Young Sun Paradox Says Life Should Not Have Happened?

Yep, you read that right. IO9 posted an article that for all intents says that due to the energy output of Sol's when it was much younger could not have warmed the Earth enough to have liquid water and there for making life all but impossible. But since Earth teems with life, there is a bit of a paradox. The young sun paradox.

This is approximately how it works. In the early days of the solar system, the sun's output was only about 70 of today's levels. This means that there was not enough energy to maintain a liquid water environment on Earth and absolutely no running water on Mars which we know is NOT the case. This paradox was first put forward in the 70s by the likes of Carl Sagan.

From the article:

• A Penn State research team .. has created a new computer model that can simulate the Sun's evolution under various different starting condition. What they're searching for is the right combination of starting elements and internal conditions that could support an old, largely disregarded explanation: that the Sun was once more massive than it is now, and a fierce solar wind shrunk it to its present size.

How much bigger....anywhere from 2% to 10%  larger than it's present size.  That would mean that despite a lower output, the additional size means that the energy reaching Earth and Mars was pretty much the same.  

Check out the article here

Want a Free Satellite? Here is How To Get One!

Well I may be a bit disingenuous with the title, but as a recent Dvice article points out that NASA has a habit of making things that last well past their envisioned mission parameters. What usually happens then is NASA runs out of money and the Satellite or whatever is abandoned in place.

From the article:

• In an uncharacteristically common-sense move, NASA has decided to explore ways of continuing the science payoff of missions that it would otherwise have to scrap due to budget constraints.

Here is an example that the article pointed out. GALEX, an ultraviolet space telescope launched in 2003 to make an ultraviolet map of the sky is about finished with it's mission.  For all intents and purposes the spacecraft is almost completely functional, but since it is so far down on the funding list NASA would have turned it off and walked away from the complete system.   However, again from the article:

• NASA is considering the unprecedented move of transferring GALEX and its associated ground equipment to the California Institute of Technology (for free) so that the telescope can continue to collect data.

This sounds like a really great idea and pretty much a win win for any participating institution.  I imagine that there are unseen complications that I am not privy to, but just knowing that there are scientific equipment platforms  that could and will be abandoned....(like, for instance, when the Hubble is finally decommed, I wonder just how much science it could still do if they just gave it to someone?  I know, extreme but you see where I am going.) 

Plainly someone at NASA is thinking outside the box.......

Does the Voice in Your Head Sound Like You?

I know...I am really just ASKING for the jokes arn't I? But when you come to consider it - just exactly what does the voice in your head sound like and does it speak and pronounce words as well as you do when you speak out loud or read out loud? It is almost like a Philip K. Dick story writing itself huh?

Anyway, I came across this piece of strangeness in Boing Boing. It cites a study published last fall by psychology researchers at Britain's University of Nottingham. It really is an interesting question.

From the article

• Although you might think it's a given, previous studies have suggested that the voice you speak with and the voice you think with might not be pronouncing words quite the same.

The surprising or not so much result from the new study is that there is some parity between between audible and silent pronunciation.  Pretty much opposite what convention up to that point would have us believe.

Article writer Stan Carey goes into great detail on how the study was performed and as counter intuitive as it might seem, it IS an interesting read.  Click the article title to go to his Boing Boing article.

Beam Me Up episode 300 now online

Listeners of the live show said that this was a bit of a “giggly” episode. Well considering that this was episode 300 I was a bit giddy plus a few of the station’s show hosts were out in studio 3 making sure I didn’t get too serious.  All in all I have had several listeners call or email to let me know that they really enjoyed everything about the episode.  Cant beat that!

Anyway, this week I play episode four of our favorite Psychic detective Jack Garrett on New Arden in “In Plain Sight” by Jason Kahn. I then review the movie “I am Number Four” blu-ray and as luck had it  was able to find a cut of one of the songs to play, Adel’s “Rolling in the Deep” is used in the movie very effectively I might add. From there we head back to the Beam Me Up blog and talk about Mars reaching aphelion this week and play a report on the event from Earth Sky. I find a Youtube short that shows a fascinating experiment on-board the ISS concerning of all things, knitting needles and drops of water! Boing Boing posts a link to a decidedly weird video from the band Total Ghost called “Space Station” now what is really funny about this is that SpaceX founder Elon Musk Tweeted this video saying it would be an appropriate theme song for their efforts to get private industry into space. Even though the video is totally out there the mind set is really dead on! Scientists from Russia have finally reached the surface of Lake Vostok more than two miles under Antarctica ice! Back to Earth Sky, I run an article on the discovery of more of brown dwarf class y stars. These stars are some of the more unusual of their class.

Finally I play a story from this month’s Antipodean flash fiction site. This story is called “Love in a Time of Entropy” by Geordie McLeod and is a great short story that I had a great deal of fun reading.

That’s pretty much it for episode 300. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed doing it. Thanks.

Demonstration of Water Droplets Orbit a Knitting Needle on the ISS

In this YouTube video we watch as astronaut Don Pettit performs a demonstration of the physics of electrical charges and spheres using of all things, knitting needles. The demonstration is instantly fascinating as Pettit releases small droplets along the length of the needle. You can instantly see the correlation to orbital mechanics even though Pettit takes great pains to caution that theses are static fields in operation and that objects orbiting a body in space are gravitational. Still, Pettit never fails to amaze and fascinate. Check this video out.