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.