WAG

You all know what that means...

This is from way out in foul ball territory. Here goes:

The Hawaiian eruption gets caused by a failure of the crust around the main crater. That causes a small leak of the magma reservoir. That leaves even more of the crust unsupported. More cracks occur along an eon-old fault, long hidden. What shows is our current situation, as a vicious cycle. Eventually, the southeastern tip of the island breaks off and heads away, propelled by magma eruption.

Now, there is a cosmically unlikely connection between Hawaii and Guatemala's eruption. There are a couple possible reasons, but they're irrelevant at the moment. We're not done yet. Perhaps it's that little chunk of island being pushed towards the Ring of Fire...

Here we go again- Yellowstone's Steamboat Springs shows a sudden major bump in activity. It destabilizes the Yellowstone hotspot and...

Gives one pause, even if it IS a WAG.

Crib notes or Why Einstein Was A Smart Dude As Far As He Went

This is going to fairly quick. As time has passed, I find working on a phone screen keyboard less and less exciting, no matter the screen size.

Einstein had his theory of a space-time full of dents of various degrees and used that to demonstrate the effects of gravity. Despite the fact that nobody has been able to detect gravity by any means other than "Hey look! We're floating (or screaming) towards that big thing over there!". His model was a rubber sheet with dents: the more massive an object, the bigger the dent. And this presents a BIG problem - what happens when you try to deal with 3D objects in a 2D model?

Generally, it goes flooey. Example: things in orbit around Earth. Ask any high-school kid and he'll say that gravity (i.e. the dent) forces the object to follow the contour of the dent. Let me ask this: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE OBJECT IS IN AN ORBIT 90 DEGREES PERPENDICULAR TO ANOTHER OBJECT IN ORBIT?

Did we just create another sheet of space at 90 degrees to the original orbital ecliptic? Did we just invent another 3 dimensions? I'd really like to know.

In the meantime, perhaps we'd better call it Einstein's Special Limited View Gravity Theory.

More when I get so upset I ignore the keyboard.

News Flash!

Here's a simple opinion expressed in a heretical way:

Anything we know about Physics that includes a Fudge Factor (yes, I'm pointing your way Plancke!) is ipso facto bullshit.

If it has a fufac('), it really means we're missing something and we're expressing our ignorance in numeric form. That's it. If we can't accurately describe something in terms that can predict reality, then like dark energy, it's worse than useless... it's wasting our time when we could be moving on to new ideas.

Let's look at "dark matter". Instead of that phrase meaning simply 'matter we can't see', it's been morphed into an entity that seems like The Monster Under The Bed. You can't see it, you can't detect it, but it must be there because it'll leave a gaping hole in reality if it goes missing. Or so the gospel Math proclaims.

Honestly, every time one of these theorems appears I spend otherwise useful time wondering where the hell they came up with such nonsense.

Am I crazy, or...?

Yes, I have to wonder. As, I guess, we all do who contemplate any kind of physics and the way the universe works.

What I've been struggling with lately is the whole dark matter/energy war. I call it a war instead of a bar fight simply because of the scale of the fight going on. Everyone is trying to figure out why the universe as observed doesn't seem to show enough mass or energy to fill out what they have decided should be there. This has me wondering if these people are smart enough to balance their checkbooks every month.

Look at what they are up against:

First off, how do they decide how much matter there should be? If they're honest, they should admit that they have no idea if they could see all the matter in the universe. Ditto on detecting all normal energy. That's got to be the biggest boast in the history of our race. If any dictionary needs a definition of hubris, this is an easy shot. Consider this minor example- a star 50 lightyears away goes ultinova. It explodes with such violence that what is left inplodes and goes dark. This happened 500 years ago and the shockwave passed us 450 years ago. Now, how exactly will we know this happened? No-one noticed it, among the dozen (maybe) astronomers on Earth. They were all asleep at the time and there were no cameras. So, the blast wave and anything visible is 450 years in our past, along with the only chance to add the matter and energy to our supposed total. Multiply this by a few billion. Now tell me how you figure an accurate total.

Like I said, the very claim that that there can be an accurate guess, much less factual total, is suitable for fertilizing gardens much more than discussing in a serious setting. Then we get into 'dark matter' and 'dark energy'. I wouldn't try to get that into a comic book.

Well, let's get back to some serious science stuff. The most recent word is that Space-X will go for Mars by 2020. That is one to watch for. I have to support any attempts at planting extra-planetary bases. There is entirely too much crap zipping around out there of a size to make those who know lose sleep. Sometimes the only thing you can do about giant meteor impacts is not be home when it happens. Consider how much evidence has been left on the surface of every planet and moon we can see. It's like being in the infantry in a war- at some point your number is gonna come up. One of those bullets is going to end up in the same space you occupy at the same time. Only a fool counts on dodging all of them.

I actually feel the same way about ufo sightings. You can take any view you please about the existence of other life, but numbers don't lie. There are entirely too many planets out there to get odds on there NOT being other species with spaceflight. The only thing I am willing to bet on is that the half dozen or so that that have been observed are probably from within 50 or 100 lightyears. There are plenty of planets in that range and it ups the odds that we might be picked as a place to visit.

To finish up, I hope I will live to see a base on Mars and the moon. I will feel better about humanity's future.

Microbursts

of thought,  actually...

A lot of things about our little piece of creation are pretty clear at this point.  It's certain that our solar system is a lot bigger place than they lead us to believe back in school.  That's ok,  they didn't have the data that we do.  It does point up one thing,  of course - Don't refuse to change your outlook when those nasty old facts make your opinions obsolete.

That new data makes it clear that our solar system stretches a significant way towards the next nearest one. That and there are many Big Objects out in the Kuyper Belt.  Some really would be classified as planets,  based on size.  And they follow 'rude' orbits. That's one of the things that got Pluto kicked out of the Major Planet Club. The latest I heard, they've found some 4,000+ bodies in that belt. Some are bigger than Earth. They noticed that there was a peculiar empty(ish) region out where the edge of the solar system was thought to be and have got wondering why. They're looking for Planet X and I sincerely hope they find it! The alternative, to my mind, is that there is a black hole orbiting out there perturbing asteroid orbits and eating various trash to boot. So let's hope for a rogue planet.

So many things have been happening in the odd corners of science. Some good, some rather disappointing. One of the cruddy ones: waiting until 2032 before NASA launches a Mars mission, at the earliest. And have you seen the capsule? Not even a proper ship! It's designed to carry 3 people on the 3 year trip. And that in a space about twice the size of an Apollo capsule. What they have NOT mentioned is how they plan on keeping them sane. Cooped up in a small box with zero room for exercise and no mental input, they may last a few weeks. It should give Vegas bookies income, though: do they just go crazy or will one kill the others and then themselves? Maybe the design will change before then...

One bright spot, I think, is that they have found that the moon Ganymede is an onion-like thing made of layers of ice and water. Who could guess?

I've been puzzled, lately. I'm seeing a lot of airtime spent on the origin and ultimate fate of the universe. And I'm wondering why. Are people afraid it'll happen next Thursday? Are they afraid they'll miss it? I don't know. Ask me again in about 20 billion years...

I love that astronomers are now discovering so many exo-planets. They are finding that there are far weirder ones out there than anyone ever imagined. A planet that orbits its sun in less than a day? Outrageous!

Umm. We've been told that the most massive things around are black holes. Also, that there must be 'dark matter' in order for the universe to add up to the right amount of mass. Did they add in the super-massive black hole at the center of every galaxy? Who knows? And with all the new planets they're discovering every day in our galaxy alone... At least it will keep the people who love big numbers happy.

On another note, I will try to post at a reasonable rate. I know I've been slack, but typing things on a phone screen isn't fun. I've had to put the replacement computer off another year. Losing both the desktop and the laptop to catastrophic hardware failure in one year is hard to work around.

Brrrrrr

The old year is gone away.  The new one has actually brought something interesting about a subject that has had me wondering for a long time: the most recent ice age.

We all know that it was not a major ice event.  think those are reserved for ones lasting a million years or something. Still,  it must have seemed like a curse from the gods to our ancestors- glaciers, low average temps,  and the misery that accompanies that. Then it went away.

Now let me hand you a theorem based on new info coming in.  That new info is evidence of a major ELE comet strike.  It happened...  taDA!  circa 11,000bce. The evidence is strikingly similar to The Dinosaur Killer. There's the same layer of e.t. materials visible in the rocks,  but there are some BIG surprises.

For one thing,  this material layer exists ONLY on the north American continent.  They estimate the comet at 3 miles diameter, yet there is no impact crater.  None. Remember,  this was a mere 13,000 years ago.  Surely there would have been one helluva big hole and we'd all know about it. Trust me. The other thing about the deposition layer provides the answer,  and it's one we had best pay attention to- the layer (inches - thick) is dosed liberally with soot. Soot is super-fine particles of carbon produced by combustion. An inch or so of soot. Quite a few teensy particles means LOTS of combustion.  Of what? Pretty much everything burnable over an entire continent.  So we now get to the final key. They say the strike was an airburst!

We know what a small airburst did in Russia. Something tells me that a 3 mile hot fudge sundae would cause a real problem.

Now we're headed for the tall weeds. I'll list things that ocurred to me and you can see if they create the same picture to you that they do for me.

The Biblical flood
The Grand Canyon
(and several other canyons,  including Death Valley)
Yosemite valley -  before and after
The extinction of all North American megafauna
Same for the Clovis culture
Huge ice dam rupture at the end of the last ice age.

Still checking for other goodies to add...  the loss of megalithic monument builders of the past ("the Elder Gods").

Let us begin painting the picture.

Yosemite Valley
Created in the last ice age and may not last until the next.  The rock type that makes up the valley walls crumbles quickly under the climate there. So?  It's not an ancient feature. My timeline? Created 13,000 years ago.

The Biblical flood
While we don't actually know how far back the story originated,  we know that it's at least 4,500 years old.  At least that's the first written record.  We won't ever know exactly how old it really is. There is that site in southeast Turkey that's about 10,000 years old (or is 13,000 a better guess?).  We know that such a site would be buried in sand by a flood.  We've seen a mere hurricane Sandy bury things in sand... Finally,  every surviving record,  verbal and written from every civilization and culture, includes a flood story.

The Grand Canyon
Everyone knows that it exposes millions of years of geologic rock.  Then everyone's head goes off the rails and leaves them with the lasting impression that the canyon took millions of years to form. I don't think so.

Megafauna extinction
Well,  given enough heat,  anything burns...

Clovis people
Burn at least as quickly as your average giant ground sloth.

Here is how my picture looks now:

Scenario- typical ice age -  glaciers,  ice,  snow,  cold

BOOM

3 mile comet comes calling

EVERYTHING burns...  roast camel and North American elephant/mastodon and Clovis people.  Guess we know why so much evidence of paleo-humans appears in caves.

HUGE heat pulse transfers to ice, with predictable results- ice melts over a period of days or weeks

Any ice dams in existence at that point are likely to break as they are overwhelmed by trillions of gallons of hot water. This carves lots of canyons downstream in a short time, I would think.

The resulting mass of water would have no problem creating a worldwide flood, wiping out many people worldwide,  and leaving us their view of the cause of the event.  The only people who could give us the real story were dead. The soot layer is only in North America,  which localizes the direct effects of the disaster, but the flood and the megatsunami know no boundaries.

As I said,  a Really Bad day for planet Earth.

This, of course, is just a theorem.  It requires chucking out any number of currently popular ideas,  but that's science for you. The thing that suffers most is peoples' timeline.  My theorem requires things that we assume took years or centuries to have actually happened  overnight. It does I'd be happy to hear discussion on this.

The next issue of Galactic Surplus covers interesting news from the other side of our galactic backyard.

Wrapup

Well, we're near the end of another year. All good little geeks are snuggled up warm in their beds while visions of Intel unlocked cpu's dance in their heads. Thanks to the digital revolution, the week of Thanksgiving is now the new Christmas week. Presents will arrive by drone, instead of reindeer...

Let us give thanks for a wide world of Internet. It's become an entire virtual universe to many of us. It certainly has put the resources of many libraries of info in our hands and given us access to nearly every genius on the planet. That alone is worth the price. And there is a price. The Internet has magnified us. That includes the good and the bad.

Last of all, I am thankful for the ability to tell the difference. So many out there don't seem to have made that connection.

Another thing waning with the year is the meteor shower count. I can see why ancient 'wise' men hung out on mountain tops. If they had lived near me, they would still have been wondering what everyone was talking about.

I can't help wondering if Mankind will spread out from this rock in time. We will soon be one year closer to a serious mission to Mars, but it's still years away. Even then, it's years beyond that to any kind of large colony. The moon looks like a smart base, but nobody seems to care and I can't figure out why! I know that we no longer have billions to toss around, but if it makes it more likely that we will survive, well, what is the survival of the Human race worth? The moon is a week away even at the cruddy speeds we can manage. Let's start pushing for moon colonization before we all start pushing up daisies...

A Lesson in Humility

As some of you may have heard, we're about to be taught a lesson in humility. On Halloween next week a significant piece of rock will go sizzling past out planet at a distance that qualifies it as 'bullet parting yer hair' miss.

The object is 2015 TB145. It will pass outside our orbit at an approximte range of 300,000 miles. They say that this rock is the closest thing to come near us until the scary one of 2027.

Now, why is this any kind of lesson? Simply that NASA didn't know it existed until 10 days ago.

So pardon me if I regard any such statements with the skepticism they deserve. Any time I learn of a 400 meter wide bullet aimed at Earth, I get a teensy bit nervous. What else don't they know? The only sane answer is 'almost everything'. That is not meant as a criticism in any way of the state of their knowledge! Given how few resources are being directed at the issue, it's a wonder we found it at all. Instead, my scorn is aimed at pronouncements like that one about not seeing anything more until 2027. That claim makes me want to run and hide. Preferably on the moon or maybe Mars...

Here's a little guide for those at NASA and JPL: keep your eyes open and always ask yourself what else you don't know!

Enough for a shower?

Water on Mars.

Until a few weeks ago, it was the very stuff of sci-fi. Then they found liquid water on the surface of Mars. Of all the discoveries made in the last century, this is the equivalent of having your face shoved in 'it' and then rubbed vigorously. If the 'experts' don't realize that their holy writ of infallibility is null and void, then what more can the universe do? Sadly, it also punches small holes in the latest stranded astronaut movie, but movies are works of fiction anyway, right?

To make up for that, it may also make colonization easier. Yes, I am in favor of colonizing, even though the main direction of this blog is interstellar. We need a dress rehearsal. Something easy, but not too easy, where we can test even more theorems. The most critical thing I want to see is some drive better than a toy rocket, They are leaning towards an ion/plasma drive, which is efficient, but slow. This baby step will no doubt help, but we all know it won't make the interstellar cut. Let's hope we can eventually test out a fusion drive.

Speaking of propulsion, it turns out that there is a very effective launch vehicle for heavy lifting to orbit. IF we can stand the secondary effects! It consists of digging a deep cylindrical hole, placing a metal plate over it with the load on top. Then firing off a nuclear bomb at the bottom of the hole(!). It gives the payload a final velocity of 42 miles per SECOND. Somehow I doubt that it will be useful for lifting poor, squishy people, though it may be possible to engineer around that. And then there's the mess left behind... Well, we chip the stone into a circle and grind a hole in the middle...

But let's spend a moment thinking about Mars. There are still things about the planet (it still is a planet, right?) that we can't explain. Certainly it's been a solar system's punching bag, much like our moon. I assume that there are plans at a high level to terraform the place. I have no idea what we could do to liquefy a planetary core and spin it.

Now we get to some things that scientific experts don't want to deal with!

Mars rotates. Is this a leftover from times of a liquid core? Is there a liquid core, but one too cool to generate a liquid mantle? We'll want to know. A fire is a lot easier to start if some coals remain. And Mars' rotational axis is tilted!!! I haven't heard anyone mention that! Supposedly, there is life on Earth because our moon stabilized our axis at about 23 degrees. Where is the moon that did that for Mars? No-one in their right mind had better suggest that those two little captured asteroids that pass for moons did the job! Yes, there are a lot of things that needs facts and not theories.

Speaking of asteroids, let's just touch on that. What happened to Planet 6? We know by math that there sbould be a planet there. My favorite theorem is that Jupiter made things too dicey for planetary aggregation. It would like trying to build a concrete block wall with a 7.0 quake every day at noon. Every time Jupiter passes, progress resets to zero. The jury is still out on the idea of it being enough to disrupt an already formed planet. It will take a survey of the number and composition of the asteroid belt to tell. If we looked and found the different pieces of a planet, then the question will need further attention.  I mean that should we see that there are certain proportions of core material to mixed materials to silicon/iron/carbon and other light elements, then the idea of a planet ripped apart becomes a possibility. I do wonder how big a planet it would have been.

Let's see what happens next in Mars: the soap opera.

An afterthought

There is one little theorem that infuriates me the way that taxes infuriate lottery winners: Why do we accept 14.5 billion years as the age of our universe? Because that's all we can see? Apparently. That is just plain sad!

That's enough. Chew on it a while.

Randomness, or is it chaos?

I really don't know the answer to that. As so many have observed, sometimes it's the right questions and the answers will come along in time. And then there's other times when you're left with questions and answers and the whole mess makes no sense at all. I know that it's been a long while between posts. That's because whatever time is, there isn't enough to go around.

Now, back to things we know and things we don't. There seems to be some confusion between the two in the minds of a great big bunch of 'scientists'. Or that's the impression I was left with after watching months of tv programs about our universe, its history, present, and future. Considering that quite a few of those people appeared on camera with their current theorems, I would like to plead that they should consult a dictionary for the differences between theorem, theory, and fact.

The latest thing getting airtime is planetary formation and that part that works at explaining why planets are what they are. All driven by the discovery of the hundreds (so far) of other planets in this galaxy. It seems a bit presumptuous to worry about other solar systems when they can't figure out why our own is the way it is. Did you all know that there's ANOTHER planetoid(?) out there buzzing around outside of Pluto? I think that's something my teachers failed to mention simply because they didn't know. And precisely why was Pluto demoted? There are moons out there that are bigger than our Luna. Should we then demote our moon to a moonlet because of it? This must be some kind of planetary snobbery.

And the worst part is that they seem to be totally blind to other possibilities. As we have seen repeatedly in the past, the only source for fresh ideas is old science fiction. There are so many examples that I couldn't list them all. I kind of like the concept of wandering planets being captured by a star's gravity well. Even that idea is suspect. Gravity will bend light, but so will a chunk of common glass. That seems a little limp a reason to assume that it's a case of gravity bending space. And then you get into "well, if space is the absence of anything, then how can you bend it?".

It's a mess and it's not going away. We need to accept the things we don't know and try to imagine some way to prove what we do. But can we? Where do stand in order to discover what space is?

I leave you with a final thought: 'we' have decided that nothing can go faster than light. Why that is, I don't know. Yes, our God of Science Albert Einstein has proclaimed it to be true. So, let me be a heretic. I have never heard or seen any proof that this is a fact. So... Prove me wrong. Don't throw math at me. You can make math prove that apples are diamonds. Show me proof that the speed of light is a cast iron speed limit everywhere. Then I'll apologize and shut up.

Spring Forward

There are a lot of things to cover, so I may just deal with it in pieces.

As the science channels are fond of telling us, when it comes to things that can wipe out the human race, we aren't anywhere near running out of them. One of the most common mega-disasters is, of course, a celestial body impact.

What bothers me (along with the prospect of imminent death) is that we are in the precarious situation of being aware that there's a danger, but having no clue what to do about it.

Let me give a concrete example. A group of average people is walking along and sees a lion coming their way. It's just like a comet/asteroid threat: it's coming, you can see it, and you know that if something isn't done, you'll all die. Now, we can understand this. It's a direct threat and we would all know it's deadly. AND, we would all know there are things we could do with things we are familiar with that would stop it. Theoretically.
Say what? The group of people know that there is a list of things that may work, except that nobody has ever tried them. Yes, it's like seeing the lion (remember that lion?) coming over to check out the luncheon menu and... Your group starts to sweat!

There's a certain tension in this scenario. They think that a giant fly swatter might work. Or a pocket nuke. Or a big solar-powered trap. Or...  You see the issue, I hope. By the time the group decides what the best weapon is, develops a version suited to the threat, and goes through the engineering study to build the thing, the lion will be under a nearby tree wondering about dessert.

I don't think this is the way to deal with a cosmic impact threat. Or a lion. We know damn well that the things are out there. We know that given the number of unknowable variables, it is simply a matter of time before something takes a wrong turn and ends up in our laps. And as we discover the sheer number of players, it becomes a shorter and shorter time before we have the lion at our door.

The bottom line here is that we can't afford to wait for 2025 or so to fly the next space truck. We need to get it up, perfect it, and start engineering our lion-killer. If we whine about the budget and put it off, it will be us and not him on that menu!

More later...

The View From Left Field

I'm going to spitball a really wild theory just to see if it makes anyone else accept the possibility that someone knows.

Let me lay out the scenario and then we'll get into recorded belief of the local people involved. Their belief is that some et presence (or at least intervention) was involved, but we'll get to that later. Ready to go off road?

Good. The year is 1908. The place is, as you may have guessed, is Tunguska, Russia. The Earth experiences a fairly big bang. At the time, people notice the results of this blast, but it's so far from anything like civilization that it doesn't make any long term difference. There are bright skies at night that may point to the meteorite being a comet fragment rather than a rocky boulder. The gasses released by a comet fragment may well have been spread after the high altitude explosion, resulting in the materials being excited the same way they would have been in space.

Now, let's look at what we know, what we should be able to figure out, and then consider some strange 'why's.

We know approximately how high the thing was when it popped. We have a decent guess at how fast it was going. We have a really detailed survey of how big an area was flattened and what way the trees were pointing. This should let us find out the direction it was going and the angle of incidence, if we work at it. There have been studies done of the blast patterns of air burst explosions. This is really critical and we must have this nailed down in order to ask the right questions.

Now. There is a local myth(?) that calls the Tunguska area involved "the valley of death". The locals say there are seven 'upside down kettles' that they say were left there by the gods to keep things from coming down from outer space. There have been some weird happenings that may confirm this, but nothing that can be called proof has been found.

Here is the question: if the meteorite had been coming in at a shallow angle, where would it have impacted and what was there in 1908?

If anything was already at the impact site, what was it and was it something that was important to someone and if so, who? All in all, it makes for interesting conversation.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark

Let's get one thing straight right away- a "theory" = "it's my opinion". That's a piece of scientific language that never made it into your average dictionary. This fact has created an truly ginormous amount of fuzzy thinking and incipient chaos, simply because when people hear the term theory emitted by a scientific "authority", they assume that that person is telling them facts.

The word 'fact' is innocuous and well known. The trouble is that there are a lot fewer facts around than there are theories.

A well-known case of this is the issue of "dark matter" and "dark energy". The prevailing theory at the moment is that for galaxies and galactic-scale structures to exist, there must be dark matter to provide enough gravity to keep things from flying apart and following entropy down the nearest storm drain. Then they had to theorize dark energy in order to fit the observed fact that the universe is still expanding. GAH!

What a mountain they got out of that wormhole...I mean molehill. If you are willing to see how my theory (😄) of the universe-as-bubble fits the facts, you will note that it explains things pretty darn well without adding dark anything. The anti-matter universe is likely plugging along as it should on the negative side of space, just as devoid of "light matter" and energy. I don't have any idea how I can prove any of this. I speculate that you may have to exist outside the universe before you can begin to see what's going on. Disappointing, to say the least. Oh, yes, the anti side? On the inside of the balloon, of course. We have observed white and black holes. Points of equalizing matter inside and out. Or I should say energy. Matter being 'crystal' structures of energy.

This, then, is the ultimate roadblock. We don't have the tools to examine existence in big enough or small enough detail to find real facts. Next time you find yourself near a theoretical physicist, ask him if you can borrow a few ounces of dark matter.

No, we will have to scribble our pictures of the real world in fuzzy blobs of chalk dust on the walls of the cave we call Earth. Our entire civilization of 5 or 10 thousand years is such a ridiculously short time that it's a wonder we've gotten as far as the invention of the bicycle in that time, much less any understanding of the universe.

Good News!

No, I didn't win the lottery. It's simply that you can stop worrying: the universe isn't ending. In fact, I don't see any end. This would be a big disappointment to physicists who want to know if the universe is cyclic or steady-state. All I can tell them is No. If you insist on there being more than one universe (which I have to admit is one thing we currently have to take on faith), then consider an alternative.

One view we could take is that universes are constantly being born, like grapes on a vine. They come into being, grow, and (supposedly) die. As I've said, I theorize that our universe's load of galaxies exist on the skin of a balloon that is still inflating. Since the balloon is non-material, I don't see any need for a size limit. And would we know it if we hit the limit? Perhaps. I think the sign would be if the most distant galaxies suddenly stopped receding at faster than the speed of light. They might even stop receding at all. That hasn't happened yet. I know that some people have prophesized that our universe will eventually run out of matter to be converted to energy and there will be no more new stars. Since we currently have no handle on things like white holes, black holes, and dark matter, I just can't see any way to formulate an answer to that.

But...

I'm losing sleep again.

Darn tv keeps running programs that remind me of something I'd rather not deal with, because I don't have an answer yet. But I sure do have an unanswer!

What about gravity?

What about gravity???

Yes, it's doing all kinds of things, like sticking our butts to our chairs and holding the universe together. However, if you approach a physicist and ask him what gravity is, I'm betting you get a neatly formatted little talk about what it does and how it keeps everything together, blah... blah... blah... This is mostly because nobody has yet explained what gravity is. Hell, we can't even detect gravity! It's true and don't let them try to talk their way around it. They can't even show you a gravity detector of any kind. You can dare any one of them to show you one. You might win a free drink...

This bothers me. That's because I'm right in there with them. We can detect electricity, magnetism, and something we like to call electromagnetism. But not gravity.

So, we are really stuck. Things are as clear as the atmosphere of Jupiter. We can demonstrate electricity, I'm fairly sure. That fat spark between terminals of opposite polarities is pretty convincing. But what, then, is the big difference between electricity and magnetism? Magnetism has polarity. Oh, yes, nobody has yet shown magnetic sparks. Hmm. And the electromagnetic spectrum? Uh, does that mean we can 'tune in' different frequencies of magnetism?

I don't even want to get involved with gravity, at this point. I can certainly understand why physicists don't spend time worrying about gravity. Frankly it gives me a headache, and I've had enough of those as I dealt with the flu this winter. I will keep trying to figure out where gravity comes from and how we can get a better hold on it, but this is not going to be an overnight fix.

There is something hinky about the business where two objects of different masses are attracted at the same rate by gravity. I know that it has been demonstrated, but if their explanation of gravity is right, it shouldn't work that way. So somebody has been playing fast and loose and hoping we don't look too closely at where the coin goes when they wave the cloth.

Like I said, I'll keep working at it.

Next

Darn those tv shows. They tend to toss out those peculiarities whenever they feel like it. For instance, that NASA deep space probe that's not following the orbit that physics says it should. The telemetry says the launch went as perfectly as possible for such things. The hardware takes off for interstellar space with all the verve that its creators hoped. BUT, it's swerving off the planned path.

This engendered as close to a heart attack as staid science allows. How can this hunk of hardware, every milligram planned for and calculated, be not going where it should? And it's not a small deviation, either.

Well, let's look at this from simple situations, as Occam would have it. You launch an object into a "zero g" environment and give it a shove over thataway. Given how little gravity there should be out there, your shove should send it in a straight line. It didn't. So... Now we ask why.

Here is a theory that explains a few things. Let's suppose that there is a black hole in our solar system. I know that concept is not a blockbuster, but I'm not done. Suppose this is not a marble-sized object (can you call a black hole an "object"?), but something with the mass of, say, Earth. Let's place it somewhere around the orbit of the steroid belt, but not necessarily in the ecliptic. What could it do if it had been around long enough? Something like ruin the formation of a planet, perhaps? Leaving a ring of loose junk... Umm, fill in the blank spot in what Bode's law says about our solar system? Ruin the projected orbit of a probe?

Of course that's just a theory. The proof might lie in launching a number of probes in almost the same orbit. One of them might disappear! But that's not likely. Not in an era when we're turning our attention inward rather than outward.

Because, if it was true, it might open all kinds of doors. At the very least, we could well use such a thing to slingshot probes or ships further and faster than we have yet gone. And that, to my mind is worth a few hunks of hardware!

Time for Everything

Yes,  it has been a while.

Let's just say that this has been a truly chaotic winter.  We've been facing everything from a taste of frozen driveway (800 ft.  Long and uphill both ways) to finding out that my wife's dog has cancer.  Compared to this,  recent happenings lightyears away didn't make the impression it should have.  Then  the news hit that Leonard Nimoy had died of lung disease.  The news of the loss seems to have a fitting place in the cosmos I'm creating here.

And speaking cosmically,  I have begun to pull together a consensus from all the programs I've watched: We will have to colonize the stars,  if someone else hasn't done it already.  Duh!  In the meantime,  all they can seem to find to argue about is the Ark's drive system and whether the crew goes out awake or as a corpsicle.  When I think of all the pure science experiments that there are to run,  it takes all the fun out of a 30 year nap.  I will admit that sometimes I feel I could really use one.  But I would be far too busy to get far into it.

The drive question,  though,  has legs to it.  Well,  except that everyone would love to use anti-matter...  Even that,  though,  may not be the ideal prime mover.  As a power source,  it's fine.  I mean the mile-per-gallon rating can't get any better. 100% efficiency is hard to beat. It still doesn't get you from A to B. I  figure that applying all that energy scooped up solar wind makes the most sense.  Anything better is going to take a theoretical breakthrough, so we will have to give it a pass. We can't count on a major coup.

The point is that the people on the inside is still not getting the big picture. I'm going to take a risk here and say that I think we need a new approach.  I have this energy matrix concept and it is holding up to a scary extent.  No real matter,  just the equivalent energy in a more or less stable form. It even makes sense of chemistry, which I would have given long odds against back in college.  You end up with two forms of energy: fixed and radiant.  Fixed energy is in a stable matrix form that we 'macro people' perceive as matter. It inhabits its own bit of space.  To make any sense of this,  there has to be at least 6 dimensions.  The three we can see and 3 more to hold the space frame. Look at the way it simplifies something like refraction.  Radiant energy in the form of photons or whatever comes close,  gets changed by the energy of the (or charged) stable matrix and will take a different path.

I think that what will make a huge difference is if we can find out how to nail down the stable matter.  Next we engineer a drive that will grab hold of space and pull the ship along with it. Will it be limited to the speed of light? I have no idea.  I have a hard time dealing with limits ;')

Tune in, Turn on!

Considering that quantum physics now views atoms as some kind of wave construct (a variety of static wave), it seems reasonable to use the same tools used in optics to manipulate them. In fact, viewed this way, matter, photons/light, and electromagnetic waves seem headed in the direction of being the same standing wave construct propagated in different media. It also opens the door to a myriad of unorthodox ways of handling these waves as well.

It should be just as possible to handle these waves using the tools created for other classes of waves.  For example, it would be conceivable to use what is called a comb filter, in the field of radio, and apply that to do something like filter everything out of water that is not H2O. Or filter H2O to produce hydrogen. What you could produce using a lens, I'm not all sure, but it should be an interesting experiment! And how about using a 'tuner' to release and refine gold out of gold ore? The possibilities are huge and wide open. A plant 'tuning' hydrogen, then burning it could replace coal and nuclear power plants and producing pure water for human use.

My biggest hope is that someone, somewhere will read these crazy theories of mine and attempt to find out if it's more than a dream. The number of human problems that could be solved seems to me to make such research a  higher priority than a lot of other things being studied today.

In the long run, such filters and tuners  could open the door to the universe.

Touchdown!

Against a whole lot of odds, the Rosetta mission has succeeded. The Human race now has a temporary, tiny foothold on the core of a comet.

Just getting there was a monumental task. The story started ten years ago. On top of a rocket sits the main probe and a tiny instrument lander. The lander will be like a pebble tossed down a well. Our little pebble will sit in the cometary well and hopefully tell us all kinds of things we don't know. The mission launches and one of the longest space missions in history begins.

Now we're faced with a slow motion chase. The probe can't head straight for the well. We don't have ability to fly something fast enough to make the 4 billion mile trip in any sane amount of time. A hundred year mission wouldn't be viewed as practical. So we sent it out in the wrong direction. Or at least nowhere near where the comet was. As is the case with most things involving orbits, it gets complicated. First we whip the probe around the Earth like a hula hoop in a classic slingshot maneuver. That gets things going much better than any rocket motor we could attach. Not to mention the amount of fuel needed. Still not fast enough. We send the probe to Mars, for it's help. Now we have a fast enough probe. All of 85,000 mph. Woot! Fast boat to China! NOT. I mean really. 85,000 mph. A mere 45000 years to the nearest star. Sigh. So  much for human ingenuity.

Well, our little pebble is on its way. We can sit back for the next 6 or 7 years and twiddle our thumbs.

Now it's 2014. The pebble is at the well and things get the scientific equivalent of exciting. Did we plan the orbit to the right well? Has anything interfered with the orbits of our pebble or the well? Will the pebble and the well end up in the same place at the same time? The number of things that could go wrong has probably kept our team's psychologist busy staving off anxiety attacks for most of the ten years.

But now we're up against the biggest gamble of all: tossing the pebble. The probe cosies up to our well. The pebble is tossed. A bunch of people are probably very close to breakdowns. Something goes wrong and the team finds out if stress can cause mass heart attacks in a group of people. Pure luck lends a hand. Our pebble's landing hardware and anchor has failed. Somewhere out in the dark and utter cold of space, something stopped working. Now our luck: the pebble lands anyway. Three bounces and it settles at the bottom of the well.

The relief is tremendous! Ten years work and billions of dollars have been well-spent. The pebble goes to work and we start getting back the very first pictures of a comet's core. It may be just black and white pictures of what looks like your average pile of rubble on Earth, but it's so very much more.

The pebble down, we are getting priceless data about what the solar system was like when the comet formed. The drama is not entirely over. The batteries powering all this activity have been sitting on the shelf for ten years and they don't last forever. So for the next 3 days they're being recharged by a solar panel array. Then it's back to work unlocking things hidden for eons.

We're just opening the book. There will be many chapters and it all adds up to a great treasure. I can't wait to read the next page!

Cold News From Outer Space

There's no lack of news this time around and not all of it is good. Fortunately, even some of the bad news isn't so bad.

First off we lose two spacecraft in a matter of days. This is a disaster, because in the case of the Virgin Spacecraft Two, there was a fatality. Then there was the case of the unmanned SpaceX cargo launch that had to be aborted. Spaceflight really doesn't need this kind of disastrous news.

SpaceX says that the flaw in their cargo rocket was caused by their "antique" Soviet engines that were built 40 years ago. That seems reasonable. What isn't so reasonable is that SpaceX was using those engines because they were unable to get American made engines that fit. That is very sad. The once pioneer United States lost the edge.

And the other crash. One brave test pilot lost. It's unclear what happened, though it looked like the wings or entire wing section came loose and started fluttering. Did the pilot unlock the wings too soon? Did the lock fail? It may be a year before we know. The surviving pilot is in no shape to tell us at this time.

The tiny silverish lining is that neither outfit is giving up. In Virgin's case, none of the reservations for future flights have been canceled and in fact, they had two new reservations on the day of the crash. I give those people my heartfelt thanks, as well as Richard Branson himself.

It was a tragedy, but it could have been so much worse. Maybe some company will decide that we need to get American rocket engines back in production. It's been that 40 years. Let's see if we can't do a little better in engine design!

Now on to happier things (at least in one case).

Next week there will be a BIG show! On the 12th the Rosetta probe will land ON a comet core. There was a mission that landed on an asteroid and returned, but this comet is the next best thing to an alien visitor! It was created during the same times as our solar system and gathering samples will tell us all kinds of things. Think about this - if such a comet ever decides to take a shot at Earth, we'll have a far better chance of changing the outcome.
Speaking of far, it will be between 3 and 4 billion miles out when the probe lands.

They're going to be a long way from home!