This talk mainly focuses on Saturn, its largest moon, Titan, and on frozen Enceladus, and some of its peculiarities.

Whenever we look up at the universe at night everything we see, that is all the protons, neutrons and electrons, make up for only 4% of the mass and energy of the Universe.
The rest is the dark and mysterious stuff known as dark energy (70%) and dark matter (26%).

Scientists know that dark matter acts like regular matter when it comes to gravity but it doesn’t release light which makes it very different to what makes up the stars and planets that do their celestial dance about us.

One way they are trying to learn more about dark matter is by studying clusters of galaxies, in fact it was galaxies that gave us the first evidence that dark matter existed.

Because galaxy clusters move around so quickly there has to be a lot of matter to hold them together with their gravity. Most of the normal matter is hot gas but there is not nearly enough mass in this hot gas to hold all the normal matter together and that’s where invisible, dark matter comes into the equation.

To study some of the interesting properties of dark matter like whether it interacts with itself, the study of galaxy clusters violently colliding with other galaxy clusters has shown that dark matter can been wrenched free of normal matter which is something that doesn’t generally happen in the universe.

Dark energy is perhaps the biggest mystery in all of physics

Studying clusters of galaxies is a good way of estimating how much matter there is in the universe and this helps to work out how much dark energy there is.

Another way to look at dark energy is to look at how galaxy clusters grow with time.

It seems that galaxies haven’t grown much over the last 6 or 7 billion years and it could be that dark energy is limiting the growth of these objects.

• So if it is so that we only know about 4% of the macrocosm, I wonder if the same applies for the microcosm?
• Is their dark matter, dark energy that goes into the making of our own internal universes?
• What holds all the molecules and atoms that go into making the structure of our bodies together?
• Is it another form of dark matter or dark energy?
• If there is how would we know, what would it do if we found out and does it really matter anyway?

All of these questions I am going to mumble over as I toss back a pint or two at my local and let the universe get on with its merry way, revealing its mysterious workings in its own good time which by our standards is too bloody long anyway to really make much difference to we, who are mere blinks in the existence of creation.

Cheers,
Clip Tycles

(the information for this article has been shamelessly collected and reassembled from an article titled “The Universe Darkly” by Megan Watzke from the Chandra website)

Read about Dark Matter at Wikipedia

People were driving around in their rickety old trucks with their shotguns and pitchforks just looking for a damn commie martian from the red planet to skewer in order to protect freedom and liberty for all (except the martians of course).

Soundtrack to the article ? ~ Kit Cotter performs “Omniverse” Omniverse.mp3

Although a bit smaller than earth, Mars has often been described as a twin to our beautiful blue planet and has inspired the imagination of science fiction writers and artists for more than a century.Many had hoped that there were civilizations living on our neighboring planet but when the Mariner 4 probe was finally sent to the red planet in 1964, these hopes of fantasy were dashed forever.
Instead of finding civilizations living in peace and harmony amongst tree lined lakes and rivers of tranquility, a desolate, wind swept planet containing the largest volcano in the solar system greeted us.
Although life was not found it was believed that life did once exist upon the fourth planet from the sun and so the search for water was instigated.

Now water has been found on Mars by NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander.

Finding water is a crucial first step toward learning whether the ground on Mars is hospitable, because all life as we know it requires water. Now scientists can study the chemistry of Martian dirt in more detail.

When the probe took photos of a ditch it had dug four days before, scientists noticed that about eight small crumbs of a bright material had disappeared. They concluded those crumbs had been water ice buried under a thin layer of dirt that vaporized when Phoenix exposed them to the air.
Phoenix’s robotic arm first revealed the crumbs about 5 cm deep in the trench called “Dodo-Goldilocks” on June 15.
By June 19, they had vanished.
If the crumbs had been salt, they wouldn’t have disappeared, scientists said, and if the ice had been made of carbon dioxide, they wouldn’t have vaporized.

The $420 million mission landed on the arctic plains of Mars on May 25th 2008, embarking on a quest of at least four months to search for signs that the environment was once habitable to life.
Finding ice on Mars isn’t completely shocking, since observations from past satellites sent to orbit the planet, such as the 2001 Mars Odyssey spacecraft, have indicated that ice is likely to lie beneath the planet’s surface.

Although the 2001 Mars Odyssey satellite could measure the average water ice content in roughly the top meter of ground over areas of several hundred kilometers, these data didn’t reveal how that ice was spread out.
The form of the water isn’t known, beyond the fact that there is too much there to be explained solely by water bound in minerals.

Mission scientists plan to eventually put samples of ice into Phoenix’s oven instrument, the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA), which is designed to bake Martian dirt and analyze the vapors it emits to detect its composition. They also plan to use the onboard Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument, a wet chemistry lab that measures levels of acidity, minerals, and conductivity in dirt samples.

So now that water has been found on Mars, does this explain the huge canyons that snake across the surface of the planet?
Did they once contain vast amounts water?
If so what happened to it all?
I asked a friend of mine who told me of some people who subscribe to the belief about a rogue planet called Nibiru.

This planet travels into our solar system every 3600 years or so and creates havoc and mayhem and was the cause for Mars being the desolate planet it is now.
Apparently the atmosphere of Mars was ripped away by the gravitational pull of Nibiru as it passed by on its last visit.
It was discovered by the ancient Mesopotamians who gave it the name Nibiru and was apparently also known by the Mayans.

Sounds plausible if the planet exists and my sources inside NASA tell me “no comment”.
Does this mean “yes it is true but we’re not going to tell you, you loser” does it mean “we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t, say anything” or is it simply a case of “don’t waste our time with conspiracy theories we are men of science not science fiction you nut”.

I must pause here for a moment and remind all our readers that it is too easy to let ones imagination run away with itself, cackling madly over the hills and valleys of ones mind as happened in 1938.
The existence of Nibiru is hearsay as I haven’t seen any of the pictures but I am not beneath sensationalizing my articles to make them more interesting.

The fact remains however that some of what was once thought science fiction is now viewed in the realms of reality, indicating that anything is possible just like the water that has been found on Mars.
Maybe someday my children’s children’s, great grandchildren will be able to hitch a ride to Mars and catch some awesome waves on the fourth planet from the sun and maybe I should leave you all alone for now to contemplate the reality of a multidimensional navel.

So from the planet of my imagination, this is Clip Tycles signing off for now and catching the next bus for Mars.

Some Cool Links.

Excellent interactive and video journey on MSNBC.com showing the Mars rovers mission.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25954096/

Revolutionary Space Exploration Concepts

http://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/home/chien/spAGU2006Images.html

NASA Animation and article – Peeling Back Layers of a Martian Polar Ice Cap

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/sharad-20080515.html

]]> http://astronomyrecords.com/water-mars-heavenly-delights/feed/ 0 http://astronomyrecords.com/nasa-turns-50/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nasa-turns-50 http://astronomyrecords.com/nasa-turns-50/#comments Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:22:17 +0000 Clip Tycles https://astronomyrecords.com/?p=318 If you visit any one of their websites you will find the very best images for free download. Hubble images, space shuttle launches, Mars imagery. All in full resolution with absolutely no restriction. You can even use their images or video footage in your own productions as long as you credit them!

Their philosophy is that the universe and its wonders are too valuable to be exclusive. We agree.

Everyone deserves to have access to the mind and heart opening effect of the magnificent universe we inhabit.

So we celebrate the vital role that the spirit of exploration, innovation, and courage play in our role as Human beings that care about more than just ourselves but also knowledge and the greater good.

NASA, You Rock!

Visit their 50th Anniversary website at http://www.nasa.gov/50th/home/

Explore the August 1st total solar eclipse here.

In this particular part of the universe, 6-10 billion light years away, there is a remarkable drop in the number of galaxies.

Astronomers had known there was something different about this spot in the universe, it had been dubbed the ‘cold spot’ because it stood out on a map produced by the Cosmic Microwave Background or (CMB), which are faint radio waves that are a remnant of the Big Bang, kind of like the earliest baby picture available of the universe.

This cold region of Eridanus was discovered in 2004 after studying the ‘Sky Survey’, which as its name suggests is a mapping of regions of the sky, it was found that there was a scarcity of galaxies in this area.

That along with the slightly lower temperature in this area led astronomers to come to the conclusion that there is an enormous hole in this part of the universe, nearly a billion light-years across.

It is empty of both normal matter such as stars, galaxies and gas, as well as the mysterious dark matter. Read more about this phenomenon here.

This image taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Visit the Chandra site : http://chandra.harvard.edu/

Astronomers have known for years that the Universe has voids largely empty of matter, but no one has ever found one this size and they believe that what they have found is not normal.

Well, I ask, what is normal in this universe of outstanding beauty and infinite possibilities?

That wraps itself around our tiny planet and carries us through its expansion of the infinite so vast, so bizarre and so delightfully stunning.

It is the envy of us all that astronomers have a very unique perspective as they gaze out into the boundless realms of the universe, seeing things few of us could imagine.
What they will discover next will be reported to you from the roving mind of your raving reporter,

Clip Tycles

Here is a video that will absolutely expand your perspective beyond its limits!

Tony Darnell, from AstronomyBuff.com has created a 6 minute YouTube video that will blow you away! This is the Hubble Deep Field imagery presented with a great voice over and some very cool music.

What is the Hubble Deep Field?

It is the furthest we have ever seen into space using the most advanced telescope we have. Free from the distortion of The Earths atmosphere it uses its huge penetrating eye to see deep into space.

Press play and experience what happens when Hubble stares at a blank patch of sky!

Interested in how the Hubble Space Telescope works?

Read this article over at www.howstuffworks.com

This particular one is special to us though, because it is the source of light and life on our world.

Music by Zane Savage from the album “Sci-Indra”. Download the music right here.