Afraid Of Global Warming? Don’t Be.

Be Afraid of the Sun. Be Very Afraid

150 years ago this week something very interesting happened, up there, in the sky. Except for telegraph operators on the east coast, most people in the US did not know, or care, until the sky lit up in the evening.  It was very pretty.

On Sept. 2, 1859, at the telegraph office at No. 31 State Street in Boston at 9:30 a.m., the operators’ lines were overflowing with current, so they unplugged the batteries connected to their machines, and kept working using just the electricity coursing through the air.

In the wee hours of that night, the most brilliant auroras ever recorded had broken out across the skies of the Earth. People in Havana and Florida reported seeing them. The New York Times ran a 3,000 word feature recording the colorful event in purple prose.

“With this a beautiful tint of pink finally mingled. The clouds of this color were most abundant to the northeast and northwest of the zenith,” the Times wrote. “There they shot across one another, intermingling and deepening until the sky was painfully lurid. There was no figure the imagination could not find portrayed by these instantaneous flashes.”

It must have been cool.

If it happened today, most all of the world’s – all certainly this country’s – communications would shut down. The vast majority of the hardware we use to run civilizations today would be fried. Permanently. You may expect your TV, PC and even phone to not work. But your stove, if it is less that say, 10 years old, has a chip in it. Fried. Your car, if it’s not an antique, has one also.  Several of them, in fact.  So don’t expect it to start.  And your alarm system at work?  As Tony Soprano would say, fugeddaboudit.  That’s okay.  Tony’s much more interested in the bank.  Oh yes, the back-up battery there will work, but not the alarm that’s wired to the communications grid.

Civilization would come back alright, should such an event occur tomorrow.  None of this is stuff that we can’t rebuild or replace (or do without, mind you).  But the effort would be slow, costly and probably uncomfortable. Some who otherwise might live, will die.

Late last year, the National Academies of Science put out a report on severe space weather events. If a storm even approaching 1859 levels were to happen again, they concluded the damage could range upwards of a $1 trillion, largely because of disruptions to the electrical grid.

What’s interesting to contemplate is that the solar storm that triggered the events of Sept 2, 1859 was not a singular event.  Solar storms – solar flares that strike the earth – happen several times a year.  Only the magnitude of this particular storm was unusual, and that’s only because mankind has not known how to – or even to – look for such things for very long.  Solar storms are not conjecture based on models and derived hypotheses based on scant data.  Indeed, they are a fact of nature.

So Is It A Planet?

And Why Not???

Pluto From New Horizons

From CNN on-line:

It was three years ago Monday that the International Astronomical Union demoted Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet, a decision that made jaws drop around the world.

An outcry followed, textbooks had to be rewritten, long-held beliefs were shattered, and many people felt our cosmic neighborhood just didn’t seem the same with eight — instead of nine –planets in the solar system.

Well, even though I was working on the New Horizons Mission to Pluto at the time, my jaw didn’t exactly drop. The debate had been going on for awhile. Besides. It’s just nomenclature. As it was, ever since Arthur C. Clarke pointed out that Europa was every bit as interesting as Jupiter, astronomically speaking, many of us had sort of realized early on that there was more to the Solar System than just planets, comets and asteroids.

Not that planets were downgraded, mind you. It was more like everything else was upgraded in importance. The icing on that particular cake was that astronomers began to realize that even the planets were more varied than originally supposed. There weren’t just two kinds; rocky like the Earth and gaseous-giants like Jupiter. It seems better now to recognize that Uranus and Neptune might be yet a third class – with interiors that are much different than the others, and with unique formation-histories to boot. The discovery of large ice-balls in the outer solar system, of which Pluto is  the earliest known (and probably best) example, is merely the last step in that march.

So, planet or no, Pluto is going to be a great place to visit.  Too long a commute to live there, however.

In The Dictionary Under “Complete Waste”

The International Space Station

Although it may happen that they keep it up until 2020, NASA wants to decommission the ISS earlier, in 2016.  Oddly, this is not news.  The ISS has been pretty much a useless endeavour ever since it was downsized to approximate a large tin can in the late ’80s, and has cost the U.S. taxpayers something like $100 billon (yes, billion with a b).

Perhaps I should not hold back so much and say how I really feel.  From PopSci.com:

Despite nearing completion after more than a decade of construction, and recently announcing some upcoming improvements to accompany its full crew of six astronauts, NASA plans to de-orbit the International Space Station in 2016. Meaning the station will have spent more time under construction than completed.

With the space shuttle being decommissioned and the Ares is doubt, it was inevitable.  This is what happens when the goal is politics, instead of exploration and science.

Waxman-Markey

Cap and Trade

Al Gore

If you Google Waxman-Markey, the ‘Climate Change Bill’ coming up in Congress this week, you’ll see that opinions on it are all over the map. Waxman-Markey Will Mandate Greener Building, Drive Green Renovation, Waxman’s Economy Killer, Waxman-Markey bill to address indirect land use change, Global warming bill still contains some smoke and mirrors, – no two giving the same opinion.

It’s a difficult topic, because it touches on economics, science and yes, politics. From an economic point of view, Megan McCardle notes that the bill seems to be low-cost.

But the real question, I think, is whether the low cost is a feature or a bug. The only way a bill is going to have an impact is if it causes real financial pain to American households–enough to get them to change their behavior. Waxman-Markey obviously is not going to do that. And indeed, the projections of its effect on global warming are entirely negligible.

Why should that be? Does this economist have the science to back up that statement?  No, and she doesn’t need it.  She explains that the reason is political, not scientific.  The reason is  – China.

China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India. Global warming isn’t even high on the list of environmental concerns they’ll want to attack as they get rich; local air pollution is far more pressing. Thinking that we’re somehow going to lead them by example is like thinking that poor rural teens are going to buy electric cars because Ed Begley jr. has one.

In other words, if you believe that climate change is anthropological in nature, you must believe that nothing is going to change until and unless China and India come on-board.

Well, what about the rest of the world? From RealClearPolitics, Robert Tracinski and Tom Minchin point out that it’s not happening in other countries either.

As the US Congress considers the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, the Australian Senate is on the verge of rejecting its own version of cap-and-trade. The story of this legislation’s collapse offers advance notice for what might happen to similar legislation in the US—and to the whole global warming hysteria.

So what do the scientists say? Dr. James Hansen, the director of the Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS) said this, as he was being arrested:

I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen. Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient. Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished.

I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think he’s saying that the science doesn’t matter; it’s what people feel is right that matters. That sort of works, because the science is apparently being ignored. But contra Hansen, it’s being ignored for the politics. The scientists are playing politics.

A source inside the Environmental Protection Agency confirmed many of the claims made by analyst Alan Carlin, the economist/physicist who yesterday went public with accusations that science was being ignored in evaluating the danger of CO2.

The source, who chooses not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said that Carlin was rebuffed in his attempt to introduce scientific evidence that does not accord with the EPA’s view of global warming, which largely relies on IPCC reports.

Kevin Mooney at the Washington Examiner publishes on the story:

Scientific findings at odds with the Obama Administration’s views on carbon dioxide and climate change are being suppressed as a result of political pressure, officials at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) charge.
“This suppression of valid science for political reasons is beyond belief,” said CEI General Counsel Sam Kazman. “EPA’s conduct is even more outlandish because it flies in the face of the president’s widely-touted claim that ‘the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over.’”

If this story was about anthrax, possible political manipulation in Congress and scientific intrigue, the story would not sell.  It is a mess, too convoluted, too unbelievable.  And there it is.  We buy it, we believe it’s plausible – why exactly?

Enceladus Is All Wet

…And Is A Moon of Saturn

Geysers on Enceladus

Arrggg! So much news today! But the most interesting (unless you’re a real Michael Jackson fan) is from a paper published in the British journal Nature, by Frank Postberg of the University of Heidelberg.

The Cassini spacecraft has found what may be the strongest evidence yet that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus has an ocean beneath its icy surface. If the liquid water finding is confirmed, it would suggest that the moon may be one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of past or present extraterrestrial life.

This is significant.

Saturns Moon Enceladus

You see, there are three ingredients necessary for life; an energy source, a good mix of organic chemicals (both of which Cassini has found on Enceladus already), and water.  Liquid water.

Researchers in Europe detected salt particles in the volcanic vapour-and-ice jets that shoot hundreds of kilometres (miles) into space, the strongest evidence to date of a liquid ocean under the moon’s icy crust.

If Jupiter’s moon Europa also has oceans below its frozen surface, the number of places in the solar system with the potential to harbor life is starting to look distinctly greater than 1.

Cassini has been circling Saturn since 2004.

Staring At The Sun

Not a Flower

But Not For Too Long

What you see in the picture is not a flower, but a sunspot, close up.  Very close up.  The scale shown on the full size image indicates a bar that spans 10 million meters, or about 6,100 miles.  For comparison, the Earth’s diameter is about 8,000 miles.  What’s causing those flares, filiments and tongues of fire?  Why, magnetic fields, of course.

But you knew that.  You see, at the temperature of the Sun’s surface it’s hot enough (about 5,000 deg. K.) that electrons don’t stay tied to the nucleus of hydrogen (and some helium) very long, and go flying off.  That leaves a lot of naked, electrically charged stuff floating around for magnetic fields to play with, and boy, do they have a good time wallowing in all that plazma.

But that’s not the best part of that photogragh.  From Anne Minard at Universe Today:

In the just-released image above, the interface between a sunspot’s umbra (dark center) and penumbra (lighter outer region) shows a complex structure with narrow, almost horizontal (lighter to white) filaments embedded in a background having a more vertical (darker to black) magnetic field. Farther out, extended patches of horizontal field dominate. For the first time, scientists have modeled this complex structure in a comprehensive 3D computer simulation, giving scientists their first glimpse below the visible surface.

It’s good to know about the inner workings of the Sun, and sunspots are the portal through which we can study the sun’s interior.  Why should we bother?  There are two very good reasons.

Sunspots are the most striking surface manifestations of solar magnetism, and they are associated with massive ejections of charged plasma that can cause geomagnetic storms and disrupt communications and navigational systems. They also contribute to variations in overall solar output, which can affect weather on Earth and exert a subtle (and as-yet deciphered) influence on climate patterns.

A quote from Matthias Rempel, a scientist at NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory:

“If you want to understand all the drivers of Earth’s atmospheric system, you have to understand how sunspots emerge and evolve. Our simulations will advance research into the inner workings of the Sun as well as connections between solar output and Earth’s atmosphere.”

That’s the best reason.

The 0.1 Second Brushoff

Ohhhh – This Hurts!

From PhyOrg.com, another reason to be so glad I’m married to the AstroWife…

Our brains get a first impression of people’s overriding social signals after seeing their faces for only 100 milliseconds (0.1 seconds). Whether this impression is correct, however, is another question. Now an international group of experts has carried out an in-depth study into how we process emotional expressions, looking at the pattern of cerebral asymmetry in the perception of positive and negative facial signals.

Hummm… Back in my bachelor days I noted with some chagrin that most women I saw in the grocery store spent much more time considering loaves of bread on the shelves than I ever saw them considering men in the local bar.  Well, me, anyway.

That’s when I stopped going to bars.   So glad those days are over.

Some Untruths

Things We Thought Were True, But Are Not

When I was learning this stuff, I was told that:

• Astronomers would never see planets circling other stars
• We can see almost to the end of the universe and almost count everything that’s there
• The universe will stop expanding one day, and may even start to contract
• You’ve been as constant as the Northern Star, the brightest star that shines

Oh wait – that last one is from a song by Gerry Rafferty.  It’s as wrong as all the other things in the list, though (Polaris, the “Northern Star”, is neither the brightest star, nor is it constant in brightness).

The latest bit of knowledge circa 1960 that’s gone “poof!” is the idea that the Earth’s atmosphere is pretty solidly connect to the planet, and is shielded from solar storms by the Earth’s magnetic field.  These storms and the solar wind would otherwise drive the atmosphere off the planet.  But unlike Mars, the air is not leaking away.

Oh yeah?

This may mean our planet’s magnetic shield may not be as solid a protective screen as once believed when it comes to guarding the atmosphere from an assault from the sun.

Researchers were stunned to discover recently that Earth is losing more of its atmosphere than Venus and Mars, which have negligible magnetic fields.

Once again, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I still feel fine.

Hubble Repair Mission Launch

Monday, May 11, 2009, 2:01 EDT

This will be the 5th and final Hubble repair mission.

With two non-functioning cameras, the orbiting telescope is all but blind now.  NASA engineers readily admit that they’re going for broke with this ambitious mission, which will replace those cameras and upgrade a host of other sub-systems on the 19 year old observatory. Says Tariq Malik at Space.com:

If all goes well, the astronauts will leave Hubble’s vision and science capability more powerful than ever before by the end of the 11-day mission. Atlantis is also carrying a set of IMAX 3-D cameras to document Hubble’s last service call for a film slated to be released in spring 2010.

To see live coverage on your PC, go here for information or here for a live feed.

HST was designed to last a minimum of 15 years in space, but it was hoped that with well timed servicing missions it would be up there for 25. With this mission, the telescope should easily be able to last that long. Getting to this point has been sometimes problematic.

NASA canceled an Atlantis mission to extend Hubble’s operational life in January 2004 because the trip was considered too risky in the wake of the 2003 Columbia tragedy that killed seven astronauts. But public pressure and the development of safer shuttle technology led the U.S. space agency to reconsider.

As I type this, the weather report for launch could not be better.

Stephen Hawkings Is Gravely Ill

Above and Beyond the Usual, That Is

He’s lived almost 40 years with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, which usually kills its victims in 2 or 3 years. That’s never stopped him from being recognized as the world’s foremost cosmologists, holding Sir Isaac Newton’s seat at Cambridge, being a grandfather or being a world class prankster and pain in the butt (or so I hear). From CNN: Scientist and author Stephen Hawking is “very ill” and has been hospitalized, according to Cambridge University, where he is a professor.

From Nancy Atkinson at Universe Today and Yahoo News:

Famed theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has been rushed to a hospital and is seriously ill. Cambridge University released information today that Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks, and was taken to a hospital in Cambridge.” Professor Hawking is very ill,” said Gregory Hayman, the university’s head of communications. “He is undergoing tests.”

Update: CNN updates the information on Hawking’s condition.

Moon Shadow

And Cat Stevens

Credit - Cassini / NASA

Emily at Planetary.org has a wonderful post about some shadow-play that’s occurring right now on Saturn’s rings.  You see, the rings are quickly becoming “edge-on” to the Sun, as they do twice every Saturnian year (which is about 30 Earth years).  Right now, shadows caused by the moons of Saturn that happen to fall on the ring system are very long, as you can see by the spike shaped shadow cast by Mimas in the photograph.

But that’s not the cool part. That would be the jagged, “grassy” edge that you can see above (and mostly to the left of) the spike (click on the thumbnail to enlarge it).  What’s that caused by? Why, something much smaller, clearly.

Emily does some quick “back of the envelope” calculations right there in her blog (she’s a pro., so please don’t try this at home without a trained mathematician nearby!) to show that whatever is causing that jagged line effect is only about 3 km. high.

But Cassini has already spotted moons around the planet that are about that size, and whatever is causing this doesn’t look like a moon to Cassini.  So are they many small moons – hundreds of them?  Not exactly, probably.

I believe that what we’re actually seeing is clumpiness of particles at the outer edge of the densest B ring, where particles bunch together partially by self-gravity (which would make them more like moons) but also by the periodic gravitational shoves they get from Mimas. At least that’s what the imaging team has said about past images of the outer edge of the B ring, like this one. These clumps would be transient, torn apart by the same forces that bring them together. The B ring is so dense that particles rub up against each other as they orbit Saturn — an astronaut would be able to travel easily from one particle to the next, clambering around the rings, though it’d be a long trip to circle Saturn! And, evidently, the astronaut would have some climbing to do, traveling up and down the clumps of big particles that form the B ring’s outer edge.

Now that’s cool!

Here’s more from Nancy Atkinson at Universe today.

Because Saturn is approaching its equinox, in August the rings will “disappear” from our view from Earth, as the rings will be exactly edge-on. But as the rings ease into alignment with the sun, Saturn’s moons cast their shadows across the rings, growing longer as equinox approaches. See in the image above, a shadow is cast on the rings[.]

Quantum Mechanics and Free Will

Speaking in Many Tongues

It’s rather stunning, sometimes, when the language used by physicists to describe what they know becomes, well, metaphysical.  What does it mean when you say that quantum particles have free will?

On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if the choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then its outcome is equally not a function of the information accessible to the particles. We show that this result is robust, and deduce that neither hidden variable theories nor mechanisms of the GRW type for wave function collapse can be made relativistic. We also establish the consistency of our axioms and discuss the philosophical implications.

Near gobblelygook.  Except it isn’t.  That abstract will give you this link to the full article (in PDF format), which says, in essence, that if you have free will, then so does every particle in nature.  If you have the ability to make a decision that is not constrained by your past history (and all of past history), but freely chosen and spontaneous, then so do electrons (and every thing else).  Gotta be, or the universe isn’t self-consistent and can’t exist.

But wait.  What kind of decisions can an electron make, anyway?

Lemme explain.  Imagine two identical twins; we’ll call them Sally and Katherine.   Let’s move Katherine to Alpha Centauri, and proceed to ask them both a set of questions. To do this, we need two questioners, and a list of questions to be asked.  As soon as the question is asked, then the answers are reported back to the lab, examined, and then (and only then) is the next question asked.  Oh, you also have to know that the questioners can ask any question on the list in any order, and have no idea what question is being asked by the other in this round.

When the questions have to do with their common, identical past (i.e. how tall were you at age 20; what hair color at age 25, etc. – remember, their identical!), we expect agreement.  When the questions are asked in random order, then we expect a certain set of statistics that reflect this.  If they were not identical twins, then we’d expect a different set of statistics.

Some of you may recognize this as the beginning of the famous Einstein, Rosen, Podolsky thought experiment.  I’m going to take the opportunity to name-drop here, and tell you that I was a student of the late Prof. Okalowski (one of my favorite professors, ever!), who was a student of Rosen.

So far, this may all seem very mundane.

The experiment becomes interesting, though, when you begin to ask Sally and Katherine questions when only one could know the answer.  Ask Sally in Dec. of 2012 who the next president of the U.S. is, and she might very well say “Sarah Palin”, while Katherine might be expected to say “Barack Obama”.

But what if they both consistently answer the same, statistically speaking, to these kinds of questions?  Only one of them should know the answer.  We put Katherine an Alpha Centauri to make sure of that, after all, and it would be weird (indeed, physically impossible) for her to know who won before the televised results of the 2012 election even got to Alpha Centauri.

But the universe is weird.  If you use electrons that are created together (so that the quantum-mechanical spin polarization for both is related), separated far enough so that you know a signal can’t travel between them fast enough and ask the right question (Are you polarized in this direction right now?), and check the results statistically, it turns out that the electrons answer just as if they’ve talked to each other.  That experiment was done in the ’80s, so we know.  They can’t have communicated, but they must have, faster than light.  It’s very weird, and physics now considers the quantum mechanical states of these two particles to be “entangled”.

So what has this to do with free will?  If the quantum-mechanical wave function of one of those particles collapses to a definite state when the experiment is done (that is the decision about a particles spin is determined only when someone looks at it, and not a moment sooner), then we have to ask if the state of the other, quantum-mechanically entangled particle is determined by the choice made by the first particle.  That second particle may have no choice in the matter.  And in the aggregate, you have no choice in anything, either.  Everyone of your actions has been pre-determined by something else, and by history.

In their heart of hearts, nobody finds that easy to believe.  John Conway, Simon Kochen demonstrate rigorously that you’ll free will depends upon the ability of quantum mechanical particles to choose their state independent of their history.

I find it sort of neat that physics is capable of saying anything at all, wrong or right, about the topic of free will. You wouldn’t think that it could.

Obama’s Embryo Destruction

Who’s Afraid of Post-Modernism?

We were hearing last week about the freeing up of science from the yoke of politics.  No more would government prevent scientific research that would otherwise find cures for a host of diseases that plague us by using dubious ethics as a bludgeon to hold academics at bay.  Yuval Levin, who’s associated with the Ethics and Public Policy Center, cuts through the verbiage written about the new Human Embryonic Stem Cell research policies put in place by the Obama administration.  It is, as he says, important to know what the new policy does and does not do.

The federal government has in fact never before-even under President Clinton-used taxpayer dollars to encourage the destruction of human embryos, as it will now begin to do. Obama’s decision is an unprecedented break with the longstanding federal policy of neutrality toward embryo research. Before 2001, not one dollar had ever been spent to support embryonic stem cell research, and when George W. Bush provided funds for the first time, he did so in a way that made sure tax dollars did not create an incentive for the ongoing destruction of human embryos. President Obama’s new policy will do precisely that: it will tell researchers that if they destroy a human embryo, they will become eligible for federal dollars to use in studying its cells; establishing an obvious and unprecedented incentive.

Well, that’s change, I guess.  No more politics over science, right?

Over at Hot Air, Ed Morressey puts his finger on what really happened.

The advocates of this policy cheer the supposed triumph of science over politics, but in truth, it’s the reverse. Over a year ago, researchers found a way to unlock adult stem cells to have the same flexibility as hEsc lines, ie, the ability to transform into any kind of tissue. Bush’s policy in effect pushed the government-funded research in that direction, which prompted the breakthrough. With that process available, we have no need to grind up our offspring to cure diseases, especially since grinding up our offspring has yet to result in even one therapeutic result, despite billions of dollars of research into hEsc. A scientific approach would dictate that we follow success instead of failure.

In fact, the market has done just that.

But the Bush administration was anti-science, wasn’t it?  I mean, everyone was saying so.  It was the meme.

Melissa Clouthier at Pajamas Media questions that idea.

The press, the left and even some on the right have purposefully misrepresented President Bush’s position about stem cells, making it seem like the President hated stem cell research in particular and science generally. This was a simplistic view meant to reinforce the image of Bush as a bible-beating anti-science zealot rather than a man sensitive to the ethical concerns of using the citizenry’s money to fund research which many voters view as morally ambiguous.

President Obama reinforced this inaccurate view by taking jabs at President Bush saying, “Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry. It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”

President Obama made it sound as if scientists themselves are devoid of ideology and politics. One only has to examine the overwhelming amount of breast cancer research compared to every other kind of cancer research, to know that this is simply not true:

As for breast cancer, the second most lethal malignancy in females, investigation in that field has long received more funding from the National Cancer Institute than any other tumor research, though lung cancer heads the list of fatal tumors for both sexes.

When government funds are used, politics necessarily plays a part in what does and does not get funded. Scientists know this, politicians know this and citizens should know this. [Latest example: nuclear power. Want politics to drive scientific inquiry? Look at anything related to global warming.]

I see often from even conservative writers that the humanities are PC bastions of post-modernism at the heart of universities, and along with it, the notion that the sciences are (at least relatively) unaffected by such things. They are “rational”, “devoid of ideology and politics”.  I don’t think so, and I come to believe it’s a naive idea.

Planet Hunter Blasts Off

Searching For Other Earths

At about 10:50 PM EST, the Kepler spacecraft left the pad at Cape Canaveral on board a Delta II rocket.

Kepler’s mission: to peer closely at a patch of space for at least three-and-a-half years, looking for rocky planets similar our own. The spacecraft will target an area rich with stars like our sun, watching for a slight dimming in the starlight as planets slip through the space between.

“Kepler is a critical component in NASA’s broader efforts to ultimately find and study planets where Earth-like conditions may be present,” said Jon Morse, the Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

One of the hardest questions to address in astronomy and in all of space science is the question of life in the galaxy. Is there life elsewhere, how much of it, and under what conditions can it survive long term are nearly unanswerable, given the sample of 1 that we have to study. The Kepler mission is designed to improve those statistics, by searching explicitly for earth-like planets, the one type that we know can sustain life.

“The planetary census Kepler takes will be very important for understanding the frequency of Earth-size planets in our galaxy and planning future missions that directly detect and characterize such worlds around nearby stars.”

You Win Some…

And Sometimes The Bear Eats You!

A NASA climatological satellite failed shortly after launch last night.  “Initial indications are the vehicle did not have enough [force] to reach orbit and landed just short of Antarctica in the ocean.”

Several news sources say the satellite fairing (the clamshell-like housing containing the satellite during launch) failed to open and separate after it was launched from Vandenburg AFB, in California.

The $273 million satellite, called the Orbiting Carbon Observatory, would have collected global measurements of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth’s atmosphere to help better forecast changes in carbon-dioxide levels and their effect on the Earth’s climate.

The OCO also would have provided information about CO2 “sinks” — areas, like oceans or landfills, that absorb and store carbon dioxide. NASA officials said all measurements would be combined with the findings of ground observation stations, providing a more complete account of the human and natural sources of CO2.

Orbital Sciences, based in Dulles, VA, built the vehicle.