Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NASA. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The New York Times was unclear which galaxy contains billions of potentially habitable planets

Galaxy contains billions of potentially habitable planets, say Berkeley, Hawaii astronomers

"Astronomers reported that there could be as many as 40 billion habitable Earth-size planets in the galaxy, based on a new analysis of data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft," The New York Times is reporting, adding, "One out of every five sunlike stars in the galaxy has a planet the size of Earth circling it in the Goldilocks zone — not too hot, not too cold — where surface temperatures should be compatible with liquid water, according to a herculean three-year calculation based on data from the Kepler spacecraft by Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley."

Three other weird things about The New York Times article is that it kept referring to "galaxy," when I think that they really mean "universe." Each time they refer to "galaxy," I could not figure out which "galaxy" within the "universe" they meant. Did anybody figure out which "galaxy" the reporter meant ?

Also, it is not explained why the scientific study cited in the article required that the habitable planets being search had to be approximately the size of our planet, earth ? Wouldn't it not matter what size a planet was, so long as the planet had water, breathable air, sufficient atmospheric pressure, and gravity to make life possible ?

What kind of "life" were astronomers thinking that they would find : life that would identically resemble human life ?

Sunday, May 5, 2013

American National Security Officials Worry Over Threats Related To Global Climate Change

From The Guardian : White House warned on imminent Arctic ice death spiral.

Will the Arctic Sea be completely free of ice during the summer months by 2015 ? New NASA satellite imagery from March 2013 reveals massive cracks in ice connecting Beaufort Gyre region to Alaska.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

NASA Mission Measures Major Glacial Ice Sheet Break In Antartica

NASA has a special arctic project called Operation IceBridge which monitors the sea ice, icebergs, and glaciers in the poles. One of its missions is called its Antarctic 2012 campaign, and its mission members fly high-priority missions measuring polar ice from a base of operations at the tip of Patagonia on the Strait of Magellan. They have even made a return visit to the Pine Island Glacier, the site of last year's discovery of a massive rift in the ice.

Sea ice doesn't always hold the allure of a massive ice sheet, or a crevassed blue glacier spilling between mountains, but it comes in array of shapes and sizes and has its own ephemeral beauty. Operation IceBridge studies sea ice at both poles, and also runs across interesting formations on route to other targets. Operation IceBridge returned to the Pine Island Glacier twice in 2012, and NASA glaciologist Kelly Brunt discusses the implications of the glacier's impending calving event.

Operation IceBridge has now returned to the Pine Island Glacier, not once, but twice in 2012. And the year-old giant crack in the glacier, poised to create an iceberg the size of New York City? Well it's still there, and that iceberg has yet to break free. But the rift has grown longer, much wider, and spawned a secondary crack. Before we talk about when that mighty berg will be born, let's take a look at the IceBridge missions themselves. IceBridge's first return to the region was a high altitude flight over the entire region, including the Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers. After this campaign is over, scientists will be able to compare this broad survey with previous years' measurements in order to better document the rapid and widespread changes in the region over time.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Felix Baumgartner Space Jump Video

Watch Felix Baumgartner leap from a stratospheric helium balloon at more than 120,000 feet and freefall at the speed of sound before opening his parachute and returning to Earth. (October 14, 2012)

Monday, August 27, 2012

Viral Video of Curiosity Descent Down To Mars

From This Is Colossal : New Interpolated HD Video of Curiosity Mars Rover Descent Depicts Real-Time Landing

Using footage provided by NASA, Reddit user Godd2 just spent the last four days on behalf of all humankind creating a stunning interpolated HD version of the descent. In layman’s terms interpolation involves taking a choppy video, in this case NASA’s 4 frames-per-second video, and rendering the “missing” frames in between resulting in an incredibly smooth 25 frames-per-second video. This is, I believe, the closest approximation ever of what it might feel like to land on another planet in real time using actual footage. Amazing.