ikenbot:

“My Father”

Happy Father’s day from CWL: ‘NASA Tribute to Carl’ By Dorion Sagan

My father’s work made science cool. He showed that it was good to be smart, to be open to wonder but also critical, both of superstition and political authority. The universe was our home. Space exploration and evolution were part of a story based on evidence that belonged to all humanity, not a religious or political elite looking out for their own interests. He criticized Congress (most of whom are lawyers) for not knowing science, and he empowered the public by revealing the multicultural truth of our belonging to a cosmos that was beautiful, understandable, and open to human discovery. He showed not only that science belonged to everybody, but that a scientifically educated public was necessary for the health of society. In short he used television to democratize the advances of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

Cosmos was one of the most watched TV programs in history, and it wasn’t drama or sports but the story of who, what, why, when, and where we are. Rather than being local or international news, it was cosmic news: a taking-stock and popularization of where we are in our voyage of self-discovery of the cosmos from which we have evolved. Although Jacob Bronowski had preceded and paved the way for my father in his TV series The Ascent of Man, and David Attenborough had expanded the form in his nature series, my father inaugurated and embodied the idea of exciting television that was about the beauty and truth of our place in a universe that is far bigger than humanity. He showed science as both an intellectual adventure and a spiritual experience. As the Protestants dispensed with priests to show that the individual could have a personal relationship with God, so my father showed that anybody on the planet, employing the nondenominational method of science, could have a personal understanding of the cosmos—a kind of God (the God of Einstein and Spinoza) but one that was open to rational and mathematical inquiry.

Cosmos may be dated in terms of production value and special effects, and certain scientific and philosophical aspects of it could be tweaked, but its spirit remains timeless. Because of the backsliding in science education, in some ways it is more relevant than when it appeared. The emphasis on evolutionary biology, scientific history, critical thinking, free inquiry and the role of evidence in the growth of humanity’s understanding in a universe that dwarfs us and in which we are not masters but an immature life form—these continue to be crucial themes.

My father was unparalleled in his ability to convey the essence of science in poetic language. He was pleasant to look at, hypnotic to listen to, and the conviction and enthusiasm of his presentations—which took the form of a moral imperative for us to know ourselves—were infectious. I miss him; the world misses him. He was not just a good popularizer, but a man in love with the truth. He was not afraid of the powers that be or, if he was, he had the courage to face them in the name of a cosmic human heritage that transcended class, sex, and racial-cultural differences. He oversaw a leap from an age of science fiction to an age of scientific reality, where we really did go to the moon and beyond. He was asked to lend his image to advertising campaigns—but he steadfastly refused. Although he was famous, he was motivated to educate and empower through science, not to cash in or compromise. Here he differs from the many celebrities and sports stars who do not think twice about attaching their name to a product to make money.

Read the rest or finish it at your pace right here.

(Source: kenobi-wan-obi)

scinerds:

Universe’s 1st Objects After Big Bang Possibly Seen by NASA Telescope

New observations from a NASA space telescope have spotted what may be the very first objects created in the universe in unprecedented detail, scientists say.

The faint objects, imaged in infrared light by NASA’s Spitzer space telescope, might be hugely massive stars or black holes, but are too distant to see individually.

The Big Bang is thought to have kick-started the universe about 13.7 billion years ago. At first, the universe was too hot and dense for particles to be stable, but then the first quarks formed, which then grouped together to make protons and neutrons, and eventually the first atoms were created. After about 500 million years, the first stars, galaxies and black holes began to take shape.

The scientists can’t confirm for sure that the objects they see date from the early universe, but say that’s the most likely explanation.

“These objects would have been tremendously bright,” Alexander “Sasha” Kashlinsky of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement Thursday (June 7). “We can’t yet directly rule out mysterious sources for this light that could be coming from our nearby universe, but it is now becoming increasingly likely that we are catching a glimpse of an ancient epoch.”

Spitzer spotted these ancient structures after observing two patches of sky for more than 400 hours each. The telescope sees in infrared light, the long-wavelength range of the electromagnetic spectrum that’s less energetic than optical light. [Infrared Pictures from the Spitzer Space Telescope]

The researchers first removed all known stars and galaxies from the images. What was left over showed lumps of structure in a pattern consistent with how very distant objects are thought to cluster together.

The light spied by Spitzer has probably traveled for billions of years to reach us. It would have started out as optical or ultraviolet light, but over time stretched until it became infrared.

While Spitzer, which launched in 2003 and orbits the sun in an unusual Earth-trailing path, has made inroads in observing these objects, scientists are waiting for the James Webb Space Telescope to make major progress in understanding them.

James Webb, billed as the successor to the Hubble telescope, is an $8.8 billion infrared observatory due to launch in 2018.

“This is one of the reasons we are building the James Webb Space Telescope,” said Glenn Wahlgren, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “Spitzer is giving us tantalizing clues, but James Webb will tell us what really lies at the era where stars first ignited.” 

The researchers report their findings in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

wired:

It’s Wired Science’s Space Photo of the Day!

“This self portrait from NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows dust accumulation on the rover’s solar panels as the mission approached its fifth Martian winter.”

For more spacey goodness, check out the gallery here!

npr:

Dark Energy And The Joy Of Being Wrong

Sometimes nature just throws you a loop. All your carefully laid plans, all your exquisite calculations, all your deeply held beliefs and expectations get blown away in the simple eloquence of real data from the real world. That is how Dark Energy made its appearance into the world of cosmology. Its not just that folks weren’t expecting it. They were, in fact, expecting the very opposite.

Last week I explained how Dark Matter was “discovered” (inferred really), based on observations over decades of the gravitational influence it exerts on matter we can see (the stuff we are made of). Dark Energy was discovered in a similar way, except that it arrived all at once in one big, fat surprise package.

The year was 1998 and two highly competitive groups of astronomers were each rushing toward the same goal: they hoped to hunt down the effects of gravitational braking in the universe. Ever since astronomers had accepted the idea of the Big Bang, they had been out hunting for its subsequent cosmic deceleration.

The idea was simple.

While the Big Bang blows space apart (it literally stretches all points of space-time away from each other), the gravitational pull of matter should, over time, slow down that initial burst of cosmic expansion. The two research groups, (Berkeley vs. Harvard), were racing to find the magnitude of deceleration in the universe. It was a critical project since the rate of cosmic braking is directly related to the total density of mass (and energy) in the universe. It would be a Nobel Prize-worthy result.

Things didn’t go quite as planned. -Adam Frank (Photo credit: WMAP/NASA)

NASA Spacecraft Samples a Snowing Moon

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed that Enceladus, a tiny moon orbiting beyond Saturn’s rings, may be capable of hosting some of the life forms found on Earth, NASA Science News reported today.

Planetary scientists using Cassini’s spectrometers found that more than 90 jets near the moon’s south pole are spurting water vapor, organic material, salt and icy particles through fissures. Essentially, it is snowing on Enceladus, and the snow’s composition is microbe-friendly, making this moon a prime candidate for gathering samples in the search for life.

“We can fly through the plume and sample it. Or we can land on the surface, look up and stick our tongues out. And voilà…we have what we came for,” Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist and leader of the Imaging Science team for the Cassini spacecraft, said in the NASA report.

More critical reading and viewing to understand what we’ve learned about Saturn’s moons:

- An image of four distinct plums at the south pole of Enceladus, from Cassini’s mission news earlier this week.

- Astrobiology.com’s explanation with an image of the “tiger stripes,” or fissures where water and ice sprays near the south pole of Enceladus.

- Scientific American‘s coverage last year of the discovery of water beneath Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus.

- Smithsonian’s story on Saturn’s two types of moons: those like Enceladus are similar to moons around other giant planets, such as Jupiter; the others are tiny, icy moonlets that reside on the outer edges of Saturn’s rings. They weren’t discovered until about 8 years ago when the Cassinispacecraft began imaging the Saturn system, and they were an unexpected find.

- A study published in Nature in 2010 found that Saturn’s moons formed from the accretion of material in the planet’s rings. When ring material moves beyond a certain distance from the planet—called the Roche limit—it becomes gravitationally unstable and clumps up to form the tiny moons.

- And Smithsonian’s story that year about the mystery of Saturn’s walnut-shaped moon, Iapetus.

What else have you read that’s great about Saturn’s moons? Let us know in the comments.