Will NASA Send Astronauts To The Moon Again Or Any Other Planet Within The Next Ten Years?

July 16th, 1969, 8:32 AM - Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. lift off aboard Saturn V SA-506.

ASTROGENOUS

[adjective]

producing or creating stars.

Etymology: from Greek, from astron “star” + -genēs “born”.

[J. R. Slattum - Star Maker]

Ep. 2 Cosmology - HD and the Void

Learn about some of the major cosmological models that scientists through the ages have assigned to our universe, even when the known universe was only as big as our solar system. I talk about Claudius Ptolemy, Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Nicolaus Co...

Welcome to the second episode!

Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a glossary, a timeline of all the people I mention in the podcast, and the script I was working with. I’m on Twitter @HDandtheVoid if you want to tweet at me instead of tumblr-ing me!

Let me know what you think of this episode, let me know what you think I should research next*, tell me a fun space fact… any feedback is helpful!

*(My current thoughts are henges, spectroscopy dark matter, or black holes. Let me know by April 27th so I can start researching before I put up the next podcast on May 8th!)

Glossary:

astronomy - first used to describe a field of study in the 12th century, it concerns the study of objects and matter outside the earth's atmosphere, as well as their physical and chemical properties

corpuscles - any very small particles. A precursor to atoms.

cosmology—the study of the properties of our universe as a whole.

eccentric orbit - an orbit proposed by Ptolemy’s model of the universe where each planet's circular orbit is not centered on the Earth but at a point slightly away from Earth. See an example in the link.

elliptic orbit - also known as a Kepler orbit, it is an orbital system where a smaller body, like the moon or the planets, orbits a larger body like the Earth or the Sun, with the Earth or Sun at one focus of the ellipse while the other focus is empty. See an example in the link.

epicycle - a planet’s smaller orbit around a point on the larger orbiting sphere it is assigned to. See an example in the link.

Platonic Solid - a regular, 3-dimensional, convex polyhedron constructed by regular polygonal faces with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex. Only five shapes meet these criteria: tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron. See an example in the link.

precession of the equinoxes - also called axial precession, it is a slow and continuous change in the orientation of an astronomical body's rotational axis due to gravity. On Earth, it is seen as a westward movement of the equinoxes along the ecliptic relative to the fixed stars, opposite to the yearly motion of the Sun along the ecliptic. See an example in the link.

solar system - first used in 1704, this term describes the Sun together with the group of celestial bodies that are held by its attraction and orbit around it.

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe—a spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the Big Bang.

Script/Transcript (It’s not exactly what I said, but it’s what I was going off of. It’s conversational and it’s less rambly than what I actually said)

Timeline of people mentioned:

Claudius Ptolemy, Greek (100-170) Al-Hasan Ibn al-Haytham, Arab (965-1040) Nicolaus Copernicus, Polish (1473-1543) Tycho Brahe, Danish (1541-1601) Giordano Bruno, Italian (1548-1600) Galileo Galilei, Italian (1564-1642) Johannes Kepler, German (1571-1630) René Descartes, French (1596-1650) Sir Isaac Newton, English (1642-1726/7) Edmond Halley, English (1656-1742) Immanuel Kant, German (1724-1804) Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace, French (1749-1827) William Huggins, English (1824-1910) Heber Curtis, American (1872-1942) V. M. Slipher, American (1875-1969) Albert Einstein, German (1879-1955) Harlow Shapley, American (1885-1972) Edwin Hubble, American (1889-1953)

Sources:

Mars in retrograde during Tycho’s time

History of the idea of black holes

Size of the universe since 1919, presented as a teacher resource

Timeline of cosmological models

Current cosmological model

Measuring the size of our universe via NASA, with links to further universe-size resources

19th-century size of our universe debate between Shapley and Curtis

Cosmological Constant via NASA

Cosmological Constant via HubbleSite

NASA’s breakdown of the makeup of our universe

Dark Energy via NASA

Kirshner, Robert P.  “Hubble’s Diagram and Cosmic Expansion.”  In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 101.1 (Jan. 6, 2004), 8-13.  http://www.jstor.org/stable/3148363 [accessed 2 December 2013].

McLennan, Evan. Cosmological Evolution: Critical and Constructive. 2nd ed., Gazette-Times Press: Corvallis, OR, 1916.

Pickover, Clifford A. Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them. Oxford UP: NY, 2008.

Sabra, A. I.  “Configuring the Universe: Aporetic, Problem Solving, and Kinemaic Modeling as Themes of Arabic Astronomy.” In Perspectives on Science 6 (1998), 288-330.  Retrieved from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/posc [accessed Oct. 4, 2013].

Shank, Michael H.  “Setting the Stage: Galileo in Tuscany, Veneto, and Rome.”  In The Church and Galileo, 57-87.  Edited by Ernan McMullin.  Notre Dame, IN: U of Notre Dame P, 2005.

Sharratt, Michael.  Galileo: Decisive Innovator.  New York: Cambridge U P, 1994.

Smith, R. W.  “The Origins of the Velocity-Distance Relation.” In Journal for the History of Astronomy 10.29 (Oct 1979), 133-165.

Westfall, Richard S.  Essays on the Trial of Galileo.  Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Foundation, 1989.

…and class notes from a class on Ancient Astronomy I took with Prof. James Evans.

Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity

Filler Music: ‘Epigram’ by Tycho off their album Dive

Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught

This is Kjell Lindgren. He’s a NASA astronaut who just got back from 5 months on the International Space Station. There are two reasons why this picture is hilarious:

His wife is flawless and makes bad space puns to make him do household chores.

I have that shirt. Thousands of people have that shirt. That shirt is available at Target. Which means actual astronaut Kjell Lindgren, with his wardrobe already full of NASA-issued and logo-emblazoned clothes, was at Target, saw a NASA shirt, and was like, “Yes, I am buying this because this is what I want to spend my actual astronaut salary on.”

 tl;dr NASA employs a bunch of fucking nerds

This photo of Astronaut Charlie Duke’s family has been on the moon for the last 43 years.

via reddit

TODAY IN HISTORY: The first-ever color image of Mars, taken by NASA’s Viking 1 lander on July 21, 1976. (San Diego Air & Space Museum)

Ep. 14 Dark Matter Part 1 - HD and the Void

In preparation for a future interview with someone who knows much more about astroparticle physics and dark matter than I do, tune in this week for a quick-and-dirty breakdown of a theoretical particle that, if it exists, would clarify a couple of...

We’re getting theoretical here, and not just astronomy theory but particle theory. That’s right, it’s a dark matter podcast! Learn what some astronomers think it is and why other astronomers think there are better explanations for certain nutty galactic phenomena. Hear about MACHOs and WIMPs! Also learn what dark matter is too hot, too cold, too medium, or just right! 

Below the cut are my sources, music credits, a vocab list, a timeline of the scientists I mention, and the transcript of this episode. Tell me what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, rate it and maybe review it, and tell friends if you think they’d like to listen!

(There’s a lot of ever-evolving info about dark matter and I was not able to cover all of it in just one episode, so get excited to hear about dark matter’s friend, dark energy, on November 6th. My thoughts on the episode after that are still the Voyager golden records, space race history, the transit of Venus, the Moon landing, or Edmond Halley. Let me know what you think!)

Glossary

astroparticle physics - the interface between astrophysics and particle physics.

baryons - heaviest particles. Ex. Protons, neutrons. In astroparticle physics, electrons are included in baryonic matter.

bosons - particles that can exist in the same state at the same location at the same time. Ex. Photons, Higgs boson.

cosmic microwave background radiation - the electromagnetic radiation left over from the time of recombination in Big Bang cosmology.

dark matter - a theoretical mass made up of unknown particles that have not been created on Earth. It is used to explain why galaxy clusters have 10x the mass that their light output suggests they would have; why distant stars on the edges of spiral galaxies orbit at the same speed as stars near the center of the galaxy; and the accretion of gases that created galaxies at the beginning of the universe.

fermions - particles that cannot exist in the same state at the same location at the same time. Ex. Protons, neutrons, electrons, leptons.

gravitational lensing - when light from more distant sources passes near a massive star, galaxy, or galaxy cluster and the object’s gravity bends the light like a lens to provide a warped angle view of space.

leptons - lightest particles. Ex. Electrons, neutrinos, tau particles, muons.

MACHO - acronym for MAssive Compact Halo Object. Made of baryonic matter, these objects are a theoretical explanation that takes the place of dark matter and include neutron stars, black holes, or brown dwarfs.

mesons - medium-weight particles. Ex. Pions, kaons.

Planck satellite - a spacecraft that operated from 2009 to 2012. It measured the dark matter content of the universe by looking at the cosmic microwave background radiation and seeing how dark matter clumped and drew the regular matter together to form galaxies.

WIMP - acronym for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle. Theoretical particles that can pass through ordinary matter without affecting it.

Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe - a spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences in the cosmic microwave background radiation leftover from the Big Bang.

Transcript

Sources

Fritz Zwicky via the Swedish Morphological Society

Fritz Zwicky via the American Museum of Natural History

Zwicky: “Astronomers are spherical bastards. No matter how you look at them they are just bastards“

Vera Rubin via the American Museum of Natural History

Vera Rubin via Astronomy Magazine

Morton Roberts’ 2007 article on dark matter via Harvard

Particle classifications via PhysicsNet.co.uk

Leptons via Georgia State University, copyright 2001 and all written by Carl “Rod” Nave, who has a teaching award named after him at GSU. Go Rod!

Fermions and bosons via The Particle Adventure

MOND theory by Mordehai Milgrom, published in Scientific American Aug. 2002

Newton’s Second Law of Motion via NASA

MACHOs and WIMPs via NASA

MACHOs and WIMPs via the Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics

Bertone, Gianfranco. Behind the Scenes of the Universe: From the Higgs to Dark Matter. Oxford U P: Oxford, 2013.

Tucker, Wallace H. Chandra’s Cosmos: Dark Matter, Black Holes, and Other Wonders Revealed by NASA’s Premier X-Ray Observatory. Smithsonian Books: Washington, D.C, 2017.

“a mysterious force that causes the observed accelerating expansion of the universe” (3).

“sterile neutrinos, axions, asymmetric dark matter, mirror dark matters, and extradimensional dark matter” (23).

“the concentration of dark matter is leveling off, rather than peaking sharply, in the central regions of this cluster” (31).

Timeline

Albert Einstein, German/Austrian (1879-1955)

Edwin Hubble, American (1889-1953)

Walter Baade, German (1893-1960)

Fritz Zwicky, Swiss (1898-1974)

Enrico Fermi, Italian (1901-1954)

Morton S. Roberts, American (1926- )

Vera Rubin, American (1928-2016)

Peter Higgs, English (1929- )

Kent Ford, American (1931- )

Mordehai Milgrom, Israeli (1946- )

Romeel Dave

Rachel Somerville

Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity

Filler Music: ‘Darkmatter’ by Andrew Bird off his album Fingerlings 3

Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught

People think they know darkness, and that they experience darkness everyday, but they don’t, really.

Across the United States, natural darkness is an endangered resource. East of the Mississippi, it is already extinct; even in the West, night sky connoisseurs admit that it’s quicker to find true darkness by flying to Alice Springs, Australia, than traveling to anywhere in the lower forty-eight.

Ever since the nation’s first electric streetlight made its debut in Cleveland, on April 29, 1879, the American night has become steadily brighter. In his new book, The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, Paul Bogard aims to draw attention to the naturally dark night as a landscape in its own right — a separate, incredibly valuable environmental condition that we overlook and destroy at our own peril.

Read More.

Five Famous Pulsars from the Past 50 Years

Early astronomers faced an obstacle: their technology. These great minds only had access to telescopes that revealed celestial bodies shining in visible light. Later, with the development of new detectors, scientists opened their eyes to other types of light like radio waves and X-rays. They realized cosmic objects look very different when viewed in these additional wavelengths. Pulsars — rapidly spinning stellar corpses that appear to pulse at us — are a perfect example.

The first pulsar was observed 50 years ago on August 6, 1967, using radio waves, but since then we have studied them in nearly all wavelengths of light, including X-rays and gamma rays.

Typical Pulsar

Most pulsars form when a star — between 8 and 20 times the mass of our sun — runs out of fuel and its core collapses into a super dense and compact object: a neutron star. 

These neutron stars are about the size of a city and can rotate slowly or quite quickly, spinning anywhere from once every few hours to hundreds of times per second. As they whirl, they emit beams of light that appear to blink at us from space.

First Pulsar

One day five decades ago, a graduate student at the University of Cambridge, England, named Jocelyn Bell was poring over the data from her radio telescope - 120 meters of paper recordings.

Image Credit: Sumit Sijher

She noticed some unusual markings, which she called “scruff,” indicating a mysterious object (simulated above) that flashed without fail every 1.33730 seconds. This was the very first pulsar discovered, known today as PSR B1919+21.

Best Known Pulsar

Before long, we realized pulsars were far more complicated than first meets the eye — they produce many kinds of light, not only radio waves. Take our galaxy’s Crab Nebula, just 6,500 light years away and somewhat of a local celebrity. It formed after a supernova explosion, which crushed the parent star’s core into a neutron star. 

The resulting pulsar, nestled inside the nebula that resulted from the supernova explosion, is among the most well-studied objects in our cosmos. It’s pictured above in X-ray light, but it shines across almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves to gamma rays.

Brightest Gamma-ray Pulsar

Speaking of gamma rays, in 2015 our Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered the first pulsar beyond our own galaxy capable of producing such high-energy emissions. 

Located in the Tarantula Nebula 163,000 light-years away, PSR J0540-6919 gleams nearly 20 times brighter in gamma-rays than the pulsar embedded in the Crab Nebula.

Dual Personality Pulsar

No two pulsars are exactly alike, and in 2013 an especially fast-spinning one had an identity crisis. A fleet of orbiting X-ray telescopes, including our Swift and Chandra observatories, caught IGR J18245-2452 as it alternated between generating X-rays and radio waves. 

Scientists suspect these radical changes could be due to the rise and fall of gas streaming onto the pulsar from its companion star.

Transformer Pulsar

This just goes to show that pulsars are easily influenced by their surroundings. That same year, our Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope uncovered another pulsar, PSR J1023+0038, in the act of a major transformation — also under the influence of its nearby companion star. 

The radio beacon disappeared and the pulsar brightened fivefold in gamma rays, as if someone had flipped a switch to increase the energy of the system. 

NICER Mission

Our Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) mission, launched this past June, will study pulsars like those above using X-ray measurements.

With NICER’s help, scientists will be able to gaze even deeper into the cores of these dense and mysterious entities.

For more information about NICER, visit https://www.nasa.gov/nicer

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

Ten minutes till this happens! I can’t watch it live but I’m excited to see what happens in the aftermath…

In about 20 minutes SpaceX will attempt to reuse a rocket booster they’ve already used before. If they succeed it could be a very serious step forward in space exploration capabilities.

Go SpaceX. Pleassssse…