Space and Problems Remember that object which came into our solar system from another galaxy? It was what looked like an elongated rock and sped past us at high speed. At the time some thought the object might be an alien spaceship, not only because of its speed, but also because of its shape. It sped past us and went past the sun and left. This seemed to be the end of the speculation, and one of the reasons for that was the lack of a signal coming from the object. Well this wasn’t the end of the story, because two Harvard astronomers who have examined the data have come to a possible conclusion about the object. When they checked the data, they noticed the object was traveling faster than it should and when it went past the sun it should have slowed down, but instead it sped up. This led them to think something else was afoot. They noticed the object acted the same way a solar sail would act. They also studied spectra of the object and came to the conclusion the object could have been far lighter than suspected. This led them to think the object could have indeed been a solar sail. As for not having a signal, they believe it could have been disposed of and was making its way through space randomly on its own. Scientists had named the object Oumuamua. Having said all this about the possibility of the object being a solar sail, which could be used to power a spaceship by allowing the solar wind from stars to push against it much as a sail on earth powers a ship as it is pushed by the wind, it did look like a rock. The scientists think this outer covering could just be very thin metal. There is just so much we don’t know concerning space. One of the very basic things is how will space travel affect our bodies and what do we have to do to protect ourselves when traveling through space? We had assumed changes to our bodies will be bad, but I haven’t heard anyone talking about the chance a change might be a good thing. I am not saying changes to us would be good things, but we just don’t know if changes are made to us if any would be good. One of the reasons I wonder about this is because of the pull of gravity. If we didn’t have gravity constantly pulling us down might some parts of our bodies work a lot easier and maybe last longer such as our hearts? Of course, this is all predicated on the fact once off world we would stay in a non-gravity environment. Currently astronauts who do long stays at the International Space Station which has no gravity, come back to earth and have a hard time moving around again. There are other changes we know about, but they have to be assessed. One of the changes is a change to the brain. I am not sure why this happens, but I do know the fluid in the brain is also subject to non-gravity when there are astronauts staying on the space station. Scientists are saying this is not good for our brains, because the fluid from our brains and spinal cord pool around and squish our brains, causing damage. Some of this reversed when astronauts returned to earth, but not everything went back to normal and it was suspected pressure inside the skulls of those in zero gravity increased pushing water into their brain cells. The water then evacuated on return to earth shrinking the brains. Observers are now claiming Google Earth is hiding the fact there is a 138-mile-long structure on the moon. This is not the first time Google has been accused of hiding things in Google Earth. The area which is being questioned looks normal at first glance, but something looked strange to one person and he decided to use editing software on the area in question and now he claims he discovered some bizarre things below what were supposed to be shadows. He enhanced the photo with the shadows on it and was able to bring up what was under the shadows and what he discovered looked like buildings, a lot of buildings. Some view the moon as a place which has a lot of ruins on it and much has been said about this. Because of this it is hard to tell if we see buildings on the moon whether they are ruins or bases. It does seem like something is there. One of the companies developing a rocket to take humans to the moon and Mars is Boeing, but things are not all rosy for the company. A report from NASA’s Inspector General did not have nice things to say about the Boeing rocket. According to The Motley Fool the rocket is having problems being developed, and the cost has already doubled and if anything else goes wrong it could delay its launch. The Inspector General stated there were, management, technical and infrastructure issues driven by Boeing's poor performance. The cost has now risen to $8.9 Billion which is double what was planned. How will this affect SpaceX? Originally the rocket was to be ready by 2017 with the first humans aboard going on a mission by 2021. This seems to be a pipe dream now. Since the new system uses expendable rockets, some are questioning if it will be obsolete before it ever makes it to launch. MIT has something to say about the search for alien life. They say space is multi-dimensional and we have only scratched a tiny part of the surface. One scientist compared the search to a person examining the salt water in a shot glass for fish. They say signals like the famous WOW signal which was never repeated, might be a repeating signal which is being repeated slowly. When we search space for signals, we have to take into consideration frequency range, repetition, polarization and modulation along with the bandwidth and sensitivity of the searches. I would like to add the fact there could be signals being sent out which we are unaware of, because we haven’t reached the level of technology needed to discover them. With all the problems with space travel for humans already noted, a new one has come up. It seems NASA has discovered the microbes in our guts will be affected if we travel in space. We have more than one type in us and it seems prolonged trips into space decrease one type and inflate the other.
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