Category Archives: science

50 years of the Space Age

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October 4th, 1957 saw the first successful launch of a satellite into space.

The (then) USSR lauched “Sputnik 1” becoming the first country entering the Space Age. Its characteristic “beep-beep” sound was heard by radio enthusiasts all over the world on approx. 20 MHz and 40 MHz. MOre information and a recording of the beeps can be found at the Wikipedia page concerning Sputnik 1 . (link at the bottom of the page)

One month later, on November 3rd, a second launch of Sputnik 2 with the first living being put in orbit. The dog Laika, unfortunately, had no way of returning alive to earth.

The first satellite launched by the US was Explorer 1 , on January 31st, 1958.

This marks the beginning of the “Space Race”, which continued through the 1960’s and 70’s.

The Space Age has had a lot of “ups and downs” , and I will come up with some highlights in later posts.

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (3)

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Saturday :

A good lecture on the mysterious “Dark Energy” , which is thought to take up ab0ut 70 % of the Universe . Most of the remaining part of the Universe is “Dark Matter” , so all we can see of the totality is about 5 % of it . A bit scary, isn’t it ?
In the presentation we heard that two teams had – at the same time – found some surprising results during surveys of supernovas in the furthest corners of our universe. This particular type of supernova was known (or assumed) to have a rather limited range of luminousity – and a lot of light coming from them – meaning that the distance to them could be estimated with a rather good certainty. Other sources of error (such as dust clouds) could be eliminated, and the result was that the expansion of the universe looks like accelerating in stead of slowing down – as we would expect due to gravity. So what we have is a sort of anti-gravity – but only on very large distances. Later other surveys in different fields gave similar results , so the scientists are rather certain that the effect exists. There is just no clue as to the cause of it. Rather exciting to listen to.

More on the Saturday later …

Jan from Denmark

Impressions from Eurocon 2007 (2)

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This was only my second Scifi convention, the first one being a Star Trek convention in Fresno,California about 15 years ago.

Thursday night :

Already on Thursday evening at the pre-registration there was convention activity. The organisers were quite happy that I offered to make some photos at the con, so they are receiving a CD with photos for every day of the con.

A nice talk with frequent convention goer – and volunteer – Wilf from the UK was already a good start for me. A quite knowledgeable fellow with a solid scientific angle as well.

Friday :

Panel with Guests of Honour. Anne McCaffrey arrived a little late and, when asked, insisted on going up the stairs to the stage (in spite of the handicap) – hats off. A few words from the guests of honour. Harry Harrison is a veteran guest of con’s and has quite a few stories to tell.
Anne McCaffrey, too is very experienced in conventions and could tell of her first con’s where she had good advice from (then) experienced writers, and expressed her advice to new writers : in short , if you want to write , make youself sit down and write … every day.

Scientific lecture on Solar eruptions. This has had my interest for a long time, being a licensed radio amateur. For me the content was not new, but a condensed version of what I already knew. Only difference was – this came from a scientist’s point of view.

There were lots of other presentations during the day , but these stand out for me. A lot of time went with meeting other fans and discussing science fiction, science and fantasy .

A little fun thing is a photo I made : Anne McCaffrey is also involved in the “Writers of th Future”, a quarterly competition, where the winners get their stories published in collections. One moment a Star Wars Stormtrooper in full gear was “standing guard” right behind the famous author, link to the picture .

more to come …

Jan from Denmark

Eurocon 2007

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The European Convention on Science Fiction and Fantasy takes place in Copenhagen on 21 – 23 September.

For me the most interesting guest of Honour is Anne McCaffrey. The “Dragonriders of Pern” series is one of my favorite SciFi book series, well written and with an interesting plot.
The first book of the series ,”Dragonflight” was published in 1968 , and since then a steady flow of sequels (and prequels) have come out.

You can find out more at their website Eurocon 2007

If I can find the time (and an Internet connection) I might make a few posts during the days of the Eurocon

Pulsar Measurements – Radio Astronomy Podcast

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Just heard this on the podcast “Mountain Radio Astronomy”. Their podcast of 8 October 2005 was an interview with pulsar hunter Scott Ransom at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville. Scott had – at the time of the interview – found about 30 millisecond pulsars in a globular star cluster called Terzan 5.

A pulsar is believed to be a quickly rotating neutron star, a supernova remnant, most of them rotating in less than a second. The pulsar has a rather small and directional radiating area that can only be registered when it is facing us.
A second type of even faster rotating pulsars – known as millisecond pulsars – rotating more than a 100 tomes per second, are found in globular star clusters.

The rotation period of the millisecond pulsars is extremely precise, approaching that of an atomic clock , and this means thatsome interesting measurements of pulsar orbits can be made.

About 20 minutes into the interview he talked about a measurement of a pulsar orbit with an accuracy that really surprised me.

The example here is the Hulse-Taylor star system two pulsars orbiting each other in an orbit smaller than the Sun.This can demonstrate Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the interaction between spacetime and gravitation and an indication of gravity waves.

One other of the pulsars, Terzan N is orbiting a massive companion in an almost exact circular orbit about the size of the Sun.there is a little eccentricity, that is difference in the long axis and the short axis of the orbit, is measured as 48 cm +/- 6 cm. Less than half a meter ! Measured at a distance of 20 000 light years. Mind blowing …

Science stranger than fiction …

Link to Mountain Radio Astronomy

Link to The podcast MP3 file