Oumuamua

Oumuamua is an asteroid which came from beyond the solar system.  Perhaps it was ejected from a star system in the Carina–Columba association (which is not an Italian fraternal organization but rather a vast nebula by Eta Carinae about 100 parsecs) around 50 to 100 million years ago, but its age and point of origin are unknown.   It is whipping past the sun and then back into the vast darkness between the stars at a prodigious velocity (apparently it was traveling through interstellar space at something like 26 kilometers per second (58,000 miles per hour).  The object, which measures between 100 and 800 meters (300 to 2500 feet), was initially classified as a comet, but its speed, its orbital eccentricity, and its bizarre shape–which is like an icicle or a shard–caused astronomers to realize it was deeply strange interloper from beyond.

The object has been closely observed by many of the Earth’s great observatories and it is apparently a dark red—which is caused by cosmic radiation striking it for 100s of millions of years (Kuiper belt objects have similar coloration).  It is traveling far too fast for any existing human craft too reach (although we may be able to build such crafts in the near future), however scientists are assessing it for traces of life or civilization by means of radio telescopy.  It will be out by Jupiter next year and far beyond are kin soon after that, but scientists have learned a great deal from the visit.  Additionally they speculate that other such objects come through the solar system at the rate of one or two per year (which does not seem like a lot considering how large the solar system is).  We are lucky to have spotted this shard, but its catastrophic shape makes one speculate that there is a lot about planetary formation (and destruction) which we don’t know yet.

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Yuri’s Night–And Heavenly Plans

It’s April 12th, “Yuri’s Night” when humankind comes together to celebrate our achievements in space…and to brainstorm about where we will go next.   Of course at this precise moment we are having some temporary setbacks in space—but we’ll post about NASA’s space telescope trouble tomorrow.  Today is about the glory and magnificence of space exploration.  And there are plenty of news stories about that too.  SpaceX has finally “stuck the landing” on one of its reusable rockets (and the past year’s drama of watching them nearly land on a raft and then blow up was pretty thrilling in its own right).  A private firm is building an inflatable module for the International Space Station.  NASA is moving forwards with its plans to build a space probe to touch the sun! And that is not to mention the many man robot probes running around the Solar System.

Solar Probe Plus (NASA)

However, today is also a day when we whisper our heart’s dearest wishes to the stars.  The Economist has abandoned its fusty articles about central banking to lovingly describe a feasible interstellar space craft!  Visionary engineers keep grinding ahead with plans for a space elevator (the brainchild of a different Yuri— Yuri Artsutanov).   Tech billionaires are working on their asteroid mining project (at least on paper)… and NASA continues to talk of a Mars mission.

Yet all of this pales beside my near-future space vision—a plan which is as simple as it is breathtaking and incomprehensible.  I want us to come together and hang a new society in the distant skies over Venus.  At first it will be a crude plastic bouncy city, but, as we drop energy transfer cables down into the atmosphere and skyhooks down to harvest raw materials from the surface things should start to get more elaborate fast.  We can make floating farms, forests, and oceans.  All we need to do is get a plastics factory over to Venus and uh, solve the pesky problem of shielding our new society from deadly solar winds (a real problem on Venus, since it has no magnetosphere to speak of).

(Artwork by Don Dixon)

With this in mind, it is time to take a much closer look at Venus.  So this is my Yuri’s Night resolution.  We will be revisiting our sister planet at this site and reviewing everything we know about it.  Since the first humans looked up in the morning sky and saw it as the brightest star up until now Venus has always been in our hearts—but these days we know some real and meaningful things about the morning star (wisdom which did not come easily).   It’s time to review that information and find out more about our closest planetary neighbor.  So hang on to your (heat resistant) helmets and get ready to visit this beautiful hellish sister world!

Leaving the Solar System

Voyager I

Today (September 12, 2013) NASA announced that Voyager I has officially left the solar system.  The probe is the first human-made object to enter interstellar space: it is farther away from Earth than anything else people have ever made.  Launched on September 5, 1977, Voyager’s primary mission was to fly by Jupiter and Saturn and take pictures (and electromagnetic radiation readings) of the two worlds and their systems.  The probe reached Jupiter in 1979 and Saturn in 1980.  After a close fly-by of Titan, the moon with an atmosphere, the spacecraft was flung out of the plane of the solar system.  Only this summer has it reached the heliopause, where the sun’s electromagnetic energy is matched by the ambient energy of the cosmos (although since only minimal instruments are running on Voyager, astrophysicists may be a long time arguing about when exactly the craft slipped out of the solar system).

The Great Red Spot of Jupiter as imaged by Voyager I

A Volcanic Eruption on Io (imaged by Voyager I)

 

The Atmosphere of Titan (imaged by Voyager I)

Voyager is not moving as quickly as the solar probes mentioned in yesterday’s post, but neither is it moving slowly (its current velocity is 38,000 miles per hour).  However such speed is minimal in the face of interstellar vastness (although Voyager is due to pass within 1.6 light years of the red dwarf star Gliese 445 in 40,000 years).