What’s Happening In Space?

A lot of things have been going on in space lately. Scientists believe the rover has found actual liquid water on Mars. The water was brackish and there wasn’t a lot, but with all the other signs on Mars indicating water has flowed on the surface before, I think we are at the point where we have to say there is a pretty good chance water might exist inside Mars. Getting to Mars no longer has to be such a lengthy affair. A new type of rocket is being developed named the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket or VASIMR for short. The rocket would use radio ways as a way of heating the propellant which would create plasma that would be accelerated using magnetic fields. The important part of all this is it would only take 39 days to get to Mars. While people in the future would probably laugh at even this length of time to reach a neighbor planet, to us this is speedy. The first spacecraft to get to Mars was Mariner 4 which was launched on November 28, 1964 and arrived on July 14, 1965.

SpaceX has been very busy lately with several projects and recently conducted a test of the Crew Dragon. This is the vehicle which will carry astronauts in the future. It was a Pad Abort Test. The vehicle carries a revolutionary launch abort system. The first human missions are scheduled for 2017. The test was successful and would save the lives of astronauts by carrying them to safety if an emergency occurred on the launch pad. This is something which has been needed ever since the space program started. Incredibly the engines used were created using a 3D printer. A test dummy aboard the ship proved if had there been a launch pad problem, the crew would not only had survived but would have been in good condition.

Stories have been going around the Internet which state NASA now has a warp drive. Supposedly the warp engine would not use any propellant, but this story is now being called baloney. It all came about because the Eagleworks lab said they had measured thrust from an electromagnetic propulsion drive. At this point I got confused, because isn’t that what an Ion engine does as does a VASIMR engine and they are far from being warp drives? Then I realized it was being said there was no thrust involved coming out the back end. It was being said the engine worked on warp field mechanics and now many scientists are saying the tests which were set up were flawed and because of this didn’t prove the fact. This is at least the second time Eagleworks lab has been criticized about the way they are testing this engine. Somehow I have to wonder if they will eventually have the last laugh.

Space exploration, whether it is being done with probes or through telescopes is helping us find out things we never knew. Take the case of a huge exoplanet we discovered which is about 500 light years from earth. A very small star was found with a planet the size of Jupiter orbiting very close to it. The orbit is so close it only takes that planet 3.3 days for a full orbit. Why do scientists care about this? The reason is scientists believed large stars had protoplanetary disks which formed into planets and small stars had small protoplanetary disks. If his were true how could such a small star have such a large planet orbiting it? I have to wonder if the star is extra dense and because of this had more material around it, or the theory is just completely wrong?

Back to the supervoid which was found in space. How can there be an area of space which is basically a void and how can it be so perfectly round? Yes it is round and looks like a giant took a plug out of space. Is this area of space really a void or does it just look like a void? Could it be a tunnel to another universe or a spot where something is hidden we are not supposed to know about? The void certainly does raise some interesting questions and if we had the capability to get there I bet this would be one of the first things we would look at outside our solar system. A NASA drawing shows the void as a hole in space surrounded by blue stars which form a rim around it and are at least 10 stars in depth. The hole was discovered about 10 years ago and scientists think about 10,000 galaxies are missing from this area. That is a mighty number and goes to show the enormous size of the void. Not only is the area huge, but it is very cold. It has been measured at 1.8 billion light years across making it the biggest object in space ever found. One theory states we are in a multiverse and the void is caused by another universe rubbing up against our own. Before we get too excited, scientists state there are a few galaxies in the void and the reason they call it a supervoid is that it is so under populated.

Scientists have found there is a powerful magnetic field near a super massive black hole in a distant galaxy. The reason scientists are so excited about this is it is the most powerful magnetic field ever detected in space. Weak magnetic fields have been found far from black holes in the past but nothing like this. The magnetic field was detected by examining the polarizing of light from the area. “When produced naturally polarization can be used to measure magnetic fields, since light changes its polarization when it travels through a magnetized medium”

I started this article talking about Mars so it is appropriate that I finish it on the same topic. A report was released in March 2015 which stated ancient Mars had nitrogen in a form which could have been used by microbes if they existed. Another study said the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere is a feasible energy source for microbes. We know methane is given off by living things and methane has been found on Mars near caves. No one can be sure what this means, but maybe there is animal life on Mars.