Kiwis in Space

Well  maybe. According to the news article below our cousins across the ditch have managed to launch an private rocket into Space. However there seems to be no independent verification of the altitude reached.:

New Zealand's first space rocket has launched this afternoon.

The Atea-1 took off from its launch site at Great Mercury Island just before 3pm, after technical problems delayed this morning's planned launch.

The launch company, Rocket Lab Ltd, started up three years ago with the aim to develop a series of Atea rockets that would make space more accessible, company director Mark Rocket said last week.

"This is the first step in a long journey," he said.

The 6-metre-long craft should reach speeds of up to Mach 5, flying 120km into the air, before splashing down in the sea, where it will be picked up.

It is the first time in the southern hemisphere a privately owned company has launched a rocket to space.

Atea is the Maori word for space as the team wanted an indigenous name for the rockets.

The first rocket Atea-1 has been named Manu Karere by the local Thames iwi, which means Bird Messenger.

Supervolcanoes

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will focus our attention on perhaps the least understood and the most destructive natural phenomena on Earth – Supervolcanoes.

Only a handful exist in the world but, when one erupts it will be unlike any volcano we have ever witnessed. The explosion will be heard around the world. The sky will darken, black rain will fall, and the Earth will be plunged into the equivalent of a nuclear winter.

Normal volcanoes are formed by a column of magma - molten rock - rising from deep within the Earth, erupting on the surface, and hardening in layers down the sides. This forms the familiar cone shaped mountain we associate with volcanoes.

Supervolcanoes, however, begin life when magma rises from the mantle to create a boiling reservoir in the Earth's crust. This chamber increases to an enormous size, building up colossal pressure until it finally erupts.

Supervolcanoes

The Universe: Dark Matter - Dark Energy

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the dark side of the Universe. Less than five percent of our universe is comprised of matter that is radiant or interacts with light or other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

For thousands of years we have looked at the night sky and believed the illuminated stuff was all that made up our universe. Scientists now realize it's not what shines in the light but what hides in the darkness that holds the true secrets of our Cosmos. There is a mysterious dark matter that binds stars and galaxies together, and strange particles like wimps, axions and machos might be to blame. And there is a dark, repulsive energy that is creating space in the universe, that's driving the galaxies further and further apart, to a dismal fate. Combined, dark matter and dark energy make up 96% of the universe and uncovering their secrets is like making the one-in-a-million shot. If uncovered, the ultimate fate of the universe might be revealed. Will it crash and burn in a horrific collision of gravitational forces? Or will dark energy tear the universe apart? 

Join us on an odyssey to the dark side of the universe and the hunt for dark matter and dark energy.

Journey to 10,000 B.C.

Today on Discovery Enterprise we journey to the year 10,000 BC and experience the suspense and heart-pounding action of a woolly mammoth hunt. A single kill could feed the tribe for weeks. As the winters grow curiously colder and longer, this vital source of nourishment becomes even more critical. Experience the land where giant ground sloths, great saber-toothed cats, and camels roamed. Witness their extinctions and live through the cataclysms that we are only now beginning to understand.

Journey to 10,000 B.C.

ATOM - Part 1 - Clash of the Titans

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the microverse of the atom with British theoretical nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili. The discovery that everything is made from atoms has been referred to as the greatest scientific breakthrough in history.

As scientists delved deep into the atom, they unravelled nature's most shocking secrets and abandoned traditional beliefs, leading to a whole new science which still underpins modern physics, chemistry and biology, and maybe even life itself. Nuclear physicist Professor Jim Al-Khalili tells the story of this discovery and the brilliant minds behind the breakthrough.

ATOM - Part 1 - Clash of The Titans

2001: A Who Odyssey?

I just came across this wonderful video today on The Thrilling Wonder Stories blog site. One of the most stunning web sites devoted to the genre of science fiction that I have seen to grace the web.

In the April of 1968 two great space epics were to grace the silver screens of television and cinema – Doctor Who: The Wheel in Space and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Just image the possibility of merging these two great epics into a new Hollywood blockbuster – 2001: A Who Odyssey.

2001: A Who Odyssey

The Day the Earth Nearly Died

Today we live in a world teeming with life but, some two hundred and fifty million years ago that nearly change and life on earth was very nearly wiped out.

The evidence of this event takes us to Siberia in a region known as the Traps. Today it’s a sub-Arctic wilderness but 250 million years ago, over two hundred thousand square kilometres of it was a blazing torrent of lava. The Siberian Traps were experiencing a ‘flood basalt eruption’, the biggest volcanic effect on Earth. Instead of isolated volcanoes spewing out lava, the crust split and curtains of lava were released. And the Siberian flood eruption lasted for millions of years. Could volcanic activity over such a long time alter the climate enough to kill off ninety five percent of life on Earth?

The Day The Earth Nearly Died

Watch THE DAY THE EARTH NEARLY DIED in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Living With Sharks

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When we were in Hawaii recently, a friend shared the details of his relatively recent shark attack. (Please do not reveal his name on replies if you guys know him. He has asked for privacy.) It was totally horrific - he came within inches of death and was hospitalized for over a month. Within an hour of his story we were in the ocean diving with him. I took my first night dive in the ocean off Honolulu an hour after I saw JAWS for the first time in 1976. I was a younger man then and impulsive and was definitely looking around for the great beasts. But this weekend, diving alongside a man who was seriously attacked, it was a wholly different story. I am not as young as I was and not so much impulsive. The dive in broad daylight was far more intense than the night dive off Waikiki beach. I have been diving in this very spot for hundreds of hours and knew that this was definitely NOT a haven for sharks, but having just heard his story I was definitely looking around.

I know the statistics for shark attacks is lower than being struck by lightning – UNLESS – you live in Florida, that is. And nearly all shark attacks occur in water you can stand up in and most bites are relatively minor leg and ankle bites (ie – surfing injuries). But I also remember the photo that some of my environmental management colleagues took from the air off launch pad 39A. There were countless sharks in the photograph – about one shark every 50 feet or so.

Not all sharks are killers and man-eaters. But all sharks have to eat. They are not known for their intelligence and probably have no idea what a man is, much less swim around and dream up plots against him. But when man encounters shark – it is entirely up to the shark to do whatever he – or they – are going to do.

The shark has very sensitive sensors on its nose. It can detect activity in the water long before it sees its prey and far in advance of the prey seeing the shark. The good news is that sharks apparently do not like the taste of humans. That is why my friend was not killed.

Swimming off the Honolulu Boat Harbor about half a mile out, the shark just ‘tasted’ him and left. In a single instant, the shark clung to his abdomen with its rear teeth. Held him with the back teeth and then took two severing bites with its top teeth in less than half a second. He felt no pain. He thought he had collided with a log. He stood upright in the water and reached his hand out for the ‘log’ and felt the nose of a huge shark. It was at that moment that he saw the ocean around him was ‘purple’. The he felt the huge flap of skin that used to be on his back fold around his arm. The shark turned and left. But he was a half mile out in the ocean bleeding profusely with half his back hanging loose in the water. It was nothing less than a miracle that he survived, and one key part of the miracle is that he apparently didn’t taste very good to the great beast.

As we look forward to longer periods in the water, the site we have selected for the Atlantica I expeditions is also a breeding site for the Bull shark – one of the most aggressive sharks in the world. We will definitely seek ore training on diving in those waters from shark experts and diving in and around the habitat will be done with special attention to the activities and behavior characteristics of the rather mean-spirited Bull shark.

Having said all that, we also recognize that our activities are in its waters where it has lived for countless millennia. We are the observers, not the conquerors. We are the scientists there to observe it in its element and we are most definitely not there to remove or injure a single shark. If anything, we wish to study them and count them and understand how the activities of man are encroaching on their habitat. In so doing, we hope to make life easier on them and thereby encourage them to achieve their ultimate balance in the aquatic realm where we have presumed to join them.

PODCAST A Tour of the Jules Undersea Habitat

This is a video tour of the Jules Undersea Habitat by the Atlantica Expedition crew.

Click here to view the podcast.

The Quest to Reach Absolute Zero

Today on Discovery Enterprise we present a scientific saga concerning a remarkable group of pioneers who wanted to reach the ultimate extreme: absolute zero, a place so cold that the physical world as we know it doesn’t exist. Electricity flows without resistance, fluids defy gravity and the speed of light can be reduced to a mere thirty eight miles (sixty one kilometres) per hour.

This documentary features a strange cast of eccentric characters, including: Clarence Birdseye (of frozen food fame); Frederic ‘Ice King’ Tudor, who founded an empire harvesting ice; and James Dewar (best-known today for his invention of the Dewar flask), who almost drove himself crazy by trying to liquefy hydrogen.

The quest to reach the holy grail of extreme cold - absolute zero is a quest as elusive as the speed of light.

Reaching such cryogenically extreme low temperature is considered the gateway to many new exciting technologies, such as nano-construction, neurological networks and quantum computing. The possibilities, it seems, are limitless.

The Quest to Reach Absolute Zero Full Episode on YouTube

Einstein and Eddington: The Story of General Relativity

Today on Discovery Enterprise we proudly present the BBC docudrama “Einstein and Eddington” This is the story about Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, his relationship with Arthur Stanley Eddington and the introduction of this theory to the world, against the backdrop of the Great War.

During the 1920s and 30s Eddington gave innumerable lectures, interviews, and radio broadcasts on relativity (in addition to his textbook Mathematical Theory of Relativity), and later, quantum mechanics. Many of these were gathered into books, including The Nature of the Physical World and New Pathways in Science. His skillful use of literary allusions and humor helped make these famously difficult subjects quite accessible.

To obtain various works by (and about) Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, which are very difficult to obtain elsewhere go here.

Einstein and Eddington: The Story of General Relativity is one movie you will want to add to your collection and is available on DVD from Amazon.com.

Einstein and Eddington: The Story of General Relativity Part One




Einstein and Eddington: The Story of General Relativity Part Two

Planet Earth – Jungles

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will join host David Attenborough for the eighth episode of the reward winning documentary series Planet Earth. In today’s instalment we will join Dr. David Attenborough on a tour of the lush jungles and tropical rain forest of our beautiful world and study the rich diversity of flora and fauna that grace these biomes. These environments occupy only three percent of our planet’s land area yet are home to over half of the world's species.

New Guinea is inhabited by almost forty kinds of birds of paradise, which avoid conflict with each other by living in different parts of the island. Some of their elaborate courtship displays are shown. Within the dense forest canopy, sunlight is prized, and the death of a tree triggers a race by saplings to fill the vacant space. Figs are a widespread and popular food, and as many as forty four types of bird and monkey have been observed picking from a single tree. The sounds of the jungle throughout the day are explored, from the early morning calls of siamangs and orangutans to the nocturnal cacophony of courting tree frogs. The importance of fungi to the rainforest is illustrated by a sequence of them fruiting, including a parasite called cordyceps. The mutual benefits of the relationship between carnivorous pitcher plants and red crab spiders is also discussed. In the Congo, roaming forest elephants are shown reaching a clearing to feed on essential clay minerals within the mud. Finally, chimpanzees are one of the few jungle animals able to traverse both the forest floor and the canopy in search of food. In Uganda, members of a 150-strong community of the primates mount a raid into neighbouring territory in order to gain control of it. Planet Earth Diaries looks at filming displaying birds of paradise, focusing mainly on the filming of the six-plumed bird of paradise.

Planet Earth – Jungles

The Universe - Pulsars and Quasars

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore two of the most intriguing astronomical objects discovered in the nineteen sixties namely, Pulsars and Quasars.

The first pulsar was observed in July 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish. And created an initial flurry of excitement when the radio pulses emanating from these enigmatic objects where artificial signals coming from an extraterrestrial civilization. In fact the first pulsar discovered was briefly designated LGM-1 for little green men.

Later it dawned on Astronomers that these pulsating objects were in fact the remnants of the incredibly compressed cores of massive stars left over after their demise in a supernova explosion.

The word "pulsar" is a contraction of "pulsating star", and first appeared in print in 1968:

An entirely novel kind of star came to light on Aug. 6 last year and was referred to, by astronomers, as LGM (Little Green Men). Now it is thought to be a novel type between a white dwarf and a neutron [sic]. The name Pulsar is likely to be given to it. Dr. A. Hewish told me yesterday: "… I am sure that today every radio telescope is looking at the Pulsars."

The suggestion that pulsars were rotating neutron stars was put forth independently by Thomas Gold and Franco Pacini in 1968, and was soon proven beyond reasonable doubt by the discovery of a pulsar with a very short (33-millisecond) pulse period in the Crab nebula.

In 1974, Antony Hewish became the first astronomer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in physics. Considerable controversy is associated with the fact that Professor Hewish was awarded the prize while Bell, who made the initial discovery while she was his Ph.D student, was not.

Quasars (quasi-stellar radio sources) are the incredibly energetic cores of distant galaxies powered by supermassive black holes.

The first quasars were discovered with radio telescopes in the late 1950s. Many were recorded as radio sources with no corresponding visible object. Using small telescopes and the Lovell Telescope as an interferometer, they were shown to have a very small angular size.[4] Hundreds of these objects were recorded by 1960 and published in the Third Cambridge Catalogue as astronomers scanned the skies for the optical counterparts. In 1960, radio source 3C 48 was finally tied to an optical object. Astronomers detected what appeared to be a faint blue star at the location of the radio source and obtained its spectrum. Containing many unknown broad emission lines, the anomalous spectrum defied interpretation — a claim by John Bolton of a large redshift was not generally accepted.

In 1962 a breakthrough was achieved. Another radio source, 3C 273, was predicted to undergo five occultations by the moon. Measurements taken by Cyril Hazard and John Bolton during one of the occultations using the Parkes Radio Telescope allowed Maarten Schmidt to optically identify the object and obtain an optical spectrum using the 200-inch Hale Telescope on Mount Palomar. This spectrum revealed the same strange emission lines. Schmidt realized that these were actually spectral lines of hydrogen redshifted at the rate of 15.8 percent. This discovery showed that 3C 273 was receding at a rate of 47,000 km/s. This discovery revolutionized quasar observation and allowed other astronomers to find redshifts from the emission lines from other radio sources. As predicted earlier by Bolton, 3C 48 was found to have a redshift of 37% the speed of light.

The term quasar was coined by Chinese-born U.S. astrophysicist Hong-Yee Chiu in 1964, in Physics Today, to describe these puzzling objects:

So far, the clumsily long name 'quasi-stellar radio sources' is used to describe these objects. Because the nature of these objects is entirely unknown, it is hard to prepare a short, appropriate nomenclature for them so that their essential properties are obvious from their name. For convenience, the abbreviated form 'quasar' will be used throughout this paper.

– Hong-Yee Chiu in Physics Today, May, 1964

To learn more about these objects watch today’s exciting video feature from the highly acclaimed television series currently airing on the History Channel - The Universe.

The Universe - Pulsars & Quasars

The Universe - "Science Fiction, Science Fact"

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the very limits of science and the possible. Many of the technologies we take for granted today, such as space travel, transcontinental passenger aircraft, submarines and almost instantaneous global communication, once existed in the realm of speculative fiction. How many of the technologies which exist only in the realm of our best loved Sci-Fi television series will eventually become the reality of tomorrow?

The world of tomorrow is quickly becoming the futuristic world of today. While you may not be "beaming" to your next appointment, researchers are preparing for the first tests of a transporter. And while scientists have long mocked Hollywood's visions of warp speed a new generation of physicists continue to rewrite the fundamental rules of the universe. Is there a way around the cosmic speed limit – the speed of light?

The Universe -Science Fiction Science Fact

The Universe - Unexplained Mysteries

Join us today on Discovery Enterprise as we ponder some of the unexplained questions and mysteries of our cosmos.

We will delve into some of the myths, misconceptions, truths and amazing mysteries of our unique universe. Could life exist on Mars? Is time travel possible and does Einstein’s theory of relativity support it? Is there a companion dark star to our sun and could it pose a threat to earth? Learn about the spark that lit the big bang. Take a journey from science fiction that predicted all these things, to the scientific reality of what they mean to us in the ever-changing universe.

These are just some of unexplained mysteries just begging to be explored and understood, and so long as there are inquisitive minds, the unexplained can one day be made explicable.

The Universe - Unexplained Mysteries

The Universe - Supernovas

"We are the journeywork of the stars, no less than the leaves of grass." -Walt Whitman

Join us today on Discovery Enterprise as we explore our stellar legacy. Each of us, in the immortal words of the American poet Walt Whitman, “…are the journeywork of the stars, no less than the leaves of grass." As Carl Sagan would put it later on in the twentieth century – “We are star stuff which has taken its destiny into its own hands. The loom of time and space works the most astonishing transformations of matter”.

Each of us owes our existence to a stellar alchemy some thirteen billion years in the making where simplest elements hydrogen and helium were transformed by the process of nucleosynthesis into the heavy elements which were forged in the hearts of distant and massive suns. These stars eventually died a spectacular death in the form of a stellar explosion know as a Supernova.

This is an explosive event that can shine as bright as 100 billion Suns and radiate as much energy as the Sun would emit over 10 billion years. Jets of high-energy light and matter are propelled into space and can cause massive Gamma Ray Bursts and emit intense X-ray radiation for thousands of years.

Astronomers believe that it is this explosive event which enriches the interstellar environment with these heavy elements that are the very building blocks of planets, people and plants.

We owe our existence to the laws of physics expressed succinctly within Einstein’s mass- energy expression E=mc2. For contained in this short and concise equation is the cosmic heritage of our species.

To learn the underlying science and contemplate the meaning of how the atoms within us are the journey-work of the stars visit Connie Barlow’s wonderful web sites “A Leaf of Grass” and “We Are Made of Stardust: Toward a New Periodic Table of Elements”.

The Universe - Supernovas

The Universe – Extreme Energy

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the concept of energy. Energy is the driving force of the Cosmos. It is the very stuff of matter, life and mind. Energy can neither we created nor destroyed but, only transformed from one form of energy into another.

Ours is a universe of vast yet finite energy. But, where did this energy come from? In the Cosmos energy takes many forms and can manifest itself in spectacular ways. From powerful jets ejected from black holes to the raw nuclear fury of our Sun. But, the total amount of energy in the universe maintains perfect equilibrium--no more can be added or taken away. And, what new vast energy resources can an advanced technological civilization hope to harness?

The Universe – Extreme Energy

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 1

Tuesday November 24th, 2009 marks the hundred fiftieth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s publication of his master work “On the Origin of Species”. Today on Discovery Enterprise we continue our year long celebration of the life and achievements of Charles Darwin by joining him on his historic five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle in this wonderful television series produced by the BBC in 1978.

Darwin’s five year voyage aboard the HMS Beagle was an odyssey through time as well as space for it led Darwin to discover the principle mechanism that has shaped and sculpted every life form that has graced our world across the eons of life’s existence on our planet.

The Voyage of Charles Darwin - Episode 1


Watch The Voyage of Charles Darwin (Episode 1) in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Planet Earth – Great Plains

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will join host David Attenborough in the seventh episode of the reward winning documentary series Planet Earth. In today’s instalment we will join Dr. David Attenborough on a tour of the savannas, steppes, tundra, and prairies of our glorious planet.

This episode also highlights the importance and resilience of grasses in such treeless ecosystems. Their vast expanses contain the largest concentration of animal life.

In Outer Mongolia, a herd of Mongolian gazelle flee a bush fire and has to move on to new grazing, but grass can repair itself rapidly and soon reappears. On the Arctic tundra during spring, millions of migratory snow geese arrive to breed and their young are preyed on by Arctic foxes. Meanwhile, time-lapse photography depicts moving herds of caribou as a calf is brought down by a chasing wolf. On the North American prairie, bison engage in the ritual to establish the dominant males.

The Tibetan Plateau is the highest of the plains and despite its relative lack of grass, animals do survive there, including yak and wild ass. However, the area's most numerous resident is the pika, whose nemesis is the Tibetan fox. In tropical India, the tall grasses hide some of the largest creatures and also the smallest, such as the pygmy hog. The final sequence depicts the African savannah and elephants that are forced to share a waterhole with a pride of thirty lions. The insufficient water makes it an uneasy alliance and the latter gain the upper hand during the night when their hunger drives them to hunt and eventually kill one of the pachyderms. Planet Earth Diaries explains how the lion hunt was filmed in darkness using infrared light.

Planet Earth – Great Plains

Newton: The Dark Heretic

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will offer an entirely different portrait of one of the greatest minds in science-Sir Isaac Newton.

Newton was the brilliant scientist who formulated the laws of motion that bare his name and the discoverer of the law of universal gravitation, but he was also an alchemist and a theologian.

This documentary uncovers for the first time the original manuscript where Newton forecast the date of the end of the world.

Newton, the father of modern mathematics, dedicated a large part of his life to a quest to decode the Bible which he believed to be the word of God.

For over fifty years, he studied the Bible trying to unravel God's secret laws of the Universe. He was fanatical in his quest to discover the date for the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world.

Isaac Newton was one of the world’s first great experimental and theoretical physicist but, perhaps he was also one of the last of the great magicians of the medieval tradition.

Newton: The Dark Heretic

LCROSS confirms water on the Moon

It appears that the LCROSS  Moon bomber did confirm water at the Lunar pole:

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- Preliminary data from NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates the mission successfully uncovered water in a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The discovery opens a new chapter in our understanding of the moon.

The LCROSS spacecraft and a companion rocket stage made twin impacts in the Cabeus crater Oct. 9 that created a plume of material from the bottom of a crater that has not seen sunlight in billions of years. The plume traveled at a high angle beyond the rim of Cabeus and into sunlight, while an additional curtain of debris was ejected more laterally.

"We're unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and, by extension, the solar system," said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The moon harbors many secrets, and LCROSS has added a new layer to our understanding."

Scientists long have speculated about the source of significant quantities of hydrogen that have been observed at the lunar poles. The LCROSS findings are shedding new light on the question with the discovery of water, which could be more widespread and in greater quantity than previously suspected. If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data. In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.

Since the impacts, the LCROSS science team has been analyzing the huge amount of data the spacecraft collected. The team concentrated on data from the satellite's spectrometers, which provide the most definitive information about the presence of water. A spectrometer helps identify the composition of materials by examining light they emit or absorb.

"We are ecstatic," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS project scientist and principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Multiple lines of evidence show water was present in both the high angle vapor plume and the ejecta curtain created by the LCROSS Centaur impact. The concentration and distribution of water and other substances requires further analysis, but it is safe to say Cabeus holds water."

The team took the known near-infrared spectral signatures of water and other materials and compared them to the impact spectra the LCROSS near infrared spectrometer collected.

"We were able to match the spectra from LCROSS data only when we inserted the spectra for water," Colaprete said. "No other reasonable combination of other compounds that we tried matched the observations. The possibility of contamination from the Centaur also was ruled out."

Additional confirmation came from an emission in the ultraviolet spectrum that was attributed to hydroxyl, one product from the break-up of water by sunlight. When atoms and molecules are excited, they release energy at specific wavelengths that can be detected by the spectrometers. A similar process is used in neon signs. When electrified, a specific gas will produce a distinct color. Just after impact, the LCROSS ultraviolet visible spectrometer detected hydroxyl signatures that are consistent with a water vapor cloud in sunlight.

Data from the other LCROSS instruments are being analyzed for additional clues about the state and distribution of the material at the impact site. The LCROSS science team and colleagues are poring over the data to understand the entire impact event, from flash to crater. The goal is to understand the distribution of all materials within the soil at the impact site.

"The full understanding of the LCROSS data may take some time. The data is that rich," Colaprete said. "Along with the water in Cabeus, there are hints of other intriguing substances. The permanently shadowed regions of the moon are truly cold traps, collecting and preserving material over billions of years."

LCROSS was launched June 18 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO. Moving at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second, the spent upper stage of its launch vehicle hit the lunar surface shortly after 4:31 a.m. PDT Oct. 9, creating an impact that instruments aboard LCROSS observed for approximately four minutes. LCROSS then impacted the surface at approximately 4:36 a.m.

LRO observed the impact and continues to pass over the site to give the LCROSS team additional insight into the mechanics of the impact and its resulting craters. The LCROSS science team is working closely with scientists from LRO and other observatories that viewed the impact to analyze and understand the full scope of the LCROSS data.

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To Mars via Aquatica

Here's an interesting little story about NASA astronauts exploring the undersea to better explore space:

Pavilion Lake, in British Columbia, Canada, is home to a biological mystery. Microbialites, coral-like structures built by bacteria, in a variety of sizes and shapes, carpet the lakebed. That’s unusual for a freshwater lake like Pavilion. So unusual that researchers don’t know of any other freshwater lake in the world that has microbialites with some of the same strange shapes.

That explains why scientists have established the Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) to study the lake. They want to understand what’s so unusual about seemingly normal Pavilion Lake, how the microbial structures manage to survive, why they aren’t destroyed by snails, worms and other grazing animals, as they are elsewhere.

What it doesn’t explain is why NASA’s MMAMA (Moon and Mars Analogue Missions Activities) program has funded the PRLP to continue its work for the next several years. Or why astronauts from NASA and CSA (the Canadian Space Agency) are participating in the project. After all, there are no lakes on the moon, and it’s been a long time since there were any on Mars.

Because of the logistical difficulty of doing comprehensive exploration in an underwater environment, however, lessons learned in the process of exploring Pavilion Lake are directly relevant to future human exploration of other worlds.

“We’re doing science in a setting where we have limited life support,” says Darlene Lim of NASA Ames Research Center, PLRP’s principal investigator. “I can’t just walk out and hang out with [an interesting] rock all day.” PLRP divers have been studying the lake for several years, but were able to survey only a small fraction of it. So in 2008, researchers began exploring in the lake in DeepWorkers, mini-submersibles just large enough for a pilot to squeeze inside. That’s when NASA and CSA sent astronauts to the scene. A second round of DeepWorker exploration took place in 2009.

The full article is here.

December 21st, 2012: Doomsday Ain’t Happening

Today Friday November 13th, 2009 theatergoers the world over will be teleported via cinematic magic forward in time to the near future date of Friday December 21st, 2012 and a possible End Day that will signify the end of civilization as we know it. In view of the gravity of the situation, and believing that our blog site has a responsibility to serve in the public interest at all times, we are going to help set the record straight.

Let us assure you our dear readers of Discovery Enterprise that on Friday December 21st, 2012, in all probability “the Earth's magnetic poles will not flip, California will not break apart and slide into the sea, and a secret monster planet will not smash into Earth out of the invisible nowhere”. On Saturday December 22nd, 2012 we will be back to the old everyday concerns of work, school and family and making the last minute entries on our holiday gift list and debating whether or not we are going to get Uncle Bob another Paisley Tie again this Christmas.

"The world will not come to an end on December 21, 2012," says prominent astronomer and astro-historian E. C. Krupp, director of Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles and a Sky & Telescope contributing editor. "The 2012 doomsday idea starts with a misinterpretation of the Maya calendar."

Dr. Krupp debunks the 2012 doomsday idea in the cover story of the November 2009 issue of Sky & Telescope magazine, which is now on sale at newsstands. The article explains what you need to know for your 2012 defense kit. Click here to download a copy of Dr. Krupp's informative article in Sky & Telescope.

So we can all sleep a lot more easily tonight. In the mean time if you are staying in tonight and not attending the premier of the theatrical release of this latest Hollywood disaster flick we at Discovery Enterprise will provide you with the next best thing – two episodes of the highly controversial and questionably accurate documentary series Decoding the Past. Namely: “Doomsday 2012 - The End of Days” and “Mayan Doomsday Prophecy”. So make some buttery mouth watering Popcorn and enjoy today’s video offering. Make sure you book your tickets to see John Cusack in 2012 tomorrow and sleep easy tonight with the knowledge that its just plain old make-believe.

Decoding the Past - Doomsday 2012 - The End Of Days


Decoding The Past - Mayan Doomsday Prophecy


'2012' Trailer HD

The end of the world is coming in 2012 or so goes the plot of this apocalyptic drama from the director of Independence Day. The movie, appropriately titled 2012, is about a group of people (led by John Cusack) trying to counteract and survive the disastrous events predicted by the Ancient Mayan calendar. Why do I get the feeling the Director Roland Emmerich has a thing for the end of the world judging from his past movies like Independence Day, Day After Tommorow, and Godzilla?? Take a look at this teaser trailer and see the destruction for yourself. Not a very long trailer but you get the idea. I assume there will be much more of the same for the whole 2 hours of this movie. Let us know what you think, does 2012 look like it could be another Independence Day?

The Universe - Ten Ways to Destroy the Earth

Today on Discovery Enterprise in anticipation of this Friday’s release of the disaster film 2012 we are going to explore ten possible ways to destroy our home world – the Earth.

In this episode of the History Channel’s awe inspiring television series – The Universe, our experts cook up ten ways you could destroy the earth worthy of the upcoming Hollywood disaster flick 2012. Everything from: swallowing it with a microscopic black hole; blowing it up with anti-matter; hurling it into the Sun, and switching off gravity.

This is a fun way to explore the dangerous physics of the Universe and the properties of the planet we call home. So today we explore the ten possible scenarios scientists have dreamed up and that may be coming to a theatre near you with the next disaster flick depicting End Day whatever the date of the year maybe.

The Universe - Ten Ways to Destroy the Earth

Buzz Aldrin: Fake rockets and a commercial solution

Buzz Aldrin was in fine form the other day in the Huffington Post. Here is what he has t say about the recent Ares-1 test:

Yes, the rocket that thundered aloft from NASA's Launch Pad 39B sure looked like an Ares 1. But that's where the resemblance stops. Turns out the solid booster was - literally - bought from the Space Shuttle program, since a five-segment booster being designed for Ares wasn't ready. So they put a fake can on top of the four-segmented motor to look like the real thing. Since the real Ares' upper stage rocket engine, called the J-2X wasn't ready either, they mounted a fake upper stage. No Orion capsule was ready, so - you guessed it - they mounted a fake capsule with a real-looking but fake escape rocket that wouldn't have worked if the booster had failed. Since the guidance system for Ares wasn't ready either they went and bought a unit from the Atlas rocket program and used it instead. Oh yes, the parachutes to recover the booster were the real thing -- and one of the three failed, causing the booster to slam into the ocean too fast and banging the thing up. So, why you might ask, if the whole machine was a bit of slight-of-hand rocketry did NASA bother to spend almost half a billion dollars (that's billion with a "b") in developing and launching the Ares 1-X?


The answer: politics.


Technical problems, the kind that follow every new rocket's development, have haunted the Ares like leftovers from Halloween. The rocket as currently designed shakes so much during launch that shock absorbers are needed beneath its capsule payload. All of this takes time to fix -- and money, money that NASA really doesn't have. To stave off critics, three years ago the Project Constellation managers conceived of the 1-X flight to supposedly show some progress. They could instrument the rocket with hundreds of sensors gathering information never before obtained during a booster use in a Shuttle mission. It would give the launch team some practice in the assembly of an Ares. And NASA would find out if something as ungainly as the Ares 1 design - a thicker top than the bottom booster - could survive during ascent through the Earth's atmosphere. Of course, all of the changes to the Shuttle launch pad to accommodate the Ares wouldn't be ready in time, so they decided to just leave all of the Shuttle hardware, such as the rotating tower that envelops the Shuttles there. A success might just buy more time for Ares to fix its problems.

Its not just an attack on the Ares either he does offer an alternative:

Here's my plan -- and yes, I am a rocket scientist -- cancel Ares 1 now and the version of the Orion capsule that is supposed to fly astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station. Instead, unleash the commercial sector by paying them for transportation services to the station. Could be capsules. Could be winged ships like the Space Shuttle, capable of flying back to a runway with its crews and cargoes, not splashing in the ocean like a cannonball. With the money saved, start developing a true heavy lifter worthy of the Saturn V's successor. Could be a side-mount rocket like the Shuttles, with a tank-and-booster set flanked by a payload pod jammed full of cargo-or a space capsule with astronauts in tow. Or new upper stages capable of deep space missions. Let's open 'er up to a true competition, with designs from inside -- and outside -- NASA. If we bypass a foolish Moon race and let the development of the Moon be an international affair, we will have time to refine the super booster to make sure it is compatible with our deep space goals, like missions flying by comets or asteroids -- or to the moons of Mars. Such a rocket would be ready when the time comes to colonize Mars. No more false starts and dead end rockets.

The whole article is worth reading and I like his proposal to commercialize manned space flight but I have more comments to make in my next post.

The Universe - The Search for Cosmic Clusters

They are the one-stop-shopping places for learning all about the nature and variety of stars in the Universe. They're unique, because in clusters, all the stars were born at about the same time, from the same material and all are at the same approximate distance from Earth. This means we can be sure that any differences among them are due to their true natures and not distorted by different distances from Earth and other factors. In this episode, two kinds of star clusters in the galaxy are explored. "Open Clusters" are young, live in the spiral arms of the galaxy and give us insight into the birth and formation of stars. "Globular Clusters" are old, live in the outskirts of the galaxy and could be nearly as old as the Universe itself. In addition, explore Galaxy clusters to reveal the large-scale structure of the Universe, which is expanding so fast that eventually all other galaxies, except for our own, will literally disappear from our sight.

The Universe - The Search for Cosmic Clusters

The Universe - Liquid Universe

On alien planets it rains from the sky as scalding iron. On distant moons, even at hundreds of degrees below zero, they slosh around in lakes of methane. They can cover planets in oceans of electrified hydrogen metal. They churn in dead stars and even our planet. They're so rare in the universe, they almost do not exist, but these are the liquids of our Liquid Universe.

The Universe - Liquid Universe

Planet Earth – Ice Worlds

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will join host David Attenborough in the sixth episode of the reward winning documentary series Planet Earth. In today’s instalment we will join Dr. Attenborough on an odyssey to the coldest and most inhospitable regions of our planet – the frigid wastelands of the Arctic and Antarctica. Yet, despite the fact that these regions are freezing and forbidding ice worlds, life manages to flourish here.

Snow petrels take their place on nunataks and begin to court, but are preyed on by South Polar skuas. During summer, a pod of humpback whales hunt krill by creating a spiralling net of bubbles. The onset of winter sees the journey of emperor penguins to their breeding grounds, 160 kilometres (99 mi) inland. Their eggs transferred to the males for safekeeping, the females return to the ocean while their partners huddle into large groups to endure the extreme cold. At the northern end of the planet, Arctic residents include musk oxen, who are hunted by Arctic foxes and wolves. A female polar bear and her two cubs head off across the ice to look for food. As the sun melts the ice, a glimpse of the Earth's potential future reveals a male polar bear that is unable to find a firm footing anywhere and has to resort to swimming — which it cannot do indefinitely. Its desperate need to eat brings it to a colony of walrus. Although it attacks repeatedly, the herd is successful in evading it by returning to the sea. Wounded and unable to feed, the bear will not survive. Meanwhile, back in Antarctica, the eggs of the emperor penguins finally hatch. Planet Earth Diaries tells of the battle with the elements to obtain the penguin footage and of unwelcome visits from polar bears.

Planet Earth - Ice Worlds

Space Wars

Someday humanity will leave its planetary abode and will eventually embark on the grand enterprise of humanizing the high and final frontier of space. But, as humanity expands ever outwards into this vast new frontier it is certainly inevitable that we will take our propensities for war an aggression with us. We may eventual engage in warfare with members of our own species or extraterrestrial civilizations which share our bloodlust or whatever analogue of blood they possess.

Outer space is already an essential part of America's ability to fight wars. Our military depends on satellites for many things, such as communications, reconnaissance and targeting information. But so far, no country has put weapons into space, although the U.S. and China have both shown they can shoot down satellites with ground-based missiles. If weapons do become a part of space, how will they work, how effective will they be, and what type of damage could they do? From ground-based lasers to telephone-pole sized rods hurtling from space at two miles per second to the far out weapons of the distant future, it's time to "lock and load" for Space Wars.

The Universe - Space Wars


Watch The Universe S04 - Space Wars in Educational & How-To  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Leonardo da Vinci

Today on Discovery Enterprise we explore the life and work of one of the greatest minds in history Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo was the quintessential and prototypical Renaissance man and represents the epitome of the rebirth and explosive revival of intellectual and artistic achievement of this period in Florentine Italy. This was a resurgence of creativity that would spread to the rest of Europe and influence the future course of human history. Leonardo was an artist, scientist, engineer, visionary and a well accomplished polymath who straddled the worlds of both science and art. His work and creativity still fascinates us today.

Over three gripping episodes, this docudrama from the BBC reconstructs the life of Leonardo from early boyhood to death. Each episode is infused with brilliant academic commentary and includes the building and testing of some of Leonardo’s inventions, including his tank, hang glider, underwater suit, and parachute.

Did these amazing conceptual inventions work as Leonardo intended? Find out in today’s video feature.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Real Neanderthal Man

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will take a journey through time and visit Europe during the last ice age and encounter a remarkable group of people.

Some forty two thousand years ago, the only living humans in Europe made clothes, educated their young, made tools. But they were not us. Now twenty first century science can reveal exactly how they lived, the dangers they faced and the communities they made in the Neander valley of Germany.

Horizon - The Death Star

Out in depths of deepest space lurks a force of almost unimaginable power and ferocity. Explosions of extraordinary violence, are blasting throughout the Universe every day. If one ever struck our Solar System it would irradiate and shower the Earth with a lethal blast of gamma radiation destroying the human species and seriously damaging our planet’s biosphere.

For years no one could work out what was causing these awesome explosions. Now scientists think they have identified the culprit. It’s the most extreme object ever found in the Universe; they have christened it a ‘hypernova’.

Could these explosions perhaps be the answer to Fermi’s Paradox and explain why it appears that humans may be alone in the universe.

Horizon - The Death Star

Are We Alone In The Universe?

Today’s documentary investigates one of the most controversial questions of all time… are we alone in the universe?

This is not documentary that claims to have conclusive proof of extraterrestrial civilizations elsewhere in the Milky Way Galaxy, but rather a look at the serious science of the search for extraterrestrial life.

The search for extra-terrestrial life has been going for 50 years – but there’s been a recent breakthrough. Astronomers have discovered a new planet called Gliese 581 c.

It is the most Earth-like planet ever found. It orbits a star and may have habitats capable of supporting life. NASA hopes to find 50 more Earth-like planets by the end of the decade, all of which increases the chance that alien life has begun elsewhere.

Are We Alone In The Universe?

Planet Earth – Deserts

Today on Discovery Enterprise we will join host David Attenborough on a trek through some of the harshest and most inhospitable and arid environments on our planet – Mongolia's Gobi Desert, Africa's Sahara, Egypt's White Desert, and Chile’s Atacama.

This installment features the harsh environment that covers one third of the Earth: the deserts. Due to Siberian winds, Mongolia's Gobi Desert reaches extremes of temperature like no other, ranging from -40°C to +50°C (-40°F to 122°F). It is home to the rare Bactrian camel, which eats snow to maintain its fluid level and must limit itself to 10 litres (2.6 U.S. gal; 2.2 imp gal) a day if it is not to prove fatal. Africa's Sahara is the size of the USA, and just one of its severe dust storms could cover the whole of Great Britain. While some creatures, such as the dromedary, take them in their stride, for others the only escape from such bombardments is to bury themselves in the sand. Few rocks can resist them either and the outcrops shown in Egypt's White Desert are being inexorably eroded. The biggest dunes (300 m or 1,000 ft high) are to be found in Namibia, while other deserts featured are Death Valley in California and Nevada, the Sonoran in Arizona, the deserts of Utah, all in the United States, the Atacama in Chile, and areas of the Australian outback. Animals are shown searching for food and surviving in such an unforgiving habitat: African elephants that walk up to 80 kilometres (50 mi) per day to find food; lions (hunting oryx); red kangaroos (which moisten their forelegs with saliva to keep cool); nocturnal fennec foxes, acrobatic flat lizards feeding on black flies, and duelling Nubian ibex. The final sequence illustrates one of nature's most fearsome spectacles: a billion-strong plague of desert locusts, destroying all vegetation in its path. Planet Earth Diaries explains how the hunt for the elusive Bactrian camels necessitated a two-month trek in Mongolia.

Planet Earth – Deserts

Into the Belly of the Gravitational Beast

Today on Discovery Enterprise we are presenting a double video feature where we will embark on a voyage that will take us into the belly of a gravitational beast – The Supermassive Blackhole.

Supermassive Blackholes

A supermassive black hole is a black hole with a mass in the range of hundreds of thousands to tens of billions of solar masses. It is currently thought that most, if not all galaxies, including the Milky Way, contain a supermassive black hole at their galactic center. Could the existence of these celestial monstrosities explain the creation of the very galaxies in which they lurk?

Monster of the Milky Way

Astronomers are closing in on the proof they’ve sought for years that one of the most destructive objects in the universe – a super massive black hole – lurks at the center of our own galaxy. Could it flare up and consume our entire galactic neighborhood?

NOVA takes us on a mind-bending investigation into one of the most bizarre corners of cosmological science: black hole research. From event horizon to singularity, the elusive secrets of supermassive black holes are revealed through stunning computer-generated imagery, including an extraordinary simulation of what it might look like to fall into the belly of such an all-devouring beast.