Let's Get Weird

This post is more of a personal confession of weirdness than anything else. I do not expect to get any points for it.

There is a condition known as Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), and I won't bore you with the details, but it affects people in different ways, and it is triggered by various different stimuli. You can Google it, if you're interested. There is a rapidly growing ASMR community on YouTube that I am a part of, and tonight one of the ASMRers posted an amazing new video that I would like to share with you. I have been watching these types of videos for about five years now, even before they were calling it ASMR. I don't think I'm actually addicted, but I have been watching them every single night for a little over a year and a half, and I do watch them every single night, even if I go to bed really late. The only time I don't is if I don't have Internet where I am or my phone or Mac is dead, and I don't have a charger or something like that...

Anyway, like I said, this video was pretty good, and it has to do with space travel, so it is kind of relevant, even though it isn't very realistic. If you'd like to leave a comment, I'm interested in what you have to think about space travel in the future.

For the best experience, get into a comfortable position and use headphones when watching. This video has binaural audio, which means that wearing headphones will create a "3-D" effect. I hope you enjoy!

Entropy Statistics

Last summer the Higgs Boson, the particle associated with the corresponding Higgs field, which is responsible for the fact that matter has mass, was found. Now, according to Yahoo!News, livescience.com, and Space.com, the Higgs may also be able to determine whether the universe will end in a "big crunch," a "big rip," a "big freeze," or at all. This debate has been going on for some time now, and one of the biggest problems trying to find the answer is that we do not yet understand dark energy. Fundamentally, we don't know why the universe is expanding, or why this expansion is so rapid. Apparently, from what physicists can understand, the fate of the universe depends upon the mass of the Higgs boson, which teeters on the critical mass which determines how stable the vacuum of empty space-time is. Joseph Lykken, a theoretical physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Lab had this to say: "You won't actually see it, because it will come at you at the speed of light. So in that sense don't worry." I would like to add that you needn't worry at all, since this tentative event will not occur for billions of years, if it even happens at all. But for the sake of discussion, what do you think will happen?

photo from REFINERY29

Tropical Titan Tributaries

So another of my favorite astronomy topics is "planetary" geology, but I'm actually more interested in their "lunar" geology...

You probably know that Saturn has moons, but do you know how many? So far, NASA and JPL's Cassini Solstice mission has been able to find 62 moons orbiting Saturn! That's pretty incredible, right? And even more incredible is that, at least on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, tropical lakes have been found! Many of the moons around some of our solar system's planets have interesting climates and features, and Titan's lakes make it a moon of particular interest. Okay, so the liquid in these lakes in methane, which means that they must be extremely cold. So why are these lakes considered tropical? The adjective merely refers to the location of these lakes on Titan. It sounds cool, though.

You may be wondering how there could be lakes on the moon and how they don't evaporate. The lakes are very shallow, and in some areas may only be ankle deep, so how are they getting recharged? Well, just as Earth has a water cycle of condensation, precipitation, and evaporation (and transpiration, which we can ignore in this analogy, since we don't know if there is life on Titan...yet), Titan has a similar Methane cycle. It also has a thick atmosphere, which may contribute to the lakes and makes the moon difficult to study. However, astronomers do not believe that the Methane cycle provides enough precipitation to supply these extremely large, albeit shallow, lakes, and postulate that "a likely supplier is an underground aquifer," according to Caitlin Griffith, a Cassini team associate. Here is a video from How the Universe Works on the Discovery Channel website explaining how Saturn's satellites may have formed. In the model, a methane comet smashed into one of Saturn's moons, which exploded and recombined into the current planets and rings. This may be the original source of the methane in these lakes. 

Titan's lakes make it the only other celestial body besides Earth to have confirmed existence of liquid on its surface. Astronomers are trying to see if the Saturnian moon shares something else in common with terra firma: life.  The life forms on Titan might inspire hydrogen and expire methane, similar to exotic anaerobic microbes found on Earth. The conditions on Titan are obviously different from those in which the thermophiles live in Earth's oceans, but this form of respiration is one of the possibilities that astrobiologists are considering. 

I hope you found this post interesting, and if you are interested in learning more about Saturn and its moons, I suggest researching the controversial ice volcanoes and how Saturn's rings stay "replenished." Also, if you have any requests for me to blog about, please leave them in the comments section below.

This Just In!

About an hour ago in Russia, a meteor whizzed by, causing explosions, shattering windows, and injuring almost 1,000 people! Supposedly, it has nothing to do with tonight's asteroid. What else will happen today? Read the story here!

Duck, but Don't Cover!

If you want to have a chance to see the asteroid that will be grazing overhead tomorrow night, this website might help. :P

Happy searching!

Move Over, Rover

MAVEN, which stands for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, will be the next mission to Mars and will study the atmosphere, according to ScienceDaily.

(I did not know what the word maven meant, so I looked it up at dictionary.com, which defines maven as a noun that means expert or connoisseur.)

Right now, MAVEN is being tested to ensure that it will be able to withstand the harsh conditions in space and on Mars. If everything goes according to plan, the "connoisseur" will be launching in November. MAVEN is going to be gathering data about the planet's possible past habitability. You can read more about Mave's poor turkeyless-Thanksgiving on the principal investigator's website, lasp.colorado.edu.

Now what the heck does habitability mean, and why would past habitability matter? To me, and I think the prof. would agree with me, "habitability" by the University of Colorado at Boulder's and many others' standards refers to habitability by Earthlings specifically, or at least Earthling-like creatures. If this is so, then would past habitability mean anything? Why does it matter if we find evidence that Earthlings (unlikely) or Earthling-like creatures used to live on Mars? And why research that? Is it so hard to believe that life forms on other planets wouldn't have different needs, and wouldn't that make all planets "habitable" by some life form or other?

Wait. Earth is habitable by Earthlings. But for how long? Maybe MAVEN can help us see into our own future and try to prevent a similar fate from happening to us. If Mave discovers that Mars used to be inhabitable by Earthlings, and if he (yes, I said he) can determine what caused it to become uninhabitable, those would be invaluable findings. And imagine, what if there had been Earthling-like creatures on Mars at one time? What if...?

Feel free to comment below what you think about the MAVEN mission and it's potential results.

Telescopes...and Microscopes?

How did the constellations Telescopium and Microscopium get their names? (Careful. It isn't because you need a telescope to see one and a microscope to see the other...)

Find more constellations at the Startales website.

Astronomers may not use microscopes to look at the sky, but they have been using telescopes to look at it for centuries. Galileo Galilei didn't invent the telescope, but he was the first person known to point one towards the sky, and telescopes have come a long way since then. 

For example, they are even able to "see" things that are "invisible." With the Chandra X-ray Observatory, we are able to detect black holes. The Chandresekhar limit separates stable white dwarfs from unstable ones which either collapse into neutron stars or black holes. Both contain extremely high energy, and since the Chandra telescope is used to observe these stellar remnants, it was named after the man who determined the Chandresekhar limit-Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar. After researching this telescope and Chandresekhar himself a little bit, I came to realize that the observatory was launched only four years after his death. It's sad to know he didn't live to see it.

The website chandra.harvard.edu had many wonderful things to say about Chandresekhar, and it has some pretty cool facts about the observatory, too. My two favorite facts from their website are that the space mission that launched Chandra was the first NASA shuttle mission commanded by a woman, and that Chandra can observe x-rays from particles up to the last second before they "disappear!"

I have a newfound admiration and respect for Chandresekhar after researching for this blog. After reading about his life and personality, he is definitely going on my list of people dead or alive with whom I would like to have dinner. I thought it would be nice to add a quote from him, and I really liked this one that I found: "Indeed, I would feel that an appreciation of the arts in a conscious, disciplined way might help one to do science better." I wonder what he meant by that.

Subrahmanyan Chandresekhar

19 October 1910 - 21 August 1995

There's two dates in time

That they'll carve on your stone

And everyone knows what they mean

What's more important

Is the time that is known

In the little dash there in between

-Garth Brooks