How far into space have radiowaves travelled?

We've been broadcasting our existence into deep space via 'radio leakage' for more than 100 years, Travelling at the speed of light: 3 x10^8 that encompasses a sphere that spans more than 200 light years across and dozens of planetary systems the signals in theory have reached extreme deep space, but any artificial intelligence would need antennae to receive the signal hundreds of kilometres across to pick up the signals.

How will we have changed 1,000 years from now?

With technology and knowledge of how the human genome works ever increasing, we could actually speed up the past of evolution with radical results.

We could become superhuman

Disease Resistant: Genes which offer protection from many big killers such as  Malaria and HIV will probably become more dominant, and the cures and treatment will become more effective.

Super- intelligent: If we could work out the genetic basis of intelligence we could start screening fertilised eggs in order to make brainier babies.

Ginger: Natural selection actually dictates that Natural selection dictates that all the survivors would be ginger.

Better- Looking: It's fairly normal to get with a partner that is good looking, so the child then has 'good looking' genes so over time these genes become more prominent, kind of like selective breeding, where the genes become more dominant throughout the generations.

Man and Machine Merge

A life in silicon? : If some scientists are right, it could be possible to transfer human intelligence to machines by using a variety of scanners to produce far more detailed images of the brain than ever before!

Obsolescence of humans: Once artificial intelligence has been created, who knows what could happen to humans? Machine intelligence could mean that humans become obsolete.

The Far Side of the Moon

The far side of the Moon as photographed by the
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

Due to an effect called Libration, we, on Earth can never see more than 59% of the Moon's surface, leaving the so-called "far side" never visible to humans on Earth. This was first photographed by the unmanned Soviet Luna 3 probe in 1959. It was first directly observed with human eyes by the Apollo 8 crew in 1968.

The far side of the moon is only covered by  1% of  maria (darker surfaces on the moon) compared to 31.2% on the near side of the moon. Until the late 1950's very little was known about the far side of the Moon, because of Libration. Our lack of knowledge about the far side of Moon caused so much speculation, one example of a feature that can be seen through libration is the Mare Orientale. This is a prominent impact basin which spans almost 1,000km. Until 1906 this wasn't even named as a feature on the Moon. In 1906 Julius Franz in Der Mond named this as a feature. In the 1960's the true nature of the basin was first discovered and photographed in detail by the Lunar Orbiter 4 in 1967.

As these landscapes were mostly discovered by Soviet space probes and Soviet scientists selected names for them, although this caused some controversy so the International Astronomical Union (IAU) now name lunar features. 

. 

Could a planet exist without a Sun?

Yes planets can definitely be "free floating" without a star. These type of planets may have been ejected from their first, original star system. Scientists often refer to this as "rouge planets" or "normad" planets. Another way they can form is by the condensation of material in much the same way as stars themselves. These are normally called "sub-brown dwarfs".  The closest rogue planet to be discovered yet is 'S Ori 52' a member of the Orion star system and is around 80 light years away. Some recent studies have suggested that there might be more free floating planets in the Milky Way than stars!


An example of a rogue planet

Chris Hadfield's Journey to Space...

The YouTube sensation Chris Hadfield first reached the headlines in December 2012 when he blasted off into space on board the Soyuz rocket to the ISS (International Space Station), his mission was to last nearly 6 months orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour seeing a sunrise or sunset every 92 minutes. What's even more astonishing is that it only took 8 minutes and 42 seconds to reach the ISS.

Overall Chris Hadfield has spent 166 days in space, and has completed two space walks. He was even the first Canadian to ever walk in space.  Chris Hadfield was first inspired to be an astronaut when he was raised on a corn farm in Ontario, he watched the Apollo moon landing in 1969. At the time Canada didn't have a space agency so Chris went on to gain his glider pilot licence under the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. he joined the Canadian Armed Forces and he earned an engineering degree at the Royal Military College. As part of an exchange programme with the US Navy he also obtained a degree in  aviation systems at the University of Tennessee Space Institute.

In 1992 Chris Hadfield was one of the first astronauts ever to be excepted onto the Canadian Space programme. In November 1995 he took his first space flight to the Russian Space Station, Mir, where he flew as a 'Mission Specialist'. In April 2001 he flew again on the STS-100 and visited the ISS, here he helped to install the Canadarm2. He took his third and final space flight in December 2012 where he joined Expedition 34. In March 2013 he then took over command of the space station as part of Expedition 35. As part of the mission he was in charge of five astronauts and dozens of experiments on board the space station, on many different things including the impact of low gravity on human biology. During the mission he gained popularity by chronicling life aboard the space station. He also took many pictures of Earth and posted them through Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr to many people worldwide. His mission ended in May 2013 when he safely returned to Earth. Shortly after returning he announced his retirement, ending a 35-year career as a military pilot and astronaut


Chris Hadfield has since written a biography titled: 'An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth' about his 4,000 hours he has clocked up in space and a whole lot more.

 

Meet the Piglet Squid

The Piglet Squid (BBC Focus Magazine)

This is the Piglet Squid (Heliocranchia pfefferi) which always has a smile on his face! The tentacles seem to form a mass of curly 'hair'. The squid is roughly the size of a small avocado and is common in deep water in virtually all oceans. It lives at depths of around 100m or 320ft.

 

The piglet squid is a slow swimmer but ammonium ions in its body fluid help to keep it buoyant. A large light-producing organ (photophore) is located beneath each of its large eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Andromeda Galaxy

This  is the Andromeda Galaxy, which I was lucky enough

 to take as part of the GCSE Astronomy that I do every

Wednesday evening at school

This is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) which lies around 2.5 million light years away from Earth and it our closest spiral galaxy. Observations taken in 2006 by the Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that the Andromeda Galaxy contains around 1 trillion stars. The Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be 7.1×10¹¹  solar masses. This means that the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is 7.1×10¹¹ times heavier than the Sun. The mass of the Sun being approximately two nonillion kilograms. The value of this constant was found by Henry Cavendish in 1798 at the University of Cambridge. He did this with a torsion balance which is designed to measure very weak forces. The invention of the torsion balance is usually credited to Charles - Augustin de Coulomb who invented it in 1777.
 

NASA: Tales of Triumph and Disaster - Part 1

40 years ago history was made worldwide, when the first man was landed on the moon. This will tell the ever continuing story of endeavours undertaken by the USA at the forefront of manned and unmanned space exploration.



The Astronauts part of the Mercury Mission

On July 1958 NASA was established, with one simple brief: to beat the Russians in the space race.  Drawn from military training pilots the hope was to get humans safely into space, but quickly and to a deadline.

During the 1950’s the American’s were still trailing the Russians in the space race.  NASA firstly established the Mercury programme to train seven astronauts to be ready for space. One included Alan Shepard who NASA selected for America’s first manned mission into space. Scientists at NASA were shaken as Russia launched their first manned space flight on the 15^th April 1961, only a few weeks before NASA’s first manned mission was to be launched.

On May 5^th Alan Shepard’s flight was still a history-making event. Whereas Yuri Gagarin had only been a ‘passenger’ in the vehicle, Shepard was able to manoeuvre the Freedom 7 space capsule himself.  Shepard made a safe return to Earth with a splashdown at sea and recovery by helicopter, even better still this was all captured on camera and broadcast to millions worldwide. As he returned to mainland America, he was honoured with parades in Washington, New York and Los Angeles.

This historic event signalled the first of many missions by NASA and further joint projects with various contries, including Great Britain, find out more in “NASA: Tales of Triumph and Disaster – Part 2” , coming soon)

Contact Details...

Sign up for email updates with each post to the right of my blog -->

Email: scisparks284@gmail.com

Twitter: @Sci_Sparks

The beginnings of the ISS

The first space station was launched by the Soviet Union, named Salyut 1, but this unfortunately was unsuccessful as the astronauts couldn't enter the Space Station due to a technical fault. The Soviet Union later launched Salyut 2,3,4,5,6,7 but these were all plagued with technical faults so didn't last any time at all. After the countless failures of the Salyut space stations the Soviet Union was successful in launching the Mir space station in February 1986. Cosmonauts on the Mir Space station were the first humans to spend more than a year in orbit.

In May of 1973 the United States launched its first space station, named Skylab which spent years successfully orbiting Earth. Meanwhile on the Mir space station a reliable system was developed for the transportation of equipment, food and crew members at Mir. Later in 1991, when the Soviet Union was divided, Russia took charge of Mir. By 2001, the space station was facing major problems and Russia decided to de-orbit the space station in March and it collapsed into the Pacific Ocean.

In 1984, President of US, Ronald Reagan, put forward the idea of a project of a permanent space station  named 'Freedom.' At that time, the estimated cost of the project was said to be  8 billion dollars. Many countries contributed, including the UK, Canada, Japan and Brazil. In 1993, President Bill Clinton, wanted to cancel the space program project, since it was facing a huge delay and it had exceeded the budget. At the same time, the Soviet Union was planning to build their next space station, Mir 2. After the division of Soviet Union, in 1993, Russia and United States came together and renamed the project as International Space Station.
 

On the 1st February 2003, the space shuttle Columbia broke apart whilst it was entering the Earth's atmosphere. All seven crew members died in this incident and the disaster happened all over Texas. NASA, rightly so, cancelled all flights to the ISS to ensure the safety of further flights to the ISS and beyond. The construction of the ISS was completed in 2011 and is the 9th space station and the largest artificial satellite in Earth's orbit. Altogether the space station takes around 90 minutes to complete one revolution of Earth.

The ISS - Credit : NASA

 

The First Man in Space

Yuri Gagarin

Happy New Year!


On 12th April 1961 history was made when Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (9th March 1934-27th March 1968)  became the first man in space with a 108 minute flight orbiting the earth once.


In 1960 he was shortlisted for the Vostok 1 space programme in an attempt to build on the success of the Sputnik 1 programme just three years earlier. Rivalling German Titov, Gagarin managed to impress the space programme director more so and was selected for the space programme in 1961.

Shortly following his resounding success with the mission he became an instant worldwide celebrity, he visited several countries including Britain in 1961. Unfortunatley he diedin a military training flight on the 27th March 1968 aged just 34.

Although he was awarded many medals and titles, including Hero of the Soviet Union, the nation's highest honour. Vostok 1 was his only space flight but he did serve as backup crew to the Soyuz 1 mission.

Less than a month later an American astronaut, Alan Shepard became the first American in space.

First news headlines following the mission

 The U.S and Soviet Union since this have carried out cooperative missions, the first of which happened in 1975. The mission was called "The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project" and it was designed to test the capability of docking systems for future American and Soviet spacecraft, something which later opened doors into future joint manned flights.