Twisting the Copernican Tail

by | Aug 25, 2008 | | 11 Comments

The latest Carnival of Space offers several posts with an interstellar bent in addition to our own discussion, linked to from the Carnival, about antimatter rocketry and the recent thinking of JPL's Robert Frisbee. I notice that Gerald Cleaver and Richard Obousy's ideas about warp drive continue to get play, with particular reference to the amount of energy that this purely theoretical construct might demand. As with Alcubierre's own warp drive speculations, the energy levels are daunting, in Cleaver and Obousy's case the equivalent of converting the planet Jupiter into energy (that actually beats many Alcubierre demands!). Thus NextBigFuture's comment, rising naturally from this conundrum: ...it makes no sense to assume being able to convert a planetary mass into energy without having increased control of technology and information and increased economy. It is like assuming a group of cavemen get the designs for a supersonic plane but only have the economy of their tribe of six to...

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Star Formation in the Hinterlands

by | Apr 18, 2008 | | 1 Comment

Centauri Dreams always thinks it's important to talk about images like the one below. Not the specific subject matter -- this is the Southern Pinwheel galaxy M83, about which more in a moment -- but about the beauty of the image. Casual browsers of astronomy photos often tell me they never realized how colorful space actually is, which is why I want to say periodically that images like these are doctored to reveal information. In this case, far-ultraviolet light is intentionally shown in blue, near-ultraviolet light in green, and radio emissions -- at the 21 centimeter wavelength of gaseous hydrogen -- are shown in red. Space is undoubtedly beautiful, but what you see in many of these photos is not what you would get if you were there. In fact, not only are the colors doctored here, but this is a composite image, incorporating observations from the Very Large Array and the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), an orbiting ultraviolet survey telescope. Image: The outlying regions around...

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Charter

In Centauri Dreams, Paul Gilster looks at peer-reviewed research on deep space exploration, with an eye toward interstellar possibilities. For many years this site coordinated its efforts with the Tau Zero Foundation. It now serves as an independent forum for deep space news and ideas. In the logo above, the leftmost star is Alpha Centauri, a triple system closer than any other star, and a primary target for early interstellar probes. To its right is Beta Centauri (not a part of the Alpha Centauri system), with Beta, Gamma, Delta and Epsilon Crucis, stars in the Southern Cross, visible at the far right (image courtesy of Marco Lorenzi).

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