Rampaging Herds Of Fat Space Cows Built The Planets*

August 17, 2009

Our understanding about how the planets in the Solar System evolved has just taken a huge leap forward with a new paper published in the journal, Icarus.

According to current theories, the dusty proto-planetary disk surrounding the sun during Solar System evolution spawned the accretion of small rocky bodies that gradually clumped together to form larger and larger asteroids. These asteroids then gradually swept up debris from the disk, eventually forming planetary bodies.

But there's a problem, the accreting asteroids would have dropped out of solar orbit due to drag caused by the dust and gas in the sun's accretion disk. So how did the material that makes up the asteroids and planets in our Solar System avoid being eaten by the sun?

*DISCLAIMER: The title has little to do with the research mentioned in this article and it certainly does not reflect the views of the scientists involved in this fascinating research. Linking cows with asteroids is a product of the authors questionable imagination only. The reason behind the obscure title will be revealed soon...

New Jupiter-Europa Mission: Call it 'Clarke'?

February 19, 2009

No sooner does Discovery Space put up a Wide Angle pondering a mission to Jupiter's ice-encrusted Europa, then the U.S. and European space agencies say,
"Baby, you're as cold as ice -- and covered in ice -- but we're going to fly out 780 million miles to meet you."

I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

Check out the European Space Agency's (ESA) release here, and NASA's release here (Emily Lackdawalla of the Planetary Society Blog seems to have put the first post up about this, so a hat tip to her).

Now, Europa did have some stiff (or should I say muddy?) competition: Saturn's chilly moon Titan. Scientists put up a fight for robotic visitation rights, and they still won -- Titan is on the roadmap for a future mission.

I think the reason Titan came in at #2 is because we already dropped a probe onto its soupy, organic surface -- the Huygens probe, for all of you non-space nerds -- which is why I think it's high-time we give Europa a peek.

Looking for background? Roll through this package we put together for you last week:

R.I.P. Phoenix Mars Lander

November 10, 2008

It's official now -- the Phoenix Mars Lander mission is over, and the spacecraft is probably as good as scrap.

Phoenix succumbed to the icy grip of Mars after Nov. 2, which is when we last heard from it. More than likely it's frozen solid.

I ran scared in my last post when Phoenix was going in and out of sleep mode (thanks to a diminishing supply of light on top of the red planet), and now the sobering reality is sinking in.

May its robotic soul rest in peace and Mars give it a quick burial under a crapload of carbon dioxide and water ice.

In honor of our lately departed buddy, I offer a collection of fun things cooked up by the Discovery Space team:

1. Best Phoenix Photos. The lander's end drew very near last week, so we put up a slideshow of its greatest hits.
2. Videos. We did a bunch of videos here at Discovery Space on Phoenix. Watch this new one, plus the rest of them here, here, here and here.
3. Blogging an Odyssey. Irene Klotz on the Free Space blog has put up some great posts about Phoenix -- comb through its odyssey here.
4. Searching for Signs of Life on Mars. I interview Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University about his work on the spacecraft.
5. The Perchlorator. When Phoenix found perchlorate on Mars, just about everyone freaked out. I made a music video.

And if you're curious about a formal statement, here's what NASA had to say about the spacecraft:

Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.

The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft's work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages.

"Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Looks like there's a shred of hope to re-establish contact, but it's just that -- hope. I wouldn't bet a penny on it happening.

Phoenix never found life, or direct signs of it, but that's not what it was after anyways. NASA and the University of Arizona teamed up to look for signs of habitability, and to some extent they found that (remember the asparagus-on-Mars thing that fizzled out?).

The big high-five for the mission -- decades in the coming -- was first-hand detection of water on Mars. And to that I pour one out (no pun intended) for you, Phoenix.

Photo: Dave Mosher; NASA JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Phoenix Is Dying

October 30, 2008

Woe is me...

I don't like breaking the bad news, but our plucky friend -- the Phoenix Mars Lander -- is beginning to freeze to death. As Nancy Atkinson over at Universe Today has pointed out, it entered safe mode (translation: that's bad) but is at least still Twittering... for now.

Sooner or later the cruel Red Planet will claim yet another robotic life, and NASA folks are saying anywhere from days to weeks at this point. I know... I hear you shouting "Why?!" Hush, hush now -- below is an answer.

Let's talk temperature.

We're lucky to live on a planet that has an average temperature of about 15 °C (59 °F). Well above the freezing point of water, human bodies, car battery juice and electronic circuit boards.

What about Mars?

On average, the planet is about -60 °C (-76 °F) -- cold enough to chill radon or chlorine gas into a liquid and freeze a mercury thermometer solid. During a dustless Martian summer you'd be lucky to feel temperatures above 20 °C (68 °F), and it can quickly drop below about -140 °C (-220 °F) during winter nights.

Well, Phoenix is on top of Mars and sunlight is becoming scarcer by the hour -- just as it does during winter at high latitudes on Earth (Alaska, Sweden, Greenland, etc.). Temperatures in the Phoenix spacecraft's dusty hood are presently about -96 °C (-141 °F) at night and peak only at -45 °C (-50 °F) during the day.

If you remember chemistry 101 class, you'll recall that cold stuff shrinks and warm stuff expands (ice is one of those exceptions). Metals are the most susceptible to shrinkage in the cold.

Now let's put all of this together...

• Phoenix needs sunlight to power its gizmos and charge its batteries. That sunlight is fading.
• During the night, those batteries power heaters. There's gradually less power available.
• The heaters warm the batteries and other electronics. Phoenix scientists are now turning off some heaters to conserve power.
• Most Martian spacecraft* "prefer" to have their robotic guts above -40 °C (-40 °F) -- but can dip as low as -55 °C (-67 °F). Uh oh...
• Below that temperature, the metallic material in electronic circuits may shrink enough to snap. Bye-bye robot.

So there you have it: Phoenix is currently between a big red rock and a very cold place.

And no matter how much scientists micro-manage its power to keep it alive, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will soon freeze, snow down and bury Phoenix for months -- plenty of time to kill it.

It's been slightly more than five months since Phoenix landed, and (as we know from the Mars Exploration Rovers) you can keep going for years making discoveries on the Red Planet.

I simply can't believe Phoenix is already dying. What a cruel, merciless red-hued world.

In honor of Phoenix' eventual death, I offer you this tune:

Wish I could change the lyrics, though:

Across the city solar system you'll sleep alone, I followed
Lying wide awake until it the carbon dioxide ice comes, tomorrow(?)

And you're the one who cared enough to break carry out the extended plans made for us you

You're freezing up
You're freezing
And you're freezing up with no good reason again because your energetic juice is low

You're freezing up
You're freezing
You're freezing up with no good reason again because your energetic juice is low

* As for robots that fly among the stars -- such as Ulysses? They risk having their hydrazine fuel frozen solid by temperatures below just 2 °C (36°F) -- a more or less a dooming event for a spacecraft zooming through space on a precise path.

Photos: Dave Mosher, Discovery Space; NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Max Planck Institute

Mystery Objects, Near and Far

September 15, 2008

Ok ladies and gents, this week has started with a bang!

Not only did Mr. John McCain and his camp answer the 2008 Science Debate questions, but now we have two things that should blown your mind into slushy goo:

1) First exoplanet imaged directly around a Sun-like star(?)
The skinny on this amazing image:

• object name: 1RXS J160929.1-210524
• possibly not a planet (more observations needed)
• 500 light-years from Earth
• eight times heavier than Jupiter
• more than 300 times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun
• host star is about 7/8 the mass of the Sun

Look at that tiny orange splotch at the top left -- that's it. If it is a planet, it's huge. Simply colossal.

My non-expert guess: it'd have to be mostly gas, and if you think "a gassy planet that big should be a star!" -- sorry! It's about 60-70 Jupiter's too skinny to collapse into a star. (For an actual expert's take on this, do check out Phil Plait's post.)

* For the space dorks: The paper.

2) Mystery object that came out of nowhere
The skinny on this amazing image:

• object name: CL 1432.5+3332.8
• no one has any clue what it is, but it's *probably* not a supernova
• between 130 light-years and 11 billion light-years from Earth (now that's a ballpark estimate)
• brightened and faded over the course of 200 days (in infrared light)
• caught on camera by the Hubble Space Telescope

If you see a supernova in infrared, it usually brightens and fades within a few days. But something brightening over 100 days, then fading away? Friggin' weird.

The scientists who wrote the paper (see below) seem to think it happened outside of the Milky Way.
My non-expert guess -- and this is totally far out and likely wrong -- is that it's like the incredible gamma-ray burst we heard about last week, but one blocked out by enormous clouds of gas and dust.

Might that heat up the material to extreme temperatures, causing it to gain then lose heat over 200 days via infrared? I'm not sure. (Think of how long it takes metal to cool down once red-hot.)

* For the space nerds: The paper.

I'd bet money that Ray Villard -- Cosmic Ray blogger here at Discovery Space and bonifide exoplanet junky -- is giggling with excitment about these news nuggets, so be on the lookout for something from him soon!

The Great Planet Debate: Live Blogging

August 14, 2008

Note: I updated this post every few minutes or so with highlights during August 14th's "Great Planet Debate" between Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, director of the AMNH Hayden Planetarium. NPR's own Ira Flatow moderated the event.

A summary of my thoughts on the whole thing is at the end of this post.

5:44 p.m. ET - It's over -- and from Ira Flatow: "I'm sure this is not the last word!"
I think everyone would agree with that.

5:42 p.m. ET - Tyson: The more we learn about new things, the more we need to tune our vocabulary and way of thinking, otherwise we shut ourselves off from new discoveries. He says to schoolteachers: "Get the notion of counting things out of your system!" Just explore all the amazing things in the Solar System.

5:40 p.m. ET - Time for summary statements!
Sykes: Science in the classroom needs to get away from learning "promulgations of truth by an authority" and move toward understanding how science is a process, a debate, a conversation.
Tyson agrees.

5:37 p.m. ET - They asked my question (fromt he Internet): When you're not duking it out over planets, do you get along?
Tyson summarizes their friendly rivalry, including a storming of Tyson's office by the New York Times -- and Sykes, of course, with a faux strangulation photo.
Jokes aside, it looks like they do get along outside of the planet issue. Hmm.

5:34 p.m. ET - Tyson: Let's just use the words we want in scientific papers. The IAU will pick it up once the terms are used often enough.
Sykes: Science isn't done by vote.

5:31 p.m. ET - From the audience: "I'm David Morrison and I think you're both wrong!" Morrison, a senior scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute, sez there is no consensus about anything, so we shouldn't be defining anything at all.

5:27 p.m. ET - Sykes: Mostly planetary scientists, a.k.a. geologists, made the famous IAU vote -- not astronomers. Astronomers would go against the IAU vote.
Tyson: You overrate how many people support you.
Question (actually more of a statement) from the audience: 96% of the IAU wasn't present for the vote. No absentee voting was allowed... so the IAU changes just caused more confusion. What's better?

5:25 p.m. ET - Tyson and Sykes BOTH agree that the IAU definitions are inadequate. Interesting!
They both just diverge on what's best for change.
Tyson: "The IAU is not some pope up on high" - they comb the scientific community to find prevailing trends, then define it.

5:23 p.m. ET - Tyson: "What pissed off the American public:" we just learned this mnemonic device with nine planets, "Now what am I gonna do?"

5:20 p.m. ET - Ok, Ira Flatow has cut off the heated exchanges between Tyson and Sykes -- it's question-and-answer time.
Question from the Internet: What qualifies as "round"?
Sykes: "The Captain Kirk Test" -- it's pretty obvious, he says. Tyson agrees.

5:17 p.m. ET - Tyson: Let's classify objects by group - they're more similar to each other than they are to anything else.
Sykes: "Wrong astronomy breath!" Ouch. Now he's talking about how Ceres, in the Asteroid Belt, is very dissimilar. It may be covered in clay and water (which is very unlike asteroids).

5:13 p.m. ET - Tyson: "I look forward to the day when (the lexicon lets me) talk about Earth and Titan in the same sentence."

5:10 p.m. ET - The debate is now shifting toward education.
Tyson: Memorizing planets isn't science. We need to revamp this whole educational approach.
Chemists don't worry about confusing the public - says their terms are like (demonstrates hand going into orifice) to the public, but no one complains. (Hehe.)

5:06 p.m. ET - Tyson: "I have peeps who were all together to help me figure this out," he says of the planet issue and his committee at the American Museum of Natural History to rework the Solar System exhibit. Grouped objects by type, not by planet.
Sykes: Wait, wasn't it called The Walk of the Planets?!
Tyson tries to duck, but Flatow says Sykes is correct. Ouch.

5:03 p.m. ET - Tyson accidentally punches Flatow while describing the origin of Pluto "really" being a planet -- oops! Never a good idea to slug a 'ref.
Tyson says it has a moon (Charon). But now we know, he says, that asteroids can have little moons, too...

4:58 p.m. ET - Sykes finally gets to jump back in and respond.
I am distracted at home by thunderstorms and a cat that is freaking out, so I miss the response. Damn.

4:56 p.m. ET - Tyson: The term "planet" was an obstruction to figuring out asteroids and the Asteroid Belt, but scientists got around it in 1801. Discovering Pluto is "deja vu!" Terms can give you "tunnel vision" and prevent discoveries. Calls this "one of the great tragedies of science."

4:53 p.m. ET - Tyson: "I've been polite up until now." Uh oh.

4:51 p.m. ET - Flatow asks "what about exoplanets?"
Tyson: We need to not be so darned Earth-centric. We should be able to apply our terms to bodies outside the Solar System.
Sykes: Agrees, but we need a generalizable set of terms. Like, um... planet. Major planet, minor planet...

4:45 p.m. ET - Tyson: Europeans really don't care too much about Pluto. Come to America? "It's my favorite planet!" Also jokes that Disney's Pluto the dog and the actual rocky/icy body discovered by Clyde Tombaugh have the same authority/importance to Americans.

4:43 p.m. ET - Another scuffle, and Sykes jokingly refers to the International Astronomical Union as "holy mother church IAU." Tyson says let's get rid of the word planet - it's not really useful anymore. Sykes responds: "That's why God invented subcategories."
Many chuckles heard.

4:39 p.m. ET - There's a bit of a back-and-forth with plenty of interruptions. Pretty funny. Sykes responds to IAU definition: "You have to get bigger, and bigger, and bigger" to be a planet the more toward the edge of the Solar System.

4:37 p.m. ET - Tyson: "We're in desperate need of a new lexicon" to describe the Solar System.

4:35 p.m. ET - Neil Tyson reveals to Ira Flatow the fact that Mark Sykes has a law degree. Wonder how handy that will come in at a time like this...

4:33 p.m. ET - Ira Flatow is introducing the reason for the debate. Just introduced Tyson and Sykes. Looks like Tyson got a haircut and shave since I met him Tuesday.
Mark Sykes still sporting a mighty beard.

4:25 p.m. ET - I'm listening to the Great Planet Debate via a live video Web stream. Some lady named Margaret is telling everyone to turn off their cell phones -- or she'll take them.
Scary. Glad I'm not there.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now that this bad boy is over, I'm feeling the itch to respond:

As a member of the public you don't often get to see, hear, or be a part of the intense conversations that actually lead to science. Don't get me wrong -- I highly doubt this one will result in a published paper or anything like that, but watching two well-informed scientists go at it (plus those from the audience) was fascinating.

Each and every person's argument sounded reasonable, logical, well-thought. In other words, they all sounded right. So what the heck are you supposed to think?

Aye, there's the rub of science -- it's a process!

At the end of the matchup, Ira Flatow said he doubted this would be the final world and, unless a rogue gamma ray burst vaporizes our planet's surface (and all the scientists chewing on the issue along with it) tomorrow, I'll have to agree.

I said in my previous post that I was leaning toward agreeing with Tyson's view of how the Solar System should be organized -- into classes of bodies and throwing out "planet" altogether. But after watching the Great Planet Debate, I have to say that I'm right back where I started: Uncertain.

So, my vote is to leave it up to the astronomers and planetary scientists on this one. What about you?

P.S. Ok, I'm still leaning towards Tyson's view just a little bit. Sorry Dr. Sykes!

Photos: Associated Press/American Museum of Natural History/Planetary Science Institute; Dave Mosher, Discovery Space

Tyson: Sykes "Going Down" at Great Planet Debate

I can see it already at today's Great Planet Debate...

Ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner we have Neil DeGrasse Tyson, famous astrophysicist and reigning champion over Pluto's status as a non-planet.

In the blue corner is Mark V. Sykes, the underdog who wishes to muster the scientific community toward consensus on Pluto remaining a planet.

Gentlemen, let's have a nice clean fight!

Ok, a bit of a stretch on my part -- especially the image -- and I suppose I did lead Tyson into saying that Sykes is "going down."

But a lot really is at stake in the name of science here.

Tyson put the magnitude of the event to me half-jokingly during our chat on Tuesday in City Hall Park. (If you want to listen to our entire conversation, check out the end of this post for an MP3.) Here's what he said:

"It puts great pressure on Mark Sykes and me to solve all the problems of the universe."

Perhaps. If I were to pick two guys to help solve the problems of the universe, though, Sykes and Tyson would be in my top ten. Both are extremely well-informed and in great positions to communicate the issues, both as professional scientists and directors of various institutions. Most importantly, each has a great sense of humor.

Back to what's at stake, though.

I asked Tyson about why anyone should care if people use the word "planet" or some other term to describe celestial bodies. His response:

1. Words can influence how you think about a problem
2. Agreeing on terminologies enables scientists to speak the same language (so they can make more frequent, better and thorough discoveries)

He offered up the analogy of a person from 100 years ago seeing a car today: it's a horse-drawn carriage without the horses to that person. That makes sense to me.

In fact, it reminds me of 9th grade trigonometry...

I couldn't figure out how to simplify one of those wicked, tortuous, evil sin/cos/tan problems for the life of me. At least not the way my teacher taught the class. Seeing me struggle, a smarty-pants sitting behind me (who, in my rose-colored glasses, I imagine she had a crush on me) revealed a shortcut to solve the problem. And the floodgates of understanding opened up.

So I suppose what I'm saying is this: I might be giving up my "belief" that Pluto should remain a planet.(Wouldn't be the first of my beliefs to go by the wayside.) It seems to make more scientific sense.

The Bad Astronomer Phil Plait appears to be in the same boat as me after his chat with Alan Stern. Phil offers some first-hand perspective as a former professional astronomer on the planet/no-planet issue in a recent post (see here).

It's good to know I'm not alone on the "dark side" of possibly supporting the reclassification of the Solar System -- but I'm still very, very curious to see how Sykes defends himself today at 4:30 pm ET, live on the Web.

The registration page for picking up the video feed has closed, but there may be  away I can supply you with the goods to watch :) if you find yourself in this cold, lonely place of not having a way to watch, shoot an e-mail over to DiscoverySpace@Discovery.com.

As promised, here's the MP3 of my interview with Tyson: I'm a 10.7MB file, so download me with care. The quality is intentionally crummy, but you can still hear everything perfectly. Including weed-wackers, crazy New Yorkers, and irate cab drivers.

Photos: Associated Press/American Museum of Natural History/Planetary Science Institute; Dave Mosher, Discovery Space

It's Time for the Perchlorator!

August 07, 2008

I've been brooding for a few days as to what I could add to my post on the "Phoenix Flap," "Perchlorate Kerfuffle," or whatever catchy title everyone is using out there to summarize the frenzy of news last weekend.

Alas, there are some great posts out there covering the gamut -- see here, here, and here -- as well as a great story or two. Short of inventing a time machine to get us through some more Martian samples and peer-reviewed science, I'm not sure what I could add to our collective knowledge.

Well, I've been called the "space party boy" before (which I take no offense to). So in that spirit I offer you the something I haven't seen anywhere else: Something really, really funny.

Check it out:

P.S. This has to be the geekiest thing I've ever created, and am ready for my public flogging.

Martian Chemistry Find: Bad for Life?

August 04, 2008

If you didn't catch my previous post about the Mars-potential-for-life rumors, click here.

In short, quite a few  people ran stories describing a positive habitability-of-life result for Martian soil. Those reports stemmed from from a recent wet chemistry test by none other than the Phoenix Mars Lander, but were distorted in "retelling on the Internet," as Phoenix scientist Michael Hecht told me.

Now NASA has just put out a new press release, and -- oops -- looks like that "great for life" result might in reality be the opposite.

Scientists found perchlorate, which is an oxidizer, a DNA-munching chemical, and something that's not pleasant for supporting life.

The press release beat around the bush quite a bit about concluding it's a bad sign, but one interesting note was this (emphasis added):

The team also is working to totally exonerate any possibility of the perchlorate readings being influenced by terrestrial sources which may have migrated from the spacecraft, either into samples or into the instrumentation.

Translation: Rocket fuel Solid rocket propellant -- which perchlorate is an oxidizer for -- could have contaminated Phoenix somehow. Thing is, Phoenix used liquid hydrazine fuel to land and not solid rockets to land on the Martian surface. (Thanks to Sara Hammond for the correction!)

The Phoenix team, however, thought digging deep to get to pure samples would prevent any contamination. That might not be the case, though.

So, the final word? Still uncertain, but it's not a good thing any way you look at it. Either:
a) Pure Martian soil samples may be far more difficult to obtain than thought or...
b) Perchlorate is a major component of Martian soil (possible ouch for microbes).

We'll have to wait until tomorrow after 1 p.m. EDT, when NASA holds a press conference, to get more information.

My hope, having written an article for SPACE.com last year on the subject, is that it's fuel contamination. Even though Phoenix didn't use solid rockets to land. But it's just that: A hope.

Photo: NASA/JPL/Univ. of Arizona/Univ. of Michigan

E.T. Phone Home

July 21, 2008

The Mars Odyssey spacecraft has been zooming around the Red Planet for almost seven years now, and its THEMIS camera has sent back some amazing images of Martian scenery.

Some, of course, look way more interesting than others -- at least from a human perspective.

Scientists posted some great shots over the weekend, and in the spirit of pareidolia (seeing random objects, sounds, etc. as significant), let's take a peek at their top picks:

"E.T. Phone Home"

 

"Have a Little Heart"

 

"Birdie Tracks"

 

Curious what these really are? Here you go skeptical minds:

"E.T. Phone Home" -- Two meteorites smacked into this graben, aka a lowered strip of land along a fault line. Sorry... the Face on Mars doesn't have a means to give us ring, after all.

"Have a Little Heart" -- An crater in the northern hemisphere of Mars (Phlegra Montes, to be precise). Wind erosion or a sequential meteorite impact on the crater's rim may have given it the heart-like shape.

"Birdie Tracks" -- Sorry, no birdie foot prints on the Red Planet! These depressions formed from summer heating of icy soil in Mars' northern reaches.

For more of this stuff, be sure to check out the THEMIS Web site.

Photos: NASA/JPL/ASU