Can we get oil from space ?

Excerpts from a newspaper....

MOSCOW: Scientists from the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh have said that judging by the chemical composition of stars in the Milky Way, our galaxy could contain anywhere between 300 and 38,000 highly developed extraterrestrial civilizations potentially capable of contacting planet Earth.

Cassini-Huygens, a joint robotic space mission promoted by US space agency NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency, currently studying the planet Saturn and its moons, has discovered oil and gas deposits on Titan, Saturn's largest satellite. The estimated reserves exceed terrestrial deposits by some 100 times. Previous images received from Cassini-Huygens indicated rain and snowfall on Titan. Although the discovery of oil and gas deposits on this moon is hardly sensational, it could help scientists explain the origin of life on the Earth.

Many scientists and analysts say extraterrestrial sources of energy could provide humankind with enough heat and energy for hundreds of years to come and would help it cope with a snowballing energy crisis. The newly discovered hydrocarbon deposits inside 15 large lakes on Titan could provide enough power for all US heaters, lamps and air conditioners for hundreds of years. Hydrocarbons contained inside huge dunes covering 20 percent of Titan's surface exceed the Earth's coal deposits by several hundred times. In addition, some regions on Mars have high concentrations of methane. Next autumn, NASA plans to launch another Mars exploration vehicle for studying methane deposits on the Red Planet and their origin.

However, extraterrestrial deposits are highly unlikely to solve current energy shortages. First of all, we know nothing about the quality of Titan oil. Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) know only that a local lake contains ethane, a crude-oil ingredient. A manned mission to Titan is still the fantasy of science fiction novels and would face the same mind-boggling problems as a mission to Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own solar system, at only 4.37 light years from the Sun. Moreover, even the most optimistic science fiction writers do not know when it will become possible to launch prospecting operations on Titan at minus 180 degrees Celsius. Also, no one knows whether the world will still require oil a hundred years from now when long-range space missions to other planets could become commonplace.

Famous Astronomers & Physicists

Some useful links :-)

Famous Astronomers

Famous Physicists

HST Servicing Mission

The servicing mission is delayed but the instruments have been turned back on ... this is the WFPC2 after it was restarted... click for the full pikkie...

Oct. 30, 2008     RELEASE : 08-280

NASA Managers Delay Hubble Servicing Mission

WASHINGTON -- NASA managers have announced that they will not meet a
February 2009 launch date for the fifth and final shuttle mission to
the Hubble Space Telescope. The decision comes after engineers
completed assessments of the work needed to get a second data handling
unit for the telescope ready to fly. The unit will replace one that
failed on Hubble in late September, causing the agency to postpone the
servicing mission, which had been targeted for Oct. 14.

Google and NASA are Working on an Interplanetary Internet

How nice it is to have an interplanetary internet -- our science and technology is advancing day by day ! Here's an interesting news I read from Universe magazine about launching an interplanetary internet to communicate between Earth and Space in a more effective way !

In an initiative energized by Google Vice-President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, the International Space Station could be testing a brand new way of communicating with Earth. In 2009, it is hoped that the ISS will play host to an Interplanetary Internet prototype that could standardize communications between Earth and space, possibly replacing point-to-point single use radio systems customized for each individual space mission since the beginning of the Space Age.

This partnership opens up some exciting new possibilities for the future of communicating across vast distances of the Solar System. Manned and robotic space craft will be interconnected via a robust interplanetary network without the problems associated with incompatible communication systems…

"The project started 10 years ago as an attempt to figure out what kind of technical networking standards would be useful to support interplanetary communication," Cerf said in a recent interview. "Bear in mind, we have been flying robotic equipment to the inner and outer planets, asteroids, comets, and such since the 1960's. We have been able to communicate with those robotic devices and with manned missions using point-to-point radio communications. In fact, for many of these missions, we used a dedicated communications system called the Deep Space Network (DSN), built by JPL in 1964."

"When we launch a spacecraft with a unique set of sensors onboard, we often end up writing special communication and application software that is adapted to that spacecraft's sensor systems and manipulators," Cerf said in response to the challenges space missions face each time they are designed.

The Internet uses standard TCP/IP protocols so billions of online entities are always compatible. Although there are limitations to the Internet, it has proven to be a highly flexible and scalable system, so with the help of Google, NASA hopes to push the Internet beyond Earth. "The Interplanetary Internet project is primarily about developing a set of communication standards and technical specifications to support rich networking in space environments," Cerf added.

This all sounds very interesting, but the challenges with building such a system require some novel techniques. How do you deal with the limitation of the speed of light? After all, it can take light 40 minutes to travel to-and-from Mars and up to 12 hours to Pluto and back. How do you cater for planetary rotation? The transmitters/receivers won't always be on the correct side of the planet. What happens if a satellite signal is blocked by a planet, the Sun or a moon?

Vint Cerf says the disruption of data transmission has to be confronted with a delay- and disruption-tolerant networking system, otherwise known as DTN. "It will allow us to maintain communications more effectively, getting much more data because we don't have to be in direct line of sight with the ultimate recipient in order to transfer data," he said.

DTN will be based on store-and-forward methods used by TCP/IP systems; if there is a disruption in signal, the transmitting station will hold data packets until the signal is re-established. However, DTN will be more robust, catering for long transmission lag-times (such as the many-hour light transmission times between Earth and the outer Solar System). "We have to cope with the fact that there is a really high potential for delay and disruption in the system," he added.

Standard TCP/IP protocol should also work seamlessly with the DTN, allowing planetary missions to have their own distributed Internet whilst using DTN as a link through interplanetary space.

Another Exciting ATNF/AAO Director's Tea!

An Invasion:

At one point the ATNF director, Brian Boyle (who used to be AAO director too),
was surrounded by Ingrid Stairs, Bill Harris, Dave Hanes, Terry Bridges and
myself and exclaimed "the Canadians are coming!" ... i sang a line of "O Canada" in french. Add Robert Braun to the end of the line we were sitting in and at least 20 percent of the attendees were canucks. As guests we took 2/3 of the seats and so most people were standing.

Of course Bill and Dave will give colloquia - Bill's is this arvo (afternoon) on
the history of elliptical galaxy evolution using HST images while Dave's on
Friday is on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory.

And yet another way to detect pulsars (Robert Braun and Patrick*):

And the impact is on array configurations for SKA. If the spacings between
antennas are regular, then the fan beams overlap allowing one to digitally
produce beams between antennas. This creates a primary beam with a gain of
something like 12 in sensitivity compared to using one antenna on its own.
Ambiguities in position can be removed by observing the same target at 2
different times. This makes interferometers competitive with single dishes for
pulsar surveys, especially in compact configurations. What do you think Stacie? Regular in the compact centre and irregular in the outer regions of the SKA?

And science gets wackier all the time (Ron Ekkers and Clancy from Adelaide;
presented by Clancy):


What an enthused and assured presentation this one was! The idea is that
neutrinos interacting with the moon's surface will produce a nanosecond pulse in the radio regime (the moon's surface is rather transparent to radio waves). So
you look for a geometry in which CR from a strong source (like Centaurus A
region or Saggitarius A*) are grazing the moon's limb at night and you point
your array at that point on the limb closest to the CR source. If I remember
correctly this happens about 3 time in each of Feb, Mar and May. To date they
have got the instrument's timing to under a nanosecond (they bin in half
nanoseconds), have explored detecting quasars, and they think they have detected the observatory's visitor centre. :-)))) They have determined that they aren't
affected by wireless mice. And they are poised to begin their search for moon
pulses. Detections and non-detections alike, at a range of low frequencies,
will elliminate various exotic constructs for dark matter particles.

Comment by Brian, in reference to Dave's promotion of SNO: Now that we have the solar neutrino problem solved, we have to solve the lunar neutrino problem. :-)


P.S.

I had a most fantastic visit to Swinburne University of Technology's
Astrophysics and Supercomputing Centre. UM's Experimental Media Centre, me, Chris Fluke and David Barnes will set up a collaboration. 3D stereo desktop
monitors and 3D visualization astronomy tools exist and Chris is checking out
whether he can send a monitor to me at ATNF so I can play!!

* I seem to only catch people's first names the first time they are introduced.

Astronomy in Australia

It is very exciting to be at a site where there are 2 large institutes - Australia Telescope National Facility and the Anglo-Australian Observatory. So many good colloquia and discussions!

First there was a talk by Matthew Bailes from Swinburne Uni. He's director of the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.
He gave a talk on detecting pulsars using software techniques - improving FFTs and using their supercomputer (185 Dell dual cores). I'm going to visit Swinburne (in Melbourne) on Monday. Here's a great paper from their group on inserting 3D figures in pdf's http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/s2plot/3dpdf/
We should definitely do this for our papers! Please check it out Jason :-)

Then there was Wed morning coffee... very similar in intent to ours -- people talk about news and their own results and other people's work that they think is interesting. Except that there are 30 people (and only enough seats for 10) so it is very energetic. For example Simon Johnson described the gamma-ray pulsar that isn't found in radio - probably because the radio beam is narrower than the gamma-ray one and not oriented towards us. The ATNF director Brian Boyle pointed out that there is a new radio astro technique (low freq?) for detecting lensing in clusters - a Nature paper. Ron Ekkers pointed out a newspaper article that turned a paper's speculation into a discovery which led Helen Simm, their EPO/IYA person, to poll the group as to their feelings about this (e.g. do astronomers think this is inevitable? (yes) Do they accept/like it? (no) What can we do about it?) And Robert Braun, who grew up in Winnipeg(!) - i thought he was American+Dutch, pointed out a terrific technique to use when observing with Parkes. People also mentioned that their own papers (e.g. Naomi McClure-Griffiths' GASS survey) were submitted or accepted, generating congratulations from the attendees. (p.s. Naomi is pregnant :-))

And then there was a colloquium by Peter Kalberla who is also here on sabbatical. Terrific stuff! He finds a lagging, clumping HI thick disk and that the thin disk has an exponential distribution. Also he finds a Milky Way's dark matter model, which fits the HI flaring well, has a component that is an exponential disk that has a ring enhancement. One paper is http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2008A%26A...487..951K
and he will be one of the authors of an Annual Reviews in Astronomy and Astrophyics article on the HI in the Milky Way -- first such article since Dickey and Lockman 1990. Which reminds me - Adam could you please put on your shelves the ARA&A and other astro texts (not binders or photos or beer bottles) from my glassed in cabinet? I believe theresa has the key to my office.

And then there is the Canadian contingent - all at one time or another engaged in globular clusters (including yours truly). Dave Hanes (Queen's U.) just walked into the canteen and was shocked to find me there. Bill Harris (MacMaster) will be here Tuesday for a couple of days. Terry Bridges (Queen's sort of) will be at the AAO for a month and we went on a hike and a swim in the Hawkesbury river on Sunday :-)

NGC 4945 will be my campaign while i'm here - i'll keep you posted. I'm working with Baerbel Koribalski and I'm going to the ATCA at Narrabri in the middle of Nov. Theresa is invited to do likewise in January. Also on the campaign will be Ken Freeman (KCF) and Mike Dopita (MAD) - we'll propose to use MAD's IFU on the 2.3 m at Siding Spring.

KCF was here on Thursday and jumped up to give me a big hug. He was sitting beside John Dickey, at a picnic table by the canteen, who exclaimed "Jayanne! i didn't recognize you!" I wonder if the gray hair is throwing people off :-))) At anyrate I think I have an invitation to visit John in Tasmania (King Island creme and cheese - here i come!) Lister Stavely-Smith however wasn't surprised - he's now at U of Western Australia working on the SKA pathfinder. These folk were visiting for some sort of committee meeting. I waved to Brian Gaensler (who don't think recognized me) and i'm sure i saw Jeremy Mould wandering the grounds too. I'm looking forward to seeing who else turns up!

Enjoy astrogroup coffee (feel free to pass this on to the astrogroup folk who aren't on the blog) and cherish the hunt for another UM research astronomer!
more later
galaxyGal

Chandrayaan blasts off -- launch successful !

India has launched its first Moon mission Chandrayaan 1 and placed in its orbit successfully. More details about this mission had been posted earlier in this blog. Please visit http://astro-umanitoba.blogspot.com/2008/08/chandrayaan-i-indias-first-moon-mission.html

More news on the launch can be found here: http://www.universetoday.com/2008/10/22/indias-chandrayaan-1-on-its-way-to-the-moon/

Pulsar - "Only in gamma rays, you say"

First gamma-ray-only pulsar observation opens new window on stellar evolution


Menlo Park, Calif.--About three times a second, a 10,000-year-old
stellar corpse sweeps a beam of gamma-rays toward Earth. This object,
known as a pulsar, is the first one known to "blink" only in gamma
rays, and was discovered by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, a collaboration with the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) and international partners.

So starts the press release.  Note were it comes from - i was just in Menlo Park on the weekend (at a vets and a baby shower!) which is right by Palo Aalto which hosts the beautiful Stanford University. Menlo Park is a small clean and cute town with restored train station and shops in the "spanish colonial with a touch of victorian" style (well, the shower was in a "high tea" shop). 

More about the pulsar at:http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/gr_pulsar.html

On the light side...

First detection of magnetic field in distant galaxies

A team of California astronomers has obtained the first direct measurement of magnetic field ( atleast 10 times greater than the average value in the Milky Way) from a distant galaxy (DLA-3C286) as it appeared about 6.5 billion years ago, using the Green Bank Telescope operated by NRAO . They speculate that they might be seeing the interior regions of the massive galaxy where the magnetic fields are supposed to be greater or might be due to a shock wave generated by the collision of two galaxies (discovery is featured in the Oct 2 issue of Nature). Read the detailed news here.