Category Archives: Science and Technology

SETI and the parallel challenges of dolphin communication

April 17, 2013 TopSpacer

Denise Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project gives a SETI Institute lecture in which she discusses dolphin intelligence (and animal intelligence in general) and their communications abilities and what might be learned from them with respect to communicating with extraterrestrial intelligences:

The search for signals out of noise is a problem not only with radio signals from the sky but in the study of animal communication on Earth. Like SETI radio signal searches, dolphin sound analysis includes the detection, recognition, analysis, and interpretation of signals. Dolphins use three main types of acoustic signals and many of these sounds have been a challenge to measure and categorize due to their graded and overlapping nature. The goal of this talk is to provide perspective from dolphin communication studies and lessons learned about signal detection and recognition.

And here is a video of a Google Hangout in which Herzing and Laurance Doyle and Gerry Harp of the SETI Institute continue the discussion about dolphins and ETI:

Science and Technology, Solar Science

NASA ScienceCasts: “A whiff of dark matter on the ISS”

April 12, 2013 TopSpacer

The latest NASA ScienceCasts video reports on “A Whiff of Dark Matter on the ISS”:

Science and Technology, Space Science, Space Systems

ISS communications upgrade

April 8, 2013 TopSpacer

The International Space Station is getting a big boost in communications bandwidth, which will greatly benefit the rapidly growing scientific work going on there: ISS gets communications overhaul to boost scientific output – NASASpaceFlight.com.

NanoRacks, for example, is providing plug’n’play racks to provide low cost experiment power and communications systems for a wide range of scientific investigations from biology to physics. Such experiments can benefit from real or near-real time imaging, measurement data and control access.

There are earth observation systems going to the station such as ISS-RapidScat, which will monitor “monitored ocean winds to provide essential measurements used in weather predictions, including hurricane monitoring”.

As mentioned in comments here, NASA just approved funding for the Neutron star Interior Composition ExploreR (NICER), which will go to the ISS in 2017 to study neutron stars with a X-ray timing and spectroscopy instrument.

Such systems need lots of bandwidth to be productive and it appears the station is moving to keep up with bandwidth demands.

Activism, Science and Technology

Gerard’t Hooft, Mars One, and space settlement

April 6, 2013 TopSpacer

Though not as well known to the general public, at least in the US, as someone like Stephen Hawking or Steven Weinberg, the Dutch physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft is a member of the uppermost echelon of theoreticians of the past few decades. I knew that he had endorsed the Mars One plan for a colony on the Red Planet but I had no idea he has long been an enthusiastic proponent of space settlement: Nobel physicist: Give people a one-way ticket to Mars – opinion/New Scientist.

Regarding the Mars One, he says

The concept fits in with my own ideas about human exploration of space, which I described in my book, Playing with Planets. In fact, the co-founder and general director of Mars One, Bas Lansdorp, once attended one of my lectures. When he asked me to become an ambassador for Mars One, my first reaction was that it will take much longer and cost much more than they currently envision. However, after learning more about the research they had carried out I became convinced that human flights to Mars could become a reality within 10 years. So in the end, I said yes.

Hawking is well known for his support for human spaceflight. Weinberg, on the other hand, has written more than one breathless polemic against HSF and especially against any government funding for it instead of particle accelerators.

I’m not one to appeal to authority regarding the future of spaceflight. These diametrical views by some smart individuals on the question of humanity’s future expansion into space illustrate why this is an issue of personal judgement and values, not something that can be settled purely by reasoned argument. There is no way to prove a priori that expansion into space is more or less important to humanity than other priorities and pursuits such as answering fundamental scientific questions.

As costs and other barriers to space expansion fall, those who want to go will go and those who want to stay behind will do just that. If human settlements thrive and develop robust new cultures, then they will have been a great success. If settlements fail and everyone comes back home, then they will have been a great failure. As every theoretician will tell you, it is real life experiment that ultimately answers important questions.

Rockets, Science and Technology

Fusion Driven Rocket – NIAC funded project at Univ. of Washington

April 5, 2013 TopSpacer

John. Slough of the Plasma Dynamics Lab at the University of Washington has been developing Pulsed High Density Fusion systems for many years. He has also been working on adapting the technique for space propulsion and has won a couple of grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The Fusion Driven Rocket: Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy – NASA

The Fusion Driven rocket (FDR) represents a revolutionary approach to fusion propulsion where the power source releases its energy directly into the propellant, not requiring conversion to electricity. It employs a solid lithium propellant that requires no significant tankage mass. The propellant is rapidly heated and accelerated to high exhaust velocity (> 30 km/s), while having no significant physical interaction with the spacecraft thereby avoiding damage to the rocket and limiting both the thermal heat load and radiator mass. In addition, it is believed that the FDR can be realized with little extrapolation from currently existing technology, at high specific power (~ 1 kW/kg), at a reasonable mass scale (<100 mt), and therefore cost.

If realized, it would not only enable manned interplanetary space travel, it would allow it to become common place. The key to achieving all this stems from research at MSNW on the magnetically driven implosion of metal foils onto a magnetized plasma target to obtain fusion conditions. A logical extension of this work leads to a method that utilizes these metal shells (or liners) to not only achieve fusion conditions, but to serve as the propellant as well. Several low-mass, magnetically-driven metal liners are inductively driven to converge radially and axially and form a thick blanket surrounding the target plasmoid and compress the plasmoid to fusion conditions.

Virtually all of the radiant, neutron and particle energy from the plasma is absorbed by the encapsulating, metal blanket thereby isolating the spacecraft from the fusion process and eliminating the need for large radiator mass. This energy, in addition to the intense Ohmic heating at peak magnetic field compression, is adequate to vaporize and ionize the metal blanket. The expansion of this hot, ionized metal propellant through a magnetically insulated nozzle produces high thrust at the optimal Isp. The energy from the fusion process, is thus utilized at very high efficiency.

His team has made progress on individual components of the system and this summer they will test the entire system:

Here is a slide from the presentation: Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy: The Fusion Driven Rocket, John Slough et al, NIAC Spring 2012 Symposium – Mar.2012 (pdf)