Meteor Showers!

So, seeing as this is the last "official" blog, I thought I'd talk about one of my absolute favourite things: Meteor Showers! First of all:

What is a Meteor? A common misconception is that meteors are shooting stars. In reality, they are broken pieces of asteroids or comets. They are generally rather dull in appearance, basically looking like big chunks of rock. The reason they look so bright when they flash across the sky is because they are burning up as they enter earth's atmosphere. So in reality, when you watch a meteor shower, you are watching burning rocks... If a meteor is not completely burned up and manages to land on earth, it is then called a meteorite.

When can you watch a Meteor Shower: There are various meteors throughout the year. My personal favourite falls around the 12th-13th of August, the Perseids. This is one of the best showers of the year, sometimes producing up to 60 meteors an hour! The next upcoming meteor shower will be the evening of April 21st, and because of the lack of moonlight, it should be a good one! :)

Tips for Better Viewing: Leave town! If you go out somewhere in the countryside, the bright city lights and smog will not affect your view of the stars! Not to mention it will be quieter and overall, more enjoyable. If you can, shut off any lights nearby, and situate yourself in a spot without any tall objects that might obstruct your view. Wide open fields are ideal :)

Things you probably didn't know about space:

So instead of doing a longer in-depth blog this week, I've decided to a bunch of "mini-blogs," to discuss some really cool astronomical things that don't really need a whole blog to explain :)

1) In space, if 2 pieces of metal will become permanently stuck together if they touch! (If they do not have any special coating on them...) This is because of the vacuum in space that exists because of the lack of oxygen... This is called "Cold Welding." On earth, the oxygen in our atmosphere prevents this from happening.

2) Earth almost has more than one moon! There are 4 other asteroids that are orbiting around the sun in exactly the same revolution period as earth... making it look like we're following each other! The first one was discovered in 1986 by Duncan Waldrom. People sometimes actually refer to this object, which was officially named Cruithne, as Earth's second moon. The image to the right shows the orbits of Earth and Cruithne.

3) It wouldn't actually be overly dangerous to fly through an asteroid field! This is because asteroids in asteroid fields are actually pretty far apart and most of them are very small. In our asteroid belt, there are hundreds of thousands of miles between the objects, and most of them are only about the size of a tennis ball... So despite all the cartoons we see that show us otherwise, flying through an asteroid belt would be a relatively safe endeavour.

4) Apparently the USA once planned on blowing up the moon with a nuclear weapon! No apparent reason for this, just to prove their superiority during the space race with Russia. The project was called "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" or Project A119. They wanted the general public to believe that the United States was doing better in the Space Race, but felt that shooting the moon (literally) would probably not go over too well with anyone...

Emigrating from Earth?

The idea that humans might be able to live on other planets has interested scientists for a while now. With the increasing population growth on Earth, accompanied by a finite resource base, as well as the environmental problems surrounding climate change, the idea of moving to a new planet and starting over is appealing for a lot of people. But is this possible? Would another planet actually be able to sustain human life? Mars had been an area of interest for some time, because of evidence of water and its proximity to earth. The moon had also been a plausible option at one time... but both these ideas have been dismissed. Human life is very fragile, and we would not be able to withstand the extreme temperatures of either planet. On Mars, temperatures can go down to as low as -140°C, while on the moon, temperates can range from 130°C to -170°C! Humans must maintain a body temperature of around 37°C, and with a climate like this, this would be pretty much impossible.
Another major issue is transportation. How would everyone get to this other planet? It is one thing to take a few astronauts for a temporary visit to the moon, but for a mass exodus to occur, some kind of new technology would be needed. If we were to bring enough supplies to construct some kind of shelter, as well as provisions and other basic necessities, as well as the people who were going to be living there, the spacecraft would be much to heavy to actually go anywhere... So although the idea is really cool, the reality of living in space is probably not something that will be realised any time soon...
However, if you've always dreamt of living in space, don't give up hope yet! NASA's Kepler Satellite is orbiting the sun, scouring the universe for signs of other possible earth-like planets. There is a pretty good chance with all of the celestial bodies in our solar system, that there is at least one out there that is comparable to Earth... However, the transportation would still be an issue... so for the time being, I guess we better stick to Earth!

The Kuiper Cliff and Planet X

There have been ideas floating around the scientific community about the possibility of a 10th planet existing in the outer region of our solar system. Although this idea has received much criticism, there are also many who acknowledge the possibility as a realistic one. At the furthest edges of our solar system, far beyond Pluto (not a planet :(...) is what is called the Kuiper Cliff. This is an area in the Kuiper Belt extending from 30-50 AU from the sun, composed of thousands of "ice rocks." The Cliff is a region where, suddenly, there is nothing; the density of "ice rocks" in the region decreases dramatically. In the above picture, the green dots represent the Kuiper Belt. It is obvious that there is something going on in the area at the bottom of the screen, where suddenly, there are no more "ice rocks." This is the area where some people believe our solar system's 10th planet (for now, termed "Planet X") is located. This planet is supposed to be between the masses of Earth and Mars, located beyond 48 AU.

A planet would explain the sudden decrease in the amount of "ice rocks" in the Kuiper Belt because it would create a major gravitational force, sweeping up any nearby objects. There have been theories of a 10th planet somewhere outside Neptune's orbit ever since the discovery of Neptune, but when Pluto was discovered, people thought that this is what they were looking for. However, with the recent declassification of Pluto as a planet, other theories are starting to become more prevalent.
NASA has launched a probe (New Horizons) to check out Pluto, but it will not arrive until 2015, and since we do not yet have the technology to view this possible planet from earth, we'll have to wait another 3 years before we get any concrete answers.

Dark Energy

So I've already talked a bit about Dark Matter... but something even more crazy and mysterious is Dark Energy. It accounts for an enormous 74% of our universe! When combined with Dark Matter, this means that around 86% of our universe has not been seen/discovered yet! According to NASA, "more is unknown [about dark energy] then is known." We know that our universe is continually expanding, and has been since it was formed. What is, perhaps, even more surprising is that this expansion has actually grown faster over time! Previously it had been thought that the expansion rate would slow down, and eventually stop due to gravity. So what is causing this expedited expansion? Scientists call this Dark Energy. When the universe first came into existance, it was affected primarily by dark matter. In present times, however, dark energy has a much greater effect. 
If you look at this "cup-shaped" figure, the bottom represents the formation of the universe, which is expanding, but at a much slower rate than the top of the cup. With the switch over to dark energy (occuring slightly more than half-way up), expansion sped up dramatically. Today, we are at the brim of the glass, and possibilities for expansion are endless! Many scientists actually believe that once day, as the universe as ripped apart even more, our Milky Way Galaxy will be its own little island, with all the other Galaxies and other celestial bodies we can see today being pulled even further away.
Dark energy, of course, is only one of 3 theories about the expansion of the universe, but it is the most weidely believed theory in today's scientific society.

Life after Red Giant Phase?

It is widely accepted that once the sun undergoes its inevitable Red Giant phase, the Earth will be destroyed... but recently scientists have discovered planets that have actually survived their star's Red Giant phase! Does this mean that there is hope for the earth as well? It is estimated that the sun will become a Red Giant in about 5 billion years, so its nothing we need to worry about for the immediate future... just something to think about. 


The two planets, KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02 actually had a significant effect on the evolution of their star, KIC 05807616. When observing the star, scientists noticed a variation in brightness... this, they discovered was due to light being emitted from the planets! Eliza Kempton from The University of California says:
"Light that is directly emitted or reflected from extrasolar planets has been detected in the past, but this is the first time that this particular method has been used for the discovery of a planetary system." 

The reason for the survival of these planets is that they were large enough to strip the star of a significant amount of its mass. It is predicted that before the star became a Red Giant, the planets would have been large and gaseous, like Jupiter. As the star became a Red Giant, the planets were caught in its gravitational pull, and as they came closer, they stripped the star of some of its mass, while the star stripped them of their gaseous atmosphere, leaving only the solid core behind. 


The difference between these planets and Earth is that these planets were much larger and closer to the star. When the sun turns into a Red Giant, all life on Earth will inevitably be destroyed, but it is possible that the planet itself will still survive.

Science and God?

There are a lot of people in our world today that see Science and God as two completely separate entities than cannot be combined. Personally, I do not agree with this. A few weeks ago when I heard Dr. Jocelyn Bell Brunell speak I remember she mentioned that she believed strongly in God. There are actually a surprising number of Christian Scientists out there, who see no

problem with the co-existence of both God and science. Many people treat them as binary opposites, associating God with things like faith and believe, and science with fact, logic and deduction. However, science is not completely made up of facts and logic. There are theories, things that we think are true, but cannot know with 100% certainty. God, likewise, is not based entirely on faith and belief. The more I look a the complexities of the universe, the more I realize that the odds of this happening by chance are extremely slim! What are the chances of life occurring on earth! If we look at all of the other hunks of rock and gas in our universe, isn't it kind of strange that we are the only planet that can sustain life? Even more amazing is the quality and complexity of life that we have! If scientists found even a few colonies of bacteria on another planet, they'd be super excited, but on earth we have so many different species of life! Humans are especially fascinating! The fact that we each have an individual personality, abstract thoughts and a consciousness is prettyamazing! The human body is also incredibly intricate, each  tiny cell and organ that depend on all these other cells and organs in order for us to have life! All of this cannot have come from nothing! Essentially if we go to the very very beginning, earth had to come from somewhere! According to the 'principle of causality', everything must have a cause,

but what caused the matter that started the big bang to come into existence? Where did it come from? Putting God into the picture gives us an answer to this question. I personally do not believe in the big bang theory (I may do another blog later as to why...), but there are many christians who do, saying that it was God who started it by providing the materials needed for it to happen, and setting everything up just right, so that life could exist. What about the idea that God created science? He put all these mechanisms into order, and us figuring them out is the science...

"The Universe's Speed Limit"

Einstein once referred to the speed of light as "the universe's speed limit," this is because in order for E=MC^2, and a lot of other theories to hold true, light must remain the fastest entity in existence.

The Speed of Light is 186 282 miles per second! Photons, or the basic unit of light, have no mass/ weight because they do not interact with the Higgs field (as other particles with mass do). Therefore, light does not have a "speed limit." Basically, the speed of light is an infinite speed, nothing can travel faster, because objects with mass require energy to move, and the faster you get, the more energy is required. In order to travel at the speed of light, an infinite amount of energy would be needed. We do not even have enough energy in our universe to propel one little electron to the speed of light.

The Meaninglessness of Time: At the speed of light, the concept of time is completely meaningless. Everything appears instantaneous. To us, light from something 10,000 light years away would take 10000 years for us to see, but if we were actually travelling at that speed, the journey would be non-existent. It would seem that you had just left and you were already there. The speed of light is only finite from the point of view of the person outside. If we could move at the speed of light, we could go anywhere, no matter how far, in 0 seconds!

The Speed of Gravity: Technically, the speed of gravity is the same as the speed of light (because of the universal speed limit). If the sun were to suddenly disappear, the earth would continue to orbit for 8 minutes before realizing the sun was gone and leaving its axis. Likewise, if the sun were to disappear, we would still see sunlight for 8 minutes, since light from the sun takes 8 minutes to get to earth.

What if something could go faster than the speed of light? Theoretically, this should never happen, but if, somehow something was able to travel faster than light itself, it would then be the fastest entity in the universe, and would be able to time travel!

White Holes and Dark Matter

A couple weeks ago I wrote about black holes and some of the mystery surrounding them... but something even more mysterious, and not as well-known are white holes (see below picture). These are the exact opposite of black holes, spitting out matter, seemingly from out of nowhere! We have

not yet been able to find one of these white holes in real life, but Einstein has mathematically proven that they exist. Although these white holes should exist in theory, there is much debate over whether or not they actually exist in real life. Part of the debate is that they should, in theory, be relatively easy to find, and yet, we've never found one... However, this does not entirely discount the possibility that there are some out there. If you think about it though, if black holes are taking away matter from the universe, shouldn't there be something counteracting this? If matter is being taken away, something must be putting matter back in, or the universe is slowly being eaten up by black holes! If a white hole did, theoretically exist, it would not be as stable as a black hole, and would quickly collapse on itself. Some people actually believe we may have seen white holes in the past, but were not aware of what they were... This article for example, written in May of 2011, speculates as to whether or not they might have actually found the first white hole! there are a lot of people scoffing at the idea, but hey, like Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her discovery of Pulsars, someone will have to find the first one, why not them?!

This brings me to the second idea of this two part post... the idea of Dark Matter. Dark matter is another "space mystery". This is another astronomical issue that Einstein was involved with. His famous equation, E=MC^2 is one of our basic laws of physics. However, when applied to the universe, we realize that we have only discovered about 4% of the matter in the universe! So what about the other 96%? This is what scientists have called "Dark Matter". Basically, we don't know. This opens the doors for creativity and speculation... the possibility of invisible objects (since we cannot see all of the spectrum... perhaps there is more that hasn't been discovered yet). Which is why I decided to talk about White Holes and Dark Matter together... this is purely speculation, just for fun... I definitely do not have the science background to back it up... but what if Einstein's "wormhole theory" (mentioned in the black hole post) was correct, and black holes are actually portholes to other universes? Then the white holes were portholes from that universe to our own? Then for them, our black holes would be white holes, and our white holes would be black holes! This could possibly account for all the missing matter in the universe... maybe it actually contains multiple universes, and since there are so many black holes in our universe, and little evidence of white holes, their universe has most of the matter. Just a little philosophical "what if" thought to end things off :)

Magnetic Storm Hitting the Earth Today?

I was on here checking the weather on the Weather Network last night, and something interesting caught my eye in their 'top news' section at the bottom of the screen... Magnetic storm to hit Earth Tuesday! This is supposed to be the strongest geomagnetic storm in over 6 years!

Basically, here's what happened:
Yesterday (January 23rd) a large sunspot erupted (1402) causing a long-duration M9-class solar flare (almost an X-flare, which is the most powerful kind).

This is called a coronal mass ejection, basically meaning a huge chunk of the sun's atmosphere is currently being hurled towards Earth... You can see what this looks like in the picture above, taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, using extreme ultraviolet flash. This coronal mass ejection (or CME) is moving relatively quickly, at 2200 km a second! It is expected to hit earth today at 14:18UT (+/- 7 hours). There could be interferences with satellites, radios, power grids, airline routes and other such things. Here is a video showing what happened:

The cool thing about this is that there will probably be some wicked Aurora Borealis shows in the upper atmosphere! (Northern Lights!)

Black Holes

Well, today I thought I'd talk about something else that is kind of mysterious... anything surrounded by a shroud of mystery is always exciting! Today's topic is Black Holes! There are so many black holes in our universe that it is impossible to count them all! Fortunately, there aren't any that are too close to the earth. Check out this snazzy video and website for a cool visual explanation as to what a black hole actually is and how it works: http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/

Basically... in a black hole, gravity is the strongest force, objects are pulled in by this gravity. Once something has entered a black hole, there is no chance of escaping... not even light itself can escape!
There are 2 types of black holes:

1. Stellar-mass: Form from the supernova explosions at the end of the life of a giant star. It is predicted that a new black hole is being born from a supernova every SECOND!
2. Supermassive: These are found in the centre of galaxies... and remember how huge our sun is? (110 earths across!) Well, these black holes are between a million and a billion times bigger! The closest one to us is in the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, 28,000 lightyears away.

Here are some neat facts about black holes:

• Black holes actually can be destroyed! (This was proved by Stephen Hawking in 1974 using quantum mechanics) What actually does happen is that they slowly evaporate, returning their energy to the universe. All of the black holes that have been discovered in our universe, however, are very small, and the time it would take to destroy them would be incomprehensible.
• Black holes can collide! What takes place when this happens is a merging of the two black holes into one big one. This would be an EXTREMELY violent event, and scientists do not even understand everything about it/ what the consequences would be. It would send a ripple through the space-time fabric of the universe... thats a crazy thought eh? the possibility of warping time! No one has actually witnessed this yet.

One of the main mysteries surrounding black holes is what is inside one? No one knows for sure, and it is impossible for us to find out, since nothing can escape, nor transmit information back to earth. Speculations range from a pile of objects and matter at the centre of gravity to a bridge to another universe! Einstein actually had a "wormhole" theory about this, but the solution to his equations had no event horizon...

Invisible Light

So I have a list of 'life questions.' Basically just a list of things that I have wondered, and asked a few people about, but haven't come to any firm conclusions yet... This past week, one of these life questions was answered. I've always wondered if there were colours that we can't see with the naked human eye... colours outside the visible light spectrum. And the answer is YES, there are!

Ultra Violet rays for example, have a very short wavelegnth and are extremely blue, bluer than any of the blues we have ever seen! Although humans can't see UV light, apparently some insects, like bumblebees actually can! Isn't that a crazy concept? Basically scientific proof for invisibility!

This is demonstrated in the layers of the sun. The layer that we can see is called the Photosphere, but there are two other layers, the Chromosphere and the Corona that we cannot see without special equipment because the light from the photosphere overpowers them. In the summertime it is the UV rays that burn us, but we cannot see these rays. Below is a picture of the sun taken at extreme UV wavelegnth!