PLANET 9 AND GRAVITY WAVES

       Astronomy always crops up in the general news media, and lately the buzz has been about “Planet 9” and “gravity waves.”

       The news crawl on the bottom of your TV news says something like: “Astronomers suspect “Planet 9” in Kuiper Belt beyond Pluto” and “Astronomers’ discovery of Gravity Waves Creates New Branch of Physics.”

       Which can be confusing, particular to dwarf planet and former ninth planet Pluto.  Not to mention any beach surfers out there wondering if they might “catch” a gravity wave.

       Well after decades of “surfing” the cosmos, astronomers finally did after decades of trying—they “caught” some gravity waves rippling along space, intercepting Earth and altering space and time.

       (…and maybe not far behind is Marvel Comic’s Silver Surfer—searching for planets that might energize his captor, Galactus. Huh? Space nerds understand).

       Even though it was just a movement of one-ten-thousandths the width of the smallest atom, the detection of gravity waves on Sept. 14, 2015 has shaken the foundation of physics.

       Released in a scientific journal and a press conference in February 2016, the direct evidence of gravity waves has a profound effect on the future of astrophysics and our comprehension of the Universe.  

       In a nutshell, Albert Einstein predicted 100 years ago that gravity bends light (proven in 1909) and can also warp space and time. Along with that is all the exotic concepts of time travel, warped space and even multiple Universes!

       There a plenty of visuals on the Internet to help you wrap your head around the bending of time and space. Think of this one:  a trampoline with a bowling ball in the middle.  The trampoline is outer space and the bowling ball is a huge object with lots of gravity, like a Black Hole. The stretching of the trampoline towards the bowling ball is like gravity bending space.  And if something is orbiting the Black Hole, it can create waves in that gravity force. 

       And those gravity waves can alter the space around it and the time it takes light and other cosmic matter to travel. The bottom line: time travel, as predicted in science fiction, is possible!

       Just how astronomers discovered this is quite complex and the brainy stuff of astrophysics.  But here goes how the discovery happened:

       A team of astronomers have been using two identical, special scientific instruments to detect minute changed in Earth’s gravity caused by waves of altered space/time.  Looking like a “Y” shaped pipe a half-mile long above the ground in Richland, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana, a precise laser records any disruption. The scientific tools are formally called the Laster Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO).

LIGO in Livingston, Washington

What happened is this: Watching the rare occurrence of two super Black Holes actually colliding, one 30 time the size of our Sun and the other 40 times more massive, the astronomers detected the warping of space and time as gravity waves from the event thousands of Light Years away flowed past Earth.

The actual evidence is in the form of simple graphs like an electrocardiogram of outer space, and astronomers turned that into an audio track.  The sound bite rises to a middle C before abruptly stopping, the first direct evidence of ripples in the fabric of space-time that Einstein predicted a century ago.

The discovery is ground breaking because this reveals a new factor of the Universe that is not part of the electromagnetic spectrum—of which visible light is just a small part.  You have light, radio, infrared, gamma and x-rays in that spectrum, but gravity waves are something different. Like ripples in the water, the very fabric of outer space has waves created by the mass, or weight of objects, tugging on it. Yes, it’s a hard concept to grasp, but very real.

       What will happen next, after a possible trip to Sweden for a Nobel Prize in physics? For sure, more scientific funding will become available to build bigger and better detectors of gravity waves.

        And around the world, universities of nerdy scientists will play with their experiments, build some now unknown contraptions, and possibly, quite possibly, 50 years from now create the “time machine” first written about by HG Wells in 1895. 

While the excitement of gravity waves has people thinking about time travel and Einstein’s weird Universe, another recent astronomy item in the news has two astronomers saying they have evidence for a 9^th planet in the far reaches of our Solar System. 

       Ironically, one of the astronomers, Mike Brown, is the culprit behind the demotion of Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.  Brown discovered an object, now called Eris, that is the same size as Pluto (2,370 miles) but farther away from the Sun. Than another half-dozen objects about the same size were found in this region called the Kuiper Belt. The dilemma was adding more planets or clumping these objects in their own classification.  Brown wrote about it in his book “How I Killed Pluto.”

       Now Brown and his science partner Konstantin Batygin are convincing colleagues they have found a huge planet at the edge of the Kuiper Belt, maybe tens of billions of miles from the Sun.

Astronomers Mike Brown and Konstantin Batygin

The astronomers have been studying a cluster of six objects each around 1,000 miles wide and orbiting deep in the Kuiper Belt. Their behavior has led them to a new “Planet 9.” studied the clustering of six objects way beyond Pluto and how they have been tugged about in a similar direction.  That direction, they say, is a large, Neptune-sized planet that is gravitationally effecting the cluster of much smaller bodies.

       The “Planet 9” may be no closer to the Sun than 18 billion miles and might be in an extreme elliptical orbit that takes it 65 billion miles from our star. That would mean one orbit every 10,000 years or so.   Pluto is in an elliptical orbit that takes it from 2 to 4 billion miles from the Sun.  It take 243 years to orbit the Sun.   

  
       That is the key to the prediction that Planet 9 exists, that these six dwarf planets are being tugged in the same direction out of the normal orbital plane where the rest of the planets dwell.  The eight planets and asteroids orbit the Sun in a flat, saucer-shaped plane that varies only up to 3 degrees from horizontal.  But Pluto and the other Dwarf Planets are orbiting at extreme angles to the planetary plane, just like comets that can come from any direction around the Solar System.

       The inference of unseen objects has plenty of precedence as that’s how Neptune was discovered.  After the discovery of Uranus through the eyes of astronomy giant William Herschel in 1781, it was realized something was pulling at it.  The math was done by two independent researchers and Neptune was discovered in 1846 at a Berlin Observatory.

       Pluto was also found in 1930 when searching for gravitational tugs on Neptune, though the gravity calculations were for something larger. 

       How could an 80,000-mile-wide object, 10-times the size of Earth, be so so far away from the Sun? 

       Astronomers have worked supercomputers overtime to determine that the early Solar System was filled with hundreds of large objects crashing into each other, some getting larger, some getting flung deeper into space.  One giant impact severed the Moon from the Earth in that first 500 million years of our 5-billion-year lifetime of the Solar System.

       Assuming the math is correct and there is giant Planet 9 out there, how will we find it? The “geek squad” has several earth-based telescopes looking for it, and the prediction is within 5 years Planet 9 will be found.

       Give time some time and we may just have a new member of our Solar System. And that will create a wave of excitement for all of us.   

       

Moon Man Mitchell and Soviet Moonship

       The anniversary of an Apollo lunar landing or death of a rare moon walker gets the attention of everyone looking at the Moon.

       And it gets the Space Age fanatics thinking about the race to the Moon in the 1960s.

       It was America vs the Soviet Union; Democracy vs Communism; Good vs Evil; open access vs censored secrecy; and triumph vs tragedy.

Apollo 14 Moonship "Antares"  Note right pad dug in edge of crater...close call!

       And one of the astronauts taking steps on the Moon and making a triumph out of the near-tragedy of Apollo 13 was Edgar Mitchel, who died at age 85 on Feb. 3, 2016, which was the 45^th anniversary of him orbiting the Moon with two other astronauts aboard Apollo 14.

       While I was enjoying Internet posts about the life of Mitchell and the Apollo 14 mission to the Moon, I also participated in the space nerds’ cyber banter about the one-man Soviet moonship called “LK” for Lunar Ship. It’s clear that America was ahead during most of the space race, but just barely. And once censored details about the Soviet space program are being revealed each year.  

       Edgar Mitchell walked on the Moon Feb. 5, 1971 with his commander and Mercury space hero Alan Shepard, the fifth and sixth humans to set foot on an alien world.  The astronauts were outside for two, four-hour moonwalks during their 37 hours on the surface. They brought back 95 pounds of precious lunar rocks.

       The Apollo 14 landing will be remembered for Shepard swatting two Titleist golf balls with a make-shift 6-iron during the last moonwalk.  This was after the pair became exhausted in the fluffy moon dust. They actually turned away with just a few yards from the edge of a large crater they wanted to look inside, the moonscape disorientating them slightly. 

The Apollo 14 moonwalkers taught us that without familiar objects like trees and telephone poles that we have on Earth, it was extremely hard to judge distances on the Moon.  Shepard and Mitchell walked in the deepest lunar soil experienced among the six landers, often over the tops of their boots.   They had a wheeled utility cart with all their tools, like a lunar rickshaw, which was hard to drag along the deep, moon dirt.

The Apollo 14 mission was the last of the three test missions that basically verified all the complex systems and navigational requirements.  The next three, Apollos 15, 16 and 17, would have three-day stays with a lunar rover to drive them around complex geology.

Edgar Mitchell came back from the Moon experience a changed man.  He said he felt the presence of a universal entity, not unlike, but different from the Biblical God of Christianity.  He created the Institute of Noetic Sciences to investigate the paranormal and psychic phenomenon.  A staunch believer that UFOs are evidence of extraterrestrials, he often created controversy that NASA chose to ignore. 

Mitchell’s impression of his Apollo 14 experience and his unworldly beliefs are put down in his book, “The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut's Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds” (1996).

Had the Soviets landed on the Moon first, their mission would have been a “grab-and-go” to claim the historic first.  The Soviet moon plans has no scientific experiments, and it has been guessed that the lucky cosmonaut would dash

Soviet Moonship "LK"  

outside for a mere 20-30 minutes with a camera, shovel and suitcase.  After hurriedly gathering rocks and tossing the suitcase of lunar booty into the LK moonship, the cosmonaut would get ready for blast off and rendezvous with a second cosmonaut orbiting in a Soyuz-style ship called Zond.

This “land and go” scenario would have to take place during a two-hour Zond orbit. The LK moonship could probably only operate for 6-8 hours on the Moon surface because of its small batteries for power.  So the Zond cosmonaut would be in position for rendezvous for two, maybe three lunar orbits.

       Though America had won the Moon Race in July 1969 with Apollo 11, the Soviets continued to test their LK moonship in Earth orbit without cosmonauts.  Disguised as “Cosmos” series flights, the usual cover for Soviet secrecy, it is known that Cosmos 379 and 382 were LKs flown in November and December 1970, and Cosmos 398 and 434 were LKs flown in February and August 1971.  Space insiders followed the flights with tracking information, confirming that the descent and lunar ascent systems seemed to work well.  Yet, the Soviets never sent a man on their LK moonship.

       The main reason America beat the Soviets to the Moon was the Russians failure to build a successful rocket to launch the LK moonship.  America’s Saturn V rocket was a modern day marvel even today, and it’s proven, three-stage system proved the difference in the Moon Race. The Soviet’s moon rocket, called N-1, exploded in catastrophic fashion three times in 1968 and 1969, dooming the dreams of a cosmonaut on the Moon before an American.

       The LK moonship was also questioned if it could pull off the landing and launch from the Moon. The LK was one-third the size of NASA’s Apollo.  Weight distribution, including the cosmonaut, would have been critical to maneuvers.  And the claustrophobic interior with death a simple mistake away would have taken a very brave cosmonaut to fly the mission.  Indeed, several cosmonauts have openly doubted it would work, calling their Moon landing plans a suicide mission. 

       Would the world be different if the Russians won the Moon Race?  For a while. The secrecy and ensuing propaganda would have the world thinking Communism was superior to Democracy. 

But NASA would have kept on schedule with its plans and continued the exploration of the Moon.  America’s ambitious scientific missions would have put any Soviet moon science to shame. The Russians weren’t going for the science, just the fame of being first to the Moon.  

Nearly 50 years later, only Americans have been on the surface of the Moon. The Chinese say they’re going back to the Moon in the next 10 years, while NASA looks to a Mars mission with the Moon as a possibility in 15-20 years. And Russia says they also want to go the Moon. 

       One thing is for certain, humans will one day again walk on the Moon as our nature is to explore, and outer space is the ultimate adventure. 

FIVE PLANETS DAZZLE MORNING SKY

       The media is calling it the “Great Naked Eye Planet Show,” and it is coming to your predawn sky everywhere.

       Until around Feb. 20 when Mercury moves too close to the Sun, everyone can also see the five “classic” planets strung like celestial pearls across the eastern sky.

       It might be while walking the dog before the rising Sun or climbing in your vehicle, but if you look up to the early morning twilight you will see Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn with a few bright stars tossed in between.

       Stretching from the horizon to directly overhead, this celestial necklace is an easy target for any telescope, as well as just a breathtaking sight to inspire one to appreciate planet Earth.

       In the ancient world, such a gathering of the wandering “stars” would have created a public sensation of astrological predictions and everybody would be talking about the scintillating morning scene.

       Ancient stargazer/astrologers would be working overtime trying to figure out what the Gods were trying to tell Earth.  And there would be a lot of interpretation as in all the sky just the Sun, Moon and these five bright “stars” move about in predicted patterns.

       In our 21^st Century world, horoscopes are finally just entertainment and a small percentage of us will even take the time to look up in the pre-twilight morning and see this celestial line up.  And that’s a shame, because those of us who look up can watch the Solar System in action.

       As the planets move and Earth journeys around the Sun, the whole passion play of planets will get jumbled up. Before you know it, one May evening after sunset you’ll look up and there will be Jupiter shining down with Mars nearby.  But for the Winter of 2016, they belong to the after-midnight scene.

       Following the fascinating rhythm of the stars with just your eyes—called “naked eye” stargazing—is a perfectly good way to enjoy astronomy. And it connects you with our ancestors from civilizations past, who were much more intimate with the stars than modern man.

       The morning planetary lineup will be easy to see before climbing in your mechanical chariot for the drive to work.   If before 6:20 am, you won’t see illusive Mercury hugging the eastern horizon.  But rising up from the horizon will be brilliant Venus, much dimmer red Mars, yellowish Saturn and definitely yellow Jupiter.

       Let’s look at the beautiful morning display of the five classic planets of antiquity and the constellation they dwell in this Winter 2016:

       At 6 am, Jupiter is directly overhead, shining brightly as a golden point of light. That gold light has always been associated with royalty and gold treasure.  Rising in the east at 9 pm, Jupiter is in the hindquarters of Leo the Lion, moving into Virgo the Virgin.           

       Looking at Jupiter, to the right is Regulus, the brightest star of Leo, and to the left is bright, white Spica in sprawling Virgo the Virgin. And left of Spica is Mars.

       The red hue of Mars has been associated through all antiquity with blood. Thus the great Roman warrior Mars became the fourth planet.  And it’ll be rising around 2 am in Libra the Scales, and only inanimate object in the Zodiac.

       Mars will be brightening up as it gets closer to Earth this Spring.  It is always fascinating to look at the Red Planet and think about the two rovers and four orbiters that are currently exploring the world most like Earth.

       To the left of Mars and rising around 4 am in the claws of Scorpius is Saturn.  Looking a creamy yellow, it was associated with the staple food corn, and Saturn is the Roman god of agriculture. 

       Rising in the east around 6 am is the brightest planet, Venus.  And 20 minutes later will be much fainter Mercury.  So, you have to look quick: twilight starts around 6:40 am.  And your last look of Mercury will be around 7 am just before sunrise.

       Venus is always the brightest planet, the brilliant white being associated with the purity of women and goddesses like the Roman goddess of love. Today we know that the brightness is caused by a global cloud system that reflects sunlight like a mirror.

       The ancient stargazers called Venus the Morning Star or Evening Star, depending when seen.  It was even thought to be two different objects.  But today we know Venus’ 224-day orbit puts it about 100 days in the morning and 100 days in the evening skies.

       Mercury is the illusive one for sure, as the first planet never gets far away from the Sun and takes just 88 days for its solar year.  So in Earth’s 365-day solar journey, we see Mercury bobbing back and forth from morning to evening twice in a year.

       Mercury will be the only bright star near the eastern horizon, rising ahead of the Sun at around 6:20 am, and 10 minutes later can be easily seen.  Like everything else in the sky moving westward as the Earth spins eastward to greet the Sun, the advancing twilight puts out the stars one-by-one.

       Mercury will disappear and then Mars and Saturn.  But the bright Venus and Jupiter will linger longer in the twilight—a challenge to see how long you see them against the blue sky. Sunshine takes over, and the night is officially day.

       The morning offers quite a unique and beautiful sight of our five naked eye planets, one that is worth getting up early to see.  But don’t wait as the show will be over before the March winds blow.