Category: space

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Out Of This World Facts About The International Space Station

Space, the final frontier, which few have been lucky enough to experience first hand and even fewer have called home.

The International Space Station (ISS) is home to astronauts from all over the world, demonstrating that the global community can come together for science and progress.

Here are some out-of-this-world facts about the ISS that everyone should know.


Let’s talk basics

The International Space Station (ISS) has been orbiting the planet for more than 20 years, since November 2000.

It is the single most expensive object ever built. The cost has been estimated at over $120 billion!

An international crew of between three to six people live and work aboard the ISS while traveling at a speed of five miles per second, orbiting Earth about every 90 minutes.

In 24 hours, the space station makes 16 full orbits of Earth, traversing through 16 sunrises and sunsets.

It’s a small world after all

240 individuals from 19 countries have visited the ISS so far.

But one has been there the longest

Peggy Whitson holds the record for spending the most time living and working in space. She was there for 665 days.

For anyone with 20/20 vision

Thanks to the acre of solar panels that power the ISS, it can actually be observed with the naked eye from Earth as it flies overhead.

Which is pretty amazing because it flies at an average altitude of 248 miles above Earth.

No place like home

Speaking of home-y, the ISS really is.

The living and working space in the station is larger than a six-bedroom house. It has six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree bay window.

Space takes a toll on your body

Astronauts must exercise for two hours a day to combat the loss of muscle and bone mass that occurs while in space.

It took a lot of work

The largest modules and station pieces were delivered on 42 separate assembly flights.

Since it is huge

The ISS is 357-feet end-to-end, only one yard shy of an American football field including the end zones.

There’s nearly 8 miles of wires making up the electrical system.

That’s longer than the perimeter of Central Park!

So, it takes a lot to power it

More than 50 computers control all the systems on the space station.

And the ISS computers aren’t immune to viruses, in fact they’ve been infected 52 times and counting.

Sniff, sniff

The ISS is likely one of the only places you can actually smell space.

Astronauts have described it as a “metallic-ionization-type smell.”

And, soon we can all smell it

And, for most of us, the ISS has seemed way too far out of reach. Especially if you never got to go to Space Camp. But NASA has announced plans to change all that, and allow regular tourists to actually visit!

The first visits won’t come cheap, likely costing more than a million dollars for the first trip.

But you can’t beat that view!

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Scientists Are Planning on Building Noah’s Ark…On the Moon

There are plenty of headlines I never expected to write since I started writing articles for you lovely people, and this is definitely one of them. I mean…Noah’s Ark? On the moon?

Let’s dig in here and get started on answering the many, many questions that you’ve probably already got brewing, eh?

Shall we start with why?

The answer to this is actually quite simple – you’ve seen movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact et al, right? The idea that an asteroid could suddenly slam into earth and take out all of humanity? Like, nothing left?

Scientists actually believe that, in the year 2068, something like that could be coming for us in reality.

The answer could be a 21st-century version of Noah’s Ark that, instead of containing two of every animal, would contain a repository of cryogenically frozen reproductive cells from 6.7 million species on Earth.

Dr. Jekam Thanga is the mastermind behind the project, and sees the whole thing as a global insurance policy.

“As a human civilization, we’re in a fragile state. We’re not really that rigid or able to face all kinds of adversities. And Earth’s ecosystem is also very fragile.”

They plan to utilize the lava tubes just below the moon’s surface to build the compound and a lunar solar farm to generate their electricity, and to use robots to man the laboratory, and no, we’re not living in a science fiction novel currently.

But we might be soon.

The lava tubes were formed billions of years ago by streams of lava that melted through the soft rock underground. They’re about 328 feet in diameter and could protect the facility from solar radiation, micrometeorites, and the extreme surface temperatures – not an ideal spot for humans.

At least not yet, says Thanga.

“Setting up a base inside a lava tube seems like a plausible way to go if we wanted to set up a permanent settlement on the moon. But we as humans are not mole rates. We’re going to feel pretty stuffy being underground without being able to see outside.”

Thanga says we could use existing technology and materials to build the actual structure on the moon, but the miniature robots being proposed would take a bit more finagling.

“What we envision is taking one of the existing pits – just the opening into the lava tube – and installing an elevator shaft there.”

He envisions elevator shafts and cryo preservation that shelves petri dishes much like books in a library.

There would also be a system for communicating back and forth with earth, and solar panels would be installed to turn sunlight into electricity. Modular batteries will attach to the cryo preservation modules and keep the lights on and maintain temperatures that are optimal for the samples.

If you think this all sounds a bit futuristic, think again – Thanga says this could be a possibility within the next three decades. He estimates it would take around 250 rocket launches to ferry 50 specimens each of the 6.7 million species to the ark, a goal that would be substantially helped by the private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin who are launching their own rockets into orbit.

If an asteroid does slam into Earth, let’s hope someone is still around to launch a rocket to the moon.

Someone who also knows how to use the petri dishes of cells to bring some more humans to life.

So, maybe they do have a few kinks still to work out, eh?

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Wormholes Could Exist in the Real World…and They Could Be Safe for Human Beings

With the way scientific research is going, it seems like life in our beloved science fiction stories could end up being a reality one day – even if that one day remains so far off that we’ll probably never get to see it ourselves.

One thing that has fascinated humans for years, whether they’re super smart at science or not –  are wormholes. In fiction, they’re required to allow characters to get quickly from one place to another, even if those two places are separated by many, many light years.

Image Credit: iStock

The idea that we might be able to use them for the same purpose in the real world, though?

That’s kind of blowing my mind.

Two new studies, published in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review D, have done what physicists like Albert Einstein and Kip Thorne could not – prove the physical existence of wormholes.

Not only that, they propose that they could be safe enough for humans to travel through.

One of the biggest issues theoretical physicists have had with explaining wormholes is the concern that their “necks” – the narrowest spot in these portals – would collapse under the weight of its own gravity. The first new paper, though, led by a researcher from the University of Madrid, has proposed a real, workable solution to this issue.

Even though these papers deal with the possibilities of microscopic wormholes, we can extrapolate theories based on the way they suggest tweaking the mass and charge of fermions – the fundamental building blocks of matter – into talking about wormholes large enough for a human being.

Image Credit: iStock

The second paper, written by researchers from the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey and Princeton University, takes on that challenge, working with the theoretical existence of wormholes that are large enough for people to squeeze through out there in spacetime.
They have devised on that forms in five-dimensional spacetime, and that would look like intermediate-mass black holes to the untrained observer, they say in the paper.

Inside a wormhole like this, they posit you would experience around 20g of acceleration – uncomfortable, sure, but survivable. Still, if there were, say, errant particles floating around, the paper acknowledges there could be trouble.

“If particles that fall into the wormhole scatter and lose energy then they would accumulate inside, contributing some positive energy that would eventually make the wormhole collapse back into a black hole.”

Which would probably be bad.

In addition to that trouble, space is really stinking cold (and that’s ignoring the trouble of actually creating the wormhole in the first place.

Image Credit: iStock

We’re still working on figuring that out.

If we (and by we I mean they) can figure out these little problems though, a trip across the galaxy would only take around a second (or less). That said, anyone waiting in regular time for you to come back will definitely be dead by the time you do.

So make sure you pack absolutely everything and everyone you love when you leave.

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Mars Isn’t as Red as You Might Think

Mars is called “The Red Planet” because of the way the surface shows up a rusty color in the images we get from the many NASA probes and expeditions we’ve been lucky to successfully launch.

What if I told you, though, that’s it’s really just the dirt – that the redness of the planet is actually only a few millimeters thick?

The close tie between Mars and the color red is nothing new; in Sanskrit, the word for ‘red’ and ‘Mars’ are literally one and the same. In Egyptian, too, the word for the planet means “red one,” and even with all of the great photographs we have now, all we see is red everywhere we look.

Image Credit: Pexels

The red is likely the result of dust particles in Mars atmosphere, which is much thinner than the one on Earth and allows for greater absorption at short optical wavelengths than at longer ones.

It also allows larger dust particles to scatter longer-wavelength light more efficiently.

The dust on Mars is high in reflectivity, represents bright soil deposits, and is rich in iron – which is to say, it contains large amounts of ferric oxides.

The most common type of dust is made from nano-crystalline red hematite, and is made up of small enough particles that the rapid Martian winds have no trouble sweeping large amounts of it around and even up into the atmosphere.

They also continually sweep over the surface, changing the landscape and features in both color and shape on a regular basis.

Then two scientists, one of whom was Carl Sagan, figured out why – the red layer we see on Mars’ surface is just a thin dusting of, well, dust and sand. It easily travels short distances, moving from higher to lower elevations or staying on like elevations, and is often blown off areas with steeper slopes onto flatter ones, changing the brightness of the color briefly.

The layer of dust that gives Mars its color, then, is only a few millimeters thick – even at its thickest, in the Tharsis region, it’s only around 7 feet deep.

More recent expeditions involving landers and rovers on Mars have proved, of course, that the red of Mars isn’t uniform at all, with much of the planet appearing more orange or even a butterscotch yellow up close and personal, with rocks and other deposits showing up an average brown, tan, or gray upon closer inspection.

Image Credit: iStock

If we could wave a magic wand and calm the planet’s atmosphere for long periods of time that dust would settle, and all of those other colors would be visible across the planet, much the way that blues and greens and whites dominate images of Earth from outer space.

Scientists are still looking to figure out the process by which those red hematite particles form, and in big enough quantities to turn the far away pictures red in the first place.

Which means that Mars will probably forever remain the red planet, because it’s the only color that reaches our eyes.

Until, of course, we have the opportunity to relocate there ourselves. Then, we’ll be able to see all of Mars’ true colors for ourselves.

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A Scientist Thinks the Earth Is Actually Two Planets Fused Together After Colliding

Just when you thought you knew how the world works, science throws something new at you.

There’s a ton of great research coming out of PhD programs these days–new discoveries and new ideas.

One such researcher is Qian Yuan from the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University.

His research suggests that parts of the Earth are not actually Earth at all.

His team’s research was presented at the 52nd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this past March.

For years it has been widely believed that a proto-planet called Theia helped to form life as we know it.

According to Popular Mechanics:

In 2016, UCLA researchers proposed that Earth could actually be two planets that fused together after colliding: itself and Theia. At the time, scientists said they believe the two planetary masses mixed together uniformly. Now, Qian Yuan of Arizona State University and his colleagues suggest the mysterious dense spots in Earth’s interior are the specific pieces of Theia that are still intact.

Theia is thought to be very similar in size and structure to Mars.

Scientists also believe that the Earth’s Moon may have formed during this impact.

You might remember from science class that the Earth is made up of 3 layers: the crust, the mantle, and the core.

The mantle itself is also made up of layers of varying density, and is at the center of Yuan’s research.

In some cases, there are massive pockets that are more dense, called “Large Low Shear Velocity Provinces” or (LLSVPs).

I honestly don’t understand most of Yuan’s science-related tweets, but he compares the Earth to chocolate, which is always a language I can understand:

The team did a lot of math, and they have been able to compare the objects of their study with the mantle on Mars, which can be examined in the form of meteorites that have landed on Earth–over 100 of them.

What the researchers found is that:

“The total mass of the moon, together with the LLSVPs, is almost perfectly matched with [Mars’s] mantle.”

Unlike the original supposition that the two planets fused completely, Yuan’s team believe that the heavier Theia material sank into the deepest part of the Earth’s mantle, closest to the core, and there it stayed, like the gritty dregs at the bottom of a cup of coffee.

Popular Mechanics explains it this way:

How have the dense Theia materials stayed intact for billions of years?

It’s a function of the way Earth’s mantle works, where convection circulates materials that are a certain temperature and density.

The Theia materials are so dense that they sank and never floated back into the convection zone.

Think of this like the stuff that accumulates in a sharp corner that’s hard to reach with the vacuum cleaner.

So now you know. The Earth is like an Easter candy egg with a vacuum cleaner hidden deep inside.

And even though Mars feels very far away, we are all technically walking on a foreign world.

Did Yuan’s research completely blow your mind like it did mine? ? Tell us in the comments.

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The Department of Defense Is Evaluating UFO Data That Might Be Released to the General Public

Anyone who grew up on “The X-Files” can’t help but think that “the truth is out there” was more than just a catchphrase.

And as it turns out, we could finally begin to learn a little bit more of that truth very soon.

I’ve never seen a UFO, unless you count the cow-abduction road signs in New Mexico.

But I definitely think it’s a little bit silly and hugely egotistical to assume that in the whole vast cosmos, our planet is the only one to sustain intelligent life.

It turns out, the U.S. government has seen enough unexplained evidence that they think so too.

Who that’s heard the audio of Australian pilot Fred Valentich’s encounter and subsequent disappearance can deny that something has visited us?

The U.S. government doesn’t refer to them as UFO’s anymore.

Maybe that’s considered a little too hokey and little-green-manish now, so they instead describe them as UAP or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, which can take in a broader range of encounters.

Just last year, after videos filmed by Navy pilots was leaked to the public, the Department of Defense established a new task force for investigating these phenomena, or UAPTF.

Not only that, but Popular Mechanics reports:

When Trump signed the coronavirus relief and government funding bill into law in December 2020, it contained the IAA for Fiscal Year 2021, which means the UAPTF must report its findings to Congress by June 25.

That’s June 25 of this year.

The Director of National Intelligence who served under President Trump at the time went on Fox News recently to talk about the project, and it sounds like he’s a believer too, stating that the reports will cover:

[UAP that make] “movements that are hard to replicate that we don’t have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom. In short, things that we are observing that are difficult to explain.”

The note about the sound barrier is particularly relevant.

Image credit: U.S. Navy, via Flickr

Here’s why, according to Popular Mechanics:

When an aircraft increases its speed, pressure waves build up on it and eventually coalesce into a single shockwave. When the plane outruns that shockwave and travels faster than the speed of sound in air, it causes a sudden change in pressure, which in turn creates the sonic boom. There’s no publicly available scientific data to suggest any aircraft can break the sound barrier without producing a sonic boom; while engineers can take steps to try to reduce sonic booms, physics says it’s impossible to outright eliminate it.

Which means that if the government has proof of aircraft that defy physics, then they have proof of civilizations more advanced than our own.

And so, although a watchdog group will be evaluating how the Pentagon handled UAP reports:

the Pentagon itself will be busy this month reviewing all the data they have been collecting under the UAPTF project ahead of that June deadline to release the information.

And it’s not all going to be blurry videos and darting shapes, either. There’s actual concrete data.

According to a source from The Debrief, a contributor to Popular Mechanics:

“Some of the best evidence acquired has come from measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT), rather than from videos or still images.”

Suddenly I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for summer!

What do you think? All an elaborate hoax, or FINALLY some transparency?

Let us know in the comments!

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Uranus Passed a Gas Bubble 22,000 Times Bigger Than Earth

I don’t think it’s possible for a planet to be embarrassed, but if it were, Uranus should definitely be ashamed of the gas bubbles that are emerging from its bowels.

Do farts stink in space? There’s a question for NASA the next time I’ve got them on the line.

In all seriousness, this discovery is something special, because with all of the information we’ve been able to gather from various planets in our solar system – earthquakes on Mars, grooves in Saturn’s rings, jet streams on Jupiter, and even Pluto’s heartbeat – our image and knowledge of Uranus hasn’t been substantially increased since Voyager 2 passed by the blue beachball in 1986.

Image Credit: iStock

In 2020,though, two planetary scientists noticed an anomaly that everyone had overlooked – a magnetic bubble, perhaps.

Their report appeared in Geophysical Research Letters, and has led scientists to take another look at the mysterious planet.

Gina DiBraccio and Daniel Gershman are two of the scientists who are brushing off old research, seeing what else we might have missed. They’ve spent hours manually looking at 30-year-old data, and found that by focusing on what Voyager 2 considered extraneous noise, there is much we could have missed.

Specifically, they spotted a 60-second long section of the 45-hour flyby where the magnetic field rose and fell in a way they immediately recognized.

It was a plasmoid.

Those are charged globs of atmosphere blown out into space when solar winds whip around planets, and losing them can transform a place over a long period of time.

Image Credit: Public Domain

Studying them is one of the ways scientists believe they can gain insight into how planets live – and how they die.

DiBraccio explained,

“We expected that Uranus would likely have plasmoids.

However we didn’t know exactly what they would look like.”

The plasmoid looks similar to ones they’ve seen emitting from Saturn and Jupiter, but it’s much larger – it formed a cylinder roughly 22,000 times larger than Earth.

Uranus is ripe for study, with updated imaging showing a world that’s not just blue, but painted with white, candy-striped clouds. We’ve also really never understood that way it rolls instead of spins, tipped on its side with its poles pointing either toward or away from the sun.

It’s magnetic field is different, too. It’s offset from the planet’s center, around 60 degrees to the side instead. Planetary astronomers have never really been able to see it or how it works, though the Hubble can occasionally catch an indirect glimpse.

NASA and other space researchers have a growing interest in sending a dedicated probe to Uranus or Neptune. Sketches of possible missions have emerged over the past three years, and DiBraccio confirms they’re likely not going to stop until one is approved to go ahead.

Image Credit: iStock

The plan is to send a Cassini-style orbiter to circle the planets for years, surveying the magnetic field and studying its heat flow. There would also be at least one smaller probe the ship could fire into the atmosphere to measure invisible gasses leftover from the planet’s formation.

Uranus and Neptune, made from heavier molecules (water and ammonia) than the more common “gas giants” in our solar system, aren’t anomalies anywhere else. Neptune-like planets are one of the most common in the galaxy, and understanding more about them could tell scientists about the fundamental ways our galaxy seems to differ from the majority of known space.

Image Credit: iStock

Still, nuclear power will have to catch up, and getting to the outer reaches of our galaxy will be a years-long mission, even after it gets off the ground, says Heidi Hammel, a planetary astronomer and VP for Science at the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.

“Even with our current best rockets and gravity assists, it’s still a decade to get out there. Most of us tend to think in multi-decade time scales.”

“I dream about exploring Uranus and Neptune and I dream about fantastic space telescopes. That’s how we get through tough times. We dream about the future.”

We’ve certainly had plenty of tough times lately, so let’s hope it pays off when we see some of these dreams and visions of the future come true.

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