Space Trekkers Live in Binary Planetary Systems

July 05, 2009

For years I’ve hypothesized that binary planetary systems exist, and that these are the places to go looking for space-faring civilizations.  By binary planetary system I mean a pair of gravitationally bound stars, each with its own independent family of worlds.

There could be habitable planets around each star in the binary system, if the stars are far enough apart. If technological civilizations independently evolve around both stars, they could actually travel across space and visit each other. This would be a powerful motivation to build the fusion-powered rockets needed to travel back and forth within a reasonable amount of time.

Astronomers have now found such as system, but we’ll have to wait another 4 billion years before an alien civilization manifests itself. Why? Because the double star is just a few millions of years old, and if Earth is any example, it takes a long time to evolve intelligent beings.

Government Hides Alien Moon Base!

July 01, 2009

Now that I've got your attention . . .

Every time I take a stab at debunking pseudo-science topics like UFOs and the 2012-doomsday predictions, it’s like kicking a hornet’s nest, judging from some of the comments posted here.

Some of these counterpoint arguments from readers are tied to references in clips on YouTube (truly a cesspool of idiocy) where self-styled “experts” try and sound authoritative in front of the camera.  More often than not these "whistle-blowers"  assert having special knowledge about  “government conspiracies.” They’ve discovered the Internet is a bottomless pit of people who feel powerless and suspicious of everything. Healthy skepticism is good, which means followers should not unequivocally swallow the tall tales from self-proclaimed "insiders."

Occasionally I’m going to give out a Pants-on-Fire award to those individuals who make outrageous claims that are simply incredulous.  Either they were duped or have endless other motives: selling books, videos, articles, going on a lecture circuit, getting onto radio shows or CNN’s Larry King Live (he loves UFO tall-tales), or simply bolstering their sense of self importance.

We Missed the Doomsday Comet by a Century

June 26, 2009

There is a lot of silly hoopla over the end of the ancient Mayan calendar and therefore supposed “end” of the world in 2012 according to some interpretations (such as a rogue comet whacking us). 

But let’s take a step back and consider a real event that happened to Earth when cosmic stuff really did hit the fan.

This Tuesday June 30 will be the 101st anniversary of the mysterious Tunguska explosion that flattened a forest in central Siberia with the equivalent of between 5 to 30 megatons of TNT detonating.

Do the Mars Rovers See Martian Leprechauns?

June 22, 2009

What I love about NASA conspiracy theorists -- you know those folks who think we never went to the moon and the Air Force is  hiding alien bodies -- is that they want to have their cake and eat it too.

At a recent convention called, you guessed it, Conspiracy Con 2009, self-styled Mars sleuth, Andrew Basiago, accused NASA of hiding evidence of Martian life in photos taken from the rover Spirit.

But I will bet money that when NASA eventually releases images showing manmade artifacts at the Apollo landing sites, to be photographed from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO, which will enter lunar orbit tomorrow) conspiracy flakes will accuse NASA of faking the PR pictures.

Fractured Fantasy Imagines Blowing Up Moon

June 19, 2009

We’re a nation of science dummies. No more than 25 percent of Americans are “scientifically savvy and alert,” says public opinion researcher Jon Miller. Most of the rest of us “don’t have a clue.”

Prime time TV dramas like the upcoming miniseries, Impact, which will air on ABC-TV the next two Sunday evenings  (June 21st and 28th) underscores this sad state of science cluelessness. The scriptwriter Michael Vickerman (author of several B-grade sci-fi flicks) is a total ASTRO-101 flunky.

The Meaning of Spacetime, Relatively Speaking

June 17, 2009

Space and time are something we deal with every waking moment of the day. We need to navigate space (at least between home and office) and are subservient to time from cradle to grave. But there are inherent puzzles that stumped history’s top scientists. And, these puzzles can frustrate science fiction writers who want to find shortcuts though space and time to get from one side for the galaxy to the other within the lifetime of their characters.

Would there be space if there weren’t matter around to define a volume, like the walls of a room, or periphery of the solar system? How could we ever know that space in the universe is expanding, without galaxies flowing along with the expansion and sending us signals from the remote past? Would there be time if we never saw anything changing?

Future Forecast for Solar System: Worlds in Collision?

June 13, 2009

Astronomy’s equivalent of the “Great Pumpkin” from the Peanuts comic strip is popping up again on Internet traffic. For the sixth year in a row, an Internet message gone viral predicts that the planet Mars will look as "big as the full moon" later this year. 

Nope, not happening. But in our capricious universe, never say never.

A new computer simulation of the dynamical evolution of the solar system over the next 5 billion years suggests that our distant descendents could witness such a sky spectacle, just before the world is destroyed in a catastrophe of Biblical proportions.

Are We Ready to Live on Other Planets?

June 08, 2009

The  International Space Station has a beefed up crew that has gone from three to six astronauts, now that the construction of the $100 billion space laboratory is nearly complete. We are told that the station crew will be able to spend more time doing medical and biological experiments in the station's microgravity environment to prepare humans for journeys to the moon and Mars.

We are “learning to live in space” is the shorthand justification for why we have a space station. But are the right questions behind the ISS experiments being asked? Exactly how salient is the research on the ISS when applied to human interplanetary travel?

A SETI Makeover? call it "SETT"

June 02, 2009

On the 50^th anniversary of the first attempt to listen for artificial radio signals transmitted from an extraterrestrial civilization orbiting a nearby star, astronomer Jill Tarter says it's time to rename the acronym SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence). She’s proposing SETT: The Search for Extraterrestrial Technology.

A Mundane Spacecraft Name Game

May 29, 2009

I hope there are no martian cats at the landing site where the multi-billion dollar Mars Science Lab (MSL) will touchdown in 2011.

Why? Because the lander has been named Curiosity, in a NASA contest where 9,000 students across the country submitted essays for their favorite name.

And, we all know what curiosity did to the cat.