AstroNews 3/2000

TABLE OF CONTENTS
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SPRING EQUINOX  |  WHAT DO WE DO WITH MIR?    |   SETI DISTANT SUNS   |   FULL MOON HIKES   |   GOTTA QUESTION...   |   DUST DEVILS ON MARS   |   TIME TRAVEL MAY BE REAL

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UP THIS MONTH - HAPPY SPRING EQUINOX!
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Also referred to as VERNAL EQUINOX, this is the day when day and night are EQUALLY long. It also marks the beginning of the Spring Season in the northern hemisphere. Time to go plant something! Another neat thing about Equinox is that the sun rises EXACTLY in the east and sets exactly in the west on that day!

Read all about Spring Equinox here:

http://www.treasure-troves.com/astro/VernalEquinox.html
http://altreligion.about.com/culture/altreligion

Spring Equinox arrived in the early morning of March 20 this year. The northern hemisphere can now enjoy days that are longer than nights for the next 6 months (until autumnal equinox). Get out those garden chairs...

What are the PLANETS up to? Look up at dusk to see Saturn and Mars each about the same distance from bright Jupiter low in the west. See if you can track them for a few weeks or months.

Also notice the CONSTELLATION of ORION the hunter tilting down in the southwest. Can you spot Orion's Belt (the three stars in the middle)? When Orion rises during the cold evenings around the start of winter, the belt is vertical. When Orion makes his springtime exit, the belt is horizontal. Another way to tell that SPRING IS HERE (unless you live in the Southern Hemisphere)!
 

WHAT DO WE DO WITH MIR?
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The cash-strapped Russian government said it would abandon Mir - their space station unless private investors came up with funds. They kept Mir in orbit after the Amsterdam-based MirCorp agreed to pay $10-20 million to lease commercial rights on the station. But how to resuscitate the dormant Mir space station? A series of unorthodox proposals include:

TAKE I: MOONRAKER TOURISM
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The ultimate tourist target -- the Russian space station Mir. All decked out as a luxury resort orbiting the earth 125 miles high.

James Bond fantasy? No, investors signed a $20 million deal to rent Mir and turn the station into an out-of-this-world holiday spot and commercial laboratory.

Ticket price? Tourists will be asked to fork out $20 million a head to visit Mir.
 

TAKE II. CELLULOID HEROES
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Russian actor Vladimir Steklov was supposed to blast off to the Mir next month to play a renegade cosmonaut who won't leave the space station, but Russian won't let him leave Earth.

But the Russian Aerospace Agency said Steklov will not go to Mir as planned because of the failure to meet the terms of the contract.

Cosmonauts Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander Kaleri are tentatively set to blast off to Mir on April 4, he said. The station has been unmanned since August.

The 2 cosmonauts are expected to spend 45 days on board Mir. They will take a movie camera with them and possibly shoot some footage for the movie.

The movie, tentatively called "The Last Journey," was to have told the story of a renegade cosmonaut who refuses to leave Mir, insisting he'll orbit the Earth for the rest of his days. Ground controllers decide to send up a woman to lure him back.
 

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SETI@home is way cool!
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The Special "Distant Suns" Version
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Distant Suns is one of the premier desktop astronomy packages of all time. A special version of Distant Suns where you can process SETI data AND see exactly what part of the sky your data
belongs to is now available!

To get your free copy of Distant Suns/The SETI version go to:
http://www.distantsuns.com/index_seti_at_home.html
 

GLOBALCOM
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ET Phone home! Try the long distance services offered by us at
GlobalCom. Cheap calls (especially for calling abroad!), calling cards,
callback service, and lots more telecommunication tidbits are at:
http://www.kahl.net/global
 

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ASTROTIP
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FULL MOON HIKES
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As luck would have it we just spent a few nights camping in the desert under a beautiful full moon. It was magical, the moon was so bright you could easily walk around without a flashlight.

Mark the days of full moon on your calendar. If the sky is clear and it's not too cold then make an extra effort to go out on those nights. Go as far away from city lights as possible. You'll have some very special evenings to go hiking. Bring a flashlight just in case, but most likely you won't even need it! Feel free to howl at the moon if you get the urge.
 

GOTTA QUESTION?
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Next time YOU have an astronomical QUESTION, try these sites for an ANSWER:

AQuA (Astronomy Question & Answer)
http://www.astro.virginia.edu/AQuA

Eric Weisstein's Treasure Trove of Astronomy
http://www.treasure-troves.com/astro
 

HOME IMPROVEMENT - AMAZON STYLE
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Amazon.com is now in the HOME IMPROVEMENT business. No more endless mazes and lines at Home Depot. Go online and get your tools (how about a handy leatherman as a gift?) and home renovation products (time to prepare your lawn & garden for summer?)!
PLEASE SUPPORT GLOBENEWS by only using this link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/kahlconsultants
 

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DISTANT DISCOVERIES
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DUST DEVILS ON MARS
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Dust devils, which look like small tornadoes, occur on both Earth and Mars. They're caused by the spinning motion of rising air as it is heated. The swirling column picks up dust as it moves across the landscape.

A new photo taken by Mars Global Surveyor represents the first time a swirling dust devil has been caught in the act of altering the surface of Mars.

See the Dust Devil! Read the article:
http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/03/14/mars.dust.devil.02
 

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FAR OUT FACT
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TIME TRAVEL MAY BE REAL
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Michael Crichton's latest book "Timeline" transports 20th-century academics back to 14th century France. It may not be as far-fetched as you might think.

Until the 80s physicists shied away from time travel as a subject of serious study, dismissing it as irrelevant and sensational. But recently, their understanding of the universe has progressed enough for them to actually consider the possibility.

The classical objection to time travel involves a conundrum sometimes referred to as the "grandfather paradox"; people traveling back in time could prevent their grandparents from meeting, and thus prevent themselves from ever being born.

The solution to that paradox is hard to believe. But it is supported by quantum theory, one of the two pillars of modern physics.

The laws of quantum mechanics always arrange for you to go back in time to a different universe. A DIFFERENT universe? More and more theorists are willing to accept the idea of multiple universes, each one reflecting a possible outcome of the grand experiment that is existence.

So if you traveled back in time and killed your grandfather, you would actually be going to a different universe. You could appear there, do the deed, and never be born - in that universe. In this universe, meanwhile, nothing would change. You would still be born, grow up and then you'd disappear one day into the mists of time, never to return. So time travel and travel to other universes are essentially the same thing.

How would you travel between universes?

Choice 1: Wormholes! Places where space and time are so twisted that a tunnel develops between two distant locations. A person could step into a wormhole and step out billions of light-years away, in another part of the universe. A wormhole is a subway, a shortcut in space and time.

Nobody has ever seen a wormhole, much less traveled through one. But there are theoretical reasons to believe that wormholes can exist near black holes and other super-heavy celestial objects.

Choice 2: Black Holes! Plunging into a stationary black hole would be suicide, because by definition nothing ever escapes from one. But a ROTATING black hole is shaped like a ring, so there is the possibility of surviving a trip through it the way a circus lion leaps through a flaming hoop.

The middle of that cosmic hula hoop is essentially a wormhole leading to a distant location in space, time or both.

Unfortunately for aspiring time travelers, the nearest black hole is at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, 26,000 light-years distant from Earth.
 

LAST PLUG
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http://setiathome.berkeley.edu

ET Phone home! Try the long distance services offered by us at GlobalCom. Cheap calls (especially for calling abroad!), calling cards, callback service, and lots more telecommunication tidbits are at:
http://www.kahl.net/global

OK, OK, you want to get to the good stuff right away! Good, then check out the some cool NEBULAS and the "Stars of Wonder" video:
http://www.msnbc.com/modules/slideshow/1999_1022_deathstar_/slideshow.asp

Now doesn't that make you want to go on your own rock-collecting trip in Southern California’s MOJAVE DESERT? Yeah! It could happen to you too - while walking around you spot a couple of dark basaltic rocks, scoop them up, take them home, put them in a box.

So how did astronomers tell such meteorites are of Martian origin? Two reasons. First, gases trapped in the rock match that of the Martian atmosphere. Second, the rock’s oxygen isotopic ratios are unlike other meteorites or any Earth rock, but they match the ratios found on Mars. The rocks were likely ejected from Mars during a large impact event, making their way to Earth in less than a million years.
 

NASA DREAMS ON
Two failed robotic expeditions to Mars in a row. NASA's biggest humiliation since... well, probably since Challenger blew up. Bruised but unbroken, NASA is planning BOLDER TRIPS, like drilling on Mars and submarine voyages in an extraterrestrial ocean.

Major cost-cutting and miniaturization was achieved for the failed Pathfinder missions - Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander. Both build by LOCKHEED under contract to NASA. With dramatically cheaper landing rockets. And a camera only 2% the mass of its predecessor. Both should find application in future space journeys. NASA turned to outside contractors and industries for LOW-COST COMPONENTS, some commercially available.

First the Climate Orbiter got lost in orbit because a technician failed to convert between English and metric units -- DUH! Then the Polar Lander disappeared in Mars orbit in early December. This loss is still unexplained. NASA is still looking for that darn robot. The cost of the recent Mars missions combined is about $300 million, compared to about $3.5 billion (in 1999 dollars) for the entire 1970s Viking mission.

Now NASA visionaries are busy pondering the possibility of even bolder future expeditions, including:

(1) A mission to recover rock samples from deep within Mars. This could shed light on the ORIGIN and EVOLUTION of Mars. Deep samples might also contain groundwater and even microbes. But this is still in the early planning stages. NASA is getting help from some oil companies on this project. Hey, that reminds me of recent movie ARMAGEDDON, where oil rig crews fly a shuttle to an asteroid to drill it!

(2) A robot that would orbit EUROPA, a moon of Jupiter. To space scientists, Europa is a particularly exciting place because it might have a DEEP, WATERY OCEAN. If so, that ocean might contain life, some speculate. Scheduled for launch in 2003 the probe would orbit Europa and try to determine once and for all whether it is, indeed, enveloped by an ocean. If so, another mission might drop a robotic "submarine" into the ocean to explore it. Jules Verne meets Buck Rogers!
 

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FAR OUT FACT
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FACT: a day on Venus can last over 200 earth days.

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Bill Watterson)

DRESS WARM WHEN YOU STARWATCH!
 

LAST PLUG
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