Beam Me Up Episode 473 is online

Welcome to episode 473 of Beam Me Up.

This week is a David Scholes episode.

I open with David's Feeding Time, Then from the blog a review of the latest Captain America movie, troubles with China's space station, a possible SETI class radio signal plus others. 

The closing story is Not So Brave New World. Plus other odds and ends I hope you enjoy. 

To listen to the program, please click HERE

Kepler - 56 Prepairing For a Great Meal

In 2012  Kepler-56 was discovered. Planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c were subsequently confirmed.  The Kepler 56 planetary system is a bit odd however.  First, it was discovered that the orbits of its two planets are about 45° misaligned to the host star's equator. Even weirder is the possibility of a "ghost" planet in the mix.  The scientists though are calling it a gravitational perturbator.   Mainly because it is not clear if it is a nearby star or a third planet.

That would be enough strangeness for several star systems, but Kepler 56 has been exciting the
astrophysicists.   Kepler 56, roughly 1 Sol mass, is going off main sequence and becoming a red giant.  In doing so, it will engulf its two closest in planets Kepler-56b and Kepler-56c.  But wait...there's more!

From the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysic, the lead author on the paper of this discovery, Gongjie Li said:

• "As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,"

The prediction is for the event to happen soon, by astronomical standards. Their ends will come in 130 million and 155 million years, respectively.

Since Kepler 56 is so much like our sun that these observations  provides a glimpse into the future of our solar system.

Wikipedia link HERE       Phys.org link HERE

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

"As far as we know, this is the first time two known exoplanets in a single system have a predicted 'time of death,'" says lead author Gongjie Li of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-06-star-swallow-planets.html#jCp

Asteroids have rings, too?!

Wow, I think my head just exploded!  

Out between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune - orbits 10199 Chariklo, an asteroid-like object that's a little more than 90 miles in diameter.  It may be small, but Charriklo shares a feature similar to it's gas giant neighbors....rings.  

Astronomers think Chariklo has two flat, dense, thin rings, about 4.3 miles  and 2 miles in width, with a 5.5-mile gap between them.

Read the complete Pop Sci article HERE

The Milky Way May Have Formed Center Out!

Scientists studying how the Milky Way formed, using one of the worlds largest telescopes the 8-m VLT in Chile, have uncovered evidence that our galaxy formed from the center  out.

That evidence comes in the form of 'metallicity' or the amount of metal contaminants found in a star.  Older first generation stars are made up of mostly hydrogen and helium, which were the most common elements available shortly after the big bang.   But as the larger short lived stars aged out, the level of contamination metals rose with younger stars now having a higher levels than first generation stars.  

With this piece of the puzzle in hand, astronomers began a systematic study of stars with a wide range of  locations in the Galactic disc.   

Our star named Sol lays mid-way out along one of the Milk Way's spiral arms.   At this distance, it takes Sol roughly 250 million years to complete an orbit around the galactic center.    The researchers called this orbit the Sol Circle and look at stars both inside and outside the "circle" to determine their metallicity.  

From the Science Daily article:

• The team have shown that older, 'metal-poor' stars inside the Solar Circle ......The stars that lie in the outer regions of the Galactic disc -- outside the Solar Circle -- are predominantly younger...... 'metal-rich' stars.

For more, check out the Science Daily article HERE

***UPDATE*** Evidence Ison Survived

***UPDATE***
Information from the IO9 blog has some pretty disapointing news:

From the blog

• After a weekend of hemming and hawing from experts, the sun-grazing ball of ice and dust has been declared officially dead. Again. Except this time, it's pretty much for sure

As you can see, as of Nov 30 Ison had disintegrated into a dusty smudge.  The Bad Astronomy site has a killer time lapse video
Here

Evidence in the form of  material, appeared, streaming away, on the other side of the sun,  which appeared in  NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory late in the evening on Nov. 28, 2013. This seemed to

indicate that Comet ISON survived, at least in part, it's close encounter with the sun and now it is on a trajectory that will fling it out of the solar system proper.

The question now is whether it is just left over debris  or some portion of the comet's nucleus. Analysis supplied from staff at the NASA's Comet ISON Observing Campaign suggest that it may be at least a small portion of the comet's nucleus.

For more information on Comet ISON: www.nasa.gov/ison

Earth Visible Supernova Possible in Next 50 Years?

According to THIS "The Daily Galaxy"  - 

• Astronomers  calculate: the odds that, sometime during the next 50 years, a supernova in the Milky Way galaxy will be visible from Earth.  the odds are much better at nearly 100 percent that such a supernova would be visible to telescopes in the form of infrared radiation.

 The Daily Galaxy reports:

• A new study suggests that they have a solid chance of  detecting a supernova fast enough to witness what happens at the very beginning of a star going supernova. 
• Professor of astronomy at Ohio State,  Christopher Kochanek said, “We see all these stars go supernova in other galaxies, and we don’t fully understand how it happens. We think we know, we say we know, but that’s not actually 100 percent true...."

This Daily Galaxy article is really very good.   Check it out HERE

Rogue Planets!!

From The Daily Galaxy

In a huge cloud of gas and dust 4600 light years from Earth in the the Rosette Nebula exists tiny, round, dark clouds. Dubbed "globulettes" these strange formations have the right characteristics to form free-floating planets with no parent star.

• 
  
• The Rosette Nebula is home to more than a hundred of these tiny clouds. This observation from 
• Gösta Gahm, astronomer at Stockholm University. These structures are very small, each with diameter less than 50 times the distance between the Sun and Neptune with an estimate that most of them are of planetary mass, less than 13 times Jupiter’s mass. 

From the Article:

• Previous research has shown that there may be as many as 200 billion free-floating planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way. Until now scientists have believed that such “rogue planets”, which don’t orbit around a star, must have been ejected from existing planetary systems. New observations of tiny dark clouds in space point out another possibility: that some free-floating planets formed on their own.

Read complete article

Don't Look Now, But We Have 2k Rogue Black Holes Tailing Us!

Does the thought of this kinda give you nightmares?  It should...you know that horrid old gag they still pull in scary movies?  You know, when someone calls on the phone to say the killer is right there in the house!  Well we may have 2 thousand of the worst type of  dealers of death practicably in the same room with us! And are we talking about your average singularity?  nope Galaxy class Black Holes.

How is this possible?  Haven't we been told that when a galaxy starts to form, its the central black hole that is powering the growth, right?  Well yeah, up to a point.  But when galaxies merge, the complex gravitational dance that can eject one of the massive central black holes.

Implausible as that sounds, astronomers have found evidence that in the space just outside the Milky-way of thousands of orphan black holes.


IO9 article

 Credit: Aurore Simonnet/Sonoma State University/NASA.

Traveling at Near Light Speed. What Would it Look Like?

How many times have we seen the light speed effect in the movies or on TV?  You know, the cool streaming stars of Star Trek and Star Wars.  But honestly, what would it look like if you were say, looking out a front view port.  

Well what I think is that the closer you get to C the narrower your point of view.  By this I mean is an effect like going from a wide angle lens to a telephoto at full extension.  One gives you a very wide view field and the other very narrow.  At a significant percentage of C your complete view of the universe would be a narrow point of light straight ahead.  But then that's what I have been able to garner from reading.  I came across the very same question in a recent Dvice article. 

Physics students at the University of Leicester decided to take on the task and do the math and this is what they came up with as you approach light speed and look out a view port:

Humm, not so far off!  But exactly what are we looking at.   Well in a nutshell the Doppler Effect.  Matter of fact this shows that light DOES have properties that are wave like.  But I digress  as you travel, light waves ahead of you are compressed, this would "narrow" the field of view  (and moves the frequency into the blue spectrum and then think about light behind you....and how we know the universe is expanding...hummm) of course as you get within a few thousands of a percentage the doppler would compress the light well past what the human eye can detect so there is a point where everything is completely dark. 

IO9 article

    

How Do We Know The Earth is Round?

I know, the lunatic fringe even has the Earth flat, when you are asked the worst come back is "because it is!!" So, check out these Top 10 Reasons Why We Know the Earth is Round. It gives some fascinating thought experiment and real world ones as well. Not heavy, just fun stuff!

Why is the Night Sky Dark?

Sounds like a pretty simple kids question, does it not? And of course, as adults with faaaaaaah greataaaaaaaaah knowledge know this answer. Well I got my mind blown with this video. Yes the simplistic answer is that the sky is bright in the day because the Sun's radiated energy is absorbed and retransmitted and defused by the atmosphere. But you know what? That is only partially right. I am not going to ruin it for you by giving a spoiler talk. Play the video and then, see if you are not properly struck dumb!

BMU #332 Now On Line

****UPDATE***
For some reason, mainly not paying attention, the newest episode 332 was labeled 331 even though all the links went to 332 it could have led to some confusion so I have updated the file title.  Sorry for the confusion.

Here is episode 332 of Beam Me Up, for your enjoyment!

 yaaaeeeeee are we excited yet? Wow, tough crowd.... Well, anyway, I warm up with an oldie, Thomas Dolby's She blinded me with science.

Next is the first story of the afternoon, Mark Webb's The Gloriously Cunning plan which demonstrates that even the best laid plans can often be unraveled when one does not take in crucial facts.

Up next is Star Trek Trivia with two new trivia questions!

Ok, now on to the BMU blog!

Have you heard about planet Nibiru? If no, then listen to with Earth Sky article I found!

I rented both of the animated Ultimate Avengers animated straight to disk movies. The first movie in particular really followed the Marvel Avenger history line.

Check out my reviews of both movies on disk. And on the ISS, NASA, with shades of Apollo 13, two EVA astronauts assure the continuation of some of the critical systems with some unusual parts!

Is FTL possible? NASA steps back and rethinks it's position as some high level mathematics which, on paper, seem to show that it might just be possible with far lower energy requirements than was previously calculated!

And finally, part 5 of Edward McKeown's The Dive. Enjoy!

Evidence Found of a Red Giant Devouring a Planet

In a recent post on the IO9 blog, astronomers from the from the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, Poland have released data concerning red giant BD+48 740 that shows evidence of absorbing one of its close in planets.

This evidence takes the for of elements that are usually not found in start, especially older ones, due to the heat and pressure, that destroys many of the less stable elements, in this case lithium, which shows up in unusually high concentrations.

Also other massive planets in the same system have erratic, elliptical orbits, which seems to indicate a missing planet.

For more, read the IO9 article here

Beam Me Up episode 324 is now online

Here we are again for another week of Beam Me Up. This week in episode 324, I start off with an article posted by Kallamis who noted that we have lost one of our greatest scientific and space ...I have to say it...heroes Sally Ride . I note how little recognition Mz. Ride received for being the United States' first woman in space among many other accomplishments.

Next is our first story of the afternoon. I had started reading some golden age science fiction only to discover that Librivox had both of these excellent pieces of fiction already available, so what had started as a celebration of some of the early days of written fiction, instead becomes additionally an example of some of the great fiction available on Librivox!

The first story is “I am a Stranger here Myself” by Mac Reynolds.

Fast on the heals of our first story is Star Trek Trivia. I answer last week's questions and ask two more more trivia questions.

This week I found 3 very good article from Earth Sky that really cover a variety of scientific questions.
I am certain you will enjoy this week's Earth Sky section.

The final article from the blog was an excellent run down of the newest Mars exploratory vehicle called the Mars Mobile Vehicle or Curiosity that is due to land on Mars the sixth of August and there is supposed to be close to live broadcasting as they can get it. Of course there has been some confusion about how live “live” will be, but I am just anxious to see that it arrives healthy!

And finally another Librivox offering called Cully by Jack Egan which details a very mysterious walk across the ocean bottom.

Enjoy!

Hyper-velocity Ejected Star

Now here is another truly strange character - Ejected Stars or Rogue Stars if you like. These are stars that astronomers say are or were ejected from the MW galaxy.

It would seem however that this is an extremely difficult thing to do. Here is an excerpt of the Science Daily article that gives you an idea just HOW difficult.

• the primary mechanism (for ejecting stars from the milky-way galaxy) that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes requires a close encounter with the super-massive black hole at the galaxy's core.

It seems that it is so difficult and thus so rare that only sixteen hyper-velocity stars have been verified, and even though they have enough speed to eventually leave the Milky Way all together, they are still "inside" the galaxy.

However this may not be the case completely. Here is another excerpt.

• Vanderbilt astronomers report in the May issue of the Astronomical Journal that they have identified a group of more than 675 stars on the outskirts of the Milky Way that they argue are hyper-velocity stars that have been ejected from the galactic core.

Very strange indeed.  Here is the link to the rest of the Science Daily article

Picture shows Four runaway stars plowing through regions of dense interstellar gas and creating bright bow waves and trailing tails of glowing gas. The stars in these NASA Hubble Space Telescope images are among 14 young runaway stars spotted by the Advanced Camera for Surveys between October 2005 and July 2006 (from wikipedia.org)

Dark Energy, it would seem, Has Been Confirmed

From the IO9 blog comes information that researchers have been able to confirm the existence of Dark Energy. This proof is in the form of a study called the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, or BOSS. This "survey" examined 300+ thousand galaxies with an average age/distance of six billion years. This time in the age of the universe is a telling time. The universe reach a point where matter density/gravity could no longer slow, let alone reverse, the outward expansion. At this point the repulsive forces of dark energy came into play and began speeding up the expansion.

But there is still a problem. We can see the effects, but not what is causing said effect. It is hoped that by studying the 300 plus thousand galaxies, it is hoped that scientists will be able to determine more and hopefully what this mysterious force really is.

One of the effects that the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey has been able to
observe some of the effects of and there by hinting that they are indeed on the right track is the Baryon Oscillation for which the study is named for. The Baryon Oscillation were massive oscillations, sound waves if you like, that took place very shortly after the big bang (30 thousand years or so) These sound waves ultimately could have been responsible for the overall make up of the Universe billions of years ago.

Check out the IO9 article here
BBC News online
Wiki on Baryon Oscillation Survey

Exoplanet's Moons Might Be the Best Bet For Finding Life

Habitable moons....somehow the thought is attractive. I am reading an article on IO9 that makes a good argument for finding extra-solar forms of life be found on habitable moons. This is how the numbers stack up.  Scientist have presently discovered 716 exo-planets, the problem being that to contain life they must be positioned in the narrow "life" zone that supports liquid water and most of the discovered worlds are gas giants, in to close to their primary and therefor way too hot.  But there are over a hundred planets discover that ARE in the habitable zone. But in a cruel twist, most of these are also gas giants.

Scientists have started to speculate about the moons that may well circle these gas giants.  Since they too would be in the habitable zone they could be a very real possibility.   None of course have been discovered to this date, but that is hardly a surprise.  Just finding the planets themselves is a daunting procedure,  uncovering exo-moons is much more so.

Right now with the present detection capabilities of the most powerful telescopes and space based platforms can not detect a moon much  smaller than 1.3 times the size of Earth.  That is a very real area of concern.  Many of the moons we consider good candidates for life in our own solar system fall well below that mark.

Read the complete IO9 article that describes the difficulty of detecting these small worlds.  HERE

Another good reference article here in Centauri Dreams

Smallest Black Hole Discovered

It has indeed been a productive month for black holes. Record setting absolutely huge black holes as big as our solar system has set the record for the largest super massive black hole.

But NASA has discovered a black hole that sets a record for another reason. Being one of the smallest ever discovered. Object IGR J17091-3624 is very very small. In fact, it's probably only three times as massive as the Sun! Dangerously close to the lower limit that could for a black hole at all! Any less massive and it would have stopped collapsing well short of becoming a black hole all together.

More information is available on NASA's site.  

Will The Universe Ever Truly End?

Hey, ready to get your mind twisted? Ok, here we go.

It has been observed that the universe is expanding and at the edge of the universe the expansion is accelerating. Astronomers have extrapolated this accelerating expansion to such a point that at some point in the vastly distant future all matter will so separated that everything stops as all energy is used up.

Well Roger Penrose in a word calls this view boring, matter of fact, incredibly boring. He wrote in

Cycles of Time: An extraordinary new view of the universe:

• the only remaining particles will be massless
  

This would take place because the standard theory says that the acceleration would continue and the mass of everything approaches infinity which for all intents is the same as saying that if everything is infinite mass then mass loses meaning or all is massless and therefor traveling at the speed of light. Well we know what happens when mass approaches infinite as related to space/time.... yep time slows and at some point if acceleration continues....stop or at least lose all meaning.

Read Roger Penros's exerpts here and I also see links there if you're brave enough...

Billion Pixel Camera!

You read that correctly. A billion pixels and it's not some trick multi camera stunt but the worlds biggest digital camera.

From the article:

• Gaia's gigantic sensor is comprised of 106 separate CCD detectors, mosaiced together to form a monster camera over three feet wide. The resulting imaging system is so powerful that it will be able to precisely measure the width of a hair from over 600 miles away, and from here on Earth, it could spot a dime on the moon.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Sorry..... Gaia is a spacecraft built by the ESA due to be launced in 2013. The spacecraft will spend five years creating a three dimensional map of our entire galaxy. It is hoped that Gaia will detect 15,000 new alien planets. It will also focus it's high resolution eye towards quasars, brown dwarfs and 10 stars with planets orbiting them plus it's hoped that the system will catch 1 of 10 stars that explode in other galaxies each day.

Here is the ESA's Gaia site