Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye

Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye

Looks like Saddam Hussein will make the long drop with a sudden stop in the next 48 hours. And isn't this just precious:

After his sentence was given, Louise Arbour, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, urged Iraq to ensure a fair appeals process and to refrain from executing Saddam even if the sentence is upheld.

Now, how to say this without putting too fine a point on it... Madame Justice Arbour (she used to be on the Canadian Supreme Court) is an insufferable twit. The appeal was automatic under Iraqi law, and that appeal was already held, and denied, a few days ago. Louise Arbour, of all people in this world, should be a champion of the rule of law, and not encouraging the abandonment of the rule of law simply because it doesn't achieve her preferred result.

Furthermore, representatives of the United Nations, which along with Saddam Hussein perpetrated the largest fraud in the history of the world in the Oil-For-Food program, really ought to consider keeping their mouths shut about anything to do with either Saddam Hussein or Iraq.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Iraq, United Nations, Saddam Hussein, Death Sentence

Santa's Secrets Revealed

Santa's Secrets Revealed

Years ago, NORAD started tracking Santa Claus every Christmas Eve. After all, there's a fast-moving object travelling on an erratic path around the world, and if you're NORAD you don't want to mistakenly shoot down a reindeer.

Now, I know if you're my nephews' age (7 and 9), you've got a lot of questions about this yearly journey. Questions that need answers. Questions like:

Why is Rudolph's nose red? Rudolph is leading the team of reindeer, and they are travelling at incredible speeds - hypersonic speeds - through the atmosphere. As a result, Rudolph's nose is piercing the airflow and heating up due to air friction, becoming red-hot. You might even say it glows. Note that this does not require some mythical "ion field" or "11 dimension" manifold, as is stated in the Physics of Santa.

Hypersonic speeds huh - so how come there aren't any sonic booms? Don't be surprised if you don't hear multiple sonic booms as Santa passes close by your house. The fractal configuration of reindeer antlers causes interference patterns in the hypersonic shock wave, breaking it up before it turns into a sonic boom. Indeed, the airflow around the reindeer and sleigh resembles that of a golf ball, whose dimples create a low-drag fluid boundary layer.

How does Santa know where my house is? and how does he know if I've been naughty or nice? The secret surveillance program was revealed in the Bright and Early blog. The details of this program are far beyond the scope of this simple blog post, so be sure to read the shocking details there. Plus, Santa uses Google Earth.

How does Santa get down and back up the chimney so fast? And what if I don't even have a chimney? The legend of Santa climbing down the chimney is based on a misunderstanding of quantum mechanics by Clement Clarke Moore in the poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" (Twas the Night Before Christmas). In the poem, Moore stated that:

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

What Moore didn't know about quantum mechanics is that at that same instant, the reindeer were on every roof in the town of Troy, New York, simultaneously, and that Santa Claus used a quantum tunnelling effect to transport himself down from the roof into Moore's living room - and indeed, every living room in Troy at the same time. It is only Moore's observation of the event that caused the collapse of the wave function that made it appear (to Moore) that Santa was in Moore's living room and nobody else's. Perhaps Santa tried to explain the quantum tunelling process to Moore, who became confused and explained it as a bound down the chimney (which is sort of like a quantum tunnel).

How can reindeer fly without wings? When the reindeer are pulling Santa's sleigh, they are moving very fast. The streamline distance under a reindeer's belly is much less than the streamline distance over its antlers, back, and tail. This means that the air moving over the reindeer's back has a much higher relative velocity compared to the air moving under its belly, so according to Bernoulli's principle the air pressure above the reindeer is lower than the air pressure below the reindeer, thus giving the reindeer lift. If you're wondering how the reindeer can go so fast... well, they eat a lot of candy canes, which contain lots of sugar.

How does Santa manage to pack all those toys into his sleigh? Obviously, there are a lot of kids in the world, so that's a lot of toys to carry. However, not all kids are good, and the bad ones get coal (which takes up much less volume). Also, some kids receive gifts that are not material in nature, such as the love of friends and family. Even so, that still leaves a lot of gifts to carry, much more than would fit into the volume of a single sleigh. The solution is that Santa actually has three sleighs, and two different sets of reindeer. The first set of reindeer (Alpha Squad) is the group that you're most likely familiar with (Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen), and they take several shifts pulling the first sleigh. The second sleigh is pulled by the second set of reindeer (Bravo Squad), which is made up mostly of the junior varsity reindeer, and led by Olive (the other reindeer). The third sleigh is not pulled by reindeer at all, but by six white kangaroos (also known as The Boomers, not to be confused with the fictional character Boomer on Battlestar Galactica), during Santa's trip to Australia. So, Santa actually makes several trips from the North Pole to points around the earth and back. While he's out making deliveries, his other sleighs are being loaded for the next shift. This also gives the reindeer (and the Boomers) a chance to rest between trips.

I hope that this has answered some of the questions that you may have had about Santa Claus. Of course, that isn't why we celebrate Christmas. This is:


Merry Christmas.

Technorati Tags: Santa, Physics, Christmas

New Search Engine

New Search Engine

Google first made a name for itself by producing an excellent search engine. Over the years, Google has expanded its scope beyond the original search engine, acquiring companies like Blogger and YouTube and adding new features to Google in the process. One of the new features is Google Co-op, which allows users to create customized search engines. I have done exactly that, and created the Space and Astronomy Search Engine. This search engine is now available on the Space Feeds blog, or on its own page here.

Look what happens when one enters the term Hydrogen Peroxide into the Space and Astronomy Search Engine, and compare that to the results for Hydrogen Peroxide in the regular Google search engine. One needs to go to the third page of the regular Google search before seeing applications for H2O2 in the space industry, but on the Space and Astronomy Search Engine the results relevant to the use of H2O2 as an oxidizer or monopropellant, or theories that H2O2 is a naturally-occurring substance on the surface of Mars, are right there on the first page. Similarly, when one searches for Bigelow on the regular Google search engine, results on the first page include Bigelow Tea, the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, Bigelow Chemists, and Kathryn Bigelow. When searching for Bigelow in SASE the first two dozen pages are all about Bigelow Aerospace, with the first mention of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in a NASA article near the bottom of the 24th page.

The Space and Astronomy Search Engine is the same as the Google search engine, with one important difference. Although SASE searches the web just like the Google search engine, SASE gives the most weight in its searches to 345 space-related news sites, space reference sites, national space agencies, space businesses, and space blogs. This results in a better focus for the search.

cross-posted at Space Feeds

Technorati Tags: Space, Astronomy, Search Engine

robot haka

robot haka

The New Zealand All Blacks have been one of the best rugby teams in the world for several decades. Before each test match they perform the Haka, a native Maori war dance that is supposed to incite a collective frenzy in the warriors while instilling fear in the hearts of opponents:


So popular is the Haka in New Zealand, even their robots now do it:


Technorati Tags: Robots, Haka, Rugby, All Blacks

Space Elevator Patented

Space Elevator Patented

As was pointed out on one of the Yahoo Groups that I frequent, a patent (#6491258) has been issued to Lockheed Martin for a space elevator. This type of space elevator is different from the space elevator envisioned by Tsiolkovsky, Artsutanov, Clarke, Edwards, Laine and so on; for the Lockheed design, the bottom of the elevator is not affixed to the surface of the earth, but is instead itself located in a "substantially fixed orbital distance from the surface of the earth".

Technorati Tags: Space Elevator, Patent, Lockheed Martin

Lunar Markets

Lunar Markets

Jon Goff at Selenian Boondocks wrote about Lunar Markets, and he has some interesting ideas there about tourism, a foreign astronaut corps, platinum group metals, and in-situ resource utilization. I think that he has missed some interesting and potentially very lucrative lunar markets.

Vice Tourism

This is closely related to Jon's ideas on tourism. He was talking about getting the cost of a ticket to the moon down to the $1 million to $5 million range per seat. What he didn't go into is why people would go there as tourists (beyond the because-they-want-to motive).

What makes places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Monte Carlo, and Amsterdam vacation destinations? In short, vices: gambling, drugs, prostitution, and the like are things that polite society tends to frown upon, but for which there is a definite demand. Put them all together into one exotic location, far from the clutches of earthly governments, and you have a place that people would spend one to five million dollars per seat to which to travel.

Offshore Banking

The moon has the potential to be the ultimate offshore bank. The physical isolation of the moon and the lack of jurisdiction of terrestrial governments would allow the moon to escape the regulations and taxes that plague terrestrial banks. The vast area of the surface (four times that of the United States) makes hiding the lunar equivalent of Fort Knox that much easier - a burglar cannot break into a bank that he can't find.

Secure Data Backup

Data centers on the earth are subject to any number of natural disasters: wildfires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornados, hurricanes, ice storms. A data center on the moon would be immune from most of those disasters, as the moon is a geologically (or I guess that would be selenologically) quiescent body and has no atmosphere to cause such disturbances. Granted, the moon is subject to a different class of natural disasters, such as meteor strikes or coronal mass ejections, but the effects of these can be somewhat mitigated against by placing the data storage facilities deep under the surface.

Such data backup centers could also function as data havens, since they would be outside the jurisdiction of terrestrial governments.

Now, in the above examples, I do not mean to show ways that the moon could be used for evil purposes. People might view things like gambling or drugs or offshore banks as evil things, but in and of themselves they are not. For many of these things, it is the illegality that provides the profit margin to organized crime syndicates - and it is those crime syndicates which bring with them the violence, which is evil in and of itself. I am simply trying to show that there are ways to make a profit, to build the cislunar economy, that have nothing whatsoever to do with space, other than that space is a government-less frontier.

Update: I want to make it clear that I personally would most likely not be involved in any of the businesses that I mention above. Instead, I want to open the first pizza place on the moon. I'd call it Moon Pies.

Technorati Tags: Space, Moon, gambling, drugs, prostitution, Offshore Banking, Data Storage, Data Havens

Chasing the Dream

Chasing the Dream

Jim Benson's Benson Space is well into the first phase of the design of DreamChaser, and has signed on former NASA astronaut Hoot Gibson as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Test Pilot. The critical design review and go/no-go decision will come in March of 2007.

Technorati Tags: Space

night launch

night launch

A friend of mine took a series of pictures of Saturday's launch of space shuttle Discovery, as seen from Orlando:








Sweet.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Space Shuttle, Discovery

liquid water on Mars

liquid water on Mars

Update: Whoa, wait just a cotton-pickin second. I was too hasty; I found another microscopic image from Sol 327 of the same area on the rover, with the same feature present. So, it looks very likely that this is actually a part of the rover itself, perhaps some kind of clear epoxy. Yep, I make mistakes from time to time. I'm leaving the rest of the post as-is though, as there is no point in hiding my mistakes. Mea culpa.

By now, most of my readers will have heard about the big NASA announcement yesterday. The current presence of liquid water on Mars came as no surprise to me, having been intimately familiar with the work of Charles Shults. I work with the guy, and I'm editing his book, so I've seen evidence of gullies, geysers, flow patterns, glaciers and so on for over a year now. Soon after the NASA announcement, Charles posted this image on his website, showing even more compelling evidence for liquid water than was presented at the NASA briefing:


This image was taken on Sol 1006 with the microscopic imager on the Spirit rover, which looked at the top of the rover itself. Look in the top left quadrant of the picture. See that round, transparent, shiny thing? Here's a closeup:


It isn't part of the rover. It is sitting on top of the dust that covers the rover's solar panels. It refracts the light (look at the straight piece of metal below it, see how the light is bent? Hold a ruler up against your monitor along the straight edge, and again on the image of the straight edge within the bubble).

It's a drop of water, sitting on top of the Spirit rover.

How did it get there? The theory we are tossing around here is that some water condensed on the panoramic camera mast and then dripped onto the solar panel.

The NASA guys called the images of the gullies taken by the Mars Global Surveyor the "squirting gun" evidence of water on Mars. Well, this is even better, and should put an end to the debate about the present-day existence of water on Mars. Mars is sopping wet.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Mars, Water

Space Feeds - new and improved

Space Feeds - new and improved

I have been fiddling around with the blog template for Space Feeds ever since I first put it up last month. I wasn't really happy with how long it took to load everything, nor with the static order of the feeds. I think I have found the solution though, by incorporating Google Reader "clips". Now, when the Space Feeds page is loaded, Google does a quick scan of over 100 space blogs and several dozen space news sites, and displays the titles of the 50 most recent blog posts and 50 most recent news stories, with the newest ones listed first. At the bottom of the blog feeds and news feeds, there are "Read More..." links that go to my Google Reader public pages, which give more detail on these recent entries.

I have also shamelessly stolen some code from Dick Stafford over at the Rocket Dungeon, embedding NASA TV at the top of the page. I do have a problem with that though; for some reason which I just cannot fathom, the media player starts playing as soon as the link to NASA is established, even though SelectionStart is set to False (and when I tried to set AutoStart to False, the damn player wouldn't work at all). The only change I made to Dick's code was the height and width of the player. Anyone have an idea what is causing this, and how I can fix it? Dick? I don't want to have NASA TV automatically start when someone visits that page; instead I want them to have to actually press Play.

At any rate, the page loads much faster now, and with the feeds displaying newest-first (instead of the more static method I had in there last month). I think that the Space Feeds site is much more useful than it was before. And of course I'm not done fooling around with the design; I will likely keep tweaking it over the course of the next few months or so.

While I was testing the page out over the last few hours, it was gratifying to see the content updatng before my eyes as bloggers published new material. One entry in particular caught my eye, an alternative plan for NASA called Lunar Much Sooner (and Better) by Jon Goff over at Selenian Boondocks. Jon has really been on a roll lately, and this post summarizes much of what he has written over the last few weeks, in a proposal that could return men to the moon as early as 2012. I think his idea is much more in line with what President Bush was talking about in the Vision for Space Exploration speech, compared to what NASA presented yesterday.

Update: Dick pointed out in the comments that there was a problem viewing the Space Feeds site in Firefox. I think I have that problem straightened out... but of course, I can never leave well enough alone. So, I did some more tweaks, added Astronomy Picture of the Day, and moved some stuff around. If anyone has any more problems with Space Feeds, let me know either in the comments here or in the comments section on the Space Feeds site.

Technorati Tags: Space, NASA, Moon, Blog