Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Discovery's Shuttle. Summer Çamp. Space and Science News. You Are Not the Person You Were. Thoughts

Hello Troops,

The Discovery Space Center in Pleasant Grove has a space shuttle of their own! The Discovery shuttle rides atop a trailer surrounded with information on the Center and its programs. The shuttle isn't a static display. It is intended to be driven around our Utah County. Be sure to give the Discovery Shuttle a honk if you see it along the road. Let's do what we can to help our friends at Discovery make the people of Utah County aware of this new, awesome experience.

Where are the Summer Space Center Camps?

The Discovery Space Center
The Discovery Space Center is registering people for its summer space camps. These camps are patterned after the summer camps the Space Center once offered. You can choose an Overnight Camp, a 48 Hour Camp, an EdVenture Camp, a Leadership Camp or a Day Camp. Prices have never been this low, so you'll want to book your camp right away. Visit the Discovery Space Center's web site for more information: discoveryspacecenter.com

The Christa McAuliffe Space Education Center
The CMSEC hasn't posted a summer camp schedule as of today. The Space Center closed for renovations last August. It reopened for field trips only in February. Mr. Williamson, the Space Center's founder and director, will be retiring from the Alpine School District on May 30th to take a new position as Director of the Farpoint Institute at the Renaissance Academy in Lehi.

Farpoint
Mr. Williamson's Farpoint Station, will be built during the 2013-2014 school year at the Renaissance Academy (charter school) in Lehi. It will be part of a new junior high school building. Farpoint will offer field trips, camps, private missions and multiple volunteer opportunities. Visit Farpoint's website for more details on classes and Simlabs you can take now: Farpointinstitute.org

Space and Science News

How far away is the moon, in scale?

First, watch this video. Oh come on... it's less than 2 minutes. You'll like it, I promise

In other words, if the Earth is a basketball, does a tennis ball get the size of the Moon right?

The Earth is 12,740 km (7900 miles) across, and the Moon 3474 km (2150 miles) in diameter, for a ratio of 3.7.

A standard NBA basketball is 24 cm (9.4 inches) in diameter, and a tennis ball 6.7 cm (2.6 inches), for a ratio of 3.6. Pretty good! I’ll have to remember that; it’s pretty useful. So how far away would a tennis ball Moon have to be from the basketball Earth to be to scale? On average the moon is 380,000 km (235,000 miles) from the Earth, a distance of about 110 times its own diameter. A tennis ball would then have to be 110 x 6.7 cm = 7.37 meters (about 24 feet) from the basketball. That’s a lot farther than most people would think!

Herschel space telescope finishes mission

Europe's billion-euro Herschel space observatory has ended its mission to image the far-infrared Universe.

Europe's flagship space telescope has stopped working. The billion-euro Herschel observatory has run out of the liquid helium needed to keep its instruments and detectors at their ultra-low functioning temperature. This equipment has now warmed, meaning the telescope cannot see the sky.

Herschel, which was sensitive to far-infrared and sub-millimetre light, was launched in 2009 to study the birth of stars and the evolution of galaxies. Its 3.5m mirror and three state-of-the-art instruments made it the most powerful observatory of its kind ever put in space. The end of operations is not a surprise. Astronomers always knew the helium store on board would be a time-limiting factor.

The Voice of Alexander Graham Bell, Recorded in 1886

I thought this was exceptionally cool:

Voice of Alexander Graham Bell Heard in Recovered Audio Recording

The recording, a wax-and-cardboard disc, contains the voice of Bell counting aloud, rattling off different percentages and dollar figures, and stating his name, date and address.
And to think; we're still using discs 128 years later. Alex, old boy, you were way ahead of the curve.

Innovation : Solar Butterfly

These "Light Birds" harness the solar energy and store the power for a rainy day – meaning times when there is an electric outage, the lamp blooms to full LED force giving you illumination during dark times.

Credit : Jang Eun Hyuk

The Supernova of 1006

In the spring of the year 1006, Earth's sky was drastically altered by the appearance of a supernova that was brighter than the entire combined night sky. Mentioned in historical records throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America, this supernova was likely bright enough to be visible during daylight hours, with some accounts even claiming it cast its own shadows. Now, 1007 years later, this exploded star doesn't look quite so impressive.

This supernova remnant was first identified as the 1006 object back in 1965. While these remnants belong to what was briefly the most impressive guest star in human history, second only in relative brightness to our own Sun, these days the remains are mostly visible only in the X-ray spectrum.

The expanding debris cloud from the stellar explosion, found in the southerly constellation the Wolf (Lupus), still puts on a cosmic light show across the electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, the above image results from three colors of X-rays taken by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. Now known as the SN 1006 supernova remnant, the debris cloud appears to be about 60 light-years across and is understood to represent the remains of a white dwarf star. Part of a binary star system, the compact white dwarf gradually captured material from its companion star. The buildup in mass finally triggered a thermonuclear explosion that destroyed the dwarf star. Because the distance to the supernova remnant is about 7,000 light-years, that explosion actually happened 7,000 years before the light reached Earth in 1006. Shockwaves in the remnant accelerate particles to extreme energies and are thought to be a source of the mysterious cosmic rays. From i09

Very Little, if Anything, Remains of the Person You Once Were. Very Freaky......

There is some debate about this, but the conscience is that hardly anything of that person you once were still remains, except for the memories that person created.

Thoughts