Sphere

Time Flies...

2008-08-21T09:34:00.001-07:00

Time Flies...
Originally uploaded by ParsecTraveller

Experimenting with a long exposure while moving a digital clock around in the air.

Long exposures are great...they make waterfalls silky, stars into trails, and waves into foam.

Future Past

2008-04-30T07:59:00.000-07:00

San Francisco Chronicle Wednesday, October 12, 1977

Cities in Outer Space—Answering the Critics

By Harold Gilliam

It didn’t look like the kind of place you would expect to find a mad scientist.

No Charles Addams mansion, just a large white gabled house on a street in Palo Alto with wide lawns and big sycamore trees, very much like a friendly neighborhood in Grand Rapids.

Nevertheless I walked toward the front door with a case of mild anxiety. There are people who think Gerard O’Neill is, if not a mad scientist, at least a dangerous fanatic.

He is the Princeton physicist who has conjured up this vision of cities in space,
housing thousands of people, and he says we can build the first one in about 15 years.

Space solar power stations would beam almost unlimited cheap energy back to earth, day and night. Good-by, Arab oil. Good-by, energy crisis.

O’Neill’s colonies, built in space with materials mined from the moon and the asteroids, would proliferate until they could hold millions of people, absorbing the earth’s entire annual population growth – people attracted by the prospect of high incomes and exotic surroundings. Good-by, population problems.

The colonies would be fully enclosed with their own atmosphere, but otherwise would closely resemble earth all cleaned up like some roofed-over Disneyland – trees, flowers, parks, farms, rivers, woods, lakes.

The man who came to the door wore a white polo shirt and a friendly smile. He appeared an athletic 40. I learned later he was 50 and a glider pilot in his spare time.

“I’m Gerry O’Neill,” he said. “Come on in.”

He said he was here temporarily from Princeton to join 60 other scientists from all over the country in a six-week space colony study at NASA’s Ames Research Center.

As we sat down I told him that I had always taken a dim view of space activities because they seemed a high-priced escape from the problems facing us on earth.

“I used to feel the same way,” he said. “Then a few years ago I developed a space project for my first-year physics students at Princeton – purely as a class exercise. They were assigned to investigate the possibilities of permanent space habitats, using only existing technology. Much to everybody’s surprise, all the numbers came out right.

“And up to now they’ve continued to come out right, even with large teams of scientists working on them.”

I told him I had talked to some authorities who couldn’t believe his space statistics. University of California energy specialist Lee Schipper, for one, has said that he believed nobody had any idea of the cost of building a colony on the moon or in space, since there’s no experience to base it on. Big projects always have colossal cost overruns, and if the space stations can’t supply cheap energy, their economic base disappears.

O’Neill nodded, as if he’d heard that before.

“These aren’t just my figures,” he said. “They’ve been checked out by many scientists in studies funded by NASA.

“In the next 25 years utility companies are planning to spend $800 billion for new nuclear and coal plants to quadruple their generating capacity. It would take much less – $30 to $60 billion – to bring on line our alternative to coal and nuclear.

“That amount would buy an industrial habitat in space turning out two power satellites a year, generating ten thousand megawatts each. Seven years later an expanded facility could supply the country’s entire need for new generating capacity.

But with all the expenses of going into space, I asked, how could he expect to do it so much more cheaply than developing earth-based energy sources?

“Manufacturing power stations – or almost anything else – is much easier in space than on earth because you don’t have to spend energy overcoming gravity. And there’s an uninterrupted supply of sunlight we can convert to microwaves beamed to earth day and night.”

I asked O’Neill about the critics who say it wouldn’t be possible to raise food in space because organic soil depends on the interactions of millions of micro-organisms, plus assorted worms, bugs, birds and bees all combined in the intricate balances of a complex ecosystem.

“I think the ecologists have brainwashed many of us into thinking ecological stability is necessary. The fact is that we have never grown food that way. The farmer puts in a plant, pulls the weeds and kills the pests.

“Greenhouse agriculture is the most efficient kind there is. And basically that’s what we would be doing in space.”

I told O’Neill that some environmentalists regard him as a very dangerous person, diverting us from the job of learning how to conserve energy and live within the limits of the earth, offering us an escape in the sky as a solution to all our problems. Don’t insulate, emigrate.

“Well, I think a lot of attacks on this idea have been emotional and based on misinformation. The critics aren’t willing to do the hard work of reading and understanding the technical documents.

“The stupidest thing we could do is to limit our ways of solving problems. We should look at all solutions and find out which is best. Including space.”

Later, as I left the house and walked down the shady street beneath the sycamores, I recalled a remark by Schipper: “O’Neill can put price tags on his hardware, but he’s talking about building complete social order in space. There’s absolutely no basis in experience to know how much it would cost or whether it would work at all.”

I could not avoid the feeling that O’Neill was promising too much too soon. Taking earth experiments into space is climbing into another order of magnitude where the unknowns out-number the knowns by a thousand to one.

And yet…

Are the unknowns any greater than those faced by Columbus sailing from Spain, or Lewis and Clark starting up the unknown Missouri? If we have lost our capacity to take risks, to venture, to dare for the sake of great purposes, our civilization is surely moribund.

Strolling down the quiet street beneath the sycamores, I had to admit that my imagination was fired by the idea of a new step in human evolution, opening up the blind alleys of our time and providing the electrifying prospect of unlimited new frontiers.

Was it a vision of a possible future – or a dangerous delusion?

Next week: Can humans survive in space?

New Sony Digital SLRs

2008-02-13T23:28:00.001-08:00

The new Sony A350 and A300 digital SLRs. The A350 has a really nice pull-out 2.7-inch LCD. Very cool.

Samsung PMA Booth LED Curtain Display

2008-02-13T23:25:00.001-08:00

The Samsung booth at PMA had a huge LED curtain that could display messages.

New Canon Lenses

2008-02-12T07:10:00.001-08:00

The new Canon EF 800mm and EF200mm lenses.

The New Sony Mylo

2008-02-09T12:27:00.001-08:00

I thought the new Mylo was very cool. The design was much improved over the previous version's egg-like shape.

The Pentax K20D

2008-02-09T12:24:00.001-08:00

The new 14.6 megapixel DSLR from Pentax. A very nice camera, with excellent ergonomics.

The Hyper-Fast Canon EOS 1D-Mark III

2008-02-09T12:20:00.001-08:00

I used this lens and camera combo at PMA 2008. The 10fps speed is incredible!

The Casio EX-F1

2008-02-09T12:15:00.001-08:00

The new Casio EX-F1 is truly amazing. It can capture 60fps full-resolution 6 megapixel images, and an incredible 1200 frames per second at lower resolution.

Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi at PMA 2008

2008-02-09T12:11:00.001-08:00

This is the new Digital Rebel XSi. I had a chance to play with it at PMA 2008 and I was very impressed. The LiveView and larger viewfinder are really great, and the higher FPS-rate is noticeable.

Excellent Podcast...Astronomy Cast

2007-12-30T17:04:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to a really great podcast called "Astronomy Cast". The casters cover some really interesting topics, and both the host and scientist are articulate and intelligent-sounding.

I just wanted to help spread the word on how wonderful this podcast is.

Is An Extraterrestrial Disease Plaguing Peru?

2007-09-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, September 15, 2007, a meteorite was observed crashing into the ground near Desaguadero, Peru. The meteorite left a crater one-hundred feet wide and almost twenty feet deep.

Over the past few days, villagers have been suffering from a mysterious illness of which authorities do not know the cause. Could this mysterious "illness" be an extraterrestrial disease?

Unlikely, but the possibility is there. The theory of panspermia states that microbes from other worlds may hitch rides on meteorites that crash on to the surfaces of planets. Perhaps this recent impact is panspermia in action.

If you wake up with no emotion tomorrow, you can be assured that panspermia is in action!

Nikon Unleashes New Camera Squad!

2007-08-22T21:47:00.000-07:00

Looks like Nikon just announced the expected D300 and the suspected D3.

Both of these cameras have incredible 922,000 pixel 3-inch LCD screens for your viewing pleasure. And 12 megapixels sensors for your shooting pleasure. The D3 is full frame, unlike the D300.

In addition to Nikon, Olympus just took the cover off of several new cameras, including the updated SP-560 UZ, with an 18x optical zoom and 8 megapixels.

It's an exciting week in the camera world!

Yes!!! Thank You Canon!

2007-08-19T22:08:00.001-07:00

I know it's been a while, but some news just came to light that was too good to pass up.

Canon just announced the EOS 40d and the 1Ds Mark III digital SLR cameras!

The EOS 40d has a 10.1-megapixel CMOS sensor, a 3-inch LCD with Live View, and a 6.5 frames-per-second shooting rate. The 40d is perhaps one of the most anticipated cameras in years, with tons of leaks building up lots of hype.

The EOS 1Ds Mark III has, get this, a 21.1-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor with a 5 frames-per-second burst rate, as well as a 3-inch LCD with Live View.

In addition to digital SLRs, Canon has announced a handful of new point-and-shoot cameras, including the PowerShot G9. The G9 now includes RAW format support, which disappeared in the G7.

If things play out as expected, Nikon will soon follow suit with a plethora of new cameras, including the rumored full-frame D3...

UPDATE: Almost forgot the links!

Canon EOS 40D on DP Review: http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07082010canoneos40d.asp

Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III on DP Review:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07082009canoneos1dsmarkiii.asp

Canon PowerShot G9 on DP Review:
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0708/07082005canong9.asp

iPhone is Amazing

2007-06-30T00:39:00.000-07:00

The iPhone is the most amazing piece of technology I have ever laid hands upon.

The multi-touch system is incredible, and so is the quality of the screen. The capacity, although reaching only 8GB, is enough for most peoples' needs. Scrolling through songs on the iPhone is awesome!

I love the camera and the SMS text messaging! The keyboard on the iPhone is sensitive and smart at the same time.

You have got to see the iPhone firsthand.

Canon PowerShot S5 IS!

2007-05-13T17:51:00.000-07:00

Darn it, my camera's outdated.

The new Canon PowerShot S5 IS was announced just the other day, and does it look good! Eight megapixels, a hot shoe for an external flash, and (finally) a 2.5-inch LCD.

Here is the link to the DP Review article if you want to read more:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0705/07050703canons5is.asp

And here is the link to the Amazon.com page in case you want to buy it (for me):

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-PowerShot-Digital-Optical-Stabilized/dp/B000Q3043Y/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2374630-3089721?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1179104092&sr=8-1

Newly-Discovered Extrasolar Planet May Have Water and Life...

2007-04-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

Exciting news came out today that astronomers from the European Southern Observatory discovered an extrasolar planet that orbits within the habitable zone of its sun. The habitable zone of a star system is the area around a star in which liquid water can exist on the surface of a planet. This new-found planet is significant because all other planets found in extrasolar systems are not capable of supporting liquid water or maintaining mild temperatures.

Article at Space.com:

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/070424_hab_exoplanet.html

As the search for other Earths continues, humanity comes closer to determining whether or not it is alone in the universe.

It's Coming...

2007-04-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

The evil robot-takeover will soon be upon us.

http://anybots.com/

The 8-Core MacPro

2007-04-07T15:44:00.000-07:00

I thought this was pretty cool: an 8-core MacPro desktop. I mean, it has eight 3.0 GHz processing cores! That's amazing! Never in history has there been something like this available to consumers. If you think 8 cores is amazing, just wait: Intel has promised to make a chip with ten times as many cores in the next five years.

Link to MacPro:

http://www.apple.com/macpro/

What Can We Expect at PMA 2007?

2007-02-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

The Photo Marketing Association show is coming up and that means optical manufacturers are going to be announcing new cameras. Although several companies have already shown us new point-and-shoots, many photographers are anxiously awaiting a fresh crop of digital SLRs. A question that has been circulating through Internet forums for months is whether or not Canon will let us lay eyes upon a potential 22 megapixel, digital SLR. Other forums have posited that Nikon will release a full-frame digital SLR, something the Japanese company has not yet done. We shall see within the next few weeks...

Vista is Out!

2007-01-31T16:53:00.000-08:00

Windows Vista finally came out yesterday! New PC, here I come...not. Oh well, I can always dream.

Three More Days...

2007-01-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

Three more days until Windows Vista! The sleek new operating system is now shipping with some Dell computers, as well as a few Toshiba laptops. Windows Vista, myyyy precioussssss....

Cool New Camera

2007-01-24T21:47:00.000-08:00

The new Olympus SP-550 UZ, announced today, looks pretty amazing. According to www.dpreview.com, (and therefore, Olympus), it has an 18x optical zoom, optical image stabilization, and 7.1 megapixels of pure joy. I would definiteley consider this if I didn't already own the awesome Canon PowerShot S3 IS.

Windows Vista - Ten Days Away!

2007-01-20T22:43:00.000-08:00

In just ten "short" days, on January 30, Windows Vista will be released! Finally, I'll be able to start thinking about a getting a computer that can actually read CD's (my current one is so old that the disc drive no longer functions). Looks like some cool new machines are coming out, including the HP TouchSmart PC and the Dell XPS 710 H2C, not to mention some cool new laptops from ASUS.

Not Another Space Article! Thoughts on Extrasolar Planets

2007-01-14T13:46:00.000-08:00

The year 1995 was a significant point in the history of science: two scientists at the University of Geneva discovered a planet orbiting the distant star 51 Pegasi. This was the first verified extrasolar planet discovery of the time, and now, twelve years later, over 200 extrasolar planets have been found orbiting other stars.

Although most planets discovered thus far are gas giants many times larger than Jupiter, some searches have turned up planets only a few times the size of Earth. On December 27th of 2006, just a few weeks ago, the first satellite designed specifically to find extrasolar planets was launched. The orbiting telescope, called CoRoT, was put into space by the European Space Agency, and is designed to find planets a few times the size of Earth.

Planet hunts are also in the future of NASA, with the Kepler mission, SIM PlanetQuest, and others. The tentative Terrestrial Planet Finder, or TPF, will search nearby star systems for planets roughly the size of Earth. In the event of the discovery of not only an Earth-sized planet, but chemical signatures of life as well, the age-old question of "are we alone?" would finally be answered. Although planets of a terrestrial-type are the holy grail, the larger cosmic bodies will not be forgotten. Gas giant planets should not be ruled out in the search for other Earths, as moons of several thousand miles in diameter are likely to be found orbiting these giants. Titan, for example, a moon of Saturn, is nearly as large as Mars and has a thick atmosphere. It is conceivable that a hypothetical gas giant could have a moon as large as Earth.

The search for extrasolar planets continues in 2007, and will likely turn up dozens of new worlds. With so many possibilities out there, one can be almost sure that the at least part of the future of humanity will lie in space...

Here are some cool sites on extrasolar planets:

PlanetQuest- http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm

The Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia-

http://vo.obspm.fr/exoplanetes/encyclo/catalog.php

The Speculation Is Over: iPhone Announced.

2007-01-09T16:22:00.000-08:00

Today, Apple told released details of the new iPhone, and I must say, this thing looks pretty sweet. With the capability of browsing the Internet, listening to songs, watching movies, viewing photos, and, of course, making calls, the iPhone looks like it will be a hot seller in the tech world. The sleek-looking media device has a huge 3.5-inch screen, a two megapixel camera, and amazing touch-sensetive technology. And as Steve Jobs said, its unbeleivably thin.

Rumors and pictures of the iPhone have passed through the Internet for months, and now, finally, techies and Mac-addicts are gonna get what they've been waiting for...

Here is a link to Apple's website so you can drool over pictures:

http://www.apple.com/

Technology Moves Forward in 2007...

2007-01-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

With the Consumer Electronics Show, Macworld Expo, and the launch of Windows Vista all crammed into this month of January, new gadgets and products are coming out faster than consumers can get their hands on them. This week at CES, hundreds of gadgets and products are being announced, like a Blu-ray/HD-DVD combo drive from Korea's LG, new computers, a 108-inch television from Sharp, cool new digital cameras from Samsung, and even an external GPU from Taiwan's ASUS Computer.

Macworld, the Apple Computer show in San Francisco, with its keynote set for tomorrow, has people wondering if an "iPhone" or a full-screen video iPod will be announced. I am curious as well.

2007 looks like it will be an exciting year for technology, and with the new Microsoft operating system, Windows Vista, a wave of revised personal computer tech may start to sweep through America's homes and offices like the surf on the North Shore of Oahu. But, of course, not everyone will be using Windows Vista, as exemplified by Mac and Linux users.

Happy New Year...

A Home Away From Home: Terraforming Mars

2006-11-28T15:40:00.000-08:00

Mars today is a cold barren landscape of dust storms and sub-Antarctic temperatures. Not exactly the kind of place you would want to colonize humans. A process known as terraforming may change all that.

Terraforming, or altering an extraterrestrial environment to make it more like Earth, is one of the possible solutions for expanding a human presence into space and across the solar system. You take an inhospitable planet or moon and turn into a place that can support human life without the need of a pressurized living area; the living area is the planet. The process of terraforming involves several steps:

1. Thickening the atmosphere (it is highly desirable to have a thick atmosphere already in place.)
2. Warming the planet's surface, whether it be with the aid of gigantic orbital mirrors of greenhouse gases.
3. Releasing water on the planet if it is not already present.
4. Using microorganisms to change the chemical composition of the atmosphere to something humans can breathe (i.e. oxygen, nitrogen, etc.)
5. Eventually, cultivating plants to further purify the atmosphere and get the planetary body ready for human habitation.

Making an atmosphere that is thin and weak into one like Earth's would require huge amounts of gases to be emitted. On Mars, an enormous quantity of carbon dioxide, (which could later be converted into oxygen through photosynthesis), is available in a frozen state within the polar ice caps. Heating these ice caps with reflected sunlight from orbital mirrors liberates carbon dioxide gas that would be used to thicken the atmosphere. Although carbon dioxide exists in the ice on Mars, not enough is present to amply increase the density of the atmosphere. This is where comets come in. Comets flying through the solar system are known to contain vast quantities of water and pent up gases. Smashing one of these comets onto the surface of an uninhabited Mars would release millions of cubic meters of hydrogen and other gases, such as water vapor. No, smashing a comet into Mars would not "destroy" the planet (the mass of a comet is far too small to be of any concern to a planet). How do you get a comet to impact Mars? Simple: you divert it with an ion propulsion drive years ahead of time.

Turning the sub-Arctic temperatures of Mars into something more reminiscent of Bali or Brazil would most likely require the notorious demon of our time, global warming. Now here is a case where global warming is actually good: if Mars was covered in greater quantities of carbon dioxide, which in itself is a greenhouse gas, planetary warming would start to occur almost instantly. Soon you have increased the air temperature to a balmy 25 degrees Celsius and your thinking your next vacation should be on Mars. Warm air and sunlight favors the growth of photosynthetic microorganisms, their waste product being oxygen. So in the end, the warming makes both the humans and the microorganisms happy, a win-win situation.

Obviously, water would be a necessary component for the eventual human colonization of Mars. As mentioned earlier, comets impacting the Martian surface would release huge amounts of water vapor. Water vapor in the atmosphere eventually condenses into clouds which later rain down on the planet. The freeing of carbon dioxide from the polar ice caps would also flood Mars with trillions of gallons of water. NASA satellite imagery shows what appear to be river channels draining into lowing lying areas. Where does the water from these rivers now hide? The ice caps of course, but possibly inches beneath the soil. If the frozen water present on Mars in liberal quantities was unleashed by melting, a multi-million year drought would end.

What good is an atmosphere if you can't breathe it? Here's where those microorganisms come in. It is believed that the atmosphere of early Earth became what it is today with the help of bacteria and algae in water. In a chain reaction, promoting the growth of life on Mars would cause carbon dioxide to be used, and oxygen to be created. After many years, enough oxygen has built up in the atmosphere (along with other gases) for humans to move in.

Centuries after the first steps at terraforming Mars, human habitation would be possible without the need of complex, pressurized colonies or cities. Plants and trees grown in the Martian soil (which would have since been transformed in something more hospitable because of the breakdown of billions of microorganisms) would make the planet much more attractive and inviting. In the fine Martian climate, people would be able to explore the vastness of Olympus Mons and the depth of Valles Marineris. Terraforming is a surefire way to spread the human race across not only the solar system, but the galaxy as well.

After reading this, you still may ask: Why would we want to colonize Mars? Well, for one thing, a single cataclysmic event on Earth, such as nuclear detonation or massive plague, could completely wipe out the human race in months. I myself would prefer to have the comfort that humanity would continue even if a disaster occurred on our home planet. Another reason for colonization is economic and scientific profit. Who knows what kind of metals, medicines, and machinery could be manufactured in a third of the gravity of Earth? The real question to ask is: Why not colonize Mars?

Welcome to Sphere...

2006-11-28T00:27:00.000-08:00

Here at Sphere, science and technology are in the spotlight. Clarify issues and learn about things you've never heard of. Sphere has an ultimate mission of bringing knowledge into the public eye.