We have all heard the prevailing theory that the dinosaurs were killed off by the impact of a colossal meteor slamming into Earth.
It is widely believed that the Chicxulub crater near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula is the impact site of that meteor hit 65 million years ago.
It is also widely believed that another colossal meteor strike on our planet is a matter of “when” and not “if”.
Scientists have been running computer models to try to determine where this colossal meteorite came from to see if there might be a way to at least predict when or where the next strike will come from.
Their computer models have developed an interesting theory. They say the models show that 160 million years ago, two “mega-asteroids” in the asteroid belt collided, strewing debris across the solar system.
They believe that a fragment from one of these “mega-asteroids” eventually made its way to Earth 95 million years later, creating the impact on the Yucatan peninsula.
The models also show that debris from the same impact created the Tycho crater on our moon.
Scientists said that they worked backwards to reach this conclusion, looking at the masses of asteroids that they believe to have originated when the two “mega-asteroids”, one 37-miles wide and one 106-miles wide, slammed into each other and broke apart.
They applied a more modern theory that sunlight traveling through space can actually effect a small amount of force on an object over time.
With nothing but time, the asteroid debris was moved little by little until it finally came into the path of Earth’s orbit and gravitational pull.
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
The Leap Days
Today, we worry about millisecond and nanosecond inaccuracies in times, but in the past, there have been discrepancies the length of days.
When Julius Caesar invented the Julian calendar, it was off by 11.5 minutes each year. Over the centuries, that small error added up so that by 1582, the Julian calendar being used by the Western Roman World was 10 days behind.
To fix the discrepancy in the Julian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII gave us leap days. However, before the Gregorian calendar could be put into place, the extra 10 days given to mankind by the Julian calendar had to be done away with.
Pope Gregory XIII then declared that the day after October 4, 1582 would be October 15, 1582. In Rome, all the days in-between never existed. There was wide-spread rioting in Rome because many Christians alive at the time felt that if their date of birth and date of death had been pre-ordained, the Pope had just shortened their lives by 10 days.
In defiance of Rome, England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar, so for nearly two hundred years it was always ten days later in Rome that it was in London.
Finally, in 1752 when England adopted the Gregorian calendar to sync itself up with the rest of the Western World, the day after September 2, 1752 was September 14, 1752, 11 days having never existed in London.
The problem this time, however, was not that people felt their lives were being shortened, but people actually were incensed to riot because they paid rent by the month and only got 19 days for their monthly rent that September. Naturally, landlords refused to make exceptions and expected October’s rent right on the first of the month.
When Julius Caesar invented the Julian calendar, it was off by 11.5 minutes each year. Over the centuries, that small error added up so that by 1582, the Julian calendar being used by the Western Roman World was 10 days behind.
To fix the discrepancy in the Julian calendar, Pope Gregory XIII gave us leap days. However, before the Gregorian calendar could be put into place, the extra 10 days given to mankind by the Julian calendar had to be done away with.
Pope Gregory XIII then declared that the day after October 4, 1582 would be October 15, 1582. In Rome, all the days in-between never existed. There was wide-spread rioting in Rome because many Christians alive at the time felt that if their date of birth and date of death had been pre-ordained, the Pope had just shortened their lives by 10 days.
In defiance of Rome, England did not adopt the Gregorian calendar, so for nearly two hundred years it was always ten days later in Rome that it was in London.
Finally, in 1752 when England adopted the Gregorian calendar to sync itself up with the rest of the Western World, the day after September 2, 1752 was September 14, 1752, 11 days having never existed in London.
The problem this time, however, was not that people felt their lives were being shortened, but people actually were incensed to riot because they paid rent by the month and only got 19 days for their monthly rent that September. Naturally, landlords refused to make exceptions and expected October’s rent right on the first of the month.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
The Leap Second
It received some news coverage, but nothing really major. At the end of 2005, there was a leap second that was added to analog clocks to get them caught up with atomic clocks.
To understand this, you must first know that there are currently two time-keeping systems in place for the civilized world.
Analog clocks are kept and maintained by measuring the Earth’s cycle around the sun and the Earth’s rotation on it axis, just as has been done for thousands of years.
The problem with analog, however, is that each time the Earth revolves around the sun, there is an average discrepancy of a half-second each year. In addition, each day is actually not exactly as long as each other due to the pulling of the tides on the Earth’s rotation which cause fluctuations of milliseconds.
Realizing that there was a problem with this analog time keeping, scientists developed a new method called the atomic method some 40 years ago. The atomic method uses the measurement of the extremely accurate and precise cycle of an atom of the isotope cesium-133.
In one second, the atom cycles 9,192,631,770 times. This cycle is constant, never varying and means that a half-second variance like the one that occurs in analog time each year, occurs only once every 10 million years in atomic time.
Since 1967, because of the variance in the two time-keeping methods, mankind has had to add a leap-second to analog time 23 times to ensure that the analog clocks and the atomic clocks are in sync to the tune of no more than a 0.9 second variance.
Why is it important to keep the clocks in sync? Well, if we stopped adding the leap seconds today, in the year 5000, the sun would be right overhead at noon, but your atomic clock would say it was getting close to midnight.
So, what’s the problem with leap seconds? Well, remember Y2K? There are some folks that believe if we keep stopping our atomic clocks for one second intervals every couple years, it will cause wide-spread system failures in the flight control, traffic control, power grids, mobile phone networks and defense systems that are all tied to atomic clocks.
For example, if a GPS satellite sends a signal a millisecond early or late, it can provide a reading that is inaccurate by 100 miles. You do not want a ballistic missile being 100 miles off its target.
So, for now, while scientists debate the best method, atomic clocks continue and the old-time Earth-monitoring analog time continues, both being continually checked against the other.
To understand this, you must first know that there are currently two time-keeping systems in place for the civilized world.
Analog clocks are kept and maintained by measuring the Earth’s cycle around the sun and the Earth’s rotation on it axis, just as has been done for thousands of years.
The problem with analog, however, is that each time the Earth revolves around the sun, there is an average discrepancy of a half-second each year. In addition, each day is actually not exactly as long as each other due to the pulling of the tides on the Earth’s rotation which cause fluctuations of milliseconds.
Realizing that there was a problem with this analog time keeping, scientists developed a new method called the atomic method some 40 years ago. The atomic method uses the measurement of the extremely accurate and precise cycle of an atom of the isotope cesium-133.
In one second, the atom cycles 9,192,631,770 times. This cycle is constant, never varying and means that a half-second variance like the one that occurs in analog time each year, occurs only once every 10 million years in atomic time.
Since 1967, because of the variance in the two time-keeping methods, mankind has had to add a leap-second to analog time 23 times to ensure that the analog clocks and the atomic clocks are in sync to the tune of no more than a 0.9 second variance.
Why is it important to keep the clocks in sync? Well, if we stopped adding the leap seconds today, in the year 5000, the sun would be right overhead at noon, but your atomic clock would say it was getting close to midnight.
So, what’s the problem with leap seconds? Well, remember Y2K? There are some folks that believe if we keep stopping our atomic clocks for one second intervals every couple years, it will cause wide-spread system failures in the flight control, traffic control, power grids, mobile phone networks and defense systems that are all tied to atomic clocks.
For example, if a GPS satellite sends a signal a millisecond early or late, it can provide a reading that is inaccurate by 100 miles. You do not want a ballistic missile being 100 miles off its target.
So, for now, while scientists debate the best method, atomic clocks continue and the old-time Earth-monitoring analog time continues, both being continually checked against the other.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
America Back On The Moon?
It almost seems trivial to be discussing space exploration at this point in American history, but I guess I must agree that we must keep on reaching for the America of tomorrow.
How else are we going to one day unite the world under the People’s Democratic Republic of the United States of the World? How many stars are on that flag?
I’m OK at looking towards space again as long as enough government is still working to keep us safe from terrorism before we are forced to divert those resources into figuring out how to defend ourselves from the subterranean Martians that we are going to piss off one day by landing on their planet.
First and foremost, despite the tragedies of 1986 and 2003, a push back to the moon, then on to Mars will most-likely result in the retiring of our space shuttles. As someone who grew up and aged with them, I will be sad to see the shuttles go, but we all know that they have outlived their mission.
The shuttles represent so much of the America that I grew up in...the America that finally defeated the Soviets and won the Cold War. As we bid farewell to our old work-horses, we will then need to decide if we launch our next round of moon missions direct from Earth or from the International Space Station. Will we see a new shuttle-like craft for transporting people and cargo to the space station? Will we see a new generation of Saturn 5-style rockets, or will we see both?
Either way, the best experts agree that for the sheer sake of technological advancements and the continually falling cost of that technology, man will be back on the moon within 15 years.
They say we will build a moon colony this time around and will have the technology for permanent residence on the moon. Yet another pristine, virtually untouched planet for us to litter with empty potato chip bags!
Once we have established our moon base, it will be time then to look to Mars, which these same experts say man will step foot on in about 25 to 30 years. I truly would love to see man on Mars before the end of my lifetime, but I must admit that I wonder how it will fit into our ever-changing lives here on Earth and which of man’s weaknesses and political and ethical quandaries will follow us up into the stars...who am I kidding? We all know that it will be all of them.
So, here is to empty Doritos bags littering the Martian countryside because, at least, as William Burrows pointed out in the WSJ, we will have spare humans on other worlds so that humans will survive when we finally destroy the Earth.
So, now that we have the pipe dream in place and can rest assured that we will not need to divvy up the surface of the moon with the evil Soviet empire this time around, how in the world are we going to pay for all of this? Well, that’s what they said before we went to the moon the first time and we managed to pay that bill off.
We’ll just have to sit back, keep paying our taxes, and see what happens.
How else are we going to one day unite the world under the People’s Democratic Republic of the United States of the World? How many stars are on that flag?
I’m OK at looking towards space again as long as enough government is still working to keep us safe from terrorism before we are forced to divert those resources into figuring out how to defend ourselves from the subterranean Martians that we are going to piss off one day by landing on their planet.
First and foremost, despite the tragedies of 1986 and 2003, a push back to the moon, then on to Mars will most-likely result in the retiring of our space shuttles. As someone who grew up and aged with them, I will be sad to see the shuttles go, but we all know that they have outlived their mission.
The shuttles represent so much of the America that I grew up in...the America that finally defeated the Soviets and won the Cold War. As we bid farewell to our old work-horses, we will then need to decide if we launch our next round of moon missions direct from Earth or from the International Space Station. Will we see a new shuttle-like craft for transporting people and cargo to the space station? Will we see a new generation of Saturn 5-style rockets, or will we see both?
Either way, the best experts agree that for the sheer sake of technological advancements and the continually falling cost of that technology, man will be back on the moon within 15 years.
They say we will build a moon colony this time around and will have the technology for permanent residence on the moon. Yet another pristine, virtually untouched planet for us to litter with empty potato chip bags!
Once we have established our moon base, it will be time then to look to Mars, which these same experts say man will step foot on in about 25 to 30 years. I truly would love to see man on Mars before the end of my lifetime, but I must admit that I wonder how it will fit into our ever-changing lives here on Earth and which of man’s weaknesses and political and ethical quandaries will follow us up into the stars...who am I kidding? We all know that it will be all of them.
So, here is to empty Doritos bags littering the Martian countryside because, at least, as William Burrows pointed out in the WSJ, we will have spare humans on other worlds so that humans will survive when we finally destroy the Earth.
So, now that we have the pipe dream in place and can rest assured that we will not need to divvy up the surface of the moon with the evil Soviet empire this time around, how in the world are we going to pay for all of this? Well, that’s what they said before we went to the moon the first time and we managed to pay that bill off.
We’ll just have to sit back, keep paying our taxes, and see what happens.
Monday, February 3, 2003
The Lesson Of Columbia
The first time I saw the space shuttle Columbia, I was six years old, sitting on the floor of my grandmother’s den, watching the very first launch of a space shuttle into space in 1981. The very last time I saw Columbia, I was lying on the floor of my living room, talking on the phone with my brother who was not even born until over four years after Columbia made her maiden voyage into space. I had gone to sleep just a couple of hours before we lost Columbia on Saturday.
On the morning of January 28, 1986, I was on a whale watching field trip with my sixth grade class and I missed the launch of the Challenger. I was actually sitting on the beach in Newport, eating lunch when I heard what had happened that morning.
I pride myself on my patriotism and being appreciative of the gifts I have been given by this nation, but I am afraid that I, too, was guilty of complacency when it came to our space program.
One of the first things I bring up whenever talk turns to 9/11 is my shock...not my shock at what happened, but my shock that our entire nation had its head so far in the sand that no one saw it coming.
I began to talk about an attack on New York even when I was in high school in 1990, and I definitely was talking about it in 1998 when I made the comparison of our state of the nation in 1998 to our state of the nation in 1941.
In 1981, I took great pride in the success of Columbia and in 1986, I grieved with the rest of our nation at the loss of the Challenger crew. Throughout my life, I have enjoyed reading about the space program, watching the launches and live interviews with the crews from space. I also still marvel at the progress of the International Space Station.
I am currently compiling pieces for decorating my bedroom which I am calling the “America” room, but even as I was putting together pieces reflecting the Civil War, World War II, our Cold War culture, 9/11, and the spirit of old New York, the thought never crossed my mind about including our space program.
I am forced to place myself in a category of Americans who had taken the dangers of our space program far too lightly. Saturday, I mourned with the rest of the nation at the loss of the Columbia crew, as well as the symbolism of the loss of the first space shuttle to venture into orbit.
If you watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there is a grouping of artwork on the recreation deck of the ship that shows the ships that bore the name Enterprise. One of them is the space shuttle Enterprise, the only of one the six shuttles never to actually fly in space.
It was a novelty in 1979 to show the space shuttle Enterprise in the movie, but as we sit here in 2003, this is now just one of the many small things in life that will remind us of our space shuttle tragedies for years to come.
Whenever I saw a space shuttle, I almost immediately remembered the Challenger. Now, I have two tragedies to remember. Science fiction attempts to teach us where we are going in the future, and also, what we need to do to get there. Remember back to 1979...who could have known then that by 2003, two of the six space shuttles would be gone, and who could have known that we would be stuck in a quandary on February 1, 2003, about how to get our long-term space explorers home from an International Space Station?
On top of it, who would have known in 1979 that in 2003, one of our options would be to rely on the help of our Russian friends? There is in all of this, a lesson to be learned. We lost Challenger in 1986, but we went back up. We lost Columbia in 2003, and we will go back up. We tamed a wild continent called America, even though it took 200 years. We will tame the final frontier, no matter how long it takes.
I am sorry that somewhere between 1986 and 2003, I took for granted the bravery and sacrifice of each person that straps on a space suit and then straps themselves to a controlled explosion to get into space. These people, just as much as any soldier on the battlefield, have helped make America what it is today through their bravery. These are the people who would climb into Discovery, Atlantis, or Endeavor today, despite everything, to go and do their job, whether it be research, defense, or bringing stranded astronauts home.
These are the people that died in a capsule fire, trying to get us to the moon...these are the people that spent the last seconds of their lives, some in 1986, and some in 2003, aboard a space shuttle. Such determination can be summed up in one small phrase...“We are Americans.” I have learned my lesson...I will not forget again...
On the morning of January 28, 1986, I was on a whale watching field trip with my sixth grade class and I missed the launch of the Challenger. I was actually sitting on the beach in Newport, eating lunch when I heard what had happened that morning.
I pride myself on my patriotism and being appreciative of the gifts I have been given by this nation, but I am afraid that I, too, was guilty of complacency when it came to our space program.
One of the first things I bring up whenever talk turns to 9/11 is my shock...not my shock at what happened, but my shock that our entire nation had its head so far in the sand that no one saw it coming.
I began to talk about an attack on New York even when I was in high school in 1990, and I definitely was talking about it in 1998 when I made the comparison of our state of the nation in 1998 to our state of the nation in 1941.
In 1981, I took great pride in the success of Columbia and in 1986, I grieved with the rest of our nation at the loss of the Challenger crew. Throughout my life, I have enjoyed reading about the space program, watching the launches and live interviews with the crews from space. I also still marvel at the progress of the International Space Station.
I am currently compiling pieces for decorating my bedroom which I am calling the “America” room, but even as I was putting together pieces reflecting the Civil War, World War II, our Cold War culture, 9/11, and the spirit of old New York, the thought never crossed my mind about including our space program.
I am forced to place myself in a category of Americans who had taken the dangers of our space program far too lightly. Saturday, I mourned with the rest of the nation at the loss of the Columbia crew, as well as the symbolism of the loss of the first space shuttle to venture into orbit.
If you watch Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there is a grouping of artwork on the recreation deck of the ship that shows the ships that bore the name Enterprise. One of them is the space shuttle Enterprise, the only of one the six shuttles never to actually fly in space.
It was a novelty in 1979 to show the space shuttle Enterprise in the movie, but as we sit here in 2003, this is now just one of the many small things in life that will remind us of our space shuttle tragedies for years to come.
Whenever I saw a space shuttle, I almost immediately remembered the Challenger. Now, I have two tragedies to remember. Science fiction attempts to teach us where we are going in the future, and also, what we need to do to get there. Remember back to 1979...who could have known then that by 2003, two of the six space shuttles would be gone, and who could have known that we would be stuck in a quandary on February 1, 2003, about how to get our long-term space explorers home from an International Space Station?
On top of it, who would have known in 1979 that in 2003, one of our options would be to rely on the help of our Russian friends? There is in all of this, a lesson to be learned. We lost Challenger in 1986, but we went back up. We lost Columbia in 2003, and we will go back up. We tamed a wild continent called America, even though it took 200 years. We will tame the final frontier, no matter how long it takes.
I am sorry that somewhere between 1986 and 2003, I took for granted the bravery and sacrifice of each person that straps on a space suit and then straps themselves to a controlled explosion to get into space. These people, just as much as any soldier on the battlefield, have helped make America what it is today through their bravery. These are the people who would climb into Discovery, Atlantis, or Endeavor today, despite everything, to go and do their job, whether it be research, defense, or bringing stranded astronauts home.
These are the people that died in a capsule fire, trying to get us to the moon...these are the people that spent the last seconds of their lives, some in 1986, and some in 2003, aboard a space shuttle. Such determination can be summed up in one small phrase...“We are Americans.” I have learned my lesson...I will not forget again...
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