At least that’s the logic being used to advance the whole 2012 mythos.

For both of you who haven’t heard about this, the ancient Mayan calendar ostensibly comes to an end in 2012, and there are no shortage of doomsayers who claim that the Mayans somehow had advance knowledge of the end of the world, and their calendar reflects this.  With 2012 slightly over a year away, you can be certain that this is a topic to which we’ll be turning here fairly regularly, even though it more correctly falls under the purview of “Fiction not Science”.

It’s understandable, actually.  From an evolutionary standpoint, it was practically yesterday that we hunted/gathered our own food, and lived in constant fear of being eaten by the saber toothed cat.  So in some senses our bodies are still wired for a way of life that hasn’t existed for several thousands of years. Most of us, with varying frequencies and intensities, still need to feel that primal surge of adrenaline. Some of us, myself among them, enjoy violent games like football, rugby, or hockey. Some of us, myself sometimes among them, get the ol’ adrenaline pumping through extreme sports. Some of us, myself rarely among them, enjoy roller coasters (not a fan). Many of us in all the previous categories scare ourselves by watching horror or action movies.

Some, myself definitely not among them, worry about the End of the World Scenario Du Jour. This is neither uncommon nor surprising, humans have worried about the end of the world since somebody first realized that it might, in fact, have an end. With 2012 now a year away, The End seems to be more of a player in the zeitgeist and is an ever-increasing topic of relevance in media and popular conversation. The popularity of my friend (and fellow Discover blogger) Phil Plait’s book Death From the Skies:  These are the Ways the World Will End speaks to this. Even mainstream media outlets like Fox News, LiveScience , and Fox News again, recently ran pieces examining end of the world scenarios (and even though the second Fox entry was about debunked scenarios for the End, it still implies that it’s in the forefront of thought).

Of course there was the movie 2012, but then again you can always count on Roland Emmerich to latch onto something like this and base a movie on it.

Mr. Emmerich’s goal is simply to tell a good story, to make a film that makes him and his sponsors lots of money, and he’s latched onto a formulaic way of doing it–one that feeds our primal need for adrenaline. As much as I find his films scientifically cringe-inducing, I simply won’t argue with his success. This kind of science fiction is fun but, at the same time, nobody leaves one of his movies believing that they were predictive.

There are others, though, whose goals are somewhat more grey, and who stand to gain by preying upon ignorance and our collective primal adrenaline addiction. While many legitimate scientists work to spread understanding (and you’ll see a lot more attempts to do just that here in the future), and hence reduce anxiety, some opportunistic types propagate fear and disinformation on 2012 because they claim to know “The Truth”.  Really!  Just buy their book, their video, or raise the hit count on their web site and learn “The Truth” (despite what they’re peddling is just as much science fiction as the works of Mr. Emmerich). I believe that these types of writings need to be examined and systematically debunked in as many places, and in as many ways, as possible (see also my recent diatribe blog entry on science literacy). Scientists have our work cut out for us.

Any astronomical event that will (or may) occur in 2012 is being rolled into the 2012 mythos– from impacts to solar flares to tidal disruption from cosmic conjunction (I’m working on a post about the latter which you’ll see in a day or two). Even the spectre of the return of the planetoid Niburu is being recycled. (the fact that it was predicted to pass Earth in 2003 and that failed to occur doesn’t seem to dampen any of the doomsayers enthusiasm). In fact, in a cheeky case of verbage straight out of the book 1984, here are some awesome–from a comedic standpoint–Niburu calculation and predictions by a group called “The Church of Critical Thinking” (Apparently Niburu also orbits retrograde–perhaps some critical thinking on the conservation of angular momentum is in order?).

Does this mean that the world won’t end in 2012? Absolutely not! Asteroid and comet impacts, solar flares, and other astronomical hazards have threatened life on Earth for over 3.8 billion years. That said, events that threaten the existence of Earth, or its biosphere, are very low-probability ones–the odds of more than one occurring in a given year, multiplicatively less so. For those among us who’d prefer to get our adrenaline through alternate means than worrying about the end of the world, 2012 represents an excellent opportunity to calibrate our sources. In the runup to 2012 just pay attention to who has said what, and keep that in mind the NEXT time somebody (who’s probably selling a book, video, or hyping their web site) predicts an astronomical end of the world. Keep that in mind after January 1st, 2013. Let me help you with that: it looks like even the Mayan Calander doomsayers were wrong, and the end of the Mayan Calendar may not be for another 50 years (or it may, in fact, have already happened).

Sorry if that hurts book or video sales.

America’s current plans for human space exploration seem horribly slow, considering we won’t leave Earth’s orbit until 2025 and won’t reach Mars until 2035. Worse than that, solar radiation spikes could keep us grounded for decades more.

The Sun emits a steady stream of potentially deadly cosmic radiation. As long as humans remain within the Earth’s atmosphere, the threat posed by this radiation is practically nil, but any extended trips into deep space require careful shielding to protect astronauts from the threat of radiation sickness or cancer. The exact levels of radiation vary depending on the severity of solar activity, which falls into a number of predictable cycles.

That’s where the problem starts, according to a new study by NASA scientist John Norbury. We already know about the Schwabe cycle, which shows sunspot activity reaches its peak, known as the solar maximum, every 11 years. When this occurs, there’s a big increase in solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which together spread deadly radiation throughout the solar system. The last solar maximum was reached in 2002, so we’re headed for more in 2013, 2024, and 2035. Those last two dates are worrying, considering the current “2025 out of orbit/2035 to Mars” plans of the United States.

Of course, if solar flares really are a problem, then it’s easy enough to adjust the years slightly to avoid them. But we might be dealing with an even bigger problem: there’s also the Gleissberg cycle, which is a longer cycle where the intensity of the solar maximums themselves wax and wane over a period of about 80 to 90 years. That means all flares would be significantly more deadly, the radiation would be greater, and any trips beyond Earth’s orbit incredibly, perhaps impossibly, dangerous.

So when is the next time we hit the peak of the Gleissberg cycle? That’s the problem: we don’t know, at least not exactly. In order to know the exact timing of the next Gleissberg maximum, we would have to know when the last ones occurred, and that would require sunspot records going back centuries, which is something we don’t have. However, there are some indirect ways to estimate when the previous maximums occurred, mostly involving carbon-14.

Scientists are fairly sure the last maximums were in 1790, 1870, and 1950. That seems to put the next Gleissberg maximum at right around 2030, with a total danger zone of about 20 years from 2020 to 2040. That’s precisely when the United States—not to mention China and other countries—hope to send astronauts back to the Moon and onto Mars. If radiation levels are lethally high, a Mars mission could be a horrific failure, as astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell explains:

“The worse-case scenario is that if you radiate a crew sufficiently, they’d all succumb to radiation sickness within a few days and essentially vomit and diarrhoea themselves to death within an enclosed capsule.”

If all these fears of increased radiation come to pass, it still might be possible to send astronauts to Mars, assuming radiation shielding can be suitably improved. But that’s going to take serious investment in new technologies that can repel the cosmic rays without creating secondary radiation. Honestly, it might just be easier to get to Mars by the end of the decade. Hey, it worked for the Apollo project…

[Advances in Space Research via Physics World]

This post originally appeared on io9.

io9. Escape to the world of tomorrow.

It’s on point related to that last one that I’d like to expand.  The fledgling space tourism is poised to explode. Seven people have already paid seven-figure sums to fly to the International Space Station. Like any airline, Virgin Galactic allows you to book your flight to orbit. The Russian Orbital Technologies Corporation has announced that it will build a space hotel by the year 2016. This is about to become a HUGE industry; I think space tourism needs a mascot.

Now I do a lot of public outreach, and talk to hundreds, even thousands, of people about space and space travel each year. A common desire among those who dream to slip the surly bonds of Earth is to ”float weightless, free of gravity.”  Almost as a rule, I find that these people are unaware of something called Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS).  Put more simply: space sickness.

For the first few days in space, most space travellers experience dizziness, disorientation, and/or nausea (sometimes very severe). Senator Jake Garn–a former naval avaiator and presumably used to motion-related sickness–was so sick that NASA astronauts named the unofficial unit of space sickness the “Garn”. An astronaut who is space sick at a level of one Garn is, essentially, useless as far as performing meaningful work. A space tourist at a level of one Garn would probably not be enjoying his or her “vacation.” One can almost envision space tourists, upon return to Earth, debarking from their spacecraft sporting the very same Transderm patches upon which some cruise ship vacationers rely.

So in some senses the industry already has a built-in mascot, one that has been with space travelers since the onset.  Unlike the virtual mascots already listed, I see space tourism’s virtual mascot as being different than those previously mentioned, and more similar to the virtual mascot of 400 meter dash runners.  As runners hit the 300 meter mark, and lactic acid builds up to a high concentration in their muscles, runers say that ”Rigor mortis sets in,” “You have a refrigerator on your back,” or “The bear jumps on your back.”  Some athletes merge two and  just say that “Riggy Bear” has jumped on your back.

Combining the spirit of the 400 meter dash mascot with the experience of Senator Garn and others, I propose that the mascot for space Tourism–one whose loving embrace you would prefer to avoid, but who will probably be your busom buddy whether you like it or not–be named Ralph^*.

I’m not sure what form Ralph should take, the best thing I’ve come up with to date is an amoeba (think of the behavior of liquid in microgravity). I know, that’s lame. So I’m throwing it out (pun partially intended) to you. In the talkback, what form should “Ralph the Mascot of Space Tourism” take?

^*For the uninitiated, to “Ralph”, or to “meet Ralph”  is a slang term meaning to vomit.

In 2004 the European Space Agency probe Mars Express detected the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Methane can be produced geologically (and Mars is not short on volcanoes), or biologically. (Though media reports of that observation got a bit out of hand.) Either way, this is an important observation and research on the source of this methane is still ongoing.

The existence of methane is ambiguous: Though methane is produced biologically, as I wrote above, it’s also produced geologically (and, in fact, the methane detected on Mars tends to be both localized and emanating from some of the more volcanic regions). It can also be delivered by comets. Given its ubiquity, methane may raise hopes, but in the end turn out to be a poor biomarker. Detecting life elsewhere will require multiple lines of evidence.

That’s where chemicals like hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan (or methanethiol) come in. It was reported recently  that the Curiosity Mars Rover will carry a Tunable Laser Spectrometer—an instrument that can detect gases like hydrogen sulfide and methyl mercaptan. Like methane, these chemicals can be created as metabolic byproducts, but like methane hydrogen sulfide is often associated with geological activity. Methyl mercaptan is more likely to be of a biological origin—the chemical is produced by the kind of microorganisms that live within the human digestive track. To be specific, it’s one of the gases that gives human flatulence and halitosis their (ahem) aromatic qualities.

In summary one of the instruments on the Curiosity rover is, functionally, a Martian breathalyzer. Am I the only person who finds it comical that our grand, age-old quest to determine “Are we alone?” may find resolution with the bacterialogical equivalent of a “BRAAAAAAAAAAAP”?

Until recently the detection methods astronomers used for finding extrasolar planets has had a distinct bias–the planets we’ve found tend to be large, Jupiter-like, and close to their parent stars. Now the Kepler spacecraft has just begun its search for extrasolar Earths and, in a very short time, has already found over 700 candidate stars that could have Earth-sized planets. As followup studies examine these candidate stars further, is it only a matter of time until another “Earth” is detected? Certainly, but we may have to sift through a lot of near-misses first.

New Scientist has a interesting article on whether or not there is a Moore’s Law for Science, using the extrasolar planet hunt as backdrop for examining whether or not previous rates of scientific discovery can be used as predictors of future performance. The article says:

Their calculations suggest there is a 50 per cent chance that the first habitable exo-Earth will be found by May 2011, a 75 per cent chance it will be found by 2020, and a 95 per cent chance it will be found by 2264.

Is there a 75% chance we’ll find an Earth-sized planet by 2020? Almost certainly, given the performance of the Kepler spacecraft and the fact that astronomers have found a planet only 1.5 times larger already. A habitable exo-Earth? Not so fast.

Enter CO2. Earth-sized planets that are situated in the habitable zones, or Goldilocks zones, of their parent stars are too small and too warm to hold onto the two most common gases: hydrogen and helium. Terrestrial planet atmospheres, at least the ones with which we are familiar, are formed initially from the volatile compounds commonly found in, and delivered by, ices from comets: in particular water (H2O), ammonia (NH3), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2). At a molecular level, CO2 is, by far, the most massive of those four compounds.

So, like dry ice (also CO2) fog at a Halloween party, CO2 sinks to the bottom of a planet’s atmosphere, displacing other gases that can eventually escape into space. When we look at our neighbors, both Venus and Mars have atmospheres composed mostly of CO2. Venus is so hot that the molecules of most gases easily reach escape velocity. (Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps the radiant heat from the sun efficiently, driving the temperature of Venus to approximately 860 degrees Fahrenheit planetwide.) Although Mars is far colder, it has only 37% of Earth’s gravity; it’s so small that the molecules of most gases escape, just as on bigger, hotter Venus.

Earth, too, likely had an atmosphere composed chiefly of CO2 in its youth, and if it still had that atmosphere, it would be too hot for life. Earth was “lucky”, though: in its infancy Earth was struck by a Mars-sized object and stripped of its Venus-like atmosphere. What are the odds that events like this are common throughout the galaxy?

So we’re not necessarily on the brink of finding Caprica, Minbar, Risa or, luckily, Skaro. Even though our detection methods are likely to turn up numerous Earth-sized planets in the very near future, they’re unlikley to be Earth-like. Yes, it’s only a matter of time until we find the first exo-Earth, but given the relative abundances and properties of the most common gases that form terrestrial planet atmospheres, we may run across a lot of extrasolar Venuses first.

Creating a space farm is a such a common assumption that SciFi writers almost routinely include some kind of plant growth or space farm area in any show that involves long distance space travel or space-based colonies. Off the top of my head, I can think of an episode of Doctor Who, and the film Sunshine, and the New Yorker story Lostronaut.

But growing plants is hardly straightforward. Indeed, straightness is one of the problems: Plants rely on both light or gravity to orient themselves, so their roots grow down and their stems grow up. But then there’s the problem of providing the right levels of humidity, ensuring the water actually goes down to the roots in a zero-G environment, providing enough nutrients, and doing it all in a space- and energy-efficient way.

To solve the problems of growing plants in space, Orbital Technologies Corporation has been working on “deployable vegetable production units“ or, as they’re more affectionately called, Veggies. The latest iteration was based on astronaut food containers, and offers astronauts a way to grow plants as a hobby during their free time, as well as give NASA a chance to experiment on the problems of growing plants in microgravity.

Each Veggie unit is a box offering 0.13 square meters of growing area (about 1.4 square feet). Astronauts inject water into a foam base with a hypodermic needle, and light is provided by multi-colored LEDs from above. The boxes can grow small herbs or other plants that can supplement astronauts food supply.

NASA gave the unit a short demo at Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS), a two-week research trip to test all sorts of different space equipment that ended on Friday. Orbitec officials said they expect the units to get a test run on the International Space Station sometime soon. NASA may even try putting some of the units into a centrifuge to test out different levels of microgravity and its effect on growing time.

The company also makes their Space Gardens for schools, which is actually pretty cool if you’re a kid. Though seems to me anyone who’s a Square Foot Gardner is already halfway toward space farming.

Take Titan, for example. Two weeks ago, I wrote that observations of Titan from Cassini have been interpreted by some as possible signs of life, in particular:

Now it turns out that computer simulations based upon Cassini observations, simulations which hint at depletions of various chemical species at Titan’s surface may again hint at the possibility of life on Titan. The results are very preliminary, but fascinating nevertheless.

It’s highly unlikely that we’ll ever be able to make a positive determination if there’s life on Titan based upon Cassini data alone. Cassini is, after all, an orbiter, and its observations of Titan’s surface come from hundreds, even thousands, of kilometers away–limited to those that can be attained during flybys. To ascertain the presence of life, we’ll need what scientists in the field of remote sensing call “ground truth”–we’ll have to wait until we are able to send a followup probe to the surface of Titan. Perhaps we’ll send a probe to Titan similar to Tiny–the Titan rover who has guest-starred in episodes of this season’s Eureka.

Even then it could turn out that, unless NASA’s version of Tiny returns samples to Earth for human examination, the results could remain ambiguous and leave scientists scratching their heads. That is what’s happening with Mars.

Titan hides its secrets beneath a thick photochemical haze, but when it comes to planets that jealously guard their secrets, Mars is the champion. The Great Galactic Ghoul of Mars destroys our spacecraft. Mars throws us curve balls; Mars lies to us. Mars even laughs at the spacecraft it does allow to explore it.

When the twin Viking probes landed on Mars in 1976, each carried three experiments designed to detect microbes in the Martian regolith (though the term “soil” is often used, we can’t really call it soil until we verify the presence of organics). Two of three Viking experiments produced negative results. The Viking Labeled Release (or LR) Experiment was a different matter, and seemed to indicate that there was life in the Martian regolith. Some scientists maintain to this day that the Viking LR experiment yielded a definite “Yes!” on the question of “Does Mars support life?”

In 2004 the European Space Agency probe Mars Express detected the presence of methane in the atmosphere of Mars. Methane can be produced geologically (and Mars is not short on volcanoes), or biologically. (Though media reports of that observation got a bit out of hand.) Either way, this is an important observation and research on the source of this methane is still ongoing.

Recent Earth-based experiments and observations by the Mars Phoenix lander serve only to muddy the waters still further, and reveal how Martian soil could be teeming with life that went undetected by Viking (and, interestingly, in experiments subsequent to the Viking mission, some bacteria in Earth soil also went undetected by Viking).

Size comparison between NASA’s Curiosity Rover and one of the Mars Exploration Rovers.

In November 2011, NASA will launch the Mars Science Laboratory rover, known as Curiosity–its Martian version of Eureka’s Tiny (though not nearly as intimidating). By far the largest Mars rover to date, Curiosity is the size of a Cooper Mini.  After a nine-month cruise, it will arrive at the Red Planet in August 2012. Rest assured that Curiosity will answer many of our existing questions about previous science results, and the potential existence of life on Mars. Rest assured that it will raise more questions.  If Curiosity gets past the Ghoul, it’ll be interesting to see if previous signatures detected by our probes did prove to be life.  It’ll also be interesting to see what tricks Mars has up its sleeve this time.

Below are short excerpts of the guest scientists’ responses, with links to the full versions:

Ken Caldeira: “…If you could directly produce chemical fuel from sunlight and do it affordably, that could really be a game changer…”

Jack Horner: “…If we want to see an animal like a velociraptor, we will be able to create one by genetic engineering. It might even be possible to make something that looks like a T. rex…”

Oliver Sacks: “…We thought that every part of the brain was predetermined genetically, and that was that. Now we know that enormous changes of function are possible…”

Sylvia Earle: “…We’ve explored only about 5 percent of the ocean. For us to have better maps of the moon, Mars, and Jupiter than of our own ocean floor is baffling…”

Rodney Brooks: “…The arguments we have about drugs and sports are minuscule compared with what’s coming, such as ‘What is the definition of human?’ We have the Paralympics now, but we’ll have the Augmented Olympics in the future…”

Debra Fischer: “…Every year since 1995, we have discovered more extrasolar planets than the year before. A parallel thing could happen with extraterrestrial life: After we find one example, we’ll hone our strategies to be smarter and more efficient…”

Tachi Yamada: “…I don’t believe just because you’re poor, you shouldn’t have access to lifesaving technology…”

Neil Turok: “…The science has reached the point where questions that used to be just philosophy could be observationally testable in 10 or 20 years…”

Ian Wilmut: “…We should be able to control degenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and heart disease…”

Sherry Turkle: “…Sometimes a citizenry should not ‘be good.’ You have to leave room for real dissent…”

Brian Greene: “…We may establish that there is not a unique universe—that ours is just one of many in a grand multiverse. That would be one of the most profound revolutions in thinking we have ever sustained…”

Similar to the polar emissions from a neutron star, seen as a pulsar if the observer is within the cone traced out by the polar streams, gamma ray emissions from a GRB are very directional as well as intense. If a GRB went off anywhere within our galaxy, yes the entire galaxy, and Earth was in line with one of the two polar beams, all life on Earth would be extinct within hours. In his book “Death from the Skies,” fellow Discover blogger Phil Plait has a great description of what life on Earth would be like in its last minutes, and my co-author Ges Seger and I examined this phenomena in this short story.  Now before you lie awake at night worrying, here’s a podcast describing why we should be safe from GRBs.

GRBs were first discovered in 1967 by the Cold-War-era Vela satellites–satellites designed to detect the gamma ray pulses emitted by nuclear weapons tests. When the Velas began sensing gamma ray pulses that weren’t coming from Earth, the initial reaction was that those darned Rooskies were testing nukes beyond the moon. Cooler heads prevailed, and GRBs were observed to be occurring isotropically–or equally likely in any direction. Numerous hypotheses were advanced to explain them before science settled on the current models.

Some of these hypotheses are less mainstream, but more fun, than others. One of my favorite “must read” online columns is Gregg Easterbrook’s “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” on ESPN. TMQ is a nerd-friendly analysis of the past week in the NFL, sprinkled with asides on politics, science, and science fiction. Mr. Easterbrook maintains that GRBs may, in fact be muzzle flashes from distant alien doomsday weapons:

Bummer Cosmic Thought: Recently, astronomers glimpsed the most distant gamma-ray burst ever observed–so far away it may have occurred only about a billion years after the universe formed. If gamma-ray bursts are caused by dying super-massive stars, as some cosmologists think, this is the oldest (or youngest, from the perspective of the cosmos) such death so far observed. But as TMQ cautions about gamma-ray bursts, don’t assume they must be natural. Maybe they are the muzzle flashes of doomsday weapons. Maybe what GRB 080913 tells us is that shockingly soon after life began, so did the horror of combat.

This is a fun notion to mull over, but unlikely nevertheless. It’s inconceivable that any civilization could generate artificially the colossal energies associated with GRBs. Moreover, if GRBs were, in fact, telltale signs of distant alien warfare, astronomers would observe energy bursts anisotropically, or coming from a preferred direction in space…

…which is exactly what has been happening recently. In Antarctica, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory is designed to detect the ever-elusive neutrino–subatomic particles emitted from cataclysmic astrophysical phenomena like supernovae and GRBs. Although, for this experiment, they are considered “noise”, IceCube can also detect cosmic rays. Not only has IceCube been detecting an over-abundance of cosmic rays, lately, they have been observed anisotropically–coming from a preferred direction. Now THAT is the kind of observation that would hint at being muzzle flashes from distant alien warfare.

Realistically, the IceCube observations are certainly naturally occurring, and it’s only a matter of time until astronomers identify a source. The observations do raise an interesting point, though. Current SETI research is based largely upon the notion that the first signals we detect from an alien civilization will be radio signals–from an intentional attempt at contact or a byproduct of their internal communications like our radio and television. Weaponry almost certainly would emit far more detectable energy into space, though it may be more narrowly focused.

If we do detect alien intelligence, it may be more likely due to a BANG, not a whisper. Wouldn’t it be wonderfully ironic if the Vela satellites, designed to detect nuclear tests, discovered GRBs, and a detector like IceCube, designed to detect neutrinos from astrophysical events, initiated First Contact?

What fewer Trekkers, and the public in general, realize is that antimatter is not solely the purview of science fiction: it actually exists in the real Universe–it’s not just a common sci-fi MacGuffin (like, say, artificial gravity)–and it’s not crazy to suggest it as a possible propulsion system for futuristic spacecraft. Antimatter, in short, is the same as normal matter except with the charges flipped: protons take on a negative charge (anti-protons), and electrons reverse charge to become positrons. Our Sun creates antimatter during the proton-proton chain–the fusion reaction that generates the majority of its energy; some cosmological models even suggest that antimatter should be as common as matter in our Universe. And of course antimatter is huge in sci-fi. In one of the better TOS episodes, Spock observed that the Doomsday Machine’s weapon was “…pure anti-proton…”–an antimatter particle beam.

Sci-fi generally does a good job of showing what happens when matter comes into contact with antimatter: BOOM. When particles of matter interact with their antiparticles, through the process of pair annihilation the mass of both particles is converted completely into energy–gamma rays–via the dictates of E=mc². We still don’t know if antimatter is as common as matter in the Universe; perhaps there are entire galaxies composed chiefly of antimatter, galaxies insulated from their matter counterparts by the vast distances of inter-galactic space. One of the last (permanent) residents of the International Space Station, the CERN-built Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (at right being loaded onto a Air Force C-5 Galaxy), may help us understand how ubiquitous antimatter is in the Universe, as well as aiding scientists in determining the nature of dark matter.

So will the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer teach us the secrets of antimatter, leading inexorably to its storage, manipulation, and use? Yes…and no. The first half of that statement is true: AMS may help physicists understand the ubiquity of antimatter and perhaps have a better grasp on the nature of our universe. Understanding the nature of antimatter as a precursor to using it? That’s more of a leap. It’s the kind of statement one might make in a work of science fiction to advance a plot point (trust me on this), but it makes less sense in the real world. Both producing and containing antimatter are currently way beyond our capabilities. But if scientists could design, and engineers could build, a vessel to contain antimatter, it would go a long way towards solving our planet’s energy needs.

As far as a viable matter/antimatter propulsion, it turns out that NASA has, in fact, researched just that–spacecraft with antimatter-based propulsion systems.  Of course the Trekkers are keenly aware of the dangers associated with the term “containment failure”, and that would be a real consideration if the antimatter had to be stored. The drives being researched by NASA would be very different from the antimatter pulse drive I wrote about previously, and would generate/use antimatter–to use a business term–on a “just in time” basis. This type of main engine would dramatically cut the travel time, and open up for exploration, to countless destinations within the Solar System.

Vacations on Mars via Antimatter Express–who’s coming with me?

Once or twice before I’ve made a case for diversity as a hallmark of good science fiction. Regardless of one’s present political affiliations, we like our sci-fi casts to be a plurality of uncanny and unfamiliar characters. The future of our species is, in part, dependent upon how well we get along with other forms of sentient life. So which stellar explorers would earn the stamp of approval from the Rainbow Coalition of the 24½th Century? After weeding out (most) all-human crews (sorry BSG!) and some of the less well-known teams (sorry Bucky O’Hare!), I’ve come up with a top five list. We’ve got genetic mutants, alcoholic robots, holograms, bisexual aliens, snarky A.I., clones, cryonauts, cyborgs, and every variant of human being imaginable. Did I leave anyone out?

5. The Space Shuttle Discovery Crew Mission STS-116 (pictured above)

The only all-human (and real) crew on my list, the STS-116 mission broke all sorts of records, with two African-Americans, two women, two European Space Agency astronauts, and a Jewish-Korean American pilot. Normally I am loath to describe any group of people by their various identities, instead of their individual personalities and achievements, but in light of the homogeneous nature of the earlier space program and much of sci-fi, the fact that a crew this diverse already exists is wonderful. STS-116 is both an excellent sign we’re moving in the right direction and a perfect first entry for this list.

4. Red Dwarf

A British comedy, Red Dwarf is about the misadventures of the remaining crew from the titular mining ship. Due to a radiation leak and an serendipitous bit of stasis, David Lister was awoken after 3 million years to discover he was the last person alive in the whole universe.

The least diverse of the top five, the crew of the Red Dwarf is comprised of David Lister, the last (and most disgusting) human in the universe; Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of his former-self; Kryten, an anal-retentive, know-it-all android; Cat, a humanoid descendent of Lister’s cat, has fangs, narcissism, and style like no one else; and finally, Holly. Sometimes male, sometimes female, always maintaining a stiff-upper lip, Holly is an A.I. that keeps things ostensibly running on the derelict ship. For a show that pretty much just has these five cast members, Red Dwarf makes the most of its motley crew.

3. Star Trek

The various and varied crews of the USS Enterprise and its sister ships in Star Fleet are too numerous to list, but the first crew set a new precedent for television. Kirk’s crew, first introduced to Americans in 1966, had Uhura, Sulu, and Checkov on the main bridge, with Spock, an alien, as the first officer. Sadly, the original Star Trek is still a high-water mark for diversity on television, matched only by its successors, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space 9 and Voyager.

Complementing the already ethnically diverse humans, notable crew members from each series include: Worf, the first Klingon in Star Fleet; Data, the first sentient android; Odo, a changeling; and Seven of Nine, a de-assimilated borg. In addition to these prominent non-humans, many members of each crew are at least partially cybernetic (Picard has an artificial heart, Jordi’s trademark Chevy-grill visor), and, like Spock, many are half-human, half-alien. Roddenberry’s commitment to unique cultures for each alien, as well as his preservation of many human ethnic traditions deep into the future, created a universe that set the gold standard for how a human future in space might be.

2. Futurama

Futurama is that perfect blend of homage, pastiche, and parody. Gene Roddenberry’s future was a believable utopia; Matt Groening and David X. Cohen’s future is a believable madhouse. The Planet Express crew does the Star Trek: Next Generation Crew a step better, having not just a robot (Bender) and an alien (Zoidberg), but also a cryonaut (Fry), a mutant (Leela), and a clone (Hubert Farnsworth). Throw in the recurring cast members of Lt. Kif Kroker, Lrrrr of Omicron Persei 8, Robot Nixon, celebrity heads in jars, and Nibbler and, well, it’s hard to get more diverse than that.

But they do. This season, the entire crew switched bodies and Bender bent his sexuality (again). That nearly every member of Planet Express has made out with or been to the “Lovenaisium” with another species, a robot, and/or changed genders is, I believe, a unique achievement.

1. Mass Effect

Mass Effect may be the most important new sci-fi story out there. Cliff Bleszinski calls it the “Star Wars for the next generation,” and I’m inclined to agree. In the universe of Mass Effect, humans have only recently become an interstellar species. Not only are we relative newcomers to the intergalactic community, we don’t even have a seat on the Council, which governs the dozens of races present in Mass Effect‘s universe. Unlike Red Dwarf, Star Trek, and Futurama, Mass Effect’s entire narrative puts humans in the position of the minority. By the end of Mass Effect 2, Commander Shepard’s crew on the Normandy consists of fifteen characters, the majority of which are non-human.

If you play Mass Effect as a female Shepard (as you should), your crew by the last mission has eight female members and seven male members. Among the humans, one is a clone (Miranda), one is telekinetic (Jack), one is a cyborg (Shepard), and the pilot (Joker) is crippled by a disease. All the non-human crew mates (there are eight) are either a unique alien race (among nineteen options) or are synthetic life, including EDI (the ship A.I.) and Legion, a member of the Geth (a collective robotic species). Among the various species, skin color and body type are only the beginnings of their differences. Sexuality, gender representation, gender hierarchy, immuno-response, diet, life-span, intelligence, thought patterns, aggression, empathy, and genetic variety all differ from species to species. These fundamental biological differences are reflected in the total culture of each species as well as within the individuals on the crew of the Normandy, creating a staggering potpourri of characters that populate the universe of Mass Effect.

As with all video games, the sense of immersion is even more intense than on a television series, which in turn makes the feeling of unity and loyalty to the crew unparalleled. The resulting effect is that you, the human, come to implicitly trust, care for, and even mourn beings that repulsed, angered, or horrified you. At the beginning of Mass Effect, you are a member of humanity. By the end of the second game, you are a citizen and hero of Council space, and see yourself linked to not merely your crew members, but the species and cultures they represent.

Like Futurama, Mass Effect is a work in progress. As the series both continue, expect more new and strange permutations to push the boundaries of whom we consider “one of us.”

Image of STS-116 crew via Wikipedia, Red Dwarf crew via Topless Robot, Futurama crew via Wired, and Mass Effect via the Mass Effect Wiki and my Photoshop skillz.

Despite years of searching, Klingons and Asgard, Daleks and Vorlons are still firmly entrenched within the realm of science fiction — for not only do we know of no intelligent life in our galaxy outside of that on Earth, we know of no life period. Finding even a microbe would be huge. (The find would be huge, the microbe would be small — hence the “micro” portion of the word. We have no expectation of finding gargantuan Martian astronaut-sucking amoebae, as in Angry Red Planet.)

While we may have to look to the stars for signs of intelligence, the search for life is a somewhat different — though obviously related — matter and we  shouldn’t forget that there are many potential abodes of life within our own Solar System. Surprisingly many are in the outer solar system, and receive only a faint glimmer of Sol’s life-giving radiation. Given the diversity of extremophile organisms discovered in the depths of Earth’s oceans (like the tube worms at right) — as well as  other places that would initially seem counter-intuitive — organisms that live their entire lives never seeing a single photon from the Sun, it appears that the presence of liquid water is much more of a requirement for life than is sunlight.

Planetary scientists now have strong evidence to support the presence of oceans of liquid water under the icy crusts of outer Solar System moons like Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede orbiting Jupiter, as well as Saturn’s Titan. For large Jovian moons, subsurface oceans seen to be the rule, rather than the exception.

Cross Section of Titan. Image credit: NASA

Titan, in particular, raises eyebrows. The moon is slightly larger than Mercury, and the instant Gerard Kuiper confirmed that this moon had a methane-rich atmosphere back in 1944, Titan became a leading candidate for harboring life within the Solar System.

In his 1944 paper, Kuiper wrote that the spectrometry from his telescopic observations suggested that Titan was orange (8th paragraph). So there was an expectation of “oranginess” when the twin Voyager spacecraft flew past in 1981. The observations of Voyager allowed scientists to determine 1) the depth of Titan’s atmosphere; and related to that 2) Titan was slightly smaller than Ganymede, because Titan’s atmospheric depth had been underestimated; and 3) a temperature/pressure profile for Titan’s atmosphere.

Scientists determined that the temperature at the surface of Titan was a chilly 94 Kelvins (about -280 Fahrenheit). Well, so much for life on Titan. Life is based upon chemical processes and, in general, chemical processes proceed faster at higher temperatures. Not only was 94 Kelvins too low a temperature for life-sustaining processes as we know them, most chemicals (chiefly water) important to life as we know it are frozen at that temperature.

So under the category of “potential abodes of life,” Titan was relegated to the category of “also ran.” Titan was referred to as similar to a “pre-biotic” (pre-life) Earth, or like the “Early Earth in a deep freeze.” Even bolder claims were made that Titan may have its day as a habitable abode in a few billion years when our Sun swells to become a red giant.

Enter Cassini/Huygens. Since arriving at the Saturn system in July 2004, the Cassini and Huygens spacecraft have been imaging, sniffing, and landing on Titan, rewriting the textbook on this moon in the process (and I did a podcast on this very subject for “365 Days of Astronomy” last November 12th). In fact, this past  June 21st, Cassini had its closest flyby of the moon Titan that it will have during the entire mission.

Now it turns out that computer simulations based upon Cassini observations, simulations which hint at depletions of various chemical species at Titan’s surface may again hint at the possibility of life on Titan. The results are very preliminary, but fascinating nevertheless.

In the past six years we’ve still learned enough about Titan not to rule out the presence of life. In addition to that subsurface ocean previously mentioned, there appears to be cryovolcanism on Titan’s surface – in one instance Cassini may have imaged an actual eruption. If Titan’s surface rocks are composed of ice, and magma is melted rock, and hydrocarbons like ethane and methane are common on Titan, then it’s not too big of a stretch to imagine that magma chambers in Titan’s subsurface could be life-sustaining cauldrons of hydrocarbon-laced water. Microbes surviving in a magma chamber on a moon of Saturn is a concept that would have been the purview of science fiction only a few years ago, now it’s a real consideration.

Life on Titan? I guarantee that we’ve not heard the last on this subject.

The exhibit is broken down into four areas:

ALIEN FICTION

The alien fiction section was small, and had a collection of movie props, videos, and sections devoted to Roswell and the Alien Autopsy video.  Interestingly the content in the Roswell section was donated by the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, NM, so I felt it was slightly skewed in favor of the object that crashed at Roswell being of an extraterrestrial nature, while the content provided for the Alien Autopsy video practically screamed “THIS WAS A HOAX!”

ALIEN SCIENCE

What might aliens look like?  Where might we find them? Are alien life forms most likely to be (from our viewpoint) extremophiles?  While astronomers and planetary scientists often make the claim that “we study other worlds to learn more about Earth,” this section emphasizes the reverse:  What have we learned about our planet, its life, and the Solar System to further help us find life “out there.”  There are exhibits that describe potential abodes of life in the Solar System, extremophile life, even bizarre Earth creatures that simply look alien. Of the four sections, this is the least speculative, most grounded in science. Later one of the docents told me that, surprisingly, this section is overwhelmingly the most popular with kids.

ALIEN WORLDS

To me this section was, by far, the most interesting of the exhibit. This section details the hypothetical worlds Aurelia and Blue Moon: the worlds and their ecosystems.  Aurelia is a hypothetical planet that is tidally locked to a red dwarf; Blue Moon is an Earth-sized moon orbiting a jovian gas giant planet. These planets and their creatures were designed by scientists who study extremophile life forms, planetary scientists, and scientists who search for extraterrestrial civilizations. In fact, the creatures inhabiting both of these worlds are very reminiscent of those from Wayne Barlowe’s Expedition. It was also in this section that I was “adopted” by a very nice docent named Ann who personally showed me the aspects of various exhibits that she found most interesting.

Thor! Buddy! Tell me if you’ve heard this one. An Asgard walks into a bar, and the bartender says, “Why the long face?”

ALIEN COMMUNICATION

What is the like likelihood of there being other civilizations out there? If they are out there, how would we communicate? That’s the theme in the final section of the exhibit.

Hey I recognize that! The Drake Equation.

After examining all the bizarre earthly “alien” life forms in “ALIEN SCIENCE”, and after being transported to both Aurelia and Blue Moon in “ALIEN WORLDS,” I found this last section relatively anticlimatic, and probably the least interesting of the four sections. There was, however, a fun little alien gift shop immediately beyond. I like little shops.

Yes, I realize that I should have visited/posted before San Diego Comic-Con, when so many more people — the kind who are likely to enjoy this kind of thing — could have stopped in. Still, the San Diego Air and Space Museum will be hosting the Science of Aliens from now until the end of the year.

The recent storms that have brought such devastating floods to China and the Iowa, as well as storms depicted in cinema like Twister, The Perfect Storm, and The Day After Tomorrow–all based upon real events (well, 2 out of 3 anyway)– reveal Nature’s fury at its full force, right?  Absolutely!  For Earth.

There are, however, places in the Solar System where Earth’s most violent maelstroms would be considered puny, and whose most violent wind would be a gentle breeze.  The Great Red Spot of Jupiter, for example, is a hurricane-like storm roughly 2 1/2 times the size of the planet Earth that has been raging with winds up to 400 mph, and was first seen by Galileo.  In recent years, Jupiter has developed a second red spot (nicknamed “Little Red”) that began as a “perfect storm” where three jovian storms collided back in 2000, and turned red in 2006. 

The jovian planets of the outer Solar System are where one truly can view the full force of Nature’s climatic fury. Recent observations of Saturn reveal superstorms (at right) and mega lightning bolts –even a giant blizzard– that put the terrestrial equivalents to shame. 

As we explore planets in other star systems, particularly the “hot Jupiters“, we may find superstorms in their atmospheres  so huge and violent that they make those in the jovian planets the Solar System as puny in comparison as the storm of Earth are relative to those on, say, Saturn.

“Megalightning vs. Superstorm“:  when that becomes a Saturday night science fiction movie, remember you heard it here first.

We are a group of professionals. We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not … an issue. We don’t have them and we won’t.

Hang on a second. I’m not sure that the concepts of “sex in space” and “professional” are mutually exclusive. I’m sure that, given what we’ve learned about human physiology because of spaceflight, that there are any number of cardiologists, internists, endocrinologists, OB/GYNs, and a whole host of other health-care professionals and researchers who would love to have physiological data taken of a couple before, during, and after a union in a microgravity environment. These researchers would be the Masters and Johsons, Kinseys, and perhaps even the Shere Hites of their time.

For me, though, when I first read Poindexter’s denial about sex in space, the first thing I thought of was Gene Cernan.

Wait, that came out wrong. Better elaborate.

Gene Cernan (the last human to leave the lunar surface, fellow Purdue Boilermaker, and one of my personal heroes) did one of NASA’s first spacewalks on Gemini 9. Unlike the previous EVA (extra-vehicle activity) of Ed White in Gemini 4, Cernan did not have a hand-held thruster unit — the goal of the EVA was for Cernan to make his way to the back of the spacecraft and don a much larger maneuvering unit, like the MMU operated almost 20 years later. Cernan had a very difficult time maneuvering his body in the airless/microgravity environment of space, his visor fogged, his suit overheated, and he never made it to the back of the spacecraft. Michael Collins had similar difficulties aboard Gemini 10. Learning of the low-gravity tribulations of Cernan and Collins, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin designed tools, handholds, and techniques for his flight aboard Gemini 12, and moved comparatively effortlessly.

NOW you can probably see where this is going.

On Earth, when it comes to the act of making love, gravity is a great enabler — certainly when it comes to the, uh, harmonic oscillations one normally associates with various sexual acts. In microgravity, a whole host of Newton’s Laws of Motion come into play, and clearly one would need a bevy of straps, velcro, and fasteners — and that’s WELL before even coming close to the realm of  kinky or B&D.

The book “Sex in Space” by Laura Woodmansee describes several potential positions by which low-gravity sex could be performed, but after reviewing the book (strictly for scientific curiosity, mind you), it looks like many of those positions would leave Barbarella and Buck flailing about — not unlike Gene Cernan on Gemini 9. Space.com did a review on the book, covering some of the topics explored within, but they didn’t discuss the topic of potentially enabling positions. (LiveScience did, however, discuss this notion briefly; so did Robert A. Freitas, Jr.)

On the reverse side of that, under the right conditions the microgravity environment of near-Earth orbit might allow a return to intimacy for people who, because of injury or disease, can’t have sex on Earth. So after the upcoming explosion of private space flight, after we’ve established lunar colonies, you can almost see that the Sandals Resorts will get into the game with a new resort called “Moon Boots.”

Humor aside, and as “clinical” as this sounds, it might not be a bad idea to consider monitoring people having sex when there are protocols and experimental controls in place, instead of allowing people who simply want to join the “Hundred Mile High Club” experiment haphazardly.

We’d learn a lot about human physiology, and imagine the spinoffs!

I’ve always maintained that in science fiction TV and cinema good science should be jettisoned in deference to drama as a last resort only–and then when you have all your other  ducks in a row. If the science is solid in the large bulk of your work, we’ll make the leap with you when you get a bit more… speculative. Some works stick to grounded science well, some do not.

Therefore, for my clips, I chose two instances of the same type of  event–the impact of a comet/asteroid with Earth — one done well (Deep Impact), one that could have been done better (Armageddon).

Since Deep Impact‘s science is fairly solid, and their science advisor (they actually had one!) once told me “We pretty much get our mistakes out of the way in the first five minutes”, there’s little to say. There’s plenty to say with the Armageddon clip I chose — which was the first 40 seconds of the movie. The opening of Armageddon purports to show what is called the K/T Event — the asteroid or comet impact 65 million years ago that caused most of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs, to meet extinction.

The opening narration, done by Charlton Heston doing his best Moses voice, starts out:

It hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons.

Here’s where getting the science right would have improved the drama.  To be more correct, Charlton Heston wouild have said:

It hit with the force of over 19 million 1 megaton nuclear weapons.

Or

It hit with a force almost 1.5 billion times the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

While Charlton narrates, the video shows the impact, and a blast wave traveling over the entire planet. While normally willing to suspend disbelief happily, from a science standpoint this movie lost me in the first 30 seconds when I first saw it in the theatre. The blast would not have traveled that far. What the video could have shown, and Charlton could have described in his best “The Dinosaurs Have Been Smote” voice was the several-hundred-foot-high tsunami that raced away from the impact. Or the chunks of impactor and target rock that fell back to Earth as secondary impacts, setting most of the world’s forests on fire.

What Charlton says instead is:

A trillion tons of dirt and rock hurtled into the atmosphere.

That’s about 1/10 the mass of the impactor (assuming it was an asteroid), so that number isn’t too bad, but, where’s the drama? What is the result of this?  He continues with:

…creating a suffocating blanket of dust the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years.

Probably not that long, the dust probably settled out faster than that — without the sun’s life-giving radiation, it would not have taken long for Earth’s ecosystem to collapse.

It happened before.  It will happen again.

Yay! They got something right!  It’s clear that had the folks who made Armageddon stuck to known science, they could have made this scene simultaneously more realistic and more dramatic.

If you missed the panel, weren’t able to attend Comic-Con, or were turned away at the door because the room was packed, here’s the video:

The “Science of Science Fiction” panel will be back at San Diego Comic-Con again next year — hopefully in a much larger space (and hopefully it will still be in San Diego).

The Bradbury panel featured Bradbury talking to his biographer, Sam Weller. I’m just going to share select quotes from his remarks. These are in order, but incomplete.

“The Internet to me is a great big goddamn stupid bore.”

“I got a call from a man who wanted to publish my books on the Internet. I told him, prick up your ears and go to hell.”

[Bradbury has met most, if not all, of the Apollo and Gemini astronauts.]

“All those astronauts had read the Martian Chronicles. When they were young men, they read my books and decided they wanted to become astronauts.”

“[Twilight Zone creator] Rod Serling came to my house many years ago, he didn’t know anything about writing science fiction and fantasy. So I took him down to my basement and gave him copies of books by Richard Matheson, copies of books by Henry Kuttner, copies of books written by Roald Dahl and by John Collier, and a couple of books by myself. And Rod Serling forgot he read all those books, and when he wrote the program, he copied some of the ideas without telling me. So we got into a big argument, so finally I walked away from the Rod Serling show. He had a great show, but he forgot the basis of the show were all the books I gave him by all my friends.”

[* Thanks to commenter John Joseph Adams for figuring this one out.]

“I read comic strips all my life I have all of Prince Valiant put away. I have all of Buck Rogers put away, too. I put away those starting when I was 19 years old. So my background in becoming a writer was falling in love with comic strips.”

“I read the comic strips, I learned how to write.”

“My favorite that’s in the paper every day is called Mutts.”

[Bradbury is a tireless advocate for free public libraries.]

“When I left high school, I had all my grades to go to college, but I had no money. I decided I will not worry about getting money to go to college, I will educate myself. I walked down the street, I walked into the library, for three days a week, for 10 years, and educate myself. It’s all free, that’s the great thing about libraries. When I was 28 years old, I graduated from library.”

“We have to reinvest in space travel. We should never have left the moon. We have to go back to the moon and build a firm base there, so we can take off from there to the planet Mars. We have to become the Martians. I tell you to become the Martians. We have to civilize Mars, build a whole civilization on Mars, and then move out 300 years from now, into the universe, and when we do that, we have the chance of living forever. Our future is investing right now in space travel. Money should be given to NASA to build the rockets to go back to the moon.”

“It’s been 90 god-damned incredible years.”

“Every day I’ve loved it. Because I’ve remained a boy. The man you see here is a 12-year-old boy, and the boy is still having fun.”

“You remain invested in your inner child by exploding every day. You don’t worry about the future, you don’t worry about the past, you just explode. If you are dynamic, you don’t have to worry about what it is you are. I’ve remained a boy, because boys run everywhere, they never look back, they run everywhere, they keep running running running. That’s me, the running boy.”

[Weller asked: Do you have any regrets?]

“I regret that I didn’t have more time with Bo Derek.”

“She came up to me in a train station in Paris 30 years ago and said ‘Mr. Bradbury?’, I said, ‘Yes.’ She said, ‘I love you,’ I said ‘Who are you?’ She said. ‘My name is Bo Derrick Derek.” She said, “Mr. Bradbury will you travel on the train with me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I will.’”

“Mel Gibson owns the [movie] rights to Fahrenheit 451. Did you see him on TV last week? Right now he’s not doing a thing with Fahrenheit 451.”

“I’ve got a new book of short stories, I’m working on, that will be published next Christmas. The title of it is Juggernaut, a book of 20 new short stories, which will be published next Christmas.”

The panel I’m referring to focused on the question of whether private companies are better suited to taking humanity into space, or whether NASA is doing awesome work and we, as a society, should just keep on keepin’ on. To help answer the question, the panel featured Mark Street (from XCOR), John Hunter (Quicklaunch), Chris Radcliff (San Diego Space Society), Dave Rankin (The Mars Society), Molly McCormick (Orbital Outfitters) and was moderated by Jeff Berkwits (editor and writer).

The group  did praise NASA for the Mars Rovers and the Hubble space telescope (referring to the beautiful Hubble pictures, Rankin said, “let it not be said the federal government doesn’t fund the arts”) but generally they brought the hammer down on NASA and its private counterparts like Boeing and Lockheed Martin: NASA is too big, too old, and is constantly trying to perfect old ideas rather than introduce new ones.

And the group praised small “new-space” companies for being willing to fail and try, try again as they strain to bring space tourism to everyone.

But perhaps most interesting was the almost uncontested assertion that space flight will never really be profitable.

“Ninety percent of mass is propellant in space, and it $5,000 [to get pound of a pound of material into space] with rockets. SpaceX is $2,000 a pound,” Hunter said. “Going to Mars, that’s one million pounds per person. Each person is going to cost $5 billion.”

But for all that Hunter threw cold water on the proceedings, he also said money really isn’t why we go into space.

“The only thing that makes money in space is communications satellites. Mining doesn’t pan out,” he said. “You have to go to space for manned exploration for the human spirit. You’re not going to make money there.”

And the members of the panel sagely nodded their heads. For all that these folks recognize the challenges of space flight, and the amount of money and smarts that will be required, they’re generally optimists: Every single one said they expect space tourism will become reality…eventually.

* This quote added later to correct a paraphrase of mine. Thanks to commenters Jadon and eyesoars for the correction.

Every 26 months Mars and Earth are in opposition, meaning that you could draw  a (nearly) straight line between the Sun, Earth, and Mars.  Although Earth’s orbit is not a perfect circle, if you could see one entire orbit, traced out over an entire year, you would be hard-pressed to tell that it wasn’t a perfect circle.  The same can not be said for Mars. Mars has a nontrivial orbital eccentricity — where the term “eccentricity” is a measure of how ”out-of-round” an orbit is. So if you could see the orbits of both Earth and Mars traced out, it would look a little like a hard-boiled egg cut down its long axis.

Owing to a physical law called Kepler’s Third Law of Orbital Motion, Earth makes a full orbit in about half the time as does Mars, so although they line up every 26 months, they line up at different points in their respective orbits. Sometimes, at opposition, they’re much closer than others.

Every year, though, many of us get THAT email — the one that proclaims that Mars will be big and bright in the sky “this August 27th.” This year I even got the text below immersed within a gorgeously illustrated PowerPoint document:

The Red Planet is about to be spectacular! This month and next, Earth is catching up with Mars in an encounter that will culminate in the closest approach between the two planets in recorded history. The next time Mars may come this close is in 2287. Due to the way Jupiter’s gravity tugs on Mars and perturbs its orbit, astronomers can only be certain that Mars has not come this close to Earth in the Last 5,000 years, but it may be as long as 60,000 years before it happens again.

The encounter will culminate on August 27th when Mars comes to within 34,649,589 miles of Earth and will be (next to the moon) the brightest object in the night sky. It will attain a magnitude of -2.9 and will appear 25.11 arcseconds wide. At a modest 75-power magnification Mars will look as large as the full moon to the naked eye. Mars will be easy to spot. At the beginning of August it will rise in the east at 10 p.m. and reach its azimuth at about 3 a.m.

By the end of August when the two planets are closest, Mars will rise at nightfall and reach its highest point in the sky at 12:30 a.m. That’s pretty convenient to see something that no human being has seen in recorded history. So, mark your calendar at the beginning of August to see Mars grow progressively brighter and brighter throughout the month. Share this with your children and grandchildren. NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN.

Well, one part of the above is true — NO ONE ALIVE TODAY WILL EVER SEE THIS AGAIN: IT WAS AUGUST 27, 2003!!!

NASA posted a page describing the geometry of the event back in 2003, and snopes.com, the urban legend-busting site, even has an entry.

Mars WAS spectacular in 2003. It WAS extra bright. It WAS fascinating seeing the bright red planet pass near to the bright red star Antares, thus affirming how this star got its name (Antares means “competitor of Mars”). The continued yearly emails are like getting repeated invitations to the “Astronomical Party of the Year” – one that has come and gone several years ago.

Pass the word; crush the opposition.

Image courtesy of NASA.

The con’s website bills it as:

A “con” unlike any you’ve ever attended. Scientists, celebrities and sci-fi writers in a mind-meld of entertainment and scientific exploration. Panels, presentations, and face-time with some of your favorite researchers. If you only attend one ‘con’ this year, SETIcon should be it!

While the guest list includes myself as well as my good buddy and fellow Discover blogger Phil Plait, aka the Bad Astronomer, we are mere bugs in comparison to some of the heavy hitters who will be in attendance–names in the field such as Frank Drake, Seth Shostak, Jill Tarter, and others (including non-planet hunting physicist/Discover blogger Sean Carroll).

SETICon is being held at the Hyatt Regency Santa Clara August 13th through the 15th.

It turns out that  group of 8th Graders have discovered what appears to be a “skylight” — a caved-in lava tube–on Mars. This isn’t the first such discovery, but they’re not overly common, either. The students’ work was done as part of the Mars Student Imaging Project through Arizona State University. The program allows students, 5th graders through college sophomores, to pose a question about Mars and then have a Mars-orbiting spacecraft take the observations necessary to answer it. The team that found the skylight was from Evergreen Elementary School in Cottonwood, CA, and initially they sought to examine erosional features on Martian Volcanoes, in particular Pavonis Mons (at right) one of the Tharsis Volcanoes.

Although this discovery was serendipitous, given the team’s stated aims, it underscores an important point.  Each instrument on a planetary probe has associated with it an entire science team–scientists well-versed in the types of questions that instrument is uniquely capable of answering. It’s tempting to think that, because they often have “first crack” at the spacecraft imagery, the members of these instrument science teams may be making all the important discoveries in the future, but that’s not necessarily a given. Owing to the titanic amounts of data and imagery being returned by spacecraft like Cassini or Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, it could turn out that instrument teams may simply be “skimming the cream.” Would it surprise anybody if graduate students were getting Ph.D. dissertations out of existing imagery for 50 years? It’s almost certainly the case that there are discoveries waiting to be uncovered in existing data sets for future researchers, even student-researchers, who are willing to invest some time, patience, and, yes, perspiration.

Where are there snowballs in Hell?

Where is the surfing the most extreme, dude?

If you’re extremely intrigued by those questions, I’m extremely excited to announce an extremely interesting book coming this Fall, written by two extremely fascinating gentlemen.  It’s  The 50 Most Extreme Places in the Solar System by Dave Baker and Todd Ratcliff. Like any good scientist, I’ll admit my bias up front: the authors were graduate students with me at UCLA. Still, both of them are extremely knowledgeable and I’ve no doubt that the book will be extremely fun and interesting and…

…I’ve overdone the running gag to the extreme.

Well, every science educator has their “pet” topics–things they really like to convey to receptive minds. This is one of mine (tides are another and we’ll be visiting that topic soon).

“So how IS it done, Mr. Smarty Pants?”

The notion that a spacecraft could gain (or lose) energy by passing close to a planet was first developed in the early 1960s by Michael Minovitch, a very clever UCLA graduate student who was working as a summer student at JPL. Previous research had suggested that a spacecraft would be accelerated by passing close to a planet (or moon)—the spacecraft gains a bit of momentum while the planet loses the exact same amount. Minovitch showed that this technique could be used to reach places in the Solar System using far less fuel. Using chemical propulsion alone, it is nearly impossible to reach many places within the Solar System: both near to (Mercury) and far from (the Jovian planets beyond Jupiter) the Sun. Gravity assist opened up new venues of exploration.

The Voyager II spacecraft used the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn to reach Uranus and Neptune.  Galileo swung past Venus, Earth, and Earth again, to reach Jupiter. Cassini (at right) used Venus, Venus again, Earth, then Jupiter in order to reach Saturn (notice also in the graphic that the spacecraft followed the same kind of spiral path outwards that Icarus would have followed inwards to the Sun, as mentioned in Part I). Other spacecraft have employed the technique; even the Dawn Mission used a gravity assist from Mars en route to the asteroids Ceres and Vesta. (You can see the current position of Dawn here.)

It begins with the concept of a gravitational sphere of influence.  There are different definitions of this gravitational sphere of influence: the activity sphere or Hill Sphere (here’s a cool Hill Sphere calculator). They are all supposed to define a (nearly) spherical region around a planet.  Outside of the gravitational sphere of influence the trajectory of a spacecraft is dictated chiefly by the gravitational attraction of the sun, with a nearby planet giving a slight gravitational tug, or perturbation, to that trajectory. Within the sphere of influence the roles are reversed – it is the planet’s gravity that primarily dictates the spacecraft’s trajectory, with the sun’s gravity being a perturbation.

Geometry of a Gravity Assist

To perform a gravity assist a spacecraft enters the sphere of influence of a planet–let’s use Neptune as an example–its trajectory is bent by the planet’s gravity, and it leaves along a different path. If the diagram above is accurate, the magnitude of the velocity/energy is the same going in as going out–by the law of conservation of energy.  The magnitude of the inward velocity vector, Vin, is the same as the magnitude of Vout (red vectors). That is entirely true, and this is why the notion of gravity assist gets very confusing!  Remember, though that these velocities are relative to Neptune. The gravity assist is relative to the Sun, however, and Neptune is moving with velocity Vn. If we determine the velocity of the spacecraft relative to the Sun, which we do by adding Vin and Vout to Vn (blue vector), nose-to-tail fashion, a different picture emerges. The white vectors below are the heliocentric (sun-centered) velocities. We see that not only does the heliocentric inbound velocity vector (Vhi) change direction when outbound (Vho), it increases in magnitude. The spacecraft has picked up speed and there’s your assist!

For a gravity assist in the real world, a spacecraft passes behind a planet (as above) to gain speed/kinetic energy, and behind ahead to lose it.

A good scientist understands his/her biases, so I will admit up front that I’m highly biased here , but a more realistic cinematic depiction of gravity assist, one that incorporated all the above, was in the pilot episode for the Fox series (not picked up) Virtuality. As with the development of gravity assist at JPL in the early 1960’s, Virtuality had an advisor who was a very clever former UCLA graduate student who currently works at JPL.

In Virtuality, as the crew of the starship Phaeton approached Neptune, they also approached the “Go/No-Go” point in their mission to the star Epsilon Eridani. If the Commanding Officer, Captain Pike, decided to “go”, they would “slingshot” around Neptune, out of the Solar System, and engage their Orion Drive to take them to Eridani. Approach Neptune another way, and they would be rerouted back home to Earth.

During their “slingshot”, one of the crewmembers, Dr. Jules Braun, reports that their trajectory is off  by “Five milliarcseconds in the B Plane.” Simply, Dr. Braun was referring to an imaginary plane, the B-plane, that dissects a planet perpendicular to the incoming trajectory. To get the desired gravity assist, a spacecraft aims at a pre-determined point (not coincidentally called the “aim point”) in the B-plane.

So consistent with our previous statement “pass behind to gain speed/pass ahead to lose”, if  Phaeton approached Neptune as in the diagram, they would be catapulted out of the Solar System and onto Eridani. Approach Neptune on the opposite side of the planet, and they would be rerouted back home to Earth.

There! Gravity assist explained simply, if not in a nutshell, with a cinematic example to boot!

I will admit up front that I found Sunshine quite enjoyable, so put any of my nit-picking in that context.  In the DVD commentary director Danny Boyle pointed out that, traditionally, in horror films the monsters attack from out of the darkness. His vision was to create a threat that attacks from out of the light instead. Very clever. At the same time, the movie was far from perfect. Having served as the Science Advisor on a TV series (or two), and having made the mistake of reading too many online fan comments about the shows on which I worked, it’s clear that people, in particular those with science backgrounds, tend to be particularly chagrined when they feel that  it is their science that is being maligned or given improper respect.  In this sense, apparently I’m no different.

With a background in orbit dynamics, I had a few “Oh please!” moments in the movie that made me cringe—partly because they were in my field, but also because they were very easy to get right, and doing so would not have impacted the drama of the film one iota. It’s this latter fact that I find bothersome in films.

The premise of Sunshine is that our sun is dying 5 billion years prematurely, so the spacecraft Icarus is dispatched to deliver a stellar bomb to restart it—to “create a star within a star.” Unfortunately, and for unknown reasons, the crew of Icarus fails to complete their mission. The movie follows the adventures of the crew of Icarus II seven years later attempting to succeed where Icarus failed. It has been said that, “If you see a gun on the wall in Act I, it should be used by Act III.” Therefore you just know that they’re going to encounter Icarus en route.

We join the mission as it is already well underway: Icarus II is approaching Mercury for a “gravitational slingshot” to send it closer to the Sun. Wise choice by the filmmakers: A gravity assist would almost certainly be needed to get a spacecraft and her payload—in the case a payload the “mass of Manhattan Island”—to the Sun. It turns out that from an energy standpoint—where energy is roughly equivalent to the amount of fuel that you would need to expend—our sun Sol is THE single most difficult star in the entire Universe for a spacecraft to reach. Earth is moving fairly rapidly, just shy of 30 km/s in its orbit, and just like a figure skater whose spin rate increases as she pulls her arms in, the velocity of a spacecraft traveling inwards to the Sun increases the closer the spacecraft gets. (Remember that fact the next time you hear somebody say “Well I don’t know why we don’t just shoot all our garbage/toxic waste/spent nuclear fuel into the Sun.” It is actually easier to send it to Alpha Centauri, or Sirius, or even Wolf 359 that it is Sol, though it would take far far longer.) So a mission to Sol would be very difficult to do without gravitational assists from the planets Mercury and/or Venus. That aspect of the movie is perfectly reasonable!

But before we get to Mercury to engage in the slingshot, there’s a problem: When we first see Icarus II, her orientation suggests that she is following a trajectory whose path is radially inwards to the Sun. Because of a physical law called the conservation of angular momentum, Icarus II would actually have to follow a spiral-shaped trajectory inwards to reach the Sun, so at the 6:05 point in the movie when mention is made that they’re 55 million miles from Earth, that would have been the straight-line distance. They would have travelled much farther by that point in the mission.

Then when we leave Mercury, we run into another issue. At the 18:05 mark in the movie, Captain Kaneda tells Icarus (also the name of the ship’s computer), “Icarus, please plot our trajectory following the slingshot around Mercury.” So far, so good. Later, though, we see a graphic of Icarus orbiting Mercury, and at the 23:20 point in the film, Icarus says, “Slingshot complete, Icarus leaving Mercury orbit.”

Oops.

As depicted in the film, the spacecraft actually performed several orbits around Mercury before “slingshotting” towards the sun. From an energy standpoint that’s not only very wasteful, it would probably be counter-productive. In the case of Icarus II, it would have taken energy (fuel) to slow the spacecraft in order to enter into Mercury orbit, it would have taken more energy (even more fuel) to leave Mercury orbit, and the spacecraft would have realized no benefit—or more likely would have expended more fuel than saved—from Mercury’s gravity.  A gravity assist, also known as a gravitational swingby, is performed in a single pass by the planet—like they did in Star Trek.

Recall in the original series Star Trek episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” the crew of Enterprise performed a one-pass “slingshot” (technically a powered assist or Oberth Maneuver) around the Sun to gain the speed needed to return to their own time. They repeated this maneuver using a Klingon Bird of Prey in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The only problem with the maneuver depicted in Star Trek is that there is no indication that the “slingshot” would allow them to attain a greater speed than they could by warp drive alone (we’ll show later that it may have had some benefit had they been trying to escape the gravitational pull of the Milky Way Galaxy, but locally it would have done little). Further, in The Voyage Home, there was a concern expressed that the Bird of Prey could be captured by the gravity of the Sun.  In short, and perhaps an entry for another time, a ship capable of faster-than-light travel simply could not be captured by the gravity of a sun the size of Sol unless it had a serious malfunction.

The concept of gravity assist can be difficult to understand fully, even if you have a decent background in physics, so I can give Hollywood a pass on not getting it perfect. In Part II, though, we’ll discuss how it’s done and show an example where Hollywood got it right.

Where common sense and the film divide is just how best to dodge an oncoming meteor. I wrote a while back on the idea of painting one side of the asteroid black while beaming heat onto it, causing the asteroid to shift course. It’s a neat idea, but not nearly as neat as the gravity tractor, not just because this approach is more elegant, but because there’s a British company called EADS Astrium that announced last week that they could actually build one if it were needed.

The idea for the tug first proposed by NASA scientists Edward Lu and Stanley Love in a paper in Nature in 2005. The pair realized that sure, we could change an asteroid’s course by docking a rocket onto the asteroid and pushing it, but landing on an asteroid is really hard: The asteroid is an extremely fast-moving target, and often it rotates asymmetrically around its axis, meaning that a lumpy part of the asteroid could smash a relatively teeny rocket in its rotational path. But, the scientists argued, the spaceship could hover 200 meters or more above the asteroid and use their mutual gravitational attraction to form a “towline” between the two. Then ship could use its own propulsion to slowly pull the asteroid to another course. It would have to push very gently to avoid breaking the bond and flying away, but over the course of 15 to 20 years, the asteroid could be persuaded to miss our planet.

The idea of a gravity tractor has been refined (PDF) by scientist Bong Wie, working at Arizona State University, who proposed the use of solar sails to eliminate the problem of fuel capacity on the satellite. (Love and Lu’s proposal relied on nuclear energy generators for power in their design.) Solar sails capture the momentum from photons of solar radiation to provide propulsion. By properly angling the sail (Wie proposes 35 degrees), the body of the space ship can be moved in the desired direction. The sail can take months to build up significant velocity, but since it has a long time to accomplish its tugboat-like task, this isn’t inherently a showstopper. That said, solar sail technology is still in its infancy—it’s only been tested on a very small scale by American and Japanese scientists in space—so it’s not ready for large-scale deployment just yet.

EADS Astrium’s design uses four ion thrusters of the sort used on Deep Space 1.  Each is aligned to keep the device hovering above the asteroid while gently pulling the asteroid via it’s gravitation “towline” off course. The ship will be 30 meters (about 98 feet) across and weigh about 10 tons. In news articles, Astrium representatives say they haven’t even built a prototype yet, but they’re convinced they can bang one out if necessary.

All of which puts us back to the question of whether there’s enough capacity to provide the necessary early warning to build and launch a gravity tractor in time to have it work. Since NASA currently tracks about 6,000 asteroids, of the 100,000 out there, I’m going to go with no.

It’s been worth the wait.

Since the probes started sending data back to Earth, scientists from JPL have been helping Kloor’s team turn it into the most accurate visual renderings of first few planets of the solar system anyone has ever seen. These reputedly amazing visuals will form the bread and butter of Quantum Quest, an animated, science-fiction, large-format film film that’s now been 12 years in the making.

Each rendering will be founded on contours developed from radar data, and then surfaced over with visual data, all merged together through CGI. And although the plot will feature a crew of talking neutrinos and photons taking a “solar safari” from the sun to Saturn’s moon Titan, all the space visuals, Kloor swears, will be real.

But unlike the real solar system, in Quantum Quest, there will be sound in space.

Naturally, this isn’t the sort of explosions and lasers we heard in Star Wars or Serenity. Quantum Quest aims for a more exacting standard of scientific precision (aside from the talking particles). I had a chance to talk to Kloor and his composer, Shawn Clement, in the midst of the madness of Comic-Con. First, he explained that the Huygens Probe did actually record sound (while it was in Titan’s atmosphere) and transmit it back to Earth.

But more of the film’s score is inspired by radio signals Cassini detected coming off the rings of Saturn, rather than actual sound. Of course, the human ear does not, as a rule, “hear” radio signals. To get around that, sound engineers “frequency shifted” the signals down into the audible range. Another challenge was that the sounds were also very long; they didn’t modulate quickly. So to get them into a format that could be used in a film, engineers compressed the signals into smaller packages. Kloor said these manipulations were necessary, but don’t alter the fundamental shape of the sound.

Clement never had to deal with any of this himself. He and the sound magicians at Skywalker Ranch, who are handling the background folio for the film,  got the samples already in audible form. To write the music, Clement started mucking around with the sounds in his synthesizer, but found that it wasn’t really working. So instead he went old-school and busted out a guitar and a violin.

“What I did with those was mimic those sounds a lot,” he said. “But I was able to manipulate that and do what I wanted to do. It worked out really, really well. You’re hearing those sounds and hearing them shift and change and eventually, by the end, you get the full orchestra.” Clement sent me a couple of clips of his music:

Neat-o space sounds inspired by radio waves from Saturn’s rings

After all these years, the film is finally due out in February 2010.

If you don’t have  time to watch the video you can read recaps and quotes from the panel here, here, here, here and here.

Big thanks to Jennifer at SEE, to all of our panelists, and to the Bad Astronomer, who found time to moderate our panel while he wasn’t partying with Hollywood starlets (Phil – we kid because we love).

For any curious readers of the Loom, we’re already checking with Yturralde if he wouldn’t mind if we submit a pic of his tattoo to Carl’s Science Tattoo Emporium.

“I think of Shrapnel as the anti-Star Trek,” says Sagan, who wrote several episodes for the franchise. “Instead of putting aside our differences to boldly go and do great things, I’m not sure that’s the way it’s going to actually happen. Shrapnel is based on the idea that we do colonize the solar system, but it’s not clean and optimistic. The haves are putting the screws to the have-nots. The story is about the last stand of the last free colony in the solar system.”

But moreover it reflects about man’s battle with himself—pitting the thin veneer of civilization against millions of years of evolutionary programming. “Higher levels of technology allow fewer people to do more damage,” says Sagan. “That’s going to be a real challenge for us. There’s a belief that if we branch out into the solar system, if something goes terribly wrong on Earth, we have an escape route. That’s a hopeful idea, but we tend to take our problems with us wherever we go. As a science-fiction writer, I feel my responsibility is to look ahead and see the dangers of what might happen, and try to warn people of the potential pitfalls.

“It’s an understandable criticism that with so much to fix on earth, why are we going off into space? But space exploration brings an appeal to the spirit and sense of wonder, not to mention opportunities to bring enemies together in a joint effort.”

Sagan—actually his voice—is already representing Earth to the universe: His father included his six-year-old voice saying, “Hello from the children of planet Earth,” on a record aboard NASA’s Voyager (aka V’ger).

“Years later high school friends would tell me that because I sent a message to the stars, my family would be spared by invading aliens,” he said. “They asked if I could put them on the list. I’d say, ‘Suuuurre… how much do you have on you?’”

—Guest-blogger Susan Karlin

Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey is an animated film that makes use of data from NASA’s Cassini mission.  The movie tells the story of Dave, a solar surfing photo who battles his way through the solar system to save the Cassini probe from evil aliens.

Twelve years in the making, Quantum Quest has cycled through at least a couple of voice casts.  At last year’s Comic Con Quantum Quest panel, producer Harry “Doc” Kloor, a scientist and veteran science fiction writer, announced that he had lined up Digimax Inc., a Taiwanese animation studio, as his partner to finish the film.

At this year’s panel, featuring Bob Picardo, Doug Jones andJanina Gavankar, Kloor announced that the movie will see wide release in February 2010 and will include actual Cassini images, including Enceladus and Titan.