Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Showing posts with label space. Show all posts
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A Journey of Scales
"Did you know the sun's 1,300,000 times bigger than the earth?" my father said to me in a dream. I thought it was real, like a normal day, since he never usually talks about astronomy. In response, I said, "If you think that's amazing, I'll show you the scales with comparisons of everyday objects."
For a moment, I told him to imagine what I was saying.
"If the sun was the size of a basketball," I said, shaping my hands into a ball-form, and then pulling out a bluish marble from my pocket. My father finished the sentence, "Then the earth would be the size of the marble."
"No," I said, "In fact, it would be Jupiter that would be the size of the marble. The earth would be the size of a grain of sand."
Moving on, I said, "Now, if we want to see just how far the planets are from the sun, and not just their sizes, we have to make the scale even larger."
I told him now to imagine that the marble was the size of the sun, the grain the size of Jupiter, moving the scale down by one unit. Setting the Sun-marble in the center of the floor, I stretched my arm until it was three feet from the marble. Setting my imaginary sand-grain there, I said, "That's where the FIRST planet would be, Mercury. The others are still farther. So even though they're extremely small compared to the sun, they're also extremely far away, so they don't become overwhelmed by the sun's energy."
In this situation, sand-grain Jupiter would be some ten feet from the marble, if I remember correctly. The Sun is still hot enough and powerful enough to radiate its heat even across such a distance, spanning many times its own width.
I woke up at this point, disappointing this conversation had only taken place there and not in the waking world. You should visit here if you're interested in learning more about Solar System scales:
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
And that's just the Solar System. The Solar System. That's just the Heliosphere, which is the sphere of our sun's influence; past this tiny shell, which itself is like a grain of sand compared to the nebulae and clusters of our galaxy, lies an entire cosmos filled with progressively larger and larger structure, past the realm of human comprehension.
For a moment, I told him to imagine what I was saying.
"If the sun was the size of a basketball," I said, shaping my hands into a ball-form, and then pulling out a bluish marble from my pocket. My father finished the sentence, "Then the earth would be the size of the marble."
"No," I said, "In fact, it would be Jupiter that would be the size of the marble. The earth would be the size of a grain of sand."
Moving on, I said, "Now, if we want to see just how far the planets are from the sun, and not just their sizes, we have to make the scale even larger."
I told him now to imagine that the marble was the size of the sun, the grain the size of Jupiter, moving the scale down by one unit. Setting the Sun-marble in the center of the floor, I stretched my arm until it was three feet from the marble. Setting my imaginary sand-grain there, I said, "That's where the FIRST planet would be, Mercury. The others are still farther. So even though they're extremely small compared to the sun, they're also extremely far away, so they don't become overwhelmed by the sun's energy."
In this situation, sand-grain Jupiter would be some ten feet from the marble, if I remember correctly. The Sun is still hot enough and powerful enough to radiate its heat even across such a distance, spanning many times its own width.
I woke up at this point, disappointing this conversation had only taken place there and not in the waking world. You should visit here if you're interested in learning more about Solar System scales:
http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html
And that's just the Solar System. The Solar System. That's just the Heliosphere, which is the sphere of our sun's influence; past this tiny shell, which itself is like a grain of sand compared to the nebulae and clusters of our galaxy, lies an entire cosmos filled with progressively larger and larger structure, past the realm of human comprehension.
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Journey Through the Stars - III
Your ship is old now. For countless eons, more than you can count, you've been traveling the void of space. Off on the starboard a pulsar comes up, emitting its constant beacon like a lone lighthouse on the edge of the infinite sea, radiating its light in a constant spin. You hear its pulsations on board:
"Oh God, it's beautiful," says the Captain, still weary, old in age and hardly there, it's felt. No one knows what goes on in the mind of the old man, only that he sits there looking at the stars, rarely breaking his slumbering, eternal gaze to issue a word or two. For the most part the mission takes care of itself; it's almost at mission's end. Home no longer exists; space is his home.
The racketous beating leaves the hull, and the distant, spinning light fades away from the dark view of the inner hull. It fades away into the myriad of off-colored stars, tinted with the decay of countless years like a silent graveyard whose lights are the spirits of the dead through which we wade. The ship is old, and she's been good, carrying out her assignment to the last, at one with the aging Captain of whose secrets she alone is shared. How beautiful the journey has been, now to die among the stars; one more light fading out.
The trip has been long and hard. Silence has settled around most of the ship; few of the original crew are left. For the old generation which left ages ago, it is the end.
Now you are deep. There is no sun here, no stars to light the path. You are so deep that there is nothing around you for hundreds of light-years. Color fades. Surrounded only by darkness. You are so far out... your eyes begin to see. In the distance, a luminous band comes to light; the Milky Way, slowly rotating in her cosmic path, and then another light; Andromedia. The skies are full of stars; of galaxies, sweeping and vast, of stars and pulsars, of nebulae shifting in the vast void, of countless stars and lights which you cannot account for.
It is a fitting song for your last moments. The vision burns into your eyes, the last light transmitted to your eyes a mirage of a million worlds and stars, of grand formations of cosmic medium, of the vast voids and vantage points from which your solitary ship now wades ever slowly through the infinite gulfs, to drift forever through time and space without end. No regrets, my friends. Old Captain sits in his throne, neither alive or dead, simply sitting there as if waiting, and petrified, for whatever he's been searching for. You look upon from the command deck for the last time, and then close your eyes. The music comes back to your ears; you remember all those times aboard when you heard the universe's song. Then it all turns to silence, like the ever void itself.
... the end
"Oh God, it's beautiful," says the Captain, still weary, old in age and hardly there, it's felt. No one knows what goes on in the mind of the old man, only that he sits there looking at the stars, rarely breaking his slumbering, eternal gaze to issue a word or two. For the most part the mission takes care of itself; it's almost at mission's end. Home no longer exists; space is his home.
The racketous beating leaves the hull, and the distant, spinning light fades away from the dark view of the inner hull. It fades away into the myriad of off-colored stars, tinted with the decay of countless years like a silent graveyard whose lights are the spirits of the dead through which we wade. The ship is old, and she's been good, carrying out her assignment to the last, at one with the aging Captain of whose secrets she alone is shared. How beautiful the journey has been, now to die among the stars; one more light fading out.
The trip has been long and hard. Silence has settled around most of the ship; few of the original crew are left. For the old generation which left ages ago, it is the end.
Now you are deep. There is no sun here, no stars to light the path. You are so deep that there is nothing around you for hundreds of light-years. Color fades. Surrounded only by darkness. You are so far out... your eyes begin to see. In the distance, a luminous band comes to light; the Milky Way, slowly rotating in her cosmic path, and then another light; Andromedia. The skies are full of stars; of galaxies, sweeping and vast, of stars and pulsars, of nebulae shifting in the vast void, of countless stars and lights which you cannot account for.
It is a fitting song for your last moments. The vision burns into your eyes, the last light transmitted to your eyes a mirage of a million worlds and stars, of grand formations of cosmic medium, of the vast voids and vantage points from which your solitary ship now wades ever slowly through the infinite gulfs, to drift forever through time and space without end. No regrets, my friends. Old Captain sits in his throne, neither alive or dead, simply sitting there as if waiting, and petrified, for whatever he's been searching for. You look upon from the command deck for the last time, and then close your eyes. The music comes back to your ears; you remember all those times aboard when you heard the universe's song. Then it all turns to silence, like the ever void itself.
... the end
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Journey Through the Stars - II
Your ship continues on. The darkness has taken you, the void all around. The sun is but another star now, fainter by the day. The last you see of your own system are those two little marbles floating on the edge, Uranus and Neptune, which in their separate systems live their isolated and dark existences on the edge of an abyss. Beyond here is the Kuiper belt, more distant and wide-spanning than the one further in, with cold dark bodies, some large, some small, hanging over their distant center like an intricate mobile. Further on feeds it into the Oort cloud, the shell of silent comets, beyond which lies the limit of the heliosphere, the final departure from the sun's influence and into the influence of interstellar space.
Even out here on the edge of the void already, the sounds of the hewed giants, last stops of the solar system, hang ever in the air of your passing ship.
Now on the solar system's last stop, Neptune. After this, there will be no more giants of color and moons; just a dark void of silent comets and asteroids tumbling in the black vacuum.
From here on out, you are entering the interstellar zone. From here on out, you are entering the infinite.
Even out here on the edge of the void already, the sounds of the hewed giants, last stops of the solar system, hang ever in the air of your passing ship.
From here on out, you are entering the interstellar zone. From here on out, you are entering the infinite.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Journey Through the Stars - I
You are about to embark on a journey that will take a whole lifetime. Your ship will be heading out of the solar system - beyond to the stars of the galaxy, to the core and then to the cold and quiet void of space. But even in these frozen depths, silent waves silently grind like the pulsing beatings of an ethereal sea, echoing through the radios and receptors of your ship in the vastness of the void.
Your mission will encompass many sights and sounds - the quantum waves of the planets will be broadcasted across your ship's radio. You will pass by the outer planets on your trip; using Jupiter to swing around towards Neptune while meeting Saturn and Uranus along the way - then out of the solar system, where beyond the Oort Cloud of sunless floating masses, you'll be amongst interstellar space - the first step in your long journey. There you will progress past an array of nearby stars along your path, until finally you've reached the immense propensity of the void and the sum of your journey. The natural rhythms of the universe.
Before embarking for the first step out of the solar system, the captain's only words before takeoff are: "So begins our nine million mile trek out of the reaches of our solar system."
Embarking
For days you go by. Nothing seems to move; earth is all but gone now, soon reduced to a small lit orb in the distance of the window, and then not there at all. The orbit of Mars has been passed, and now your ship is lumbering through the asteroid fields. You don't see any asteroids, because they're so far apart - even as you accelerate, none come in view of the ship. Even though countless swarms of asteroids inhabit this vestigial and forgotten belt, the vast distances of space make you truly see their greatness.
The bright orb of the Giant has loomed for months now. It grows slightly by the day, like a star, until finally you can see it's swirling eye and the bands of clouds. Faint glimpses of moons can be seen here and their, satellites flickering in rays of distant-traveled sunlight just right to see. The faint pattern of Jupiter's mutter crackles faintly, for even out here the signals begin to become audible. Even so far out here, the faint and silent breath of the Giant continues on like a ceaseless tide, an immersed rhythm of waves and frequency.
The vibrations of the planet become stronger, and as you get closer, the Giant fills the viewscreen with its enormous, lumbering presence, imposing and mighty, and now the song of Jupiter distinctly rings its murmur across the ship:
Jovian song rings in a quiet murmur across the ship, like the muttering and hooting of a sleeping giant. The eye whirls steadily past, enough to engulf a thousand worlds, your ship to say the least. The faint roundness of Europa gleams yellowish in the distance, yet the approach will not be closer. The mighty giant passes you, as surely as it came, and again you are left with no indication of your own movement. The eternal sounds fade away with distance back into silence, only a steady and constant hum of the on board receptors; background radiation. The ringed planet is still too far off in the distance, but even from here you immediately recognize the two protrusions of the disk shaping each side - the sides of the rings. The boost from Jupiter's gravity has given us an additional lift, and from here it's smooth sailing until we reach Saturn.
Over the weeks the calm orb comes closer. We see, as opposed to Jupiter, the calm and placid bands of Saturn's cool sandy clouds, it's shape elongated from a peculiar formation. The rings are vast and sharp; we soon enter in range of Saturn's song.
First it is a hum. Then a steady rumble. Like the sea at night, the ceaseless grinding of the orbits continue their well-known paths - the mighty god's waves strike the ship, eerily floating across the bridge. You and the captain hear it; all take a break from the controls to listen as the receptors pick up. They dim the lights, so that only the LEDs of the monitor lights continue to glow. Outside the vast window of the observation deck, spanning around the bridge, Saturn looms silently in the distance, her wave's sounding across the bridge. Soon we cross the rings; they are under us, and the immense size of Saturn becomes appearant. With proximity grows the intensity of the noise - we sleep with it day and night. We simply sit on bridge and listen to her eternal song:
The sun is so distant now. Only the outer plane gives solace.
The immense span of the rings floats beneath the ship. Below, you see the crystal thin disk slowly rotating beneath. The inside of the ring is only meters thick, composed of various ice crystals variously spaced and sized, from grains of sand to the size of cars. You imagine going to retrieve ice from the rings for water - of walking amongst the ice forms of the rings, of dipping in and out of the immense disk's plane. Yet you know such pristine beauty shouldn't be touched by man's orders - and further yet, that all your provisions for the rest of your life are stored aboard for safe keeping. Still, the ever present rings merge closer, and their particular sound can be heard too:
Your mission will encompass many sights and sounds - the quantum waves of the planets will be broadcasted across your ship's radio. You will pass by the outer planets on your trip; using Jupiter to swing around towards Neptune while meeting Saturn and Uranus along the way - then out of the solar system, where beyond the Oort Cloud of sunless floating masses, you'll be amongst interstellar space - the first step in your long journey. There you will progress past an array of nearby stars along your path, until finally you've reached the immense propensity of the void and the sum of your journey. The natural rhythms of the universe.
Before embarking for the first step out of the solar system, the captain's only words before takeoff are: "So begins our nine million mile trek out of the reaches of our solar system."
Embarking
For days you go by. Nothing seems to move; earth is all but gone now, soon reduced to a small lit orb in the distance of the window, and then not there at all. The orbit of Mars has been passed, and now your ship is lumbering through the asteroid fields. You don't see any asteroids, because they're so far apart - even as you accelerate, none come in view of the ship. Even though countless swarms of asteroids inhabit this vestigial and forgotten belt, the vast distances of space make you truly see their greatness.
The bright orb of the Giant has loomed for months now. It grows slightly by the day, like a star, until finally you can see it's swirling eye and the bands of clouds. Faint glimpses of moons can be seen here and their, satellites flickering in rays of distant-traveled sunlight just right to see. The faint pattern of Jupiter's mutter crackles faintly, for even out here the signals begin to become audible. Even so far out here, the faint and silent breath of the Giant continues on like a ceaseless tide, an immersed rhythm of waves and frequency.
The vibrations of the planet become stronger, and as you get closer, the Giant fills the viewscreen with its enormous, lumbering presence, imposing and mighty, and now the song of Jupiter distinctly rings its murmur across the ship:
Jovian song rings in a quiet murmur across the ship, like the muttering and hooting of a sleeping giant. The eye whirls steadily past, enough to engulf a thousand worlds, your ship to say the least. The faint roundness of Europa gleams yellowish in the distance, yet the approach will not be closer. The mighty giant passes you, as surely as it came, and again you are left with no indication of your own movement. The eternal sounds fade away with distance back into silence, only a steady and constant hum of the on board receptors; background radiation. The ringed planet is still too far off in the distance, but even from here you immediately recognize the two protrusions of the disk shaping each side - the sides of the rings. The boost from Jupiter's gravity has given us an additional lift, and from here it's smooth sailing until we reach Saturn.
Over the weeks the calm orb comes closer. We see, as opposed to Jupiter, the calm and placid bands of Saturn's cool sandy clouds, it's shape elongated from a peculiar formation. The rings are vast and sharp; we soon enter in range of Saturn's song.
First it is a hum. Then a steady rumble. Like the sea at night, the ceaseless grinding of the orbits continue their well-known paths - the mighty god's waves strike the ship, eerily floating across the bridge. You and the captain hear it; all take a break from the controls to listen as the receptors pick up. They dim the lights, so that only the LEDs of the monitor lights continue to glow. Outside the vast window of the observation deck, spanning around the bridge, Saturn looms silently in the distance, her wave's sounding across the bridge. Soon we cross the rings; they are under us, and the immense size of Saturn becomes appearant. With proximity grows the intensity of the noise - we sleep with it day and night. We simply sit on bridge and listen to her eternal song:
The sun is so distant now. Only the outer plane gives solace.
The immense span of the rings floats beneath the ship. Below, you see the crystal thin disk slowly rotating beneath. The inside of the ring is only meters thick, composed of various ice crystals variously spaced and sized, from grains of sand to the size of cars. You imagine going to retrieve ice from the rings for water - of walking amongst the ice forms of the rings, of dipping in and out of the immense disk's plane. Yet you know such pristine beauty shouldn't be touched by man's orders - and further yet, that all your provisions for the rest of your life are stored aboard for safe keeping. Still, the ever present rings merge closer, and their particular sound can be heard too:
Come take a journey with me-
To beyond the stars where man can't see.
Saturn's form drifts away like the others, a lone giant.
Once again the sounds fade out, left with the sounds of the ether and the ship.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Sounds of Saturn
Mysterious. Billions of miles from the sun, the ringed planet emits electromagnetic frequencies which, if attuned to audio speakers, produce an eerie sound. If one removes the static, even further, what you are left with is a strange series of unearthly noises. Some have likened this to "alien language", though no one knows exactly what these recordings are. They were taken by the Cassini space probe.
The vacuum of space, although a virtual void, is filled with electromagnetic frequencies which emanate from all heavenly bodies and in many different forms. In our own solar system, a thin gas medium existent between most of the planets and their moons allows further recording of sounds in the planets' ionospheres, and even the sounds of the rushing winds on the planets themselves, such as those of Neptune. Electromagnetic radiation from these bodies also lends a variety of strange and curiously audible sounds... everything from the planet's moons to the planet's rings ring with some kind of cosmic song, and that is not all - stars too produce this alien music, even all the way in the furthest reaches of known space, their cosmic song rings across eternity...
Saturn's Rings:
Uranus' Rings:
The vacuum of space, although a virtual void, is filled with electromagnetic frequencies which emanate from all heavenly bodies and in many different forms. In our own solar system, a thin gas medium existent between most of the planets and their moons allows further recording of sounds in the planets' ionospheres, and even the sounds of the rushing winds on the planets themselves, such as those of Neptune. Electromagnetic radiation from these bodies also lends a variety of strange and curiously audible sounds... everything from the planet's moons to the planet's rings ring with some kind of cosmic song, and that is not all - stars too produce this alien music, even all the way in the furthest reaches of known space, their cosmic song rings across eternity...
Saturn's Rings:
Uranus' Rings:
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