Dare Mighty Things - Curiosity on Mars

I don't know about you, but I'm still ecstatic about the Curiosity success, and things just keep getting better and better...

Some of the obvious important and concrete goals of NASA have to do with scientific research, discovery, application and engineering, but although it cannot be so easily quantified, one could easily argue that whether by design or chance, it is one of the greatest vehicles we have to increase the fecundity of scientific inspiration: NASA's successes inspire new generations of young people to dream big and to work to make those dreams come true, especially in an age when scientific literacy is more needed than ever to solve our technological, social and environmental challenges.

So here is a little bit of inspiration:

And also, thanks to my good friend Harris, I get to share some high-definition footage of Curiosity landing on Mars, captured by Curiosity itself:

And this one is the same thing, but it centers on the heat shield, so it's a lot more stable:

Go create something great :)

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Interactive Fully Panoramic Photograph of Mars via Curiosity Rover

This may just be the coolest thing you see this week: a high-def 360-degree panoramic image based on photographs taken by the Curiosity rover in Mars.

And as if that weren't awesome enough, if you view this image through your mobile device, the gyroscope inside it will help give you a more realistic experience, since the picture is configured to show you different angles of Mars (and the rover itself), depending on the direction your phone or tablet is pointed.

And just in case you have problems viewing it, you can always go to the original source.

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Jon Stewart on the Curiosity Mars Touch-Down

Yes, here I go again with more stuff on the landing of Curiosity on Mars, but you'd have to be made of stone not to be awed and excited by the incredible accomplishment this landing represented. When Jon Stewart saw the Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror we featured a couple of months ago, he was on the edge of his seat.

But have you wondered why the folks at NASA worked so hard to get this done? Maybe this is what they have to do to get laid :)

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Update on Curiosity Awesomeness

Here I was, getting all depressed about the fact that while we know Curiosity landed successfully and according to plan, no one got to experience the epic descent, but as it turns out, NASA was way ahead of the game and made perfect plans for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to snap some awesome pictures, like the one below:

I don't know the exact details, but the math that must have been required to triangulate and synchronize all these times, places, angles and directions are worthy of an Olympic gold medal.

Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps, maybe it's time to get humbled by brain power...

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Curiosity Has Landed!

Across the vastness of interplanetary space, the nice folks at NASA have hit it out of the ballpark with what looks like a perfect landing on Mars.

I don't know if I can convey the significance of this event, but consider just how momentous an accomplishment this is: Curiosity landed safely at a distance our human brains can't apprehend, and yet this all happened because of the science that human brains can comprehend.

And the thing that's bitter-sweet for me is that such an incredible feat took place in a land where no one got to experience it... it's like the universe missed out on something amazing.

But before I get all existential, let me share some of the tweets Curiosity posted during the last stages of its amazing landing:

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Earth Time Lapse from the International Space Station

Over the past few years, we have featured some incredible time lapse photography on this blog, and it truly has been phenomenal. Technology continues to get ever more awesome, and people find more and new creative ways to fill us with awe and inspiration.

But regular individuals don't have access to certain viewpoints from where to shoot their incredible videos, like out space, for instance... but the International Space Station does:

And if you thought that was great, just watch what happens when they start adding effects and taking a few creative risks:

May your day be blessed with inspiration :)

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Is Pluto a Planet?

A few days ago we saw that Joe the Plumber (representing the view of thousands or millions of Americans) prefers the Bible to science books because science books go through constant revisions while the Bible contains eternal, unchanging truth.

Of course, Joe the Plumber and company probably don't realize that, over the last few thousands of years, the Bible has gone through countless revisions, additions, omissions, translations, translations of translations, etc. And many of these, of course, are based on either innocent human error at best or ideological manipulation at worst.

When genuine science books come up with revisions, on the other hand, the reason is that new evidence has been shown to challenge some of our former ideas, and there is no sense in holding on to ideas that have been empirically shown to be deficient or at least inconsistent with other things we have evidence to believe are true.

Today we have a simple example of this idea: why Pluto got "demoted" from the status of planet to the master of the Kuiper Belt:

And if you want a more detailed explanation of our changing views of Pluto (and the reasons why), NASA has a nice video. And if Neil deGrasse Tyson is more your style, you can check him out talking about the whole Pluto debacle, including all the hate mail he's been getting from second graders, or you can check out his NOVA documentary The Pluto Files.

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Getting to Mars - Curiosity's Seven Minutes of Terror

On their own right, the semi-autonomic rovers that explore the surface of Mars for us are great feats of engineering. The fact that they do what they do (from such a long distance away it's virtually impossible for us to really wrap our heads around) ought to be enough to impress anyone, but have you wondered how it is that they get there in the first place?

As you may recall from memory or a little history, landing on Mars is no easy feat. Its gravity is relatively similar to our own, but its atmosphere is too thin and light, so even if you get the angle of entry right (and that's a huge challenge in its own right), you still have to contest with the fact that you're falling at vertiginous speeds without much to slow you down sufficiently for a smooth touchdown.

So, how do you do it without smashing to smithereens all the equipment you want to use? Once it hits the atmosphere, the rover has an infamous seven minutes of terror to deploy a number of very delicate and specifically programmed functions about which you'll learn in the following pretty dramatic animation:

How would you do it?

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Measuring the Universe

If you read/watched our recent entry on the majesty, beauty and scientific importance behind the Transit of Venus, you may have come to realize that scientists are a clever bunch: give them two or three things, and they'll give you a whole world full of goodies. How's that for a return on your investment? Suck it, Wall Street!

Right, so the scientific importance behind the transit has to do with the question of how we manage to measure things in space (like the distance between the Earth and Sun), but have you wondered exactly how it is that scientists manage to measure even greater distances, like how far away other galaxies are, or even how old the universe is? Well, wonder no more because here's a quick little introduction to the general idea:

And if you want the more serious treatment about how scientists have figured out the age of the universe, you might want to check out In Our Time, with Melvyn Bragg.

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The Transit of Venus

The Transit of Venus has been all over the news recently, mainly because this is the last opportunity to see it for virtually everyone who is alive today. The next one will not occur until 2117.

But do you know its historical and scientific importance? That's right, this isn't just a pretty light show. Over the last four hundred years, this rare occurrence held the key to determine the size of our solar system, and as the following primer shows, the individual pieces required to put the whole together spanned the gamut of scientific and mathematical thinking, and involved some incredible minds:

But this general idea goes far beyond merely determining the size of an astronomical unit: it can be used to detect and measure planets in other solar systems too:

And here it is, in all its spectacular beauty, footage of the 2012 Transit of Venus:

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Ring of Fire Eclipse Moon Shadows

I've always loved (and been curious about) how leaves distort the path of light waves. If I were to speculate, I would guess that maybe they... actually, who are we kidding? I have no idea, plain and simple. Anyone out there who can help?

So I'll admit that I don't quite get the mechanism, but when you combine that weirdness with the Ring of Fire eclipse that occurred a couple of days ago, what you get is a thing of beauty:

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Brian Cox - Mars Loops the Loop

Thanks mainly to Aristotle's teleological metaphysics and the ancient idea that the heavens are a realm of perfection, it was believed for millennia that the celestial bodies moved along a perfect sphere around the Earth. Then some odd observations of retrograde motion were discovered among the planets, or "wandering stars" (as shown in the picture to the right), and the ancient astronomer/astrologer Ptolemy explained that this was actually better than we thought: it's circles upon circles! How much more perfection can you ask for of a divine geometer?

One of the problems with this fix, however, was that it only worked in hindsight: Ptolemy could explain previous instances of retrograde motion, but not make predictions about when or where we should expect to see them again. And of course, there was no suggestion of a mechanism that would be responsible for such odd behavior... until a chap by the name of Copernicus, you might have heard of him, came up with a revolutionary new way to understand the problem: the apparent retrograde motion of the planets can be understood as an illusion if we simply assume that we are not the center of the universe. If we, along with the planets, are rotating around the sun, we can go right back to the simplicity of one perfect sphere, and retrograde motion could then simply be understood as a function of the change in our position along our orbit relative to the change of the position of other planets along their own orbits. Problem solved!

Or if that seems needlessly difficult to grasp (and remember we haven't gotten into the math Copernicus used!), Brian Cox has a nice little demonstration of this revolutionary new vision that seems blindingly obvious in retrospect, but which took the genius of someone like Copernicus to think it for the first time:

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Neil deGrasse Tyson - Space as Culture

Recently, with his characteristic passion and erudite informality, Neil deGrasse Tyson delivered the keynote speech at the National Space Symposium, and continued to make the case, as he has recently, that we ought to increase funding for NASA and space exploration.

While most arguments tend to rely on economic and practical, palpable benefits that such exploration and research can produce, this speech makes a bolder claim: that our very national identity and the greatness of our our country (intellectual, cultural, scientific) depends upon the inspiration that NASA produces in the minds of future inventors, discoverers and thinkers. The economic benefits which such greatness almost inevitably produces are simply a nice side benefit that we get for free when we educate and inspire our children, and teach them to shoot for the stars.

When he hasn't had his coffee yet, he's kind of grouchy, isn't he? :)

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Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

This famous phrase, made famous by Sir Isaac Newton, and celebrated ever since, may have been a public attempt at modesty and historical gratitude that was sure to endear him to, and inspire, subsequent generations of natural philosophers, but it may also have been a little bit of an underhanded insult to Robert Hooke, just the kind of thing Newton would do when his gigantic and fragile ego was wounded if anyone dared to question some of his ideas...

Still, the phrase has taken on a life of its own, and it is now used to describe the incredible scientific and technological progress that has taken humanity to the unique position of being able to question its own origin and place in the universe, and to actually start to answer those questions, change its environment, make its dreams more ambitious and then make those dreams come true. The following captivating video is a beautiful celebration of the cumulative knowledge and insight we've gained about ourselves and the universe in only a few centuries, and the amazing feats we've accomplished as a result, by standing on the shoulders of giants:

Hope you're inspired!

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What Is a Leap Year?

As it turns out, there are people who don't quite understand the concept of a leap year. And while I was looking for pictures to post on this entry, I discovered that I wasn't aware that there is some movie by the same name. I wasn't impressed by the trailer, so why don't we take it one step at a time and just resolve for now the more important and interesting question regarding the astronomical concept of a leap year with a quick, fun and educational animation?

And if today is your birthday, happy leap birthday! Hope you feel younger than the rest of us.

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Meet the Lampyridae (or firefly) Again

You didn't think that just because scientists have figured out how to isolate the genes that help fireflies produce light and use it to produce life-saving antibiotics, that there weren't still a hell of a lot of other applications to which these little bugs might be put to use, right?

Consider the fact that light is energy, and since the energy that goes into producing the light at the tail end of fireflies comes from ATP, and ATP is found in all living organisms (I know, high school biology flashback), now we have ourselves a little life-detecting test that can be used even in outer space exploration. Voila!

Fireflies contribute to the accumulation of knowledge through their butts... how about you? :)

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This Is a Galaxy

Ideally, science works by the testing of hypotheses. In the real world, however, hypotheses can't always be tested directly, so scientists have to get creative and figure out indirect ways to see whether hypotheses are at least consistent with our empirical observations. Consistency alone is not sufficient for thinking that a scientific hypothesis is 'correct,' but inconsistency is usually a safe red flag that the hypothesis in question either needs modification or ought to be rejected.

One such attempt to test scientific hypotheses indirectly is to create computer models and simulations based on the very best current knowledge available: you let the simulations run and then see how close a match they make to what we know about the world.

There are many benefits to such an approach, such as the reduced time it takes to run a simulation (as opposed to waiting for the universe to run on its own slow pace). Another is the fact that when you produce visual representations of a computer simulation, you can end up with a beautiful piece of art, as the following short clip demonstrates:

And for more, check out the space tag.

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Cosmos - The Lives of Stars

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, Carl Sagan famously argued, you must first invent the universe, and for that, you're going to need stuff. But where does the matter that make up the cosmos come from? How is it created? If all matter is composed of three tiny particles (protons, neutrons and electrons), how do we explain the diversity of matter all around us?

In this installment of the widely celebrated documentary series Cosmos, Carl Sagan explores the origin of the chemical elements, how these relate to the birth, growth and death of stars, and even a little general relativity for good measure.

For more on the nature and origin of the elements of the periodic table, check out Jim Al-Khalili's wonderful documentary series Atoms (parts 1, 2 and 3), or his history of chemistry (parts 1, 2 and 3).

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Phil Plait - An Asteroid Impact Can Ruin Your Day

The dinosaurs say: No shit, Sherlock!

Still, while the title is sort of obvious (and almost question-begging), Bad Astronomer Phil Plait (who apparently hosts some TV show? I'm disconnected from the world since I have no TV) delves into some interesting details about what scientists have discovered about celestial bodies whose paths sometimes cross the path of our own little world, and even some of the ways in which we might be able to avoid such a collision in the future.

For more, check out our TEDTalks tag.

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Final Countdown

With the final launch of the Atlantis Space Shuttle two weeks ago and its (hopefully) safe return this Tuesday, we witnessed the end of an important era for NASA. Unfortunately, given the economic crisis and budgetary cuts, things aren't looking too hot for the near future, and that ought to worry us.

There is no denying that the scientific advances made by the space program have been invaluable simply in terms of what we've managed to learn about our immediate surroundings and even the far reaches of the universe. Still, I would argue that its largest contribution has been with that of inspiring generations of people with a vision of what we can accomplish when we roll up our sleeves, learn science and engineering, and are given the opportunity to make our dreams come true.

John Oliver, from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, meditates on the significance of the shuttle program, and discusses the issue with some important and inspiring figures.

The Daily Show - Final Countdown
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