the somethingness of our universe

Theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss addresses the edgiest topic of all: how all the somethingness of our universe could have arisen from nothingness without divine intervention. The video prompted Krauss to write his newly published book on the subject, “A Universe From Nothing.” Krauss’ book isn’t the only one to claim that God’s not needed for the creation of the universe. British physicist Stephen Hawking, a good friend of Krauss’, made a similar point in his own most recent book, “The Grand Design.” A key point in the argument is that the positive energy bound up in matter is balanced by negative gravitational-field energy. From the quantum perspective, the total energy of the universe is pretty much zero. Thus, the energy of “nothingness” is conserved, even when somethingness enters the picture. The youtube video has been viewed over a million times and is worth the hour to ponder the grand questions.

Read the full article at MSNBC

The new mars rover mission

Scientists have decided to point NASA’s next Mars rover toward a mountain of layered minerals inside Gale Crater, after a process of picking the right landing spot. One big reason Gale won out is because it’s like Neapolitan ice cream, offering a yummy combination of flavors. Curiosity not only will return a wealth of important science data, but it will serve as a precursor mission for human exploration to the Red Planet. The $2.5 billion mission is due for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on an Atlas 5 rocket, as early as the day after Thanksgiving, with landing on Mars set for August 2012. The rover is designed to be lowered to the Martian surface by a rocket-powered “sky crane” system that’s never been used before for interplanetary probes.

End of the space shuttle welcomes the new Boeing CST-100

When Atlantis lands at the end of its current mission, that will spell the end of the 30-year space shuttle program — and the beginning of a years-long hiatus in NASA’s capability to launch humans into orbit. Thousands will be losing their jobs, including employees at Boeing and at United Space Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin venture that’s the main shuttle contractor. Work on the CST-100 will only partially close the employment gap.

NASA has committed more than $110 million so far to the development of Boeing’s CST-100 capsule for ferrying up to seven astronauts to and from the space station, beginning as early as 2015. Boeing is partnering with “new space” companies such as XCOR Aerospace, Bigelow Aerospace and Space Adventures on its bid. It’s even playing a supporting role on Sierra Nevada’s rival project to build a winged mini-shuttle for NASA’s use.

The Old

The New

Mercury… the new views

Mercury isn’t exactly the solar system’s most colorful planet, but you can make out subtle shades in this first color image from Messenger. Major craters on Mercury are named after artists, authors, composers and other creative figures from history. The dominant crater in the picture is known as Debussy.

Messanger the orbiter arrives at Mercury and take the first color picture.

Image Credit – MSNBC

pale blue dot

It’s been over 20 years since the famous “pale blue dot” photo – Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home).

the pale blue dot

Carl Sagan’s words are always worth remembering: “Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

Who has Internet access in this world?

Driving the numbers for web users, online company users and educational information dissemintated to the masses is the question around who has access to the Internet and who does not. Who is going to step the the enablement for these countries to have the same access that the “privledged” have? Mobile telecomm companies? problably not that cut throat envionrment. Who know but the potiential is waiting. the next web did a great inforgraphic with numbers from internetworldstats.com to show this opportunity of internet penetration. See the full artilce here.

Internet Penetration

the social network (facebook)

The big news in January was that facebook was reporting that they had hit the 500 million active user market. That’s alot of customers…but not enough for this popular online experience. Where is the other 90% of the worlds population? So, where have these 6 billion-plus people been hiding? Don’t they know about Facebook? Do they know it’s available in almost seventy languages? Well, it seems the answer lies in the bigger technological picture which is who has access to the Internet.

where the users are - facebook generation

Chichen Itza from above

This satellite image from GeoEye highlights the Maya pyramid known as El Castillo, or the Kukulkan Pyramid, the focal point of a monumental plaza at Chichen Itza on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The pyramid was apparently constructed with an eye to the calendar: During the spring and autumnal equinoxes, patterns of sunlight move across the main stairway to make it look as if the body of a serpent (Kukulkan) is creeping downward to join up with a giant serpent’s head carved in stone at the bottom.

Each of the stairways has 91 steps, and when you add the platform at the top, the total comes to 365 steps — the number of days in a year. The Maya, of course, were expert calendar makers. The fact that their “long count” calendar comes to an end in 2012 has led some to fear that the world will end. But even present-day Maya say that’s silly. It’s merely the end of a cycle, just as we’ll be ending a calendrical cycle in just a couple of weeks. We’ll see.

Chichen Itza on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula

the sun’s surface

The spikes of superheated gas, called plasma, are small compared to many of the Sun’s prominent features, such as giant loops of magnetic energy that are flung many thousands of miles into the solar atmosphere. The spicules are typically 300 miles (480 km) in diameter and shoot a relatively modest 3,000 miles (4,830 km) above the Sun’s surface. They scream upward at 50,000 mph (22 kps) and then vanish within five minutes, making them hard to study.

Stunning close up of the surface of the sun.

Photo Credit: K. Reardon (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, INAF) IBIS,DST, NSO)

awesome time lapse videos

I love watching time lapse videos. They allow you to see and feel a overall sense of the world at a different angle. There is a particularly awesome video of this years Cochella music festival. See the amazing tilt-shift time-lapse video capturing the action at this year. Check some of the other related videos on Bing. Be sure to check out the Tahoe time lapse that shows off the milkyway in all its glory.

Cochella from a different angle.

The Milkyway moves across Lake Tahoe at night.