I couldn’t help but pay attention to all the hullaballoo surrounding the inaugural firing up of the Overlord of Disaster, the Proton Punisher, the Gaping Black Maw of the Apocolypse….the one…the only… LAAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGEEEEEEE HADRON COLLIDER!  The time signature of this humble entry may be adduced as proof the world most certainly has not been swallowed up Jonah-style by black holes unleashed by LHC.  Having sufficiently quelled my nerves with mint herbal tea and a hearty helpin’ of “One Day At A Time” episodes from season 1, I feel confident in my ability to maintain my composure long enough to ignore my Schopehauer series for one more week.  That is unless Julie runs away again with that van-driving, Meatloaf-looking lout of a boyfriend.  She’s got to start living smarter not harder!

Scientists typically don’t like philosophers.  Anyone who thinks otherwise need only visit a few science forums to get a sense of the disdain to which philosophy is subjected.  Personally, I think the bad blood first spilled when Hume suggested that what we know to be causes and effects are merely perceptive habits and rituals. Regardless, I’ll speak my peace.  As I continue to follow the events unfolding in Switzerland, a couple of practical and timely concerns have come to the fore:

1)  The Big Bang has fundamental problems stemming from a litany of ad hoc hypotheses and departures from observational data.  Should an experimental environment as important and costly as the LHC be hinged on the assumption the Big Bang correctly describes our universe?  Is referring to the Big Bang as “the best model we have so far” sufficient reason to devise an experiment to explore the validity and limitations of the Standard Model?  If the Big Bang is the best model we have at the moment, then we probably should change statements like “WHEN the Big Bang occurred” to “IF the Big Bang occurred”.

2)  In light of concern 1, is moving forward and assuming the validity of the Big Bang despite its evidentiary flaws indicative of a greater problem plaguing science, namely too great a reliance on inductive methods of research.  The LHC seems to be more a product of “If a theory is broke, we can build an experiment to fix it.” which the philosopher in me recognizes as an inductive process and a product of curious logic.

When the Bush administration started handing out non-compete contracts to the likes of Halliburton and KBR, my first thought was “Really?  Aren’t we going to get ripped off?”  Now I see an impressive, multi-billion dollar experiment moving forward on an assumption that doesn’t possess the criteria necessary for generating a consensus.  Aren’t we going to get ripped off, cosmologically speaking?

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission became the first satellite to take a close-up photograph of a rare E-Type asteroid on September 5th. There are several types of asteroids found in the asteroid belt which is located between Mars and Jupiter. The E-type asteroids are located on the inner portion of the ring, or at about 2.2 AU’s. The E-type asteroids contain high amounts of silicate, and have a relatively high albedo of approximately .3. Because terrestrial planets such as Earth also contain large amounts of silicates it can be assumed that E-type asteroids formed from the mantle of a differentiated asteroid. These asteroids are relatively small; rarely have diameters greater than 25km.

S-type asteroids are also located around 2.2 AU’s and are composed mainly of Iron and Magnesium-Silicates. With a slightly less albedo than the E-type asteroids, S-type shine with an albedo of approximately .22. S-type asteroids come in a variety of sizes–with the largest, 15 Eunomia, having a diameter of 330km wide.

M-type asteroids are responsible for the inner section of the asteroid belt. They are found between 2.2 and 2.7 AU’s. Many of these asteroids are composed of Nickel and Iron; because this is the composition of terrestrial planet’s cores, it is thought that the M-type asteroids are left over chunks of iron core from differentiated asteroids. These asteroids have albedo’s in a range from .1 to about .2.

C-type asteroids make up 75% of the known asteroids and are located around 2.7 AU’s. These Asteroids are rich in Carbonates and have very dark albedo’s in a range from .03 to .1. These asteroids also have the spectral signature which suggests water is present within the minerals. Located just beyond the C-type asteroids is the asteroid belts rim which is composed of the very dark D-type asteroid.

When Rosetta photographed the rare E-type asteroid called 2687 Steins, it captured a diamond shape body measuring in at 5.9 by 4km. Its surface reveals a violent past as it is pocketed with 23 craters having diameters larger than 200m, and a large crater with a diameter of 2km. Surrounding the larger crater is a chain of small craters. Such crater chains have been observed on the moon and are thought to be formed by the showering debris of a large impact.

Stein is only the first asteroid flyby scheduled in the Rosetta mission. On July 10^th 2010, Rosetta will fly by the asteroid 21 Lutetia. Lutetia is an M-type asteroid which is 100km in diameter. Scientists are interested in Lutetia because it doesn’t fit the spectral characteristics of other M-type asteroids. Instead of bearing the spectral signature of nickel-iron, it resembles a carbonaceous signature which is characteristic of C-type asteroids.

After leaving Lutetia, Rosetta will drop a lander onto the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. The landing will occur during the comet’s apogee when measurements can be made on the stable nucleus. For the following 2 years Rosetta will follow the comet/lander on a 100,000km/hr chase into the inner solar system Rosetta will be able to make measurements of the comet’s corona. Hopefully Rosetta’s exciting journey will provide insight to the formation of the early solar system.

Here on Earth death usually means the end but in space, stars can have quite the interesting afterlives, and stellar corpses can even interact. The fact that stellar remnants interact is nothing new, however a new theory based on observations and computer simulations may explain a new type of supernova and help end a debate about black holes. First, let me lay out a little background.

A white dwarf is the stellar remnant of a low mass star. A star of about 2 or less solar masses will die in what is called planetary nebulae and leave behind a white dwarf. They are small dense objects about the size of earth with the mass of the sun that have an inert carbon core and are no longer do nuclear burning. For higher mass stars they die in what is called a supernova, a massive explosion where the star blows off its outer layers and leaves behind a neutron star, or if massive enough a black hole. Now there are two different kinds of supernova explosions. One is what I just mentioned, when a high mass star explodes. The other kind is when a white dwarf has a companion star. The white dwarf collects, or accretes, matter from its companion star. Once it reaches high enough mass the surface of the white dwarf reignites nuclear burning eventually then exploding in a supernova. Each one of these kinds of supernovae has a very different light signature, or spectrum.

A new paper was published describing a new way of igniting a white dwarf and a new type of supernova. In this new process a white dwarf wanders too close to a black hole. The strong gravity of the black hole causes tidal disruption in the white dwarf, it pulls and flattens the white dwarf into a pancake shake, and this compresses the star’s material reigniting nuclear burning. As each section of the star is squeezed through a point of maximum compression, the extreme pressure causes a sharp increase in temperatures, which triggers explosive burning. The explosion ejects half the material from the star while the rest falls into the black hole. This in-falling material heats up and gives off x-rays. So this supernova should have a different spectrum and be followed up by a glow of x-rays.

Now the interesting thing is this process would only be possible with a black hole of a particular mass, neither too big nor too small. It would have to be between 500 to 1000 solar masses. Theoretically and observationally we only know of small black holes, several solar masses, or super massive ones on the order of millions of solar masses. So proof of this process would mean there are intermediate mass black holes, which would beg the question of where do these black holes come from?

These types of supernova are thought to be 100 times less frequent than the other types of supernova. The Synoptic Survey Telescope, planned for 2013, will be observing hundreds of supernova per year. So far this new process between white dwarfs and black holes has been successfully modeled with computer simulations, but hopefully with this new telescope we will be able to observe the spectrum of these supernova. This would provide proof for this theory, answer some questions, and lead to some new ones.

Imagine a space exploration vehicle that needs little fuel, and can continually accelerate as long as it is in contact with solar radiation. This is the idea behind solar sails, which were first dreamt up by the great German astronomer, Johannes Kepler. Since then they have been in the minds of many astronomers, engineers, and science fiction authors. To date there has not been a successful deployment of a solar sail.

A spacecraft would deploy a large membrane of reflective material, this “sail” would reflect protons delivered by solar radiation. This exchange of momentum by reflecting photons would cause a resulting thrust of the space craft. Even though such a sail would generate a continuous acceleration, this technology is thought to be impractical for long distance travel because of the enormous sail that would be needed, the relatively slow start acceleration, and the small amounts of radiation available at distances far from the sun. By aiming the sail against the Sun, a reverse thrust, or deceleration would be achieved, making solar sails a fuel saving technology useful in repositioning satellites in Earth’s orbit or slowing satellites as they approach other planets.

NASA and Ames Research Center recently built NanoSail-D. The Sail was made from a composite of Aluminum and space age plastic. When opened the sail was suppose to span 100 square feet, and the entire space craft weighed less than 10 pounds. The purpose of this mission was to see if sails could be used to direct a satellite back into the Earth’s Atmosphere where it can be burned up, thus leaving less clutter in Earth’s orbit due to unused satellites.

However, not all missions end in glory. On August 2, the NanoSail-D space craft was launched from the Kwajalein Atoll aboard the SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket. There was a system failure in stage 1 of the launch, and the craft never reached orbit. This resulted in the loss of NanoSail-D. NASA has a spare NanaSail-D and is currently working on plans for a future launch. A similar mission also failed in 2005, when the Planetary Society and Cosmos Studios launched Cosmos 1.

If the technology for making and deploying large sails becomes available the practicality for deep space missions would change. It took Voyager more than three decades to escape the solar system using conventional rockets, but a spacecraft using large and efficient sails would be able to catch up to the Voyager spacecrafts in less than ten years.