Festive Musings, and why The Future is Now

I've been tweaking this post since Boxing Day, in the vain hope that I will suddenly become excited about something.
Gazing outside (there is a small window in this shed) , I notice how un-seasonal the landscape is .
It's really not conducive to the festive feeling.
The festive feeling manifests in many different ways -
One of my brothers, ensconced in a world of 24 / 7 sun and fun, sends photos of Santa hats and champagne on the beach , but whereas that normally conveys a sense of irony, this year, it is lost.
This year has no festive feeling.

There are no snowmen.
There is no frost on the ground.
It's not even proper bloody cold.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not overly attached to sub-zero temperatures and breath freezing in the air and scraping the ice from car windscreens.
But it makes a mockery of the seasonal cards with wrapped - up people scurrying through blizzards of snow , heading home, no doubt for a warming glass of festive punch .
I haven't even seen a robin, so normally associated with Xmas here in Blighty.

Robin pic from here     ©Andy Hay

With a sigh, I turn back to the pile of papers and printouts which litter my desk in the shed.
A piece about the new Star Wars film briefly catches my eye, as it is pinned by a dart to the noticeboard.
I shrug, doubting that my opinion would make a dent on the fannish slavering that surrounds the re-vamped franchise.
Best stick to what I usually do, then.
Perhaps if I wore a silly hat from a cracker, I'd feel more festive.


Seating myself before my trusty old Remington, I lean back, stretch, and crack my knuckles.
And so it begins...

As we head towards the end of 2015, fantastical research abounds all around us.
From a sci-fi app to predict future crimes  (shades of Philip K Dick) to the creation of matter from light ,we are spoiled for moments of wonder.
It's almost enough to melt my cynical heart.
Of course, there is no light without darkness, so this piece cautions against the Fitbit obsession.

We also have the ongoing Ceres and Comet 67p images arriving regularly and New Horizons still dutifully downloading images from the Pluto flyby in July 2015, some of which are being painstakingly fashioned into 3-d anaglyph images , courtesy of the dedicated people at planetary. org
I also hear rumblings of a projected meeting of quantum and relativity branches of physics.
As they are apparently in contradiction, hopefully any meeting will be on neutral territory.
Except, by dint of appearing in the area, it will no longer be neutral.
Oh well...

Space x returns !

On the practical level, I was pleasantly reminded that the future is now,  when I watched the footage of the first successful landing / return of a spacecraft  (okay, just a returning thruster, but even so - in one visual display, the commercial viability of re-usable rockets was displayed.)


Meanwhile back in the Inner Solar System...

On the auspicious date (well, Stateside ) July 4th 2016, the NASA  probe 'Juno' will enter orbit around Jupiter after a five year journey (New Horizons reminds us that it travelled for ten years before arriving at Pluto) - and butting in from somewhere out in inner space, the Japanese probe Akatsuki reminds us that it had to wait five years in limbo before it could retry its Venus insertion (pause for mildly offensive double entendre).

China continues to send data from Jade Rabbit, or Yutsu. still sampling lunar regolith  , from a new-ish crater in the area known as Mare imbrium (new-ish meaning 3 billion years old instead of 4).
The diversity of mineral content  tells us a tale of evolution beyond our own, apparently - ( the general assumption being that the moon was once part of Earth but separated when Earth was struck by a wandering planet about the size of Mars.)
It also tells us that large quantities of Titanium and Hydrogen 3 exist on the moon, so it has the potential for mining fuel for rockets.

Suddenly I am distracted by the sound of happy banter nearby, and I turn away from my musings on outer space.
It's not actually happy banter - it's more of a heated debate.
Specifically , it's the neighbours arguing about the sheer impracticality of hoovering up pine needles as opposed to the benefits of an artificial tree.
I sigh, and switch on the S.A.D. light.
'Tis the Season, after all...

The Smell Of Space and a Magic journey...

The Horsehead Nebula is some 1500 light years away, and is instantly recognisable.
It is a nursery for new stars, and as such, contains many unusual features including unknown molecules - one recently discovered was so alien that it cannot exist in a stable form on Earth (although scientists at the University of Cologne did manage to create a sample that was stable for a few seconds, proving that the theoretical particle could exist).

Horsehead Nebula                          NASA.gov

The molecule is C3H+ ,  and has been detected through the wonder of radio astronomy.
Specifically the IRAM telescope in the Sierra Nevada.
They have isolated the wavelength on which this molecule transmits (89.957 gigahertz).
They can even tell you what it smells like - it is in the benzene family...
On that note, there was a news piece a few years ago where they announced the smell of space.
Apparently it's a mixture of seared steak and hot chrome.
Space smells like a cosmic motorbike parked up at a roadside barbeque.

The fact that they essentially deduced the nature of this molecule via the radio wavelength it transmits on, makes my brain ache.


In other news, a recent burst of gamma rays from distant galaxy PKS 1441+25 took scientists by surprise.
Because these powerful gamma rays had been travelling in a straight line for 7.6 billion years, which is half the age of the known universe.
Approximately.
These gamma rays set out from a supermassive black hole at the centre of PKS 1441+25 some 7.6 billion years ago, and have travelled in a straight line, uninterrupted by cosmic debris or radiation (I wish my wi-fi was that good) through untold events and timelines (including the creation of our world , 2 billion years into the journey) , kept travelling forward through time and space ( meanwhile, we had five mass extinctions and an ice age leading to the rise of mammals and humans ) and eventually reached our solar system on the outer edge of the milky way,  travelled past the Oort cloud and Pluto and Neptune and Uranus and Saturn and Jupiter and Mars and our moon and finally reached our  humble planet where the signals were picked up by Fermi and an array of radio telescopes that only started operation 3 years ago - how's that for timing ?
Specifically, the signals arrived in April 2015.
Quite a catch for a set of data from high energy particles ejected from a black hole 7.6 billion light years away...

Artists impression of Fermi 

This is where my rudimentary understanding of science breaks down.
Now that these incredibly powerful particles have been interrupted by noting them, is their journey at an end?
Or do they continue to travel as invisible particles through the Earth and onwards?
Do they end up in the furnace of our sun, their energy transmuted by alchemy into another form ?
Are we into quantum territory, where their observation means that they cease to be gamma rays at all ?
And why all the questions ?

The science behind all this leaves me deeply impressed, but the clincher for many, in this Age of Acronyms, is surely that the Earth based telescopes which detected the particles , are known as the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cerenkov  telescopes , or MAGIC .
A name to conjure with,..

On that note, I shall take my leave, and bid you

 A Very Merry Festive Holidays to All !

Final Vinyl ? Everything Is Retro !

I decided to write this after reading a comment on an article which basically rubbished the current resurgence of vinyl records.
The main thrust of the piece was that the resurgence of love for vinyl recordings was driven by ' men of a certain age' reliving their halcyon days, and the piece pointed to examples such as boxed sets of Pink Floyd and the like.
Personally, I find it restores my faith in humanity to see records and cover sleeves back again - okay, disclosure - I am a man of a certain age , but I know many people, including millenials, who love the thrill of vinyl.
It's sad that most of the little indie record shops I used to frequent have gone the way of all things, especially with the encroaching 'homogenisation' of our high streets.
I give thanks for every indie shop that still trades , especially now.
It would also be too easy to bemoan the sudden interest in vinyl records by the supermarket chains, for instance - after all, they only ever stocked the top twenty and a dull array of reliable 'oldie' favourites (and let us not forget the Pick of the Pops albums which offered fairly bland cover versions of mainstream hits...)
Rather than decry the beginnings of a resurgence in old style music love , we should embrace it - and accept that here, in the 21st © , everything is retro.
It's just - weird to see the revival of what, until fairly recently, was the normal...

In the style of the old 'Dansette' players...

As the u.k. charts began to fill with novelty records and acts throughout the Eighties / Nineties , pop began to paint itself into the corner*, and when the Top of the Poppers had started covering punk songs, you knew the writing was on the wall.
And it wasn't graffiti .

In the UK, we can also blame shows like TOTP, with forced miming and bad choreography (although my rampant adolescent hormones were very forgiving).
There were many more issues as the industry grew top heavy with hangers - on and self-appointed 'taste-makers' (hello Mr Cowell).

Ribald and risque outside, nearly but not quite covers inside...

 I've written before on the subject , so I'm not going there again, but I'm genuinely pleased to see this resurgence of actual records , and a new appreciation of them.
After all, it can only be for the greater good - more vinyl pressing plants means more cover art so more print / repro places, more graphic designers, more jobs in record sales / distribution...basically more opportunities in an increasing creative market.

I don't consider myself an audiophile, and I won't slavishly buy everything committed to vinyl - not even by one artist, as I'm not a completist.
The medium is the message, though , and vinyl is tactile and real in a way that an mpeg will never be.

For me, the interest is in seeing how long the integrity is maintained - i.e., without the payola and coke - fuelled distortion that accompanied big music corporate f..kovers.

At the present time, it seems to be in the hands of those who remember the simple pleasures of album covers and their sleevenotes, which often added to the experience.
Of course, there is still the mainstream, with its dwindling côterie of ' stars' , a revolving parade of mix 'n' match personalities feted by brands.
Whether it's Miley or Gaga or RiRi or Taylor or Bieber or Murs, it's all a bit meh , if you ask me.
If anything, the current trend for the revival of stars from yesteryear keen to prove themselves outside of the rarefied corporate environs, is a welcome antidote.

Recent plugs have appeared in my newsfeeds showing excellent quality packages, in which the artwork is as much part of the experience as the music.. .
So let's hear it for hearing it , loud and proud.

 P. S....I know I said I'm not an audiophile, but I am worried about the heavy arms of the new decks - rumour has it that the Crosleys of this world will gouge your grooves, man.
So dig out the old school decks.
- and keep music live.

Lots of live stuff... pic© Uncut / M. Hunt, probably

* I realise that this is a shallow summary of a very complex thing, but this is not a dissertation.
 As I said at the beginning, this piece was 'inspired' by the negative comments of a troll on social media .
It's not supposed to be definitive, but it's my defence of the burgeoning trend for vinyl records.
Let's take them beyond the 'hipster' fad.

Newsflash! Ceres Resolved ...Or Not

False colour image to heighten drama...    ©NASA/JPL/Caltech

This is just a fast post to tie in with the official news from NASA that reveals the bright lights on Ceres are - salt.
Far be it for me to question  NASA , but is that it ?
I'm sure I saw another release that said it was a mixture of a salt (magnesium sulfate) and dirty ice thrown above ground by a collision - or multiple collisions.

In a nutshell, Ceres could provide a new source of  health-giving spa waters...

The assertion is that it derives from some form of subsurface ocean (quite a common theme in our moons and smaller worlds , these days).
Estimates say that Ceres is approximately 25% water, most of which is locked in as subsurface ice, allegedly.
There seems to be a lot of discussion about the incredible refractive index (let's not forget that some of these areas are 6 miles across and glowing...)

So there we have it, and thank you for resolving the mystery, NASA.
Of course, this is not a full and defintive answer...

130 'spots' have been identified...

Atomic Clocks , Bucky Balls and Another Dawn

The ubiquitous 'they' have discovered that time moves forward , even at a quantum level.
This makes for vaguely depressing news for anyone seeking an elixir of eternal youth, in that you can't reverse the flow of the ageing process.
They are however, closer to identifying the mysterious trigger that sets this process in motion.
I love such tantalising information.
It holds a vague promise of greater understanding.
The very carrot that, when dangled before our nose, keeps us moving forward...
In the meantime, back to the anti-aging creams and Botox.

In the never ending attempt to control time, a new material has been created, using  Fullerene, also known as 'Bucky balls,' : in this case, carbon molecules containing nitrogen atoms.
The new variation can be used in atomic clocks, reducing their size and increasing timing accuracy.
Boffins at Oxford University have developed it, and media spin has declared it as 'the most expensive material' ever, at  £ 200 million a gram.
Emperors new clothes then - after all, at that price...

On which note , as we approach the festive season of 2015, how is your world shaping up ?
Personally, I had high hopes for the discovery of alien life in the inner solar system, and a resultant celebration of new technologies as we join our spacefaring companions in an era of endless,blissful, advancement.
Sadly, this has not proven to be the case, but I have cleared a path in the snow on my driveway for any wayward ufos.
Combined with the ufo landing pad on my roof , this should clearly notify any approaching aliens of my welcome.

Which brings us to the equally stultifying news that SETI may be a wholly inappropriate 'listening mode' for intelligent life, given that radio frequencies are inefficient and the maths involved in accurately detecting any signal from a distant star would be wishful thinking to say the least.
Personally, I'm not convinced that any intelligent race would be prepared to spend the time and ludicrous amounts of energy needed to send a signal a thousand light years away on the remote chance of someone intercepting it. .
The recent discovery of Fast Radio Bursts from beyond our galaxy which turned out to be a microwave in the next room , serves to remind us of the frighteningly mundane reality in which we operate (and almost certainly led to a fair amount of egg on the face of the astronomers concerned) .
I particularly like the fact that the mysterious FRB signals could not be detected - unless someone actually opened the microwave , interrupting the power cycle.
Alien contact - or half - heated breakfast?
You decide!
In fairness, all serious arrays of sky watching telescopes are situated far from population centres with their inevitable sources of light pollution: this, combined with extreme boredom and cabin fever might have the inevitable result of even the smallest stimuli  having a disproportionately huge effect.

Akatsuki orbits Venus                                  © JAXA

On a farewell note, the Japanese probe Akatsuki* has finally settled into orbit around Venus (after a delay of five years),  and is now connected to the 'Deep Space Network'.
Ensuing science based on atmospheric conditions may clear a path for proposed Venusian cloud cities...



* Akatsuki literally means ' Dawn'. So now we have Dawn orbiting Ceres , and Dawn orbiting Venus.

From the lights of Ceres to the plains of Pluto

Ceres Occator crater - closest view yet...

The indefatigable Dawn explorer is dropping (slowly, the Ion engines are fragile) to its closest point in orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres, and hopefully a final solution to the true nature of those baffling lights.
We are told it will be in place for mid-December, so anytime now
From an orbit of 915 miles, it will drop to 230 miles , hopefully providing us with a final definitive moment when we can collectively nod knowingly, saying -'So that's what it is, hmmm'.
I suspect we'll still be none the wiser, but even so, it is a truly fascinating thing.
And to think it's on our nearest dwarf planet.
The closer we get, the more I am convinced that they are subsurface, molten sources, probably of intense heat, too.
If you check out the other images of Ceres, you can see many examples of similar, brightly coloured ejecta around the cratered surface.
I think it's a natural phenomenon of some kind - if it is an alien city, it's the equivalent of putting on every light in the city and shouting ' Here we are! Come and get us!'.
Which would be foolish on a cosmic scale.
Of course it could be a double bluff, and they want us to explore what appears to be a dead city...


Whilst entertaining such wild ideas, scientists have apparently proven that our reality is not a hologram, so - yeah, sorry to all the Matrix-philes and existentialists out there, but apparently reality is not an illusion.
Well, not a holographic illusion.

Meanwhile, Pluto continues to surprise with the latest high definition image downloads from New Horizons...

I'm amazed that this is a strip of land on a planet over 3 billion miles away...


Back on Earth...

'Nudol', Russian anti-satellite system

Russia has successfully tested its first anti- satellite missile.
The image above allegedly came from a Russian site - I especially like the blending of the hardline military vehicle with fluffy clouds and golden crops.
Seems almost peaceful...
This is proof that we are in a new era of space war - or at least the paranoid defence of our satellite capabilities.
This article makes for sobering reading.
For myself, I tend to think of satellites as GPS and mapping and such things - of course it's far more than that. Many nations are dependent on satellite functionality - business, military, communications, weather - so this is the beginning of overhead powerplay...groan.
Okay, so it's not the beginning - the U.S. already have ASAT, their own missile system ready - it's just that Russia and China have entered the fray.

This being the case, I just hope that the joint US / Russian Venus mission goes ahead, along with the proposed ESA/ Roskosmos moon mission - just to remind us all that we can work together and do constructive, forward looking things...

In other revelations this week, it is mooted that there was no Big Bang, and infact the Universe has existed forever . Whether I find this cheering or depressing is uncertain at present - the illustration of the man blowing up the expanding balloon / universe says it all , I think.

  So the universe expands, like a balloon - but who's inflating it - and what's out there?

Distant Galaxies and Nearby Nuts

M60 galaxy, with M60-UCD1 inset.      pic ©NASA,ESA, J. Seth

Far away, on the edge of our galaxy lies a teeny tiny other galaxy - except that this one (M60-UCD1) has a humongous black hole to outshine (in a dark sense) any other.
It has a mass of 21 million suns.
But fear not, it won't be devouring Earth anytime soon - it's 50 million light years distant.
On the other hand, we also know that the light we see from M60-UCD1 is showing us how it was 50 million years ago, so it could already be gone.
And the bottomless time distorting maw of the black hole could be looming ominously overhead, even as we speak.
Which is cheerful.
Sorry...

 Our night sky (viewed away from big cities and their light pollution), contains 4000 stars.
Which is quite a lot, if you ask me - but M60-UCD1 contains 140 million stars, of which 1 million  are visible simultaneously (if there was an Earthlike world there, and you looked to the night sky).

This is an artists impression of the galaxy M6 UCD1

On the similar but opposite end of the spectrum, we have Triangulum II , a really tiny ghost galaxy with a paltry 1000 stars - but the largest detectable quantity of dark matter.


To put the old space race in perspective, there was a nuclear powered spacecraft that was considered for travel to Saturn - in 1958 . It was known as the Orion project, and would have been propelled by exploding hundreds of atomic bombs ....

Oddly enough, the current craft for Mars is also known as the Orion, although its proposed use of nuclear fuel is a little less dynamic...
NASA have revealed their reluctance , however, to engage in deep space travel -
which, given the proposed 2030 manned landing on Mars gives cause for concern - personally I think the journey will be made by a commercial firm - SpaceX and Blue Origin seem capable, although almost certainly with a rather more cavalier attitude towards health and safety...
Recent announcements state the terrible risks involved, apart from issues like loneliness and 'cabin fever', the very real threat of meteor impact, cancer and fatal irradiation.

Recent revelations tell us that the humble water bear or Tardigrade has no less than 17.5 % of  its DNA adapted from other species ; the process by which it does so is unknown, but it surely makes them the prize candidates for deep space travel , with their resistance to extremes of temperature and lethal doses of radiation - they have already been to space (and seem decidedly alien after all) ...
On the other hand, shouldn't we be concentrating on Terraforming, right now ?
Certainly the Moon needs a makeover, what with all that greyness and corrosive moondust.

There is a new mission called Luna 27 which aims to establish a presence in the lunar South Pole  in 2020, so we should spruce it up a little...at least a shiny shopping mall or two.
Perhaps with Holsts Planet Suite as piped muzak.
I'm joking of course, but seriously - recent laws passed Stateside allow for the mining and possession of minerals occuring in asteroids.
This piece of unilateral granting of rights strikes me as a tad premature.
Do we know of any other body perhaps laying claim to mining rights or even ownership of our asteroid belt ?
I'm getting into Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy territory here, but let me pause to show this -

Bill passed recently in the U.S.A.

In my slightly naive way, I'm amazed that this is a real document .
Funny how reality is mimicking fiction on an almost daily basis now.
Just this morning , I was ruminating on the fact that we live in a world where The Man In The High Castle is a popular media show.

Original edition cover . Fair Use is invoked.

That such an obscure work by Phillip K. Dick should be fêted, restores my faith in humanity.
Then I get a rude awakening with endless news from the GOP rallies in the US, and I think how bizarre that reality Trumps fiction - in a cartoon way, almost.

To my mind, the evil spectre of modern Nazism was effectively lampooned in the film Iron Sky, in which a thinly veiled Sarah Palin - lookalike aims to lead the exiled Nazis from their hidden moonbase , on a warpath back to reclaim Earth.
Which was darkly funny.
Because it would never really happen...


Meanwhile, back in space...

The buzz at the moment seems to be around black holes - what they look like, how they grow, their potential for swallowing entire planetary systems, that sort of thing.
With this in mind, I share this download and print DIY  black hole game!
Fun for all the family - unless you lose the game and have to watch 'Event Horizon', with its grand guignol horrors , in which deep space exploration invokes a hellish reality . .literally.

In Closing...

 I am UK based and have been attempting to ignore the encroaching 'Black Friday' consumer thing - but Cards Against Humanity won the day for me, with their 'Nothing' sale, in which they sold absolutely nothing at five dollars a go, and raised over $70, 000 !
An admirable response to the lure of pure consumerist greed , except that I am also annoyed at my own failure to see the potential wealth inherent in exploiting irony. dammit.

The Dread Blank

That dreadline feeling...  

The image above is a collage I did, to show the feeling of impotent dread that accompanies approaching deadlines and 'writers block' .
Self-motivation is all very well, but sometimes I feel as though I should post a sign - 'gone fishing ', or somesuch - ' watch this space '.
I'm doubly anxious, as I foolishly decided to be gung - ho and join the writing challenge,  NanoWriMo this month, to bolster my writing ability. Ha!
Big fail.
The first thing I noticed was how sickeningly youthful everyone seemed and keen as mustard with those ludicrous word counts.
The proactive devices included constant pep talks via e-mail, and invites to forums and feelgood badges to mark every virtual mountain climbed and word count analysis and sage advice from Those Who Had Gone Before - they all combined to fire up my inner cynic -
' Hey, when I've finished doing all this, am I also expected to write 2000 words a day?'
In fairness, when I started, I was determined to write sequentially and coherently ;
which meant dotting the i's and crossing the T's
Bigger Fail.
That soon fell by the wayside, as I realised that there would be a further couple of months to 'fine tune' the Magnum Opus.
Which struck me as defeating the object a little.
So , I become even more cynical.
Then I just had to work on a new electronic nonsense (did I tell you that I occasionally make weird sounds ?)
After all, the Xmas Cash-In won't write itself.
I'll post a link when it's ready.
Ahem...
And oh, Xmas and Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and
Did I tell you that I am a World Class Procrastinator ?
Still, I wrote a stream of consciousness piece which I could concievably shoehorn into my space opera.
If  I introduce quantum mechanics and the idea of a parallel universe.
Where everyone speaks like a Monty Python character.
So, probably not then.
I've downsized my dreams.

I'm still quietly optimistic, however.
Hovering at 24,000 words...
Hey, there's a market for novellas, right?
Short attention spans, fast reads on the daily commute?
Good, because I hate those unwieldy six - book chronicles.


I digress - the purpose of this rant is to apologise for the lack of this weekly blog.
I hit the buffers.
Oddly enough, my original intention was just to post a notice about writers block, by way of apology.
So even this much is a bonus, yay! (waves ridiculously small flag).
Little victories.


Normal service will be resumed...promise!

The New Space Race , Venusian Landers and Old Arcade Games

Space is the new Gold Rush - or at least, Wild Frontier.
In the USA, congress just passed the 'US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act', which gives carte blanche to any rocket - fuelled entrepeneur seeking to mine gold in asteroids and suchlike.
We already have Dragon / Space X, but now we can add Planetary Resources, Blue Origin, and many others to the list.
Add to this, NASA are recruiting, so if you fancy being an astronaut, now is the time.
Not so much the Final Frontier as The Next Franchise then - although the lack of regulation may lead to some issues.
There is a whole subgenre of sci-fi films in which alien life forms are inadvertently brought to earth.
Perhaps we should complain, just in case.

Hubble, 25 years anniversary

In this age of online hyperbole and overused superlatives , these pretty pictures, mostly coming from Hubble, are genuinely mind - blowing .

Hercules A . Image revealed via two telescopes  ©NASA

The featured galaxy (the little white dot in the centre) is Hercules A, at the centre of which is a humungous black hole , with 2.5 billion times more mass than our sun.
Then of course, there is the distance through space in which the tails drift.
One and a half million light years, end to end.

Imagine the scene aboard a deep space craft -
"All that pinky reddishness - how much more ? "
"Oh...one and a bit million years if we maintain the current pace, travelling at 186 000 metres per second"
pause for mental calculation.
Resigned sigh.
"I'm done with pinky reddishness"

Infact, the colourful 'tail' was imaged from a radio telescope, so it is not in the normally visible spectrum for us mere mortals.
Plus, the above dialogue would never take place anyway, as Hercules A is one billion light years away,


Russia and NASA (not that NASA is a country, but really the alternative might be too shocking - yes, Russia and America, those old sparring partners of the Space Race, are to collaborate on a joint expedition to Venus - last explored by the Russian craft Venera 14* which was the first lander on another planet (for 57 minutes until it was simultaneously cooked and crushed at 865° F/ 90 x Earth Atmos ).

Fingers crossed for this bold venture.
Seems a little strange, though, particularly given that there are seemingly far more bounteous and hospitable worlds to be explored out there - but apparently they want to discover the whys and wherefores regarding Venus differing so much from Earth.
Being cynical and facetious, I hereby offer to save the billions of dollars the mission would cost by saying:
in my humble opinion, Venus differs wildly from Earth as it is much closer to an immense source of heat, and radiation .
There, puzzle solved - next?
Seriously though, it is believed in some circles that a cloud base could be created, floating above the Venusian surface, eradicating the unfortunate crushing pressure and heat (450 °C) at ground level.

Talking of probes to other worlds, here's a link to the actual descent of Huygens to Titan, one of Saturns moons. The Huygens landed in January 2005, and only lasted about an hour and a half (well, it was  -179° C , and Huygens didn't have a warm jumper), but its parent - craft, Cassini, is still up there, gathering data on the Saturn system.

Some dedicated person has created this very fab solar system infographic,free to download, laminate, and hang on the wall - ideal for any budding planetary scientist.

I'm feeling a little blank at the moment, so...
For lovers of free stuff and pointless things to do online.
Here , you can follow some retro fun links
Pointless light interplay online!
Actually, with small adjustments, you could create your own ' Dark Side of the Moon' style image...then you might want some ambient sounds to compliment it...

Retro games from this arcade online !

IN other news, the Oxford English Dictionary has declared an emoji as word of the year. the emoji signifies ' Tears of Joy' which in my book is three words, anyway. But such is the dumbing down of language. Or a universal solution to language barriers. I'm conflicted.

* There were other craft, but venera 14 was the only lander

Vanishing Planets , Alien Balls and Hydrogen Pi

In recent news, our closest Earth-like planetary neighbour, the snappily - named Alpha Centauri bb , a mere 4.3 light years away, has vanished.
 Conspiracy a go - go !
Not really, it was only discovered in 2012, and that was due to the wobble of a star which indicated an Earth-sized planet nearby.
The fact is that it may have never existed, just one problem when trying to determine an objects existence based on vague data.
So there we have the disappearance of something that possibly never was.
Good thing we didn't send out a probe, eh?

With the current increase in better quality telescopes free of light pollution (i.e. in orbit), it's surely only a matter of time before some entrepeneur offers unique planetary names, perhaps as gifts for the person who has everything, and whose tastes are jaded by constant indulgence and a lack of restraint , - which makes me wonder , given the proposed joint lunar mission between Europe and Russia, how are they going to negotiate all those lunar land deeds that have been sold ?

Oort cloud                                    © NASA jpg

In other news,astronomers have discovered the furthest object in the solar system , a small world known as V774104 in the Oort cloud .
If its orbit doesn't bring it closer to the sun, then apparently it will be of interest to astronomers (as a world from the beginning of the solar system) , but they're holding off until the orbit can be accurately determined - which takes a year.
Essentially they're hoping that its orbit has never been affected by Neptune.
Planetary scientist Michael Brown said :
"There's no reason to be excited yet".
Heady stuff, eh?

V774104  in all its glory...                         © S Sheppard, C Trujillo & S Tholen

Meanwhile back on Earth...
A flurry of metallic balls have dropped from the sky, four at the last count, in Spain and Turkey.
Possibly man-made and pertaining to satellites or even a hoax (check the smiling people handling the strange, possibly toxic objects...) hmmm...
Oddly though, this is news the day before the landing of the space junk known as WT1190F.
I say landing, but it's actually scheduled to crash into the ocean a few kilometres south of Sri Lanka.
That's if there is anything left after re-entry.
Interesting and odd though, that it should be flagged in advance, when so many similar incidents occur without prior information.

Cryovolcanoes on Pluto                  ©NASA/JPL/ Sci-News

In still other news, it is now believed that Pluto houses at least two cryovolcanoes, hinting at a subsurface ocean.
To reduce the scientific terms to reality : this means ice volcanoes.
The mind boggles.
Does this mean that they erupt in showers of snowballs ?
Or that, instead of molten lava slides, we have rivers of slush with dry-ice fog, for dramatic effect ?

Water is an element as much as fire, but how bizarre!
So, with Enceladus, Ganymede, possibly Europa and now Pluto, we have a slew of potential water worlds in our solar system.
Quite a change from the dry, rocky and cratered planets that were illustrated (artists depiction) in text books in my youth .
Infact, I remember being quite devastated that there was such a dissonance between tne exotic alien worlds presented in film and the likes of Star Trek, and the dull reality of our nearest neighbouring planets.

It is a thing, apparently!

Usb cable and quantum mechanics...

Bringing all this speculation down to an individual level - I read an interesting piece of conjecture which speculated that objects which are theoretically entangled - for instance, one in a black hole , and the other on the opposite side of the universe, could be conjoined by a wormhole.
Wormholes are a great sci-fi staple as a method of taking shortcuts through 'spacetime', and the idea of wormholes providing a link between two 'entwined' particles would neatly eliminate gaps in the theory of relativity, as well as giving us an example of quantum mechanics at work in our universe-
Why not? After all, the signs are already here, on an almost hum-drum level.
Seriously - a daily occurence.
For instance, say you want to insert a usb cable into your pc.
Annoyingly, it doesn't fit first time.
So you flip it, and try again. No.
Flip it again - it works .

This implies a superposition - a third state of readiness for the cable.
But we know it only has two sides...in this dimension.


Let's not stop there - a recent discovery is the presence of the equation pi in the base state of the hydrogen atom, which, if true, hints at a level of prior knowledge that defies linear time .


Until next time!

Space is The Place...or at least, it's the Transit Lounge

NASA have announced that Mars once had an atmosphere (it still does, but a mere shadow of its former self) when oceans, pools of rippling water and lush landscapes of alien vegetation were (possibly) the norm.
In this post - 'Matt Damon stranded on Mars' movie world, we seem  to be gearing up for the next phase - colonise Mars !

Mars pic NASA / Caltech / jpl

This is perhaps driven by the 1% who are keen to start anew, with a fresh, toxin - free world, where land rights, religion and sovereignty are not yet a problem.
It's certainly driven by the stark awareness of the declining stocks of fossil fuels.
Renewable energies could be embraced, but with the likes of Stephen Hawking advocating the colonisation of space, it seems inevitable.

We still have  the eternal struggle vis -a- vis Climate Change / Global Warming / whatever it's named now, but that seems almost irrelevant.
There's a sense of excitement in the air - and perhaps an understanding of why survival of the fittest is once again on the agenda.
After all we can't all go.
Altruism aside, would we have a televised battle for seats on the putative Mars Colonial Flyer ?

And what human traits would we export to that pristine world?
The law of the gun ?
Might is right ?

I digress - one conjectural step at a time - anyway, NASA are still plugging away at the question of exactly what happened to strip Mars of its presumably once rich atmosphere. This has been greatly helped by the sterling work of MAVEN which has captured a lot of information following a series of deep swoops through the remaining atmosphere.
The action of the sun and the lack of a global magnetic shield would appear to be the main culprits, so obviously we are projecting our own fears and trying to determine exactly what could cause such a dramatic change of fortunes.
Did Mars have a dinosaur -wipeout- style comet?
If so, where were the dinosaurs, anyway?

That's about the level of my personal interest.
We have evidence of fairly violent tectonic upheavals which would seem ideal for revealing fossils, yet no apparent traces.
That said, a sense of perspective is required.
After all , not all rock is fossiliferous.
In the U.K., if you examined the rock of Edgbaston you'd find nothing.
And was there ever intelligent life in Slough?
Curiosity has been roaming and examining Mars since 2012, but even so, it has only covered a tiny area of land.
Approximately six miles all told,
In the bigger scheme of things, that's like landing on an airport runway, examining a flat area of tarmac, and deciding that the whole world looks lke that.

Then, of course, there may never have been a developed world of abundant life at all...yet, given the previous existence of bodies of fresh and saline water, you'd think so.
Let's not forget that Curiosity is not technically rigged to discover evidence of life, even in the past tense, so perhaps we just don't have the right explorer there yet .


Meanwhile - the alleged alien megastructure may be no more than wishful thinking.
Having recently pointed the Allen Telescope Array towards solar system KIC 8462852, no radio transmissions have been found on the obvious wavelengths , to which I say, perhaps they are transmitting on the same frequency as everything else? After all, if it's good enough for our wi-fi, fridge, microwave, washing machine...

For true enthusiasts there is a more detailed pic available from ThinkGeek

...of course, the lack of almost instant response does not mean anything, really: after all , KIC 8462852 is 1500 light years away, which would create a considerable delay - to transmit and receive a reply would be at least three thousand years - that's if they reply immediately.
Then they might not even use radio. Or even exist.
Researching the whole radio signal angle, I found a wealth of material that pointed to the absurdity of any succesful 'contact' via that medium.
So much so, that I wondered whether SETI was just a pacifier.

Tractor Beams and Space Junk

Did you know that we 'Earthlings' are surrounded by a 'bubble' of our own sounds / t.v. / radio transmissions?
Apparently it stretches 200 light years around us, which is pretty big, but on a cosmic scale, is tiny.
And yet no aliens have been in touch.
Perhaps they saw X Factor.

In Other News...
Scientists in the uk have successfully manipulated a physical object  using only sound waves.
Okay, so it's only a tiny bead, but it's a start.
Tractor Beams are real
The Future is now!

I was thinking of this the other day - the bewildering exponential curve of everything.
Is it me or is the curve of science and discoveries going through the (virtual) roof ?
In tihs blog, I tend to focus on a narrow band where my personal interests lie, which is mainly all things related to space travel and exploration.
In that field alone, we've seen some astonishing advances in this year - the first close up images from Pluto and its moons, ongoing examination of Mars by the Curiosity rover, now yielding details of ancient rock strata and riverbeds : we landed an explorer on a comet, whilst maintaining the benign presence of an orbiting mothership. Another explorer, (Cassini), which was tasked with mapping the moons of Saturn is now testing water plumes from Enceladus, Maven has just entered orbit around Mars, joining the Mars Express and Mars Reconnaisance Orbiter and moves are afoot to send initial human missions to Mars as well as further moon exploration  - a mooted joint venture between the ESA and Roscosmos.
'Dawn' is entering a lower orbit for final close passes of planetoid Ceres in December .
And meantime, one of our furthest explorers, New Horizons is heading for rendezvous with KBO 2014MU69
Keppler is searching for exoplanets in the 'habitable zone' of distant stars.
Voyagers one and two are heading into deep space.
It's busy out there...

  It's a busy solar system! No parking at any time...                     pic by Olaf Frohn . 

Then there's the ISS
As well as an endless band of satellites in a ring around us.
And space junk.
Officially known as 'Orbital Debris'.
At the last count 50,000 pieces orbiting planet Earth, ranging from tiny flecks of paint to objects the size of a family car

Speaking of which - did you know that an unknown object will fall to Earth on Friday 13th November ?
Unlucky for some.
Apparently it's hollow space junk, and whilst this is fairly common, this one is being monitored for reasons unknown.
It has even been given a classification : WT1190F (or WTF in popular parlance).
The 'WTF' is accurate really, as they actually don't know what it is - cue spooky music - (theremin)
Theories range from an alien vessel to the Biblical millstone cast into the sea by God, thus fulfilling Revelation 13- ahem.
Anyway, they are pretty sure it will land in the Indian Ocean, approximately 5 km south of Sri Lanka - and woe betide any local fisherman in that triangulation.

            Landing area of WT1190F  (approx 5 km)                      Pic © Bill Gray   Project Pluto

City In The Clouds

The oasis in the desert was a legendary mirage, a cruel taunt for those who were stranded, dying of thirst. For some reason it seemed to feature strongly in all the literature I read as a child. I learned that it was mere illusion - but not only in the desert.
Widely reported visions of a city in the clouds have recently spread from China.

Fata Morgana describes an illusion (usually inverted) caused by the action of cold air layers meeting heat haze in the atmosphere, showing a scene which is often miles away - the name itself is from a tradition associated with the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, who is said to have conjured illusions of castles in the air, thus luring sailors to their deaths...

Morgan Le Fay  by Frederick Sandys

Allusions have already been made to the obvious mythos - Heaven or Valhalla depending on your personal views - or more recently, the cloud city in 'The Empire Strikes Back' , or 'Columbia' from the game Bioshock Infinite.
Not to be outdone, similar strangeness was allegedly seen in Hastings-On-Sea , here in the U.K.
Ahem
Adding to the weirdness , an alleged photograph from the Netherlands showing what may or may not be an inter-dimensional vehicle emerging from a portal - or trapped in one, it's difficult to tell, really.
The last image has been linked theoretically to some quantum badness unleashed by the Large Hadron Collider . Black Holes and a gateway to Hell itself probably...
Much ado has been made and the phrase 'parallel universe' has been bandied around. 

Another theory which was given as a reason for the vision of a cloud city is Project Blue Beam, in which NASA are allegedly projecting holograms into the sky by way of faking an alien invasion.
Why?- is the obvious question, yet there are no obvious answers.
All I can say is this - given that NASA are so cash-strapped, and constantly with the begging bowl for further space exploration, it seems odd that they can spend so much time and money on massive holographic projections.
On the other hand, this is exactly what's been done to replace the giant Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban.
So maybe...

Megastructures revisited

Last weeks flurry of excitement - the strange dips in light from a nearby star-led to a rash of  bizarre theorising involving the mooted Dyson sphere, an energy gathering construct of truly monstrous proportions (big enough to encircle a star for the purpose of absorbing all of its energy).
As per usual, the internet got carried away in a frenzy of excited conjecture (myself included), and totally failed to take a deep breath and calm down.
for this reason, the very fact that the Dyson sphere does not actually exist outside of the realms of theoretical conjecture was ignored.
Ahem.
That is not to say it is impossible.
Just highly improbable.

Whatever the cause of the irregular fluctuations, it warrants a closer look.
They are already pointing a telescope in that direction, thanks to SETI , and a further bout of targetting will happen in January.

The Picture That Never Was , And Aliens That May Be

There is now an app that allows you to remove unwanted persons from your photos.
Not exactly news, but it got me thinking.
We live in a time that seems obsessed with correcting and retouching images.
I know this, because I get that twinge of discomfort whenever someone posts old photos where I'm usually looking awkward, and the ability to retouch, rendering everything just right, would be great!
Add to this, the endless variety of software to retouch images / add retro filters etc, and , voila!
When is a fake picture a real picture ?
When it's online, of course!
I remember reading a thread that discussed a black and white photo in an old magazine which had shown a group of men proudly standing around a downed pterodactyl . It was an old black and white photo, taken somewhere in the U.S.A
For years I was an avid collector of The Fortean Times and similar publications which might feature such a picture and after reading this piece, I became convinced that I had seen the actual photograph. The only question was which back issue ?
I searched through every issue, but no sign of such a picture.

One of a few photos of cowboys and pterodactyl

 Although I never found the actual photo, I am still convinced that I saw it.
Except that now I question whether I actually read such an article .
Anyway, this thread re-ignited my interest, and I promptly went online.
The resulting swathe of black/white images of old - western style images of men with a pterodactyl took me by surprise.
At first I felt vindicated.
Then came the doubt.
After all, these were surely fake.
But then why would anyone go to so much trouble posing / faking elaborate images of cowboys with a dead pterodactyl ?
By this time, my questioning mind had broken free of its real world shackles and now I was convinced that there really had been an incident out in the isolated deserts of the USA, where a group of hunters had managed to down a 'Thunderbird ', a missing link from prehistory.
It showed me how easy it is to fall for online reality.
The old adage that 'the camera never lies' is not true.
In some ways it never was, and photographic trickery is as old as the hills.

George Meliés

The difficult thing is that  we now live in the age of social media, with pictures taken as proof of places visited or deeds done - and yet, we also have increasingly sophisticated manipulation of images .
I think it's true to a degree that people are becoming more skilled at spotting photographic fakery, as 'Photoshopped' becomes a verb.
The internet has its own (n)etiquette, and linguistics - Lolcats, memes, selfies and suchlike.
On the one hand, it would seem that in the online world, people just want to be in control of their own image, but is there more to it ?
Is this all part of a merging between the worlds of human and machine?
Is our perception adjusting to fit ?

Earlier today I read of the 'self-awareness' computer being anticipated for 2049 , which sounds remarkably self-assured.
How can such a fixed date be asserted for something which is surely open to external influence ?
What if we are aided by an alien race who arrive before then, perhaps even driven by such self-aware technology, keen to impart its benefits to us ?
After all, despite being isolated in this far flung corner of the Milky Way, 6 billion living beings is a worthy sea of converts.

What if there were no such intervention and the whole thing was a promotion for a series of trashy robot overlord movies ?
That would be depressing.
Although, I'd expect robot 'movies' to have evolved by then, perhaps becoming multi-sensory VR driven 'experiences', the sort of thing depicted in 'We Can Remember It For You Wholesale'
The human mind plays tricks, and memories are easily fabricated or warped.
All it takes is a photograph.


This weeks interstellar news was the alleged discovery of what appear to be alien artefacts surrounding a star which is a mere 1500 light years distant.
It's intriguing also because it is one of 150,000 stars being examined for unusual traits by citizen scientists .
It is also the only one of the 150,000 stars which is dimming in such a strange fashion (something is occasionally obscuring 20% of light from the star)
Many have declared the object a 'Dyson' sphere , much to the consternation of the physicist responsible for the theory (and possibly the copyright holder of the bagless vacuum cleaners.)
Without getting embroiled in the theory, it could result in a visit from aliens.*

 The discovery has prompted calls for further exploratory assessment  via the Very Large Array  in Mexico, and time has been booked in January to point it in the direction of the star named VIC 8462852,in a search for the sort of radio signals which may indicate an advanced technological race of beings at work.
The next set of info should emerge in January 2016, when the requested pointing of the VLA may give us further insight.

Meanwhile, back in our own solar system...

Pluto - pits and streaks, each one is hundreds of metres long!

NASA made a recent announcement of the latest downloads from Pluto.
After what must seem like a millenia being neglected in the darkest , most distant corner of our solar system, Pluto is enjoying a moment in the spotlight!
Okay, so maybe I'm being over enthusiastic, but I am happy, as it plays into the other revelations of subsurface oceans, and dynamic geography apparent on other bodies in the solar system.
Like many others, I am guilty of being uninspired by memories of crudely drawn and dull coloured images of planets from childhood text books.
Infact, the only planetary information which I found interesting tended to be about the comparative scale of the worlds, and the incredible distances involved in any attempt to travel there, so the current glut of space exploration is pure joy!

* Hardcore trivia for conspiracy believers: the physicist who came up with the theory of Dyson spheres was Freeman Dyson. 
Freeman is the surname of the scientist / protagonist in the popular computer game Half-Life, involved in battling with a race of aliens who enter this world through a space portal...
Dyson is a popular bagless vacuum cleaner brand.
Thank you.

Postscript Addendum: 

Apologies for the 'scrappy' nature of this posting, it's been giving me technical headaches for some obscure reason, with whole swathes of material vanishing without even backup to refer to, requiring tedious rewrites and guesswork. 
Hopefully issues will be resolved - also, please feel free to send feedback on any aspect of this blog. It's lonely out here!