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So how will we know if we have found life?

Scientists can tell the composition of a planets atmosphere by how light is refracted by it. Different chemicals refract light differently. They call it spectromentry. If a planet had an oxygen atmosphere, or if there was methene in the atmosphere (from living creatures), it would have a distinctive signature that would be readable through a spectrograph.

Knowing this, the good folks at NASA figured they had a good idea what Earth should look like. When they launched the first probe they sent that had a spectrograph on it, they pointed it back at Earth.

It looked just how they thought it would.

Now all astonomers are searching for a new Holy Grail, a planet that has the distinct signature of a planet that carrys Life.

:)

A good weekend at poker

The poker pro career is back on!! Or maybe not, lol.

I came 3rd in a $24 multi tournament with 501 people in it on Full Tilt poker which earned me $1354.00. Very nice.

And just now, finally finished in the money at the White Rose Poker Club. Came a respectable 5th earning £64 from a £15 buy in. It was a relief finally putting in a good performance at my local club. It has been a long time coming.

A few more of these and the poker career is back on. :)

The picture is of one of the unsung planets Neptune. Just remember Neptune might not be as famous as some of the other planets, but it has its own rings, is minus 250 degrees, and has a core of rotating liquid metal.

Oh, and the big dark shape is a storm bigger than Earth with winds of up to 500km.

Nice.

Herschel left an impresion on Mimas.

Spare a thought for Mimas, Suturns moon.

The outer Giants are responsible for life on Earth. Life would never have started, or certainly got as complex, if the outer giants werent hoovering up meteors that otherwise would have slammed into Earth.

We've already seen Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter. This is what happened to Mimas.

Scientists think that if this impact had been any bigger Mimas wouldnt have survived. It would have been blown to bits.

Instead we have one of the best impact craters in the Solar System.
It is 130km across and they call it Herschel.

Big, huh. lol

It's my birthday

Well yesterday. I am 33 if you need to know.

I should like birthdays more, but since I was 25 I have never looked forward to birthdays. I am that grumpy sort of person who not tell anyone unless they asked.

Dont know why. My mother the the other sort! Make a big deal. Throw a party. Generally make a big song & dance about it. And I just want to bury my head until it goes away.

I am going out for a meal with about 10 friends tomorrow at the Oxford Street Brasserie. Sounds nice. Thats the only thing I like about birthdays, friends. But you should be a good friend everyday of the year, not just on someones birthday. Bah Humbug!!

And if you wonder what I got for my birthday? A pair of work trousers and 40 bottles of beer. Both useful and practical bit not exactly exciting. Two years ago Richard (my brother) bought me two tickets to the opening night of The Producers in London (Unbelievably funny!!) and the year before he bought me two season tickets for Leeds United football club (they got relegated that year, lol!!). But if you could buy me what I really wanted for my birtday, see the photo above :)

Anyway, roll on 34, Horray!

I can sing a rainbow

There is a British childrens song that I learnt at school. It is a simple melody with the following lyrics:






"Red and Yellow and Pink and Green."






"Purple and Orange and Blue"




"I can sing a rainbow. Sing a rainbow. Sing a rainbow too"




After seeing that beautiful aurora, I thought I would see what other coloured skies I could find.

To my joy, I found one for every colour of the rainbow.

You know, its not a bad planet to live on after all!

:)

Aurora

A beautiful green aurora in northern Canada. I would love to see them one day.

Peace out.

The best photo I ever took

I have been to a lot of fantastic places on this planet, and I've seen quite a few of the great sights on this planet; but I have never taken a photo of a great view and had it look this good.

Or is it just me? Is this just another average holiday snap that has got the owner thinks is a work of art?

Anyway, Victoria Falls in Zambia.
(It looks best in fullscreen!)

Starchaser

Another spacey thing I support is a British company called Starchaser Industries. They are building a commercial space tourism vehicle.

It was founded by a man called Steve Bennett who used to build small rockets and launch them from Morcambe Bay in the north of England.

In 2000 he entered The X-Prize. This is a competition set up to award $10m to the first people who could launch a vehicle to a height of 100km with 3 passengers, land, then re-launch with th same equipment only 2 weeks later. It is a prize for cheap, re-useable space travel! http://www.xprizefoundation.com/

Starchaser has a fantastic model for their vehicle, but they dont have the serious money needed. They raise their money through events and sponsorship. They have a membership ( of which I am a proud memeber) but this sort of cashflow means they can only work on one item at a time; enigine, then guidance, then excape capsule!./ It is not a very quick way of doing it. Steve has designed his own engines called Churchill! They have worked brilliantly in his smalled rockets (only 30 feet high!). I saw a test in a carpark where he got the Churchills burning for so long and so hot that he melted the asphalt, lol!! He has recenlty bought a plot of land in New Mexico and has opened Starchasers first Spaceport. We just need the spacecraft now. http://www.starchaser.co.uk/


However the X-Prize was won last year by a man called Burt Rutan and his vehicle SpaceShip-1. Congratulaions to Burt. It is a fantastic achivement, but I must point out that Burt had a backer. A man named Paul Allen. You may or may not have heard of him but he helped found a little known company called Microsoft with his college buddy William Gates III. Paul is worth about $15billion and pumped over $30m into SpaceShip-1 to help it win a $10m prize! And as we have now heard SS1 bearly got over the 100km mark and was a bit un-steady in its flight. But thats not who History will remember. I spoke to Steve Bennett once about it and he said that with £2m he could have had a shot at the record but Starchaser just didnt have that sort of money.

But the plan still continues. The X-Prize was such a sucess that they are doing an annual X-Cup, for achievement towards cheap space travel for all, and Starchaser is there every year. Richard Branson from Virgin has bought into Burt Rutans business and intends to offer flights into orbit in 2008 for about $125,000. Cheap but nowhere in the reach of most people. Starchaser is aiming for a cheeper flight than that. And a rocket is intrinsically a more safe design than SS1. Starchaser's Nova1 (their vehicle) has an escape module on it; a little rocket on the top that blasts the command module away in case of danger. ss1 doesnt.

The US Airforce defines an astronaut as someone who has passed 100 km. Nova1 climbs to 130km so everyone who flies in it can call themselves an astronaut!!! Before I die I will be able to fly a plane and call myself an astronaught. Even if I have to sell the flat to do it, lol

I will leave the final word to Steve Bennett. It may explain why this is one of the most important things I want to do.

Everyone at Starchaser Industries shares the dream of space travel and we are working toward providing you with a truly unique and memorable experience.

When you launch with Starchaser you'll have the Experience of a true Astronaut.

• Outfitted in an authentic spacesuit you'll head down the access ramp toward the Starchaser rocket, as clouds of vaporizing LOX shroud the launch pad.
  
  
• You'll climb into the capsule and be strapped securely into your seat to wait for the action to start.
  
  
• The dramatic countdown will begin, filling your mind and body with anticipation.
  
  
• As you hear the roar of engines coming to life, the rocket propels you upwards with a kick.
  
  
• Your body becomes one with the vibration of the rocket as it accelerates, quickly breaking the sound barrier and beyond.
  
  
• You'll be pushed back into your seat and feel the awesome power within every fiber of your being.
  
  
• The rocket engines shut down and everything will go silent.
  
  
• Coasting silently upward you'll feel a slight jolt as the capsule separates from the booster.
  
  
• And as you look out of the porthole and see the Earth below... you will know that you have achieved your dream...
  
  

You are an Astronaut!

The Grand Canyon

This is Valles Marineris on Mars.

"The Valles Marineris is a system of canyons located just south of the Martian equator. The system is about 4000 km long, and, if on earth, would extend all the way across the United States. The central individual troughs, generally 50 to 100 km wide, merge into a depression as much as 600 km wide. In places the canyon floor reaches a depth of 10 km, 6 to 7 times deeper than the Grand Canyon"

Big, huh?

Dont litter

The Mars Rover on its travels came across metal on the surface of Mars. Rather than proof of an ancient civilisation it turned out to be the heat shield from the Mars Rovers original decent over a year ago.

Humans! Cant take them anywhere!

:)

Earths first Spaceport?

Sooner or later, we gotta get of this planet. Me thinks sooner, judging reports about global warming and the on-coming War of the Cultures.

Over-population and the usage of our natural resources means that we must find some resources (and even somewhere else to live) before Earth has another Extinction Level Event (ELE). We know a giant rock is coming to change the order of things. It has happened 5 times we know of already. The dinosuar event, 65 million years ago in the Chixalub in Mexico is just the fifth ELE that they know of.


And of course I havent mentioned Super Volcanoes, Global Plagues, Ice Ages, and good old fashioned Thermal Nuclear Death.

sings "We gotta get out of this place". But how?

It is actually really fuel intensive to get of this planet. So much of a rockets fuel is just needed to break the Earths atmospere. You probably couldnt launch a vessel that was meant to go deep space and back again with conventional rocket fuel. It would probably weigh too much. Thats why they dont paint the fuel cells on the shuttle. The extra weight would mean extra fuel to cover it, and even more fuel to cover the extra weight of the extra fuel! phew!

So if you could launch from somewhere where you didnt have to break the Earths atmosphere, you could take so much extra fuel with you for your deepspace exploring or mining trip! Nice :)

And finally, what is the main componant of rocket fuel? Hydrogen, the H in H2O.

Which brings us to that magnificent photo from the Mars Exress showing a crater at the north pole of Mars full of water ice. It is about 10km across and about 200/400 meters thick. And its not the only crater at the pole. Concieivably, you could build a base at the poles of Mars, build a machine that converts water into Hydrogen fuel, and launch missions from there.

Many years in the future, I fear; but we have the technology now, not the political will.

Peace out.

Black Holes & Mira, the Wonderful Star

Ever since I heard what a Black Holes is I wanted to see one! Ever see that cheesy Disney movie from the 70's Blackhole? It fascinated me.


Since the creation of the Hubble Telescope it was only a matter of time before we got to see one. Buts whats that I hear you say? You cant see a blackhole because light cant esacpe from it? Well that is true; you might not be able to see the blackhole, but you can certainly see its passing!!

When a Blackhole passes close to a star, it starts to suck it in. The matter from the star streams towards the BH. As BH's are rotating the matter from the star starts to swirl around the event horizon of the BH just like a whirlpool. The gravity is so strong that the matter rotates close to the speed of light. They call this an accretion disc. You certainly can see those.

In fact the gravity is so strong that the BH sucks in far more matter than it can swallow. It ends up throwing out billions of tons of stellar matter from either pole. It throws them thousands of light years into space in two continuous jets.

Its not just BH's that create accretion disks. White Dwarf and Neutron stars do also. Both are the remains of collapsed stars that werent quite big enough to make a BH. The gravity they immit is still huge. A neutron star can have a diameter of 25k kilometres but have the gravity of a million Suns!!!

The last pictures are of Mira, the Wonderful Star, so called for its unusual fluctuations of brightness. Scientists now know Mira is a binary star system, with Mira A, a nice normal bright star, and Mira B, a White Dwarf star that is pulling huge amounts of solar matter from Mira A towards itself. The matter is spinning around Mira B at a huge speed kicking out emense amounts of radiaition. Radiaion is the main give-away for a BH.

The final picture is an artists recreation of what the Mira system might look like.


Nice.

The arc.

This is the trail that the shuttle Altanis left on her trip to space.

Pretty.

The Poles are taking over Britain....apparently

New figures from the Home Office have shown that visitors from the new EU succession countries have numbered 650,000. The government predicted 15,000, lol.

I'm all for freedom of movement. Its nice to see different people all over the place. There are two Polish lads working at my local Subway. They are both always nice and polite.

But vast amounts of foriegners in the UK always gets the debate going. Two many immigrants, not enough immigrants...yada yada yada. The Brits are actually a very tollerant people, but they cant stand the idea of people taking liberties with our laws and taxes. This debate will just keep going, with the Romanians and Bulgarians getting it next year.

But it got me thinking. Now that I actually know a Pole, I should ask; What does Poland think about a load of young, productive and tax paying Poles moving to other countries and supporting their ecconomies?

Is it a debate in your country, Kasia? Tell all!!!

The magnificent picture is from the Solar Observitory SOHO. The Sun in Ultraviolet.

Nice

:)

A smoke angel!

Another day, another cool picture. It needs an explanation.

"What type of cloud is that? It is not a naturally occurring one. Looking perhaps a bit like a gigantic owl monster, the cloud pictured above resulted from a series of flares released by an air force jet over the Atlantic Ocean in May. The jet that released the flares, a C-17 Globemaster III, is seen on the right. The flares release smoke and the resulting pattern is sometimes known as a smoke angel. The circular eyes of the above smoke angel are caused by air spiraling off the plane's wings and are known as wingtip vortices."

:)

The Venture Brothers

I have discovered a new cartoon.

I am not a habitual cartoon watcher (its all a bit too American for me), but you cant deny that some of the cartoons are aimed solely for adults Futurama, Family Guy, South Park. And some are for teens and young adults The Simpsons or Samuri Jack.

With with the advent of animated movies like Shrek and the PIXAR movies animators are not just aiming at the kids. We expect self-referential tricks, satire, and spoof that we adults will get a kick from. If we dont get it, then we dont watch it. If we do, then we watch in droves. Shrek II is the 8th highest grossing film of all time with $880 million.

I have discovered The Venture Brothers. It is set in a 1960's ish world of mad scientists and super Villians. The Venture Brothers are two lame teenagers who act and dress totally square. The try to have really lame adventures that a 10 year old would solve and always say "Go Team Venture!". But if the show was about just about them it would be failure but the Venture brothers are a backdrop to the real fun, the rest of the family. Their father Doctor Venture is a real mad scientist with daddy issues. His father was the most sucessful Super Scientist in the world. Litte Rusty cant get out of his fathers shadow. Selling crappy death rays and clones to the US governemt, he has lost his mojo. He is protected by one of the greatest cartoon characters ever, Brock Samson. An ex Super Secret Agent, he is now the bodyguard for Dr Venture and the boys. They are his family. Voiced by the fantastic Patrick Warburton (the voice of Kronk from The Emporers New Groove!), Brock Samson is the most violent bodyguard ever. Baddies dont get beaten, they get pulped and killed in the most inventive ways ever. The body count in every episode is always high.

With a full cast of Super Villans like the Monarch (dress like a giant butterfly and flys a giant cocoon full of henchmen dressed like butterflys), or the Lord OverBeiht (with a metal jaw and a whole country of henchmen) it is a joy to watch. Silly yet knowing it spoofs every 1960's spy movie ever but with modern sensibilities. There are loads of henchmen jokes. The Monarchs two chief henchmen Number 24 and Number 26 are real sad nerds who attend Henchmans Anonymous and live with their Mums. Rival Henchman get drunk and stoned waiting for their bosses to finish a super evil meeting. Even the Fantastic Four get a good kicking.

Watch this if you get the chance. I cannot recommend it enough.

http://www.adultswim.com/shows/venturebros/

Women taking over the world of Poker

Congratulations to Lois who came 4th in the White Rose poker Tournament. Of the 4 girls who entered, 3 of them mdae the final table.

Damn. I came 24th. Not bad but could have been better. Pockets Jacks beaten by AK. As is always the case with me!!


The photo is comet Hale-Bopp passing close to the galaxy Andromeda. By close, I mean only as our eye sees it. Andomeda is about 100,000 light years away in a new galaxy. But seems close to us. :)

The North America and Pelican Nebulas & The Eye of God

As the names say, these are The North America and Pelican Nebulas . I can never see the shapes myself. Maybe you can.

However, even I can see the eye in The Eye of God.

Shoemaker-Levy 9

On the 18th July 1994, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 slams into Jupiter.

"The power and size of the explosions of most fragments far exceeded most predictions. Although the visible flashes were out of sight, in infra-red the huge mushroom clouds, some bigger than the entire Earth, could be seen rising up over the edge of Jupiter. The power of the biggest explosion, that of fragment G, was estimated at 250 million megatons of TNT, 17 billion times bigger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 (yield 15 kilotons). Even the biggest hydrogen bomb ever exploded by mankind, 50 megatons, is tiny by comparison."

Cool, huh?

Arnt we small, lol?

Good News Everybody

I hope you are all Futurama fans. The most intelligent and funny cartoon ever!! The greatest cast of characters and the most quotable dialogue "What did we hit? Was it a space cow?"

The Simpsons only wishes it could be as funny as Futurama.

And the great news is Comedy Central have commisioned 13 new episodes.

Good News Everybody!!