A Sense of Doubt blog post #1908 - Sonification of Deep Space Image from Hubble and Brin on Space

A Sense of Doubt blog post #1908 - Sonification of Deep Space Image from Hubble and Brin on Space

I am making a simple share of some awesome space content for a few reasons. First of all, tomorrow is Mother's Day, so I will do my annual re-posting and rumination in tribute to my mother and all mothers. Second, there will be no comic book Sunday post tomorrow, which is actually a good thing because I have been laboring on those and it will be nice to have a break. Thirdly, taking a break from a long stream of comic book images and Twitter messages means that maybe I work away at other original material that I have been  meaning to finish.

I saved the first thing here, the Hubble image sonification, because it "sounded" cool [heh] and I wanted to feature it on my blog, which is a way for me to purposefully try to remember something because even if I forget, some day in scanning a category, I will find it again and be all like "wow, that's cool." Like deja vu and serendipity together.

I added a bonus video and a recent post from David Brin about space, "Our Bold Future in Space."

Good stuff to think about now. Think about space as a virus ravages humanity.

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-has-translated-a-hubble-photo-into-music-and-it-s-absolutely-chilling

NASA Has Translated a Hubble Photo Into Music, And It's Absolutely Chilling

JACINTA BOWLER

3 MAY 2020

The Universe is a wondrous place, full of vast numbers of planets to explore, unsolved mysteries, and even 'superbubbles' blown by black holes.

But there's one thing that space really isn't: loud. Without Earth's air molecules to help you hear, out there in space you'd be listening to a whole lot of silence.

Luckily, that didn't stop NASA from figuring out a way to produce sound in the soundlessness of space back in 2019 - by 'sonifying' the above image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yep, move over music, podcasts, or audio-books - the new thing to listen to is Hubble images.

The image NASA used for this project was taken by the Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys and Wide-Field Camera 3 back in August 2018.

The guys working with Hubble call the image a 'galactic treasure chest' because of the number of galaxies splattered across it.

"Each visible speck of a galaxy is home to countless stars," NASA explained about the image.

"A few stars closer to home shine brightly in the foreground, while a massive galaxy cluster nestles at the very centre of the image; an immense collection of maybe thousands of galaxies, all held together by the relentless force of gravity."

But as beautiful as this image already is, it just reached a new level, once transformed into a stunningly eerie musical composition.

The team that created the sonified image explains that the different locations and elements of the image produce different sounds.

Stars and compact galaxies are represented by short and clear sounds, while the spiralling galaxies emit more complex, longer notes.

"Time flows left to right, and the frequency of sound changes from bottom to top, ranging from 30 to 1,000 hertz," NASA explained in comments accompanying the video.

"Objects near the bottom of the image produce lower notes, while those near the top produce higher ones."

And although it might sound a little eerie at first, the 'sounds' of this picture create a rather beautiful melody, especially near the middle, when the sound reaches a galaxy cluster called RXC J0142.9+4438.

"The higher density of galaxies near the centre of the image," the team explained, "results in a swell of mid-range tones halfway through the video."

So there you have it: an entirely new way to enjoy the Universe.

A version of this article was first published in March 2019.

BONUS SPACE VIDEO:

FROM CONTRARY BRIN:

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2020/04/our-bold-future-in-space.html

Saturday, April 18, 2020

Our bold future in space!

Looking past quarantine... and the War On All Fact People... let's pause amid the gloom and assume that we'll prevail! Where are we headed for our next bold adventure?

Well, for one thing, sample-return missions from Mars are in the works: this is how the ESA and NASA will work together to bring rocks back from Mars. And NASA has developed plans for a lunar base camp on the surface of the moon, looking toward a sustainable human presence. 

== NIAC on the Attack! ==

NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts program (NIAC) has announced their new Phase I, II and III fellowships for 2020, including some of the most intriguing possible endeavors or new technologies that might lead to new missions and adventures out there.

Among the cool new projects: 

-An ultra-low frequency 5 km radio telescope that would fit snugly into a crater on the far side of the moon. (This had a lot of press; it's a lunar use-case that actually makes sense.) 

-And using "extreme metamaterials" for solar sails. 

-Ways to biologically convert the abundant CO2 in the Martian atmosphere into liquid hydrocarbons suitable for rocket propulsion and other energy needs on Mars. 

-Pulsed plasma rockets for combined high Isp and thrust. 

-Antimatter deceleration of interstellar probes! 

-A way to rendezvous with and study InterStellar Objects (ISOs) like 'Oumuamua'. 

-Plus ways to synthesize pharmaceuticals needed by human explorers to other worlds.  

-Another NIAC grant got press play as a possible way to actually image distant, interstellar Earthlike worlds.

... And a dozen more new and vivid concepts!   

(Full disclosure, I serve on the NIAC external advisory council.)

== Space miscellany ==

In an important milestone, one commercial spacecraft was used to save and reactivate a more valuable one, by latching onto it and providing the maneuvering ability it had lost. This is just the beginning as we'll gain the ability to service and refuel - and dispose of - satellites and make better use of orbit.

 

Spacefarers: How Humans will settle the Moon, Mars and Beyond, by Christopher Wanjek, explores humanity's cooperative, bold future in space, with colonies established beyond our home planet - to reap benefits, both scientific and economic. 

This may illuminate the origins of life: ribose has been discovered in meteorites, wow. Even more amazing… some bits of stardust found on an Australian meteorite are presolar grains that apparently formed before our sun. A new analysis of the meteorite revealed particles that formed between five to seven billion years ago. That makes the meteorite and its stardust the oldest solid material ever discovered on Earth. Inferred from elements that were likely formed by incoming interstellar cosmic rays.  

New maps of water distribution on Mars… including vast regions where ice appears plentiful near the surface… will be of major use in planningfor future habitation.

Here's a great looking video that could be on Mars, but isn't. Vegetation? Who needs vegetation? Seriously cool.

You might enjoy this... A game called Terraforming Mars - played on an accurate map of the Tharsis region of the Martian surface, where corporations vie to tame the Red Planet. 

A visual treat: this gorgeous image from the space station of the trail of the Proton-Soyuz rocket bringing up a friend.

A Scottish start-up just successfully tested a 3D-printed engine for the orbital stage of its 72ft launch vehicle. It burns 'Ecosene' (made from plastic waste). They plan to launch from a Scottish spaceport. Pure dead brilliant.

Here’s a fascinating interview with Dennis Bushnell, Chief Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, regarding a range of potential breakthrough technologies to improve our access to space. (Some of them we’ve funded at NIAC.) 

== Strange gullies in Mars from sliding Dry Ice Blocks? ==

Wow. Mysterious features observed... and clever researchers not only come up with a great explanation, but then test it out on nearby sand dunes... Followed finally by speculation on a great new sport folks may play someday... on Mars.

What a time to live in. Astronomers took a closer look at how the Vela neutron star spins at about 43,000 rpm. (Yes, you read that right.) Only about 8 km across, it sometimes “glitches” for a brief slowdown, then speeds back up again. A model now explains this as subtle interplay between a “mantle” of superfluid neutrons and an outer crust of a different superfluid state.

And how would Earth look as an exoplanet? … though I’d seen preliminary versions. It will be some time before we can image planets in other systems. (A couple of tricky methods are being funded by NIAC - it’s fun getting first looks!) Till then, an intermediate will come when we can get single pixel images with some spectral resolution. Yeah, “images” consisting of one blurry dot. But analyzing over many bands and over time, you’ll get data like rotation period, possibly mass, atmospheric constituents and – yes – a very good stab at both cloud data and the rough shape of oceans and continents!

A fascinating JPL experimental rover looks and acts like a pool cleaning robot, patrolling the underside of sea ice with two big wheels, observing the abundant life there and testing possible technologies for a Europa mission.

TESS mission has found its first Earth-sized, potentially habitable planet, orbiting at the Goldilocks range from a smaller-reddish star just 100 light years from us.  Size and orbit confirmed by the soon to be retired, venerable Spitzer Telescope. It’s tidal locked in a 37 day orbit and reddish dwarves dent to flare a lot, but this one appears to be relatively calm. All told, when we get scopes that can study atmospheric traits, this might be the one for answering many questions about a tidal-locked world. Still you can be sure all the METI kooks will be aiming yoohoo cries and adverts at this one.

Earth orbit is filled with trash – abandoned satellites, upper stages etc. – endangering humanity’s shared resource. In Existence, I posited using tethers, ropelike systems to snag and dispose of some objects. Even better would be to equip all new satellites with tether-based de-orbit systems, like the one just tested (by Tethers Unlimited). ‘Prox-1, a 71-kilogram cubesat that launched into a low Earth orbit in June on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, successfully deployed a 70-meter length of conductive tape in September that is creating enough drag to deorbit the satellite much sooner than simply abandoning the satellite.’

The Very Large Array in New Mexico – featured in the movie CONTACT – is doing an all sky radio survey that will allow the Breakthrough SETI program to tap into the data stream with a supercomputer, looking for potentially sapient patterns. “The VLA is being used for an all-sky survey and we kind of go along for the ride,” said Andrew Siemion, director of the Berkeley Seti centre. “It allows us to in parallel conduct a Seti survey.

== Stay Safe ==

Here's hoping all's well for you and yours and that you are healthy and doing great.

Do thrive and persevere... you and all you love.

But also fight for a civilization that rises above the blandishing allure of that old curse - feudalism - and instead decides that we can do better by cooperating and competing fairly, in the light. And then riding light to the stars.

Posted by David Brin at 12:22 PM  

Labels: mars coloniy, nasa, space exploration

95 comments:

scidata said...

SETI@home suspended distribution of work units at the end of March. Turns out that that's only because they have bigger things brewing:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/astrophysics/search-extraterrestrial-intelligence-major-upgrade

SpaceX has stacked SN4, now ready for testing. SN5 nearing completion. Fail fast, iterate, move on. Stunning. And next month is Crew Dragon - for real.

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2005.09 - 10:10

- Days ago = 1771 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.