Mike Falick's Blog

All Known Bodies in Our Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter

This website shows a comparison by size of all the bodies in our solar system greater than 200 miles in diameter.  Earth is the 6th largest with a diameter of 7,900 miles.

USA to Land on Mars by 1982 (At Least According to this 1969 Time Magazine Article)

In the days after the Apollo 11 moon landing, anything seemed possible.  This article in the July 25, 1969, issue of Time magazine had Americans landing on Mars as early as 1982.
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Friday, Jul. 25, 1969

NEXT, MARS AND BEYOND

EVEN as man prepared to take his first tentative extraterrestrial steps, other celestial adventures beckoned him. The shape and scope of the post-Apollo manned space program remained hazy, and a great deal depends on the safe and successful outcome of Apollo 11. But well before the moon flight was launched, NASA was casting eyes on targets far beyond the moon. The most inviting: the earth's close, and probably most hospitable, planetary neighbor. Given the same energy and dedication that took them to the moon, says Wernher von Braun, Americans could land on Mars as early as 1982

Mustering the necessary zeal—not to mention the political and budgetary support—may be more difficult than mastering the technology. NASA has no plans yet for any manned expeditions beyond the moon, largely because of its inability to wrest more funds from a Congress whose members are already divided over the $24 billion tab for Apollo. Last week, as head of a task force on future U.S. space objectives, Vice President Spiro Agnew said the nation should aim for a manned Martian landing by the end of the century. But Agnew conceded that the other members of the panel might be more cautious about a manned Martian expedition.

With sufficient funds, NASA intends to launch nine more Apollo flights to the moon in the next three years. Lofted by the same powerful Saturn 5 boosters that have been Apollo's workhorses, U.S. astronauts will range over increasingly rugged areas. The scheduled Apollo 12 flight in November will take them to the Ocean of Storms. On subsequent missions, they will touch down near the Crater Censorinus, the Sea of Serenity, the Crater Tycho and finally such forbidding abysses as the craters Aristarchus and Copernicus.

As the lunar expeditions become more ambitious, so will their hardware. NASA is now improving the life-support systems in the lunar module to allow visits to the moon of up to three days by 1970. The agency is also developing more flexible space suits and designing a small rocket-propelled "lunar flyer."

NASA also hopes to keep its manned space effort alive by using surplus Saturn 4B rockets—which now serve as the third stage of the Apollo launch vehicle—for earth-orbiting flights. This effort, dubbed the Apollo Applications Program, will begin in 1971 with a 28-day flight by three men—one a doctor. These vehicles are only forerunners of a giant space station that NASA plans to orbit by the late 1970s. The first station will probably accommodate twelve people, including the first American spacewoman. It will remain aloft for at least ten years, with crew members rotated every six months.

Mapping the Red Planet

At the same time, NASA will attempt increasingly complex unmanned probes. Two unmanned Mariner spacecraft will soon pass within 2,000 miles of Mars and radio back enough close-up photographs to map about 20% of the Martian surface. In 1973, other Martian orbiters will eject two instrument-packed capsules for soft landings on Mars.

Mars, however, is only one of NASA's planetary targets—and a relatively close one at that. In 1972, the space agency will send two Pioneer spacecraft on a flyby of Jupiter, largest planet in the solar system. A year later, another Mariner will try the first multiple-planet probe. After a sweep of Venus, it will use the Venusian gravity to boost itself on toward Mercury, the sun's closest and smallest satellite. In the late 1970s, the so-called "outer planets" will be so favorably aligned that a spacecraft passing Jupiter could use its gravity to push on toward Saturn, Uranus and Neptune —a "grand tour" that would cover billions of miles and take as long as ten years.

The prospects for man's first leap into the solar system will surely be enhanced by the success of such unmanned missions. Not only will they prove the feasibility of interplanetary travel, but they will help arouse the public support necessary for such journeys. To be sure, Americans will continue to agonize over the cost of the program —which NASA says will come to no more than .5% to 1% of the gross national product (currently running at $900 billion) a year. And the question of priorities will remain relevant as long as such earthly imperfections as poverty and pollution persist. Still, as Science-Fiction Writer Isaac Asimov says, "Man has always had the other side of the hill to worry about"—and he always will. This week the other side of the hill is the moon. Before this century ends, it will almost certainly be Mars —and beyond.

Left Brain vs. Right Brain

Cool Science Facts: 43 Digits of Pi is All You Should Ever Really Need

From the very interesting website Cool Science Facts comes this very cool science fact about pi:

The number pi is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. It's approximately equal to 3.14159265, although the digits go on forever.    

Some mathematicians are obsessed with computing pi to more and more digits. In the year 1610, a German mathematician computed pi to 35 digits. In 1789, a Slovene mathematician computed pi to 140 digits. This was all done by hand, in poorly heated houses.    

An English amateur mathematician spent 20 years calculating pi to 707 digits, finishing in 1873. 71 years later, it was discovered that he had made a mistake at the 528th digit, and all the digits following it were wrong.    

In 2002, frantic Japanese mathematicians used a supercomputer to accurately compute pi to 1,241,100,000,000 digits.    

Based on all this effort, you might assume that it'd be useful to know a trillion digits of pi. However, if you had a circle the size of the observable universe, and you wanted to compute its circumference with an accuracy equal to the size of a proton, the number of digits of pi that you'd need is only 43.    

Either mathematicians are totally crazy, or they're planning ahead for a time when the survival of humanity will depend on the ability to construct extremely large, accurate circles.

Top 10 Physics Experiments and Top Physics Stories of 2006

From the ever increasing number of very good physics websites come these two new sites. 

On the first site, Robert P. Crease, a member of the philosophy department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the historian at Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently asked physicists to nominate the most beautiful experiment of all time.  The 10 winners of this polling with short explanations of the physical experiments and computer animations can be seen here.

The second site brings you the top physics stories of 2006, including the top story of the year.

Scientific American's List of the Most Important Science Stories of 2006

Scientific American has posted its list of the most important science stories of 2006. __________________________________________________________________________________ December 28, 2006
Most Important Science Stories of 2006
Humans controlled computers with the power of thought, built an invisibility cloak, cracked the mystery of a 3,000-year-old computer, discovered a new element, unearthed a missing link and kicked Pluto out of the planet club--and those are just the highlights.
By The Editors
Astronomers Relegate Pluto to Dwarf Status After a week of contentious public and private debate, a small cluster of astronomers voted to demote Pluto from its planetary status. The world wept, and we wept with you. Newfound Fossil Is Transitional between Fish and Landlubbers Dubbed Tiktaalik roseae, this large, predatory fish bears a number of features found in the four-limbed creatures that eventually gave rise to all amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Plus, it gave our editor in chief another chance to take on creationism. The Year of An Inconvenient Truth The climate models were as dire as ever, despite some researchers' ongoing attempts to deny that anthropogenic climate change is even happening. Meanwhile, the effects of global warming continued to multiply, including more intense monsoon rains, the migration of America's breadbasket to Canada and the contraction of the Earth's atmosphere. (There was some good news, as well: levels of atmospheric methane, which is a powerful greenhouse gas, mysteriously stabilized.)   The Passing of Steve Irwin An interview with the Crocodile Hunter revealed that he was more than just a showman, and possessed a deep commitment to animals, education and environmental conservation.

Asteroid to pass within 22,000mi of Earth in April 2029: NASA Brainstorms

Today's London Times includes a very disturbing article that sounds like the plot of a mediocre movie.  The Times reports that in April 2029 a 40m ton asteroid will pass within 22,000 miles of Earth, a distance so close that the asteroid could destroy orbiting satellites. 

The article says that NASA estimates that if it hits Earth, it would release energy equivalent to the detonation of 880 megatons of TNT, more than 4 times the power of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883.

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The Sunday Times               December 24, 2006

Mission: to destroy it before it gets us

Jonathan Leake, Science Editor

NASA is drawing up a shortlist of ideas to be unveiled early next year for diverting a 40m-ton asteroid that is on course to pass dangerously close to Earth.

The schemes will be presented and discussed at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Fears that the planet may be in danger from asteroids were heightened by the discovery of one orbiting the sun that, on its present path, will pass within 22,000 miles — a hair’s breadth in astronomical terms — in April 2029.

Nasa’s idea is to engineer a minor shift in its trajectory that would make the asteroid miss Earth by a wider margin on this and all subsequent passes. Under one possible plan, a robotic craft would be sent to the asteroid to attempt to alter its course. One option might be to install a propulsion system on the surface to nudge it onto a new course.

 

An Amazing Hi-Rez Picture of Yesterday's Space Walk

If this picture doesn't make you want to be (wish you were) an astronaut, nothing will.

Pluto Gets Fired...What's the New Mnemonic Device Going to Be?

If you're like me, you learned the order of the planets by an mnemonic device that went something like

My very educated mother just served us nine pizzas (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto)

It's time to come up with a new acronym because today the International Astronomical Union determined that Pluto is no longer a planet to be considered with the other 8.  Pluto is now a "dwarf planet."  For more information, you can read this Reuters report.

** Update 8/25/06: Apparently, not only was I not the only person to think of the mnemonic device issue.  Indeed, here's a website that actually ran a contest.  Their winner:

My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.

Runners-up included:

Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet

"My vision, erased. Mercy! Just some underachiever now."

Most vexing experience, mother just served us nothing!

Why Mosquitoes Are Attracted to Certain People

As one of the people who seems to attract mosquitoes, I was intrigued by this article that appeared in the July 4 posting on NewScientist.com.  Apparently, some more fortunate people produce a natural mosquito repellant.  On the plus side, the scientists think that "one day" this naturally occuring repellant might be able to be mass produced.  Until then, Deep Woods Off.