The planets, An artist’s view; or Neptune Winter redux

It’s funny how a project I worked on a decade ago anticipated the recent work of a space artist, Ron Miller, who has created a series of images that depict what our sky would look like here on Earth if some of the planets were the same distance from us as our own moon.

For instance, here is the moon in its relative smallness as it appears one night over Death Valley:

Credit: Ron Miller

Credit: Ron Miller

Here is Venus:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

The gigantic Jupiter:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

And the rendering that really fascinated me, Neptune:

Credit: Ron Moore

Credit: Ron Moore

As you can see, this looks strikingly similar to the image below, without the people. In 2003, I finished an amateur-ish self-recorded album of original songs, and one of the songs was called, “Neptune Winter.” A fellow Counting Crows fan, Oshyan Greene, graciously agreed to create the artwork below after I gave him an idea of what I was looking for. As you can see below, Oshyan did a pretty good job of estimating perspective for the album cover way back in 2003:

Credit: Oshyan Green

Credit: Oshyan Greene

Here is the song that inspired the above artwork:

If you are interested, you can listen to more songs from this album by going to this YouTube account. It’s definitely the work of an amateur, but I still go back and listen to those songs to reminisce about the place I was in during that time in my life. But pointing out this coincidence of artistry, I couldn’t pass up.

Read more about Miller’s work here.

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Edge of the Earth

Credit: NASA: While the Moon looms above and the Earth sits below, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft takes three crew to the International Space Station.

Slate’s Phil Plait reflects on this stunning photo and the importance of taking the time to notice the soaring majesty that’s all around us:

This photo was taken by Kevin Ford, an astronaut on board the International Space Station. On Dec. 21, looking out a window, he took this picture of an approaching Russian Soyuz capsule containing three more astronauts: the crew of Expedition 35, which will take over command of the ISS for the next few months.

You can see the capsule almost swallowed by the canvas of black around it. Below, seemingly close in the picture but still hundreds of kilometers away, is the gentle blue curve of our planet’s horizon. And above, more distant by far, the half-lit face of the Moon. In this short exposure no stars can be seen; it’s just our planet, its one natural satellite, and one of many human-created satellites. The Moon above has no one on it; just artifacts left by a short visit decades ago and an uncrewed handful since. The Earth below is teeming with people, all living under that narrow blue arc of air. And in between, three more humans guided by the hand of Newton’s laws, headed for an outpost in space.

If there’s a better metaphor for the end of a year and the beginning of another, I’m not sure I know it. Humans are explorers. We’re a curious bunch, and we love to stick our heads into places unknown, moving from one thing to the next, learning about everything around us.

There’s a lot of everything to know. And we cannot possibly understand it with our eyes closed, our minds narrowed, our heads tilted down.

So look up! Because when we do, even for a moment, our view increases from here to infinity.

If you do one thing this upcoming year, just look up.

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Feeling gravity’s pull

Here is a map showing the wide fluctuations in gravity concentrations on the surface of the moon:

compared to gravity levels on Earth:

ESA's GOCE mission has delivered the most accurate model of the 'geoid' ever produced. Red corresponds to points with higher gravity, and blue to points with lower gravity. CREDIT: ESA/HPF/DLR

For further reading:
Best Gravity Map Yet Shows a Lumpy, Bumpy Earth
Violent past revealed by map of moon’s interior

And now for R.E.M. on the subject:

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Climate change: near ‘tipping’ point?

James Fallows, with The Atlantic, thinks that this story may be the most important to break in 2012.

Of course, as someone who grew up in the early 1980s, I well remember that the nation has been talking about — “talking” being the keyword — about energy conservation for decades without making substantial gains. I remember learning about the greenhouse gas effect, the need to preserve the rainforests and other issues, so it’s not like the problem has popped into the public’s consciousness in the last few years. Scientists have been warning about the potential for irreversible human impacts on the environment for about as long as I can remember.

While it’s frightening to the think that we may have already crossed the threshold in pollution damage to the planet, and subsequently, that the world may be reaching an irreversible tipping point, we have no one but ourselves collectives selves to blame, with a healthy dose of that blame falling to our politicians and world leaders who once again, faced with mounds of scientific evidence, have shirked their responsibilities to enact meaningful regulations.

Here’s part of the report:

BERKELEY — A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.

UC Berkeley professor Tony Barnosky explains how an increasing human population, coupled with climate change, could irreversibly alter Earth’s ecosystem. (Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian)

“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal Nature. “The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.”

Our daily universe: feeling gravity’s pull

It’s actually a little frightening when you consider that gravity, a force that we think is so strong on earth, is really not that strong at all. Because if it was even slightly less strong than it is, we might float out into the ether, and it is remarkable what subtle forces are needed to transcend the law of gravity:

We spend every day of our lives rooted to the Earth because of gravity, so it’s natural that most of us consider it a powerful force in the universe. Not so.

Think about it: The force of the entire Earth pulling down on a pin or a paperclip can be overcome with a small fridge magnet. Static electricity can make fabric and strands of hair stubbornly defy gravity — and all that takes is a short walk in a wool hat. Entire groups of people can be lifted off the ground for hours with a large balloon full of hot air. If gravity were as strong as the electromagnetic force, or the strong and the weak forces in an atomic nucleus, we’d all be a very finely distributed sludge over the surface of the earth.

Our daily universe: Kepler-22b

Earlier this month, NASA’s Kepler mission found its first star orbiting in a habitable zone around a sun similar to our own. This is another important discovery because as we know and as I have pointed out before, any planet that can be found within the habitable, or “Goldilocks zone,” as it is otherwise called, has the potential to support life (as long as water is also present).

According to the article:

The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don’t yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

“This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth’s twin,” said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Kepler’s results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA’s science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe.”

Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or “transit,” the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet.

“Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet,” said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. “The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season.”

Here are a couple illustrations of the planet and its orbit:

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech - This artist's conception illustrates Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star.

Credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech - This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission.

Our daily universe: ice on Europa

Scientists have discovered evidence of pockets of ice on the Jupiter moon, [[Europa]], which is further acknowledgment that life most likely exists, in some form, elsewhere in the universe, since, as we know, the presence of water is a basic necessity for the development of biological life. And I have pointed out numerous instances on this blog in which water or ice particles have been found elsewhere in the cosmos. Presumably, it’s only a matter of time before life is found somewhere other than earth, even if that life consists of only simple microorganisms.

In this photo is pictured the Conamara Chaos region of Europa:

Credit: NASA, JPL, UNIV. OF ARIZONA/Jumbled icy patches on Jupiter’s moon Europa, like the Conamara Chaos region pictured here, may indicate the presence of large liquid reservoirs a few kilometers beneath the surface.

Our daily universe: close encounter with asteroid

According to a report from The Associated Press, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier came quite close to Earth on Tuesday of this week. It was the closest encounter of that large of an object in more than 30 years.

Credit: NASA/A radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 taken on Monday.

Here is a snippet from the article:

Its closest approach to Earth was pegged at a distance of 202,000 miles at 6:28 p.m. EST. That’s just inside the moon‘s orbit; the average distance between Earth and the moon is 239,000 miles.

The last time a large cosmic interloper is thought to have come that close to Earth was in 1976, and experts say it is not likely to happen again until 2028.

Scientists at NASA‘s Deep Space Network in the California desert have tracked the quarter-mile-wide asteroid since last week as it approached from the direction of the sun at 29,000 mph. …

If an asteroid that size would hit the planet, Purdue University professor Jay Melosh calculated the consequences. The impact would carve a crater four miles across and 1,700 feet deep. And if it slammed into the ocean, it would trigger 70-foot-high tsunami waves.

Since its discovery six years ago, scientists have been monitoring the spherical, coal-colored asteroid as it slowly spins through space and were confident it posed no danger.

Our daily universe: ‘Follow the water’

Scientists looking for life (or at least earthlike life) have always obeyed a simple rule: follow the water. Biology is a wet process, after all — and generally the wetter the better.

***

According to this article from Time, scientists have discovered yet another potential source of water in the cosmos: in an infant solar system 175 light years from Earth. The solar system was scoped from the Herschel Space Observatory, which sits in space some 930,000 miles from our planet in the so-called Lagrange point, where the pull from Earth and the Sun balance out.

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