Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

If there are clever aliens out there, we may learn about them

Washington - Is there intelligent life on other planets? If so, what do space aliens watch on TV?

Astronomers plan to search 1 000 nearby stars for television broadcasts and other signals that could indicate extraterrestrial life, the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said today.

The project, planned for early 2008, would use a new radio telescope to search for radio traffic similar to that found on Earth.

Current efforts to find extraterrestrial life look for messages deliberately beamed across space - an approach that would miss any civilisation that does not advertise its existence as Earth’s does.

The new effort would search a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum used on Earth for more mundane purposes - radar, television and FM radio broadcasts.

“We may pick up spurious signals from people that never meant for us to hear them and get an inkling that something’s going on,” said David Aguilar, director of communications at the centre.

The project will be able to detect Earth-like radio signals within a distance of 30 light-years, which encompasses about 1 000 stars.

The project will be formally presented at a conference of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle on Wednesday. - Reuters

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Very Cool!

http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3616600

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

I just read an article on NASA and the younger generation. 

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/12/28/space.youth.apathy.ap/index.html?eref=rss_space

A comment at the end of it spurred me to make a post.

So here’s a message for the folks that don’t believe there was a manned moon landing by the United States of America on July 20, 1969. 

You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots. 

Pardon my lack of sensitivity.

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

Links and Discussion forums

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory

PhyOrg Forum
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?showtopic=4385&st=0

Heim’s Theory of Elementary Particle Structures
http://www.americanantigravity.com/documents/AuerbachJSE.pdf

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14489259/?GT1=8404

Scientists decide Pluto’s no longer a planet

Historic new guidelines approved by astronomers in Prague

RESOLUTION 5A
The IAU therefore resolves that planets and other bodies in our SolarSystem be defined into three distinct categories in the following way:

(1) A planet¹is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c)has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.

(2)A dwarf planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun,(b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape², (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.

(3) All other objects³ orbiting the Sun shall be referred to collectively as “Small Solar System Bodies”.

²An IAU process will be established to assign borderline objects into either dwarf planet and other categories.

³These currently include most of the Solar System asteroids, most Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), comets, and other small bodies.

RESOLUTION 6A
The IAU further resolves:

Pluto is a dwarf planet by the above definition and is recognized as the prototype of a new category of trans-Neptunian objects.

RESOLUTION 6B
The following sentence is added to Resolution 6A:

This category is to be called “plutonian objects.”

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/August/theworld_August550.xml&section=theworld

So now the IAU says we have 12 Planets!

Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Ceres
Jupiter
Uranus
Neptune
Pluto & Charon
Xena

My very educated mother can’t just use nine planets considering xena. (heh - weak - but the best I can do on short notice)

So the conclusion is that any star orbiting object (and not orbiting another planet) with gravity strong enough to pull itself into a sphere is a planet. Charon was formerly considered a moon of Pluto (along with Hydra and Nix) but is now considered a planet on its own making Pluto-Charon a double planet.

The Pluto type objects are being given a new classification of “Plutons”

… the IAU said Pluto meets its proposed new definition of a planet: any round object larger than 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) in diameter that orbits the sun and has a mass roughly one-12,000th that of Earth. Moons and asteroids will make the grade if they meet those basic tests.

Roundness is key, experts said, because it indicates an object has enough self-gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape. Yet Earth’s moon would not qualify because the two bodies’ common center of gravity lies below the surface of the Earth.

Of course this would also seem to mean Sedna and Quaoar will be planets as well. Also true for Orcus (90482 Orcus), Ixion (28978 Ixion), Varuna (20000 Varuna), “Easterbunny” (2005 FY₉) and “Santa” (2003 EL₆₁).

I’m glad to see Ceres in there - I always wanted it to be a planet. Click HERE for a great graphic of all the other objects being considered for planet status.

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/060705_blue_origin.html

Bezos has the right idea to go forward with DC-X concepts.
I was always so pissed when the DC-X was abandoned in favor of VentureStar.
DC-X worked and had shown it.

Originally published at Twixel.net. You can comment here or there.

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2006/antimatter_spaceship.html

Most self-respecting starships in science fiction stories use antimatter as fuel for a good reason – it’s the most potent fuel known. While tons of chemical fuel are needed to propel a human mission to Mars, just tens of milligrams of antimatter will do (a milligram is about one-thousandth the weight of a piece of the original M&M candy).
Image right: A spacecraft powered by a positron reactor would resemble this artist’s concept of the Mars Reference Mission spacecraft. Credit: NASA

However, in reality this power comes with a price. Some antimatter reactions produce blasts of high energy gamma rays. Gamma rays are like X-rays on steroids. They penetrate matter and break apart molecules in cells, so they are not healthy to be around. High-energy gamma rays can also make the engines radioactive by fragmenting atoms of the engine material.

The NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is funding a team of researchers working on a new design for an antimatter-powered spaceship that avoids this nasty side effect by producing gamma rays with much lower energy.