, and the “Intelligent” part of it, it certainly divides scientists (many of whom postulate that it is not science, as at its basis is an hypothesis that is not falsifiable) - as a standalone general science broadcast it is a polished piece of work, outshining much of what is available on terrestrial media.

The programme is presented by SETI’s senior astronomer, and man of fine humour and knowledge, Seth Shostak. This SETI stalwart is usually joined by Molly Bentley, who is the senior producer of SETI Radio, and has in the past presented science reports from the USA on both the BBC World Service and the BBC News channel.

Like the Planetary Society’s Planetary Radio, Big Picture Science always includes interviews with top scientists from a host of different fields, from sociology, psychology, anthropology and biology, right through to genetics, astrobiology, astrophysics and cosmology.

As NASA itself has concluded, illustrated by its own “Origins” initiative, the SETI Institute recognises the need for a multidisciplinary approach when it comes to thinking about intelligent aliens. In the process, it educates the listener extremely well in cutting edge science, explained with wonderful analogies for the lay person. Indeed these excellent podcasts require little previous scientific knowledge – this fact being amazingly juxtaposed with an enormous amount of valuable knowledge being conveyed in each fifty minute programme (file size is 35MB mp3 downloaded in a minute or so with a broadband connection).

The Big Picture Science team, left to right Barbara Vance, Molly Bentley and Seth Shostak.

This Sagan-esque public outreach approach, combined with the multidisciplinary angle is illustrated well in the last SETI Radio broadcast I heard, downloaded from the huge archive of programmes before compiling this review. Entitled Life’s Stories it centred around a series of interviews conducted with senior scientists at the AbSciCon (an acronym standing for Astrobiology Science Conference) held in 2009 in Santa Clara, California, and sponsored by the SETI Institute. On the show’s menu was a very interesting interview with Diana Valencia, planetary physicist at Harvard University, about the discovery of an increasing number of “super earths” (terrestrial or water worlds with masses up to five times that of the Earth).

Charly Lineweaver, cosmologist at the Australian National University was interviewed concerning his research into the size and age of possible habitable zones in galaxies, where stars and their solar systems can reside away from the effects of galactic central black holes, overcrowding of stars and resulting frequent supernovae events and lethal levels of cosmic rays.

Baruch Blumberg, a scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Institute, Nobel Prize winner and Trustee at the SETI Institute was interviewed concerning the role of viruses in the development of life, and was questioned as to whether viruses as self-replicating structures themselves constituted a primitive form of life. Other interviewees commented on their respective specialisms that included the length of the present epoch when the universe was able to form terrestrial planets (i.e. the period during which there was sufficient metallicity for terrestrial rocky worlds to form around stars). Asteroid impacts and volcanic activity were also discussed along with their implications for mass extinctions such as the KT and Permian, and resultant large reduction in biodiversity.

Unbelievably, all of these interesting items were discussed in a fascinating fifty minute high quality science audio broadcast (burn it onto audio CD and listen on your hi-fi!), and one that I thoroughly endorse.

A quality science programme such as this cannot be cheap to research, or produce, bearing in mind in the superb technical and presentational quality. The programme succeeds in traversing the difficult tightrope of both being highly entertaining and highly informative, with both Seth Shostak’s knowledge, jokes and humour being nicely contrasted with Molly Bentley’s common sense and professional journalistic style. This is borne out by the terrestrial radio transmission of the show on many talk radio stations, both in the US, and globally.

For the listener, the Big Picture Science succeeds in providing a high quality up-to-date general science, astronomy and cosmology “fix”, while it also acts as a superb ambassador for the organisation striving to answer that greatest of all questions: Are We Alone?

Full details of the present show and the SETI Radio show archive (all available for download) at: http://radio.seti.org/ where you can also participate in the SETI blog, contact Seth and Molly, or just enjoy the rest of a very professional website.

Rockets, a German and an American Genius

Master of US rocketry, Dr Werhner von Braun.

We reflect on the master of modern rocketry Werhner von Braun and listen to a humourous song about his life from Tom Leahy.

Further to my post (or should that be rant) yesterday (available here) about the American space program, or rather lack of it under President Obama, I thought that I would pay my respects to one of the geniuses and giants of the US space program of the 1960s, Dr Werhner von Braun.

Sure, there was a host of contributors to rocketry in the twentieth century... one just has to think of the massive contribution made by Robert Goddard for example.  But the scientists and rocket master who will be forever associated with the momentous manned landing on the Moon  in 1969 is Werhner von Braun, and his fantastic Saturn V rocket, and if to underscore his genius, it's still the most powerful and largest rocket in the world.  Full details about the mighty Saturn V are available here.  Fittingly Dr. Wernher von Braun was inducted into the Space Camp Hall of Fame at the US Space and Rocket Centre in 2007:

Of course, von Braun was a highly controversial figure in the United States.  He had been whisked out of the broken and defeated Nazi Germany in the Allies' 'Operation Paperclip' at the end of the Second World War.  He was part of a group of scientists and engineers who had been working on Hitler's vengeance weapons such as the A4 rocket and the V2, the world's first ballistic missile, and one that wreaked so much havoc on London.  Their value to the US as the Cold War with the Soviet Union heated up was immense, and the rocket men and their surviving V2's were taken to the White Sands Airforce Base.  There they could work on rockets for America's intercontinental ballistic missile program, and eventually for NASA and the space program.

Von Braun was a man with a mission: to get a human into space and to the Moon using his rockets.  To many however, he was an individual of political expedience who would nestle up to anyone, including Hitler to gain funding for his rocket development.  To von Braun, the ends justified the means, even if the latter included building Hitler's vengeance weapons, in the process using labour from Nazi concentration camps.

With this in mind, it's time to listen to another genius, this time one born in America, the singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath, Tom Lehrer.   Here is his pithy and humorous song about his take on German genius and naturalised American, Werhner von Braun.

The End of a Dream: Atlantis Returns

As the last Space Shuttle returns to Earth, ANDY FLEMING investigates the future of NASA and the American space program.

The space shuttle Atlantis has landed back on Earth, ending the shuttle programme's last-ever mission.  The spacecraft touched down at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida on Thursday, bringing an end to America's 30-year shuttle programme.  The crew of commander Chris Ferguson, pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim spent almost 13 days in space.

Space Shuttle Atlantis' final launch from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. July 8, 2011.

After more than 30 years, the space shuttle era has come to a close. Space shuttle Atlantis and the STS-135 crew landed safely on runway 15 at 5:57 a.m. EDT at Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility in Florida, ending a 13-day journey of more than five million miles. It was the final and 133rd landing in shuttle history. The STS-135 crew consisted of Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim.

Now as readers of Andromeda Child will be aware, I've never been a great fan of either the space shuttle program, or come to that the International Space Station (ISS).  The former has never lived up to its aim of being a cheap Space Transportation System (STS) costing one billion dollars every time it has launched and the latter has consumed tens of billions of dollars allowing astronauts to grow plants in low Earth orbit.  Both have lacked the vision and excitement of deep space exploration that would inspire a generation of young people into science education and productive careers in technology, so typified by NASA's Apollo program.

Indeed, the Space Shuttle was never commercially viable either, despite this being one of the justifications used by NASA for keeping it going.  It would have been considerably cheaper, efficient and more reliable to have launched the Hubble Space Telescope by a Titan booster than in the payload bay of a shuttle.  And of course the Shuttle wasn't particularly safe either as the catastrophic failure of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003 showed.  A one in seventy chance of a catastrophic failure during a mission are not good odds in the twenty first century.

However, shuttle astronauts did fix the world's favourite telescope when it was launched with a severe case of myopia and the shuttle has allowed servicing of this invaluable piece of scientific equipment.  And despite my lack of enthusiasm for the scientific value of the ISS the shuttle and its crews have played a huge role in constructing our habitat in low Earth orbit.

But I would rather have Richard Nixon's under-whelming space shuttle program, (initiated of course to give NASA a raison d'etre after the early termination of project Apollo) than no US manned space exploration at all.  Because along with the sacking of 4,000 well trained and qualified engineers in Florida, President Obama's vision for the human future in space consists of Americans being taken to the ISS via boosters with the Russian flag on them.  As their Soyuz spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan dock with the ISS they may ponder as to what John F Kennedy would have thought of today's US space program, as he fired the starting pistol for Project Apollo fifty years ago.  He must be turning in his grave.

So what now for President Obama's lack of vision in space?  And what now for NASA?  Obama believes that private enterprise will now take over where the US taxpayer no longer wishes to tread.  The future of western manned spaceflight to him lies in the hands of companies such as Elon Musk's SpaceX with its veritable Falcon 9 booster.  Such companies will bid for space transport contracts from NASA which itself will become more of a purchasing and facilitating authority.

But realistically, if mankind is ever to leave low Earth orbit and reach for an the Moon, an asteroid, the Lagrangian Points or Mars taxpayers dollars will be needed on a gargantuan scale.  But the political enthusiasm for space exploration on any scale is palpable by its total absence.  Consider this: the US Congress is now well along the road to axing the James Webb Telescope, the successor to Hubble.  Billions of dollars already spent and massive future science benefits will be lost.

However, should we be surprised at the almost criminal lack of funding for NASA when one considers that a surprisingly large number of American politicians are scientifically ignorant?  Many believe that the Earth and the Cosmos were created in 6006BC and that homo sapiens and dinosaurs co-existed in some type of quasi Flintstones-style theme park?  Dont believe me?  Well, Sarah Palin, one of the Republican contenders for the Presidency does according to the Huffington Post.

It is truly wonderful that relations between the once superpower adversaries have improved to such a degree that astronauts can travel with cosmonauts to the ISS on a Russian booster.  And it's also wonderful that private enterprise is picking up the gauntlet in a frontier-style spirit just like how the west was won.

But the challenges of space exploration far exceed those of any exploration on our home planet orin nineteenth century North America, and certainly exceed the funds available to any single corporation.  Indeed such demands possibly outstrip the ability of a single nation to fund a manned space program with the goal of say landing a human on Mars.  And what private company is going to fund unmanned space exploration such as the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity or the Juno mission to the Jupiter system?  There's hardly going to be much of a tangible benefit to shareholders.

The effects of the US cutting its manned space program (and now possibly its unmanned space program too) will be far more than saving a small fraction of the amount spent by the US military in fighting wars in the Middle East.  The loss to American science, technology and engineering will be huge and will cost this great nation dearly in the future.  As Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute states (originally another NASA project searching for life elsewhere in the Cosmos axed by the US Congress), America is starting to look more and more like the Roman Empire in its latter stages.  This greatest of empires collapsed not because of the things it continued to do but because of the even greater things it no longer undertook.  Read his report here.

If I will ever see a human on Mars in my lifetime it is becoming ever more apparent he or she won't be American... they'll be Chinese.

Further Reading and Links:
Shostak, S.: American Space Research: An Also-Ran?, Huffpost Tech, 17.7.11.

WETI - The Wait for Extraterrestrial Intelligence

We investigate an entirely new approach to not seeking out cosmic company, and it has just had its funding extended until 2620.  It's called WETI, the Wait for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The mission of the WETI Institute is to understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of intelligent life in the universe. The WETI Institute has chosen an entirely novel approach to achieve that goal. Instead of actively searching for extraterrestrial intelligence, the idea is to simply WAIT - until the others find us.
   
Waiting is a notoriously underappreciated method in our efforts to search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It is cheaper and less stressful than any other type of research. It is also environmentally friendly and does not cause global warming, terrorism or nuclear conflicts. The WETI Institute has assembled an assorted group of professionals to explore the benefits of waiting for our understanding of life in the Universe. Combining the expertise from a wide range of disciplines - astrophysics, biology, neurology, psychology, philosophy - our objective is to set a new gold standard for scientifically meaningful waiting.

We assume we are conducting the most profound waiting in human history - waiting to know our beginnings and our place among the stars. Numerical simulations have shown that events that will occur with a certain finite probability at any given time will eventually occur with certainty, if only we wait long enough. This is strong evidence for the universal validity of our waiting approach, and it has profound implications for all fields of human endeavor.

We do not need to invoke science, however. When you've lost a companion in a large crowd, the best strategy is not to run around looking for the other person, but to remain in place and wait for them to find you. It would be outlandishly foolish to give up one's own known position to reach the unknown position of another person, who might have wandered off from that position already anyway. And since, in a philosophical sense, both humans and extraterrestrials are lost in a huge and very empty crowd called outer space, the very same logic applies there.

Mankind has always felt the urge of actively doing something of extraordinary relevance. By doing so, we have caused a great deal of grief and disaster. The WETI Institute proposes to abandon our reckless anthropocentric ambition, and to strive for a more humble approach of letting the universe explore us instead.

Full details:
http://weti-institute.org/index.html

Astronomy for Everyone 2: Visit the Seven Sisters!

The beautiful Seven Sisters or Pleiades star cluster in the constellation of Taurus, complete with labels marking the main stars visible to the naked eye.  Credit: Anglo-Australian Observatory/Royal Observatory, Edinburgh.

There are certain objects in the night sky that paradoxically and almost counter-intuitively appear much better with the naked eyes or with ordinary common or garden binoculars rather than expensive telescopes.  One such object that also defies even the most appalling city and urban light pollution is the Seven Sisters or Pleiades open star cluster.  With a prominent place in ancient mythology, it's perhaps one of the most popular astronomical targets for the beginner... after all most youngsters are either taught about this beautiful cluster of stars at home or at school.  Some may also be familiar with the constellation from its appearance on the badge on the bonnet of Japanese Subaru cars: the manufacturer was named after the constellation.

Infact, The Pleiades cluster, otherwise known as Messier 45 far from containing the six or seven stars seen with the unaided eye actually contains hundreds, with many more becoming visible through binoculars.  For those in the northern hemisphere, the cluster is above and to the right of Orion the Hunter as one faces south in the constellation of Taurus the Bull, and it reaches its highest point in the sky, midway between rising and setting at around around 4am in September, midnight in November, and 8pm in January.

Location of The Pleiades, M45.  Look for the constellation of Orion the Hunter with his distinctive belt, and in the Northern Hemisphere, M45 is to the right and above.

The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them one fiftieth the age of our sun, and they are also closein astronomical terms to the Earth... just 425 light years away.  They're very hot and hence blue in colour and indeed from a dark site strands and wisps of the star forming nebula of hydrogen gas from which the stars originated can still be seen.

The main stars have delightful names too emanating from Greek mythology, and being the seven daughters of Atlas and of Pleione, the daughter of Oceanus. Their names were Electra, Maia, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. According to some versions of the myth, they committed suicide from grief at the fate of their father, Atlas, or at the death of their sisters, the Hyades. Other versions made them the attendants of Artemis, goddess of wildlife and of hunting, who were pursued by the giant hunter Orion, but were rescued by the gods and changed into doves. After their death, or metamorphosis, they were transformed into stars, but are still pursued across the sky by the constellation Orion to this day.

Finally, you may still be wondering why I recommended the naked eye or especially binoculars when looking at the Pleiades.  The reason is quite simple: to gain the full effect of observing this beautiful 'open' star cluster you need to be able to see it all in the same field of view.  The onus is on the word 'open', as M45 covers quite a large area of sky.  The typical 4.5 or 5 degree field of view provided by 10x50 binoculars is just perfect.  The limited field of view provided by a telescope is disappointing as you won't see the beauty of the group in its entirety.  You will however see more stars of course, and from a dark site, possible nebulosity.

Backyard Astronomical Sketching: Stunning Saturn!

Starting out in astronomy and want some astro-images to impress your friends but you don't have a DSLR camera or CCD? ANDY FLEMING utilised the more traditional and cheaper method of astronomical sketching to record his observations of stunning Saturn in May 2010!

As an amateur astronomer, it’s a sensible idea to professionalise your observation sessions by undertaking some recording of your activities, both by keeping a diary or reports, and also undertaking some visual recordings or sketching of celestial objects.  It’s an unexpected consequence of joining the blogosphere that you can thus kill three colloquial birds with one stone... publish your recordings online thus saving on written records... expose them to an audience... and keep an archive of your recording blog posts for future reference and posterity!

The evening and early night of May 14, 2010 here in the north east of England was exceptionally cold (-5’C at Shap Summit in the Pennines), but the flip side was that it was also clear... seeing was good, although I have known better as there was a little dew and mist about.  However, the increasingly late sunsets of May in the UK mean that every late evening observing opportunity has to be taken (bearing in mind that the early hours are not practical as I require my beauty sleep for my day job!).  For me, this limits deep sky object observing from 2100 UT to 2330 UT. Later than that and I have prickly eyes the following day, and an even more prickly response in bed from the domestic authorities.

Civil twilight, (defined as  when the centre of the Sun is between 6 degrees below the horizon to just at the edge of the horizon) is ideal for observing the brightest stars and planets, and with this in mind I rationalised my observing time by looking at my favourite celestial object first, namely the Saturnian system.

Through my garage-sale-acquired £5 10x50 binoculars, the planet had the appearance of a brilliant yellow disk with something resembling ears on either side. It was unmistakably Saturn, as to differentiate planets from stars they don’t twinkle, and of course, there are those to be telescope-resolved rings. The planet was residing in the non-descript constellation of Virgo, lying between the constellation’s brightest star Spica, and the brightest star in Leo, Regulus.  At apparent magnitude +0.89 it outshone both of these stars.

Through my 200cm Newtonian reflector of course the planet looked awesome. With a 26mm Plossl (x40 magnification) its rings and a handful of moons came into view. Interjecting a x2 Barlow lens into the setup gave much more detail, resulting in x80 magnification. Indeed, this is my favourite field of view, and my sketch reveals the scene. The two moons on view in the Saturnian system were Rhea and Tethys, and the rings were closing up again at around 10 degrees.

Using a 9mm eyepiece with the Barlow and taking the magnification up to x240 however, I still couldn't resolve the rings at this angle. Even the large A and B rings and the Cassini division were not properly observed. The disk of the planet however resolves into some barely discernibly cloud bands, and its largest moon, Titan, takes on a notably brownish hue.

My sketching of the Cigar Galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear). The realistic reverse out of my original sketching (right) was achieved on my computer by scanning in the original sketch and using Adobe Photoshop or the excellent free Artweaver Basic package and using the negative feature available in both pieces of software.

The sky virtually completely dark (well, apart from light pollution from Teesside industry,) I moved on to some galaxies. Spiral Galaxy M81 (Bode’s Nebula) and the spectacular nearly edge-on starburst spiral the Cigar Galaxy (M82) both looked stunning, M82 especially so, with the central dominating dark band of dust filaments especially striking. Both of these circumpolar (from mid-northern latitudes) galaxies were nearly at zenith (directly overhead), so although well resolved due to less atmospheric refraction, observing them was a literal ‘pain in the neck’ with a reflector!

Closing the session, M13, the Great Globular Star Cluster in Hercules looked particularly stunning, with some of the larger stars in its halo being resolved with a 9mm eyepiece (x120 mgnification). However it didn't bear a Barlow/9mm eyepiece combination as it was just too faint. M92 also looked pleasing, an easy object to find above and to the right of Vega, the brightest star in Lyra, although it’s was not as bright or striking as M13, and I restricted myself to x80 magnification.

I intended an attempt on M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, but declined as it was still too low down in the industrial sky glow to my east, and it’s an object worthy of a much better view when in a better position in the sky.

All in all, a most productive couple of hours in good seeing, made better I have to admit, with easy access to copious amounts of hot Nescafe coffee in exceptional sub-zees (for mid-May!!)

I hope you enjoy these images: ultimately the effort you invest in sketching is well worthwhile – you will have learned far more about the objects you observe, plus you will have the satisfaction of showing your drawings to family members, friends or members of your local astronomical society.


So get the pencils, paper and binoculars and/or telescope out.  Why not scan any images you make into your computer and make negatives of your sketches, so the monochrome drawings are no longer reversed out? You can then publish them on your website or Facebook profile for all to see!

In the mean time, good seeing and clear skies!

Reflections on a Mote of Dust

This photograph of the Earth was taken by NASA/JPL's Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance of 4 billion miles after it had finished its primary mission. It is commonly called "The Pale Blue Dot" photograph. Carl Sagan pushed NASA/JPL for the photograph to be taken before Voyager left the solar system, and it shows tiny and fragile planetary home as just one pale blue pixel imposed against the vast blackness of space.

Essential reading and listening for all politicians and religious leaders.

I'm often, in good humour I hasten to add, criticised for being slightly long-winded.  Usually my lack of brevity is the butt of family jokes, but admittedlyI do realise that most of my posts on Andromeda Child are quite lengthy.  In mitigation, my excuse is the subject matter, which often concerns the finer details of science and astronomy and as such often requires extensive explanation.  Hopefully this leads to a highly informative and educational blog that popularises my eclectic tastes and is interesting to readers!

And on the subject of popularisation, and of science in particular, anyone that knows me even passingly will acknowledge my strong appreciation of the work of NASA astronomer and astrobiologist and presenter of the PBS series Cosmos, Dr Carl Sagan, and not just in the fields of science but in politics, religion and philosophy too.  A full appreciation of his life and work is available here.  One of my favourite Sagan books is Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space which is available in audio book form, read by Dr Sagan himself.

Here's an extract that should be compulsory reading for every politician the world over.

(To my wife, Gill: Is this post short enough for you - not everyone can be concise!!??)



Video courtesy of Cosmos Studios and The Carl Sagan Portal

96% of Our Universe is Missing - What Can the Matter Be?

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.  This photograph shows the Atlas Experiment.  Scientists are hopeful that the LHC may shed new light on both Dark Energy and Dark Matter.

It's an embarrassment of gargantuan proportions that lies at the heart of modern physics, a kind of cosmic elephant in the room. Put simply, physicists realise that when we look out 13.7 billion light years across the visible universe with our telescopes, we are only seeing a tiny proportion of all that there is. Modern physics and its key theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity, simply doesn't have a clue as to what makes up 96% of the universe.

The best estimates of cosmologists and physicists reveal that the universe is constituted of 4% of normal baryonic matter, consisting of the things we see with our eyes and detectors. This is made of atoms and their constituent parts and includes stars, planets and intergalactic dust. Einstein said that mass and energy are equivalent, and since the late 1990s astronomers and cosmologists have found that a staggering 73% of the universe is made of something called Dark Energy, which reveals itself and an anti-gravitational force. The expanding universe it turns out, as first revealed by Edwin Hubble isn't just expanding at a linear rate, the expansion is accelerating. One day in the far and distant future, cosmologists will no longer see galaxies outside our own cluster, they'll simply be over the horizon, too far away for light to have had enough time to travel to the Earth. For now though, we have little idea as to what Dark Energy actually is.

We may have rather more success in identifying Dark Matter, first postulated by astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1934, to account for evidence of "missing mass" in the orbital velocities of galaxies in clusters. Subsequently, other observations have indicated the presence of dark matter in the universe, including the rotational speeds of galaxies, gravitational lensing of background objects by galaxy clusters such as the Bullet Cluster, and the temperature distribution of hot gas in galaxies and clusters of galaxies. It is believed that most Dark Matter, by its very nature does not consist of atoms, it doesn't interact with electromagnetic radiation, and therefore we cannot detect it with our telescopes.

There are many possibilities as to what Dark Matter may be, and these include:

• Normal matter which has so far eluded our gaze, such as dark galaxies, brown dwarfs, planetary material (rock, dust, etc.), or black holes. Some of these could be MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects), which would explain the distribution of Dark Matter in galaxy halos.
• Massive standard model neutrinos.
• Massive exotica. These can be divided into two possible classes, the first consisting of axions (a hypothetical elementary particle), additional neutrinos, super symmetric particles, or a host of others. Their properties are constrained by the theory which predicts them, but by virtue of their mass, they solve the dark matter problem if they exist in the correct abundance.

Particles in the second class are generally classed in loose groups. Their properties are not specified, but they are merely required to be massive and have other properties such that they would so far have eluded discovery in the many experiments which have looked for new particles. These include WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), CHAMPs (Charged Massive Particles), and a host of others.

Whatever Dark Matter turns out to be, and there are many experiments being conducted around the globe to detect it including at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and in subterranean laboratories, we are likely to have an answer as to what this fundamental constituent of the universe is, long before that for Dark Energy.

For whichever way you look at it - it's an embarrassment for modern physics to only know what 4% of the universe is actually made of!

Astronomy for Everyone 1: The Moon

Eclipsed Moon and background stars.  Credit and copyright: Johannes Schedler (Panther Observatory).

ANDY FLEMING takes a look at the Moon and provides a simple guide to what you can see with both the naked eye and binoculars.  Included are details of the formation of the Moon, and you may be surprised to learn that your very existence is due to the Earth's closest celestial neighbour.

There's an overwhelmingly really nice thing about the gateway science of astronomy that sets it apart from every other science: everyone regardless of education or equipment can participate and make real scientific discoveries.  Blatantly, the same cannot be said of say nuclear physics or molecular biology.

The only equipment one actually needs to enjoy this fascinating subject comes free with every human being: your eyes!  To enjoy 'amateur' astronomy you can spend between tens thousand pounds and absolutely nothing at all.  It totally depends on what you want to see and/or the level of detail.  I placed 'amateur' in inverted commas above because from the outset there is nothing 'amateur' about observing the night sky.  The adjective conjours up half-baked theories or Heath-Robinsonish equipment which actually couldn't be further from the truth... amateur astronomers make the most outstanding discoveries and with modern DSLR cameras (and CCDs) even their astrophotography can give professional astronomers a run for their money.  And that is the real reason for the term 'amateur astronomer'.  It is used purely to differentiate between individuals who undertake the science purely for fun and pleasure and those who get paid to undertake it (many in this latter group also enjoy the subject of course, and as a prerequisite will have undertaken substantial academic education in the subject!).

Most people do not possess astronomical equipment so this occasional series will start by turning its attention to the second brightest object in our skies after the Sun: the Earth's own Moon.  Our Moon is far more important to all life on Earth than most people realise.  Simply illuminating the night sky or being responsible for ocean tides is of relatively little significance whn one realises its true effect on the Earth and us.  It has been intrinsic to the very evolution of life itself, and by definition the appearance of homo sapiens!  And it's not hard to see why it is so important.  To start with it is the only Moon of a major planet in the solar system that is so large relative to its parent planet, indeed many astronomers consider the Earth/Moon system to be a double or binary planetary system.  At 385,000 kilometres distant it is the closest celestial body to the Earth (apart from Near Earth Objects and Potentially Hazardous Asteroids that worryingly come between the planet and the Moon).

The Moon was created from the Earth itself, confirmed by the geological experiments undertaken by the NASA Apollo program astronauts.  It is overwhelmingly iron-poor (unlike the Earth) and consists of terrestrial mantle material, leading most scientists to the view that it was created by a Mars-sized impactor (that they have named Thea) striking the young Earth at the start of what scientists call the Period of Heavy Bombardment.  The Earth was very nearly completely destroyed by the collision, but the ejecta from the Earth's mantle and the material from the impactor itself eventually accreted in Earth orbit to form the Moon which at that point orbited the young Earth at only a fraction its current distance.

At this point the Earth's day was about eight hours in duration, but over four billion years the friction of the lunar gravity has slowed this down to twenty four hours.  Eventually, the velocity of the Moon orbiting the Earth matched that of its rotational speed so that now the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth: the same side of the Moon is visible to the Earth at all times and until the unmanned Soviet and NASA probes of the early 1960s, no human being had ever seen the far side.  Notice it is called the 'far side' and not the 'dark side', a serious misnomer as it receives the same attention from the Sun as the Earth-facing side.

Most importantly, the Moon has prevented the Earth wobbling uncontrollably on its axis.  For example, Mars and the Earth at present share a similar angle of axial tilt - Mars is at 25 degrees, and the Earth at a fairly constant 23.5 degrees. During the past ten million years, Earth's axial tilt has only varied between about 22 and 24.5 degrees, because our large Moon helps maintain a stable tilt. But Mars, which has two tiny captured asteroid moons, Phobos and Deimos, has experienced more extreme changes in its axial tilt - between 13 and 40 degrees over timescales of about 10 to 20 million years.  In the case of Mars, this has led to cataclysmic changes in climate, but in the case of the Earth it has led to stability, and extrapolated over billions of years has provided the climatic stability essential for the evolution of complex life forms.

Visually, the Moon is absolutely stunning and it is so close to the Earth its beauty can be enjoyed with just the naked eye.  There may be no 'man in the Moon', it may not be made of bluey green cheese but its dark patches, visible to the naked eye are solidified larva plains or mare ('seas').  Slighty above the lunar equator and to the right, one can observe the Mare Tranquillitatus (Sea of Tranquillity) where, 42 years ago men from Earth first set foot on another world.  And that is the other amazing fact about the Moon, humankind has actually been there.  Between 1969 and 1972 twelve human beings, all men and all American visited the Moon, executing experiments, returning soil ('regolith') samples, driving a lunar buggy and even, in the case of Alan Shepard, even playing golf in the one sixth of Earth gravity.

It's July 20, 1969, one of the most important days in the history of humanity.  On this day men from Earth first set foot on another world in the form of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.

And one of the last Apollo era experiments is still being undertaken... special mirrors left on the Moon are used to reflect laser light from Earth, and using the known speed of light the exact distance to our only natural satellite can be calculated to exquisite precision.  Fascinatingly the experiments have determinde that the Moon is still receding from Earth at the rate of a human's finger nail growth... a couple of centimetres per year!

We are fortunate indeed to live in an epoch when we Earthlings can observe the amazing spectacle of a total solar eclipse, caused by the Moon in its orbit around the Earth making an exact transit over the disk of the Sun.  If you're lucky enough to be in a location where you can observe such a beautiful event, look at the Sun's breathtaking corona, and look for the beautiful beads of lights as the eclipse fades when the Sun's rays shine up the lunar valleys towards the Earth.  But remember NEVER look at the Sun, or a solar eclipse through binoculars, telescopes or even the naked eye.  Always use specially adapted dark glasses or appropriate telescope filters.  For the reason outlined in the last paragraph over the course of many millennia total eclipses will no longer be possible.

The stunning beauty of a total solar eclipse.  Notice Baily's Beads of light shining through the valleys in the rugged lunar terrain.

You may think it somewhat artificial in manufacture that during a total solar eclipse the diameter of the Moon appears to be exactly the same as that of the Sun.  A little mathematics gives the reason: the Sun's distance from the Earth is about 400 times the Moon's distance, and the Sun's diameter is about 400 times the Moon's diameter. Because these ratios are approximately the same, the Sun and the Moon as seen from Earth appear to be approximately the same size, about 0.5 degree of arc in angular measure.

The dramatic photograph at the beginning of this article portrays a dark red Moon during a total lunar eclipse. Imaged during the fabulous lunar eclipse in March 2007 at Wildon, Austria, the picture is a composite of two exposures; a relatively short exposure to feature the lunar surface and a longer exposure to capture background stars in the constellation Leo. Completely immersed in Earth's cone-shaped shadow during the total eclipse phase, the lunar surface is still illuminated by sunlight, reddened and refracted into the dark shadow region by a dusty atmosphere. As a result, familiar details of the Moon's nearside are easy to pick out, including the smooth lunar mare and the large ray crater Tycho. In this telescopic view, the background stars are faint and most would be invisible to the naked eye.  Because the Earth is so much larger than the Moon, such an eclipse caused by the Earth transiting across the disk of the Sun, as observed from the Moon, is much longer in duration than a solar eclipse.

Eclipses are comparatively rare and solar eclipses very rare from any particular location on the Earth, but spending £5 at a garage sale on a decent pair of 10x50 binoculars (like I did with my Super Zeniths) will reveal many more wonders aplenty on the Moon's disk, as the lunar map below reveals:

One of the most striking craters to observe on the Moon and readily seen through ordinary binoculars is Tycho, named after famous Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe who lived between 1546 and 1601.  It is a highly prominent impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands and is 'young' in geological terms with an estimated age of 108 million years, based on analysis of samples of the crater rays recovered during NASA's Apollo 17 mission.

Through telescopes and binoculars, the observer will note that the crater is sharply defined, unlike older craters that have been degraded by subsequent impacts. The interior has a high reflectivity (albedo) that is prominent when the Sun is overhead, and the crater is surrounded by a magnificent and distinctive ray system forming long spokes that reach as long as 1,500 kilometres.  Sections of these rays can be observed even when Tycho is illuminated only by earthlight.

The striking impact crater Tycho.  Note the stunning ray system consisting of ejecta being spewed out from under the lunar surface following the impact.

Another prominent crater well worth some observation is Copernicus, named after the fifteenth century Polish monk and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.  It is located in eastern Oceanus Procellarum and is around 800 million years old, and like Tycho has a ray system, albeit noticeably less visible.  It can be observed using binoculars, and is located slightly northwest of the centre of the Moon's Earth-facing hemisphere. South of the crater is the Mare Insularum, and to the south-south west is the crater Reinhold. North of Copernicus are the Montes Carpatus, which lie at the south edge of Mare Imbrium. West of Copernicus is a group of dispersed lunar hills.

Copernicus crater, as imaged by the crew of NASA's Apollo 12, whilst in lunar orbit.  Credit: NASA.

Due to its relative youth, the crater has remained in a relatively pristine shape since it formed, and it appears that the crater floor has not been flooded by lava. The terrain along the bottom is hilly in the southern half while the north is relatively smooth. The central peaks consist of three isolated mountainous rises climbing as high as 1.2 km above the floor. These peaks are separated from each other by valleys, and they form a rough line along an east-west axis.

While you're observing the Moon with your binoculars don't forget to take a look at the mare or 'seas' that I mentioned earlier.  For rather obvious reasons the Sea of Tranquillity is my favourite, but I always find the Seas of Serenity and Crises particularly striking.

So do make sure you take a look at our closest neighbour, the Moon; it really is a most fascinating and beautiful object and its spectacle is not degraded by even the worst light pollution either.  A pair of binoculars will reveal even more stunning sights on its surface and they can be used when you're out walking the dog or even emptying the trash... there's nothing wrong with 'astronomy on the hoof'... I often do it!

And when you look at our Moon ponder the question of when mankind will return to the Earth's only natural satellite, without which we would not exist.

Useful links for observing the Moon:

Google Moon - A photographic map of the equatorial region with pan and zoom capability, showing locations of the Apollo landings.

The Lunar Navigator Interactive Maps Of The Moon - A complete series of interactive lunar maps, with more than 2,500 geographic formations (including craters, mountains, lakes, seas and valleys.

Virtual Moon Atlas - Fabulous freeware program and atlas to download containing every detail and attribute about our Moon that you will ever need.  Highly recommended!