Blogs / Discoblog

Instead of spending time and money planning a manned mission to Mars, why not send an army of robots into space to do all the work? A fleet of robots could be deployed to explore far-away planets, according to researchers at Caltech’s Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory.

From the Telegraph:

Robotic airships and satellites will fly above the surface of the distant world, commanding squadrons of wheeled rovers and floating robot boats…The systems will transform planetary exploration, says [Wolfgang] Fink, who envisages the cybernetic adventurers mapping the land and seascapes of Saturn’s moon, Titan—believed to have lakes of standing liquid—as well as closer planetary neighbors like Mars.

Researchers say the robots could command themselves and other robots with little input from ground control. All of which seems like a great idea, since the human space flight program isn’t likely to take off anytime soon.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Billionaire to Throw a “Tickle Party” in Space
Discoblog: How to Find Aliens? Look for Pollution on Other Planets
Discoblog: Japan’s First Lady Claims She Went to Venus, Consorted With Aliens

Image: NASA

Scientists have proposed what seems like an obvious solution to finding life on other planets—look for pollution similar to that found on Earth. Light or air pollution would be a dead giveaway to life on another planet, according to a study to appear in the journal Astrobiology.

Of course, this is assuming that extraterrestrial life is even remotely similar to ours, and even if it is, finding the pollution won’t be easy, according to New Scientist:

Even if all the electricity we generate was used to produce light, it would still be thousands of times fainter than the glint of sunlight reflected from Earth’s surface. To reliably detect even this massive amount of artificial light on a planet orbiting a relatively nearby star—say 15 light years away—would require an array of telescopes with a combined light-collecting area of 1.5 square kilometres….

That’s about 370 football fields’ worth of telescopes.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are another source of pollution that would be a tell-tale sign of alien life, according to the study. CFCs do not form naturally and absorb infrared light, so they could be observed from afar. But by looking for CFCs we’d have to assume aliens are dumb enough to spew the pollution into their atmosphere—in other words, that they’re as dumb as we are.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Japan’s First Lady Claims She Went to Venus, Consorted With Aliens
Discoblog: A Giant Leap for Cheddarkind: Brits Launch Cheese Into Space
Discoblog: Dear Aliens: Would You Like Some Processed Chips?

Image: flickr /  LabyrinthX

Astronauts can’t be all business all the time; sometimes you just have to cut loose. Well that’s exactly what billionaire red-nosed clown Guy Laliberte intends to help the astronauts do when they blast into space tomorrow.

From the AP:

The man who hopes to be the first clown in space, Cirque du Soleil founder Guy Laliberte, said Tuesday he would tickle fellow astronauts as they sleep aboard the International Space Station.

The crew must be ecstatic to have him aboard. Laliberte might want to stick to handing out red noses and let the astronauts rest up so they can, um, fly a space shuttle.

MSNBC.com compiled a slideshow of their top nine space antics, a list that will surely include Laliberte’s ticklefest in the future. But for now it seems that astronauts’ favorite pastimes involve playing space golf, eating space fast-food, and dumping space trash.

Related content:
Discoblog: Bad Breath? Body Odor? Don’t Bother Applying to China’s Space Program
Discoblog: Scientists Examine Underwear Astronaut Wore for a Month
Discoblog: Today’s Conservation Gimmick: Drink Your Shower Water!

Image: NASA

Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of new Japanese prime minister Yukio Hatoyama, is quite a character. According to the BBC:

Japan’s new first lady is something of a Renaissance woman: designer, former actress, cookbook author, television personality—and perhaps most controversially a self-professed space traveller who has visited Venus with aliens.

If that were not enough, she also claims to have met Tom Cruise in a former life, when he was Japanese.

Hatoyama was quoted in a book called Most Bizarre Things I’ve Encountered as saying:

While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus…It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green.

Granted, Japan’s new first lady isn’t always the most, er, cautious with her words. Among her other quotations are:

“When the sun is up, I always eat it… I tear it off and eat if like this,” she said on the chat show, joking with the host.

“Yum, yum, yum,” she said. “That gives me great power.”

Perhaps something is lost in translation?

Related Content:
Discoblog: How To Chat With an Alien: The Official Guide
Discoblog: Aliens Could Send Messages Through the Stars, Scientist Says
Discoblog: Did an “Alien Octopus” Destroy a British Wind Turbine?

Image: iStockphoto

The moon has a bumpy, pitted surface; in fact, it’s vaguely similar to the ridges of an old-fashioned vinyl record. So why not use the moon to make some melodies?

Now you can, thanks to a new program called Moonbell, which is available online for free. Moonbell gives you the chance to do create music by using topographical data to determine how the pitch rises and falls, and the program can produce the sounds of 138 instruments.

The Telegraph reports:

The software works by interpreting information provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kaguya satellite, which used a laser altimeter to generate detailed maps of the Moon until its planned crash in June this year.

The music produced by Moonbell synthesises three types of topographical data. The melody is generated by the actual ups and downs in the Moon’s surface, while the “mid tones” are related to the elevation of the immediately surrounding area and the bass line is determined by an even broader section of elevation.

Info sent to Earth from the Kaguya satellite was also used in 2007 for Google Earth’s 3D Moon option.

Related Content:
Discoblog: It’s a Hoax! Famed “Moon Rock” Turns Out to Be Hunk of Wood
Discoblog: To Track Penguins, Scientists Use High-Tech Satellite Images of…Droppings
Discoblog: August: A Lousy Month for Space Exploration

Image: flickr / jurvetson

Ever since Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong gave former Dutch prime minister William Drees a chunk of moon-rock in 1969, the public has been eager to see it. In fact, the relic has drawn tens of thousands of people to Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum.

But Houston, we have a problem: Turns out that so-called moon rock (which was insured for 308,000 British pounds, or about $500,000) is really just a hunk of petrified wood—and its actual value is less than 50 British pounds.

The Telegraph reports:

Researchers Amsterdam’s Free University were able to tell at a glance that the rock was unlikely to be from the moon, a conclusion that was borne out by tests. “It’s a nondescript, pretty-much-worthless stone,” said Frank Beunk, a geologist involved in the investigation [of the rock].

Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation, said the museum would continue to keep the stone as a curiosity. “It’s a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered,” she said. “We can laugh about it.”

An investigation is under way to find out how the heck this debacle could have happened (a bait-and-switch, perhaps?). Meanwhile, we bet moon conspiracists will view this discovery as far from a laughing matter—in fact, it may add fuel to their argument that the moon landing never really happened. (For the record, it did.)

Related Content:
Discoblog: NASA Geologist Is Sent Thousands of Rocks from Around the World
Discoblog: Document Reveals Nixon Prepared for Aldrin, Armstrong Deaths
Discoblog: Buzz Aldrin, Rapper?

Image courtesy of Rijksmuseum

It seems hygiene in space is all the rage. First, it was the odor-resistant underwear that one astronaut wore for a month. Now, China’s space program has come up with 100 rules for potential ‘nauts—and anyone with bad breath, dental cavities, body odor, or a family history of serious disease within the past three generations need not apply (apparently the program is looking only for “super human beings”).

The BBC reports:

Shi Bing Bing, a doctor at the 454th Air Force Hospital in Nanjing, eastern China, said the new rules will help China send the best of the best into space.

“Bad body odour will affect fellow colleagues in the narrow confines of a space shuttle,” he said. “These astronauts could be regarded as super human beings.”

Mr Shi’s hospital has now carried out a first screening of candidates to weed out those who fell foul of the 100 rules. A further two screenings will whittle hopefuls down to the small band who will follow in the footsteps of China’s space pioneers, chosen in 1997.

We hate to say it, but sometimes discrimination stinks.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Scientists Examine Underwear Astronaut Wore for a Month
Discoblog: Cooking in Space: Slow, Mediocre, and Dangerous
Discoblog: What Happens to Your Underwear in Space?

Image: flickr / Valerie Everett

If you think changing your underwear day after day gets tedious, try doing it while orbiting the Earth. What better opportunity is there, then, to test a new type of undies that are anti-odor, anti-bacterial and water-absorbent—and that allowed an astronaut on the shuttle Endeavour to wear the same pair for a month straight.

Koichi Wakata, who was in orbit for four-and-a-half months, also tested socks, pants, and shirts that use the same technology. The AP reports:

NASA’s space station program manager, Mike Suffredini, stressed the importance of testing new products, especially those aimed at improving astronauts’ quality of life. There’s no way to wash clothes in space. Station residents simply ditch dirty outfits, along with other garbage, in cargo ships no longer needed that are sent plunging in flames through the atmosphere.

Scientists say they are excited to examine Wakata’s high-tech underthings to see how well they worked. For their sake, let’s hope that the undies are, in fact, as odor-resistant as the manufacturers claim.

Related Content
Discoblog: “Handerpants” Claim to Promote Good Hand Health
Discoblog: Cooking in Space: Slow, Mediocre, and Dangerous
Discoblog: What Happens to Your Underwear in Space?

Image: flickr / hans s

Humans have sent plenty of things into space—monkeys, other humans, and those cute little invertebrate tardigrades, just to name a few.

Then came the hope that we could add solid cheese to that list. A group of British cheesemakers attempted to send the dairy product 18.6 miles into the atmosphere using a weather balloon with a GPS tracking device, and digital camera attached.

Once the 300-gram chunk of cheddar cheese reached its destination, the cheesemakers hoped, it would float peacefully back to Earth, thanks to a parachute that deployed once the balloon hit space. But to the chagrin of cheese-lovers everywhere, the mission met with disaster, and the cheese is now MIA, according to the Daily Mail:

Within ten minutes of taking off the tracking system failed. “We think it’s somewhere in the East of England—possibly in Essex or Hertfordshire,” said Dom Lane, of the West Country Farmhouse Cheesemakers’ Group. “We wanted to take a photograph of a piece of cheddar floating majestically in the firmament with the curve of the Earth below it.”

Let’s hope the cheese doesn’t fall from the sky onto some unfortunate fellow’s head.

Want to see more? Check out this cheesy video, courtesy of BBC News.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Caution: Your Cheese Grater May Be Radioactive, Study Finds
Discoblog: Dear Aliens: Would You Like Some Processed Chips?
Discoblog: Children’s “Teddy-nauts” Shot Into Space
Discoblog: Bugs that Can Travel in Space…Naked

Image: flickr / Joi

Most of us have experienced this frustrating situation: Nature is calling, so you rush to the nearest restroom, only to find that it’s sporting an “Out of Order” sign. Annoying, right?

Well, at least you weren’t hurtling through space at the time, hundreds of miles from the nearest plumber. Apparently, the toilet on the International Space Station has broken down, leaving the 13 crew members onboard with just a backup loo, and the crew of the shuttle Endeavour using the W.C. on that spacecraft.

According to BBC:

Mission Control told the crew to hang an “out of service” sign until the toilet can be fixed….

If repairs fail, Apollo-era urine collection bags are on hand, Nasa said. “We don’t yet know the extent of the problem,” flight director Brian Smith told reporters, adding that the toilet troubles were “not going to be an issue” for now.

The main toilet, a multi-million-dollar Russian-built unit, was flown up and installed on the US side of the space station last year. It had broken down once before, requiring a rush delivery of a replacement pump by the shuttle Discovery in 2008.

Another toilet-related problem arose earlier this year. That one was due to regulations that hold that Russian crew members on the ISS cannot use the American toilet.

In any case, let’s hope NASA gets the W.C. situation figured out soon. After all, it’s pretty hard to pull over for a pit stop 220 miles from Earth.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Not Subtle, But It Works: Peepoo Bag Converts Human Waste Into Fertilizer
Discoblog: LOLScienz: Toilit
Discoblog: The Miracle Liquid that Cleans Toilets, Treats Burns, and Kills Anthrax

Image: Wikimedia Commons