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Main
I bookmarked this article a while ago hoping to get back to it in a more timely fashion, but I was jumped by a ruthless gang of rodeo clowns and have spent the last few weeks driving a small rainbow-colored rodeo clown car while rodeo clowns jump in and out, spraying seltzer and pelting me with pies. Where was I? Oh, the aliens.
'Aliens Are My Brother' is the name of an article in the Vatican newspaper by the Pope's chief astronomer wherein he says intelligent beings created by God may exist elsewhere. I'm not sure what's more unbelievable here: that the Pope has a chief astronomer, or that the Vatican has a newspaper.
If you think about this for a few minutes, you'll probably ask yourself some of the questions that I'm asking myself: Does the Vatican paper have an online edition? Is there a comics section? If so, does it reprint Marmaduke? And how likely is it that there are really aliens working on the Vatican newspaper (maybe at the sports desk?)
Update: On a fluke I searched on Google for Vatican Newspaper English Edition and, well, there you go.
Alert Reader Wendy points me to this article that may document the opening salvo of an alien attack: Mystery illness strikes after meteorite hits Peruvian village.
Apparently a meteorite crashed in all its fiery glory in souther Peru, and then villagers developed a mysterious illness. Residents have complained of headaches and vomiting brought on by a "strange odor." Of course, a synonym for strange is "alien," so what we have here is an illness caused by an "alien odor." Seven policemen were among those who were sickened.
No word on what was found in the meteorite crater, although "boiling water started coming out of the crater and particles of rock and cinders were found nearby." No word of an alien space ship or little smelly aliens or anything like that.
Amateur astronomers are pretty sure the meteorite came from the constellation Big Boötes, which as we all know is the site of the alien UFO Universe Freeway Entrance.
There's an interesting meteor shower opportunity tomorrow morning for those of you west of the Rockies. The earth will be passing through the (fairly narrow) tail of Comet Kiess (named after astronomer Carl Clarence Kiess.) This comet is interesting because we know that it takes about 2,000 years to run around the sun, putting its last visit at about 4 A.D. It's strange to think you can look into the sky and see something that hasn't been seen since 4 A.D.
Well, you can look into the sky if you're west of the Rockies. Here's a graphic showing the state of sunlight when the earth will pass through the tail:
NASA
The best time to start watching will be 4:30 a.m. PDT. Keep watching until sunrise, but meteor gazers are cautioned: this particular event is not well understood, and while it could be a dazzling light show, it could also be a bust.
The 2007 Aurigid Meteor Shower
2000-Year-Old Meteors to Rain Down on August 31, 2007
Space Weather
Aurigid Mission
Cassini took some fascinating video of a "hurricane-like" vortex located at Saturn's south pole. You can find a quicktime version here and an mpeg version here. NASA has an article here.
The storm has winds estimated at 350 miles per hour. Cloud heights are estimated at 20 to 45 miles, if I read that right, and the storm is about 5,000 miles across. When you study the imagery it's amazing how similar this is to a hurricane: you can see the storm "bands," an "eye-like feature" and even Floridians boarding up their homes.
Here's an image that was created from the video data that Cassini captured:
Image details.
Alert Reader Jon gave me the idea for this graphic, which is a follow-up to my graphic with the sun and the earth:
This graphic shows how big the Earth is compared to people, people being human beings like you and me. According to a source that may or may not be Wikipedia, the radius of the earth is 3,963.18 miles, give or take (depending on how you define "Earth radius.") That's a diameter of about 42 million feet. The average human (depicted in silhouette fashion, above, casually fleeing from some global warming) is about 6 feet on a good day. I mean, if he was laying down not six feet in diameter.
Put another way, let's assume the average human is a pixel, like the little white dot in the upper left area of the graphic. The Earth would then be 6,975,212 pixels wide, or would require almost 7,000 monitors set to 1024 pixel resolution to display its width in entirety.
Now, go back to the handy Earth-Sun chart with all of this in mind and take another look at the dot of the Earth, and the Big Yellow Sun behind it. At this point you will either yawn or your brain will melt. Now I'm not trying to say that your light bulbs aren't causing a serious problem or anything, nor am I saying that the Sun is warming the Earth. (I just like drawing figures that involve circles and average humans.)
Some of you have asked, "How big IS the sun?" I assume you're asking this because you're curious about NASA's planned manned mission to the sun, or you think that the sun has something to do with the temperature on Earth.
Well I've prepared a handy chart to illustrate the size of the Earth and the Sun. You'll find this handy chart below:
Given that the Sun is about 900,000 miles across, and the Earth is about 8,000 miles across, the Sun is about 112.5 times bigger across than the Earth. (I got this from a Ph.D. mathematician I know. So if it's wrong it's, you know, all his fault.)
The circle above is the sun, and it's about 490 pixels across. That would mean the Earth would be about 4 pixels, and if you really squint your eyes and look hard you can see the pixels up there, right above "earth".
Feel free to clip and save this handy chart to show your friends, family, convenience store clerks, and any others who are easily excited. The sun is HUGE! I mean, really big. Whether or not it warms the Earth though - who can say?
 Alert Reader and First Time Emailer* Brian pointed out this fascinating article at National Geographic that suggests that the sun may be heating the Earth. The sun (to review) is a large solar body (sort of like a star) that revolves around our planet once a year**. Apparently when the sun is not busy revolving around the Earth (the other 364 days a year, naturally) it is busy revolving around other things, like Mars. Scientists have checked the temperature on Mars (during a recent period when Mars was revolving around the Earth) and discovered that it is warmer than the last time it revolved around the Earth, which was approximately three years ago.
The parallels between what is happening to Mars and what is happening to Earth are too amazing to be coincidental. For example, Mars's south pole made up of carbon dioxide "ice caps"*** is shrinking. On Earth, our "ice caps" are shrinking as well. On Mars, the polar bears are getting stranded on small carbon dioxide "ice floes"**** - on Earth, polar bears are boarding planes to Cleveland and Erie.
Are climate scientists convinced? The answer, in two words: No.
"This study is bunk," said one noted climatologist, who asked not to be named. "Everyone knows that the Sun only warms one planet in any given sun-cycle" Peter Boughton the unnamed climatologist added.
NASA is preparing a manned flight to the sun next year to conduct studies determined to answer the global warming question once and for all.
*That is to say, the first time Brian has emailed me. Not that Brian hasn't emailed other people long before this.
**At the risk of pointing out my own satire, yes, I know that the sun sometimes take more than a year to revolve around the Earth.
***The words used in the article. I would never call carbon dioxide "ice caps." That's just silly.
****Okay, sorry, that was me.
Pictures courtesy Cassini. It's just amazing to think, "There's Saturn." At least, I find that amazing and a little mind-boggling.
NASA has the details.
There's an interesting article here in Cosmos Magazine describing the current hunt for the Higgs boson, which is sometimes called the "God Particle." I think it's called that because God created it to give Physicists something to hunt for, because when you read anything about the Higgs boson you find out that it's a very small, tiny, more-or-less made up might-not-even-exist particle that (possibly) accounts for matter having mass. It should be noted that the Higgs boson will NOT explain:
1. Why you are here
2. Why Twinkies® explode in a microwave after only 22 seconds*
3. Why Giant Purple Space Potatoes are attacking not attacking China
4. Why I can't order a hamburger without cheese
In any event, the article in Cosmos Magazine explains that Europeans are only months away from turning on the world's most powerful atom smasher. It is apparently the size of Bulgaria.** When they turn this thing on, protons (which are fairly small) will streak around in a circle with energies "of up to 14 trillion electron volts." First, I want to comment that if we can make protons run around in circles with energies of up to 14 trillion electron volts, then what in the world am I doing paying the price I am for gasoline? Second, I want to comment that I really don't understand what 14 trillion means. Is that before or after kajillion?
I think this is a great time for the Blog Hero to get in his culture fix:
What will we get when we turn on the World's Largest Atom Smasher and collide protons with "energies of up to 14 trillion electron volts?" I can't say, really, but I hope I've stocked up on Twinkies that day.
*Blog Hero does not endorse the needless microwaving of Golden-Delicious Twinkies® and Blog Hero wishes to state that no Creme-Filled (Golden-Delicious) Twinkies® were harmed in writing of this post. Except for that one I ate but it had been naughty.
**Okay, not so much.
Alert Reader Carol may have another shot tonight. This from Space.com:
"We're looking for very strong, severe geomagnetic storming" to begin probably around mid-day Thursday, Joe Kunches, Lead Forecaster at the NOAA Space Environment Center, told SPACE.com this afternoon.
You can find the article here. Current AccuWeather.com Satellite here, to give you an idea of your shot at a clear sky. Good luck everyone!
Both are on the immediate schedule - check out SpaceWeather.com and good luck spotting an aurora. I've seen it once and it's absolutely unreal.
 CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) has successfully powered up the world's largest superconducting magnet. It's 110 tons, 16' wide and 82' long. I don't know if you can see him, but there's a guy in the photo at right.
The magnet will smash protons together. Although I know very little about physics, I'm always amazed when I read these sorts of things. I mean, just think about that for a second. They're going to smash protons together.
While this is apparently the largest superconducting magnet, the title of today's post harkens back to an old episode of Get Smart, wherein Siegfried had created the "Maxi-Magnet" - a super powerful magnet that was going to be used to attract and ground an entire fleet of ships on a fake floating island which would then sink. The island, ironically enough, was the same set used for Gilligan's Island. (Max ended up defeating the Maxi-Magnet with a more powerful, small watch-sized magnet - the "Mini-Magnet.")
The magnet is called the "Barrel Toroid." I looked up "Toroid" in the dictionary and it said the following:
toroid: a surface generated by a closed plane curve rotated about a line that lies in the same plane as the curve but does not intersect it
I thought about that for fifteen minutes and I think I almost had it, but then my brain melted.
A place... where nobody dared to go...
Sorry, that ELO flashback brought to you by the National Geographic. Apparently radar images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, show a "continent-size region" which bears a striking resemblance to parts of Earth. You can read about it, and see for yourself, here.
The area in question is named "Xanadu." The official explanation is that "Xanadu" comes from the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem "Kubla Khan." What is much more likely is that someone somewhere responsible for naming these sorts of things has a crush on Olivia Newton-John. I remember seeing Xanadu a long time ago; it's hard to dislike anything that Gene Kelly is in.
Okay. I completely Do Not Get this article. I can't even mow my lawn, let alone understand what there was BEFORE the Big Bang. But here we go:
"In research reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters, the team shows that, prior to the Big Bang, there was a contracting universe with space-time geometry that otherwise is similar to that of our current expanding universe."
I've read this a few times and I'm still not sure I understand it. Maybe all of the astrophysicists in the audience (you know who you are) can leave a comment or two. But the way I read this, Penn State Brainy People, named Abhay, Tomasz and Parmpreet, somehow figured out what things looked like during a time earlier than the Big Bang. They did this using Quantum Tools which were not available to Einstein but were used almost every week by MacGyver between 1985 and 1992, and occasionally there after in syndication. Richard Dean Anderson has also been known to use a Quantum Tool or two on Stargate: SG-1.
It should be noted that for purposes of the study the researchers assumed a homogenous model of the universe. This makes perfect sense because everyone I know, and particularly all of the people I see at social gatherings, assumes a homogenous model of the universe, although you don't find this out until you engage them in conversation. Just last week I went to a cook-out and was talking to the host:
Carl: "I think you might want to flip that burger, it's looking pretty, you know, done."
Host: "Why yes, I DO work under the assumption of a homogenous model of the universe."
He then produced a Quantum Tool and flipped the burger before it burned. He also tried to slip cheese on it, since it was my burger, but I wrestled him to the ground and took away the cheese and the quantum tool.
Anyway, if you get this article at all, or your name is Parmpreet, feel free to leave a comment. You can also try to explain what "one-dimensional quantum threads" are, because you would think that would be a dot, since two dimensions = height and width, and three dimensions = height and width and depth, and four dimensions = height and width and depth and the stuff they put in Double Stuff Oreos (the cream stuff, not the chocolate cookie part.) So how you can have a one dimensional thread is beyond me.
But like I said, I can't even mow my lawn.
Well, it appears that the Japanese Mafia successfully tested out their Russian Made Cold War Era Blot-Out-The-Sun Machine. What they'll do with this new found power is beyond me, but you can be sure that it will probably involve ruining Major League Baseball's day games. (They are, after all, out for revenge over the whole Hiroshima thing.)
Alert Reader Erika, who may or may not be related to Alert Reader Mark who shows up on the Blog Map™ from time to time in Costa Rica, sent in some amazing astronomical-type photos today. I just wrote her to say Thanks and to note that I wasn't feeling well yesterday, and there was no way I was going to get up and see the eclipse streamed live at 5 a.m. So I was a little disappointed, but when I got these photos I perked right up.
This is from way back on June 8, 2004. That little dot in front of the sun is Venus in transit.
This is the eclipse yesterday as seen from Zurich, Switzerland. © Professor Markus Noll
Sorry, dating myself again.
There's going to be a total solar eclipse tomorrow visible from somewhere on the planet Earth. I can never figure these things out. I know it usually means that I have to hop a plane to Nepal or something if I want to see the eclipse, which can only be viewed safely if you've duck taped your eyes (with the black duck tape) and put a heavy down comforter over your head. Spaceweather.com, found - oddly enough - at Spaceweather.com, has some great resources. Among those great resources you'll find links to sites that will be streaming the eclipse:
Of course, to figure all of this out you'll have to do the time-math conversions to make sure you're checking in at the right moment. If anyone's going to be in Nepal or Africa tomorrow, get some good pics! (Keep in mind that you should have your head duck taped and under a blanket or your eyes will burst into flames.)
UPDATE: Here's some Eclipse Time Help. (Sigh. Why'd it have to be 5 a.m.?)
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