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National Astronomy Meeting 2012

By Gurbir Dated: March 28, 2012 Leave a Comment

Moon, Venus and Jupiter just after sunset 27 March 2012

A cram packed week – so much going on and the weather for the first half of this week is particularly cooperative for visitors to Manchester and observing the night sky.  The weather can’t possibly last. I chose to miss out a couple of the evening events and do some observing.

I was not able to get to all the talks I wanted (there really is so much going on!) but did the following three audio recordings

  • Professor Michael Kramer – Director Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) and a Professor of Astrophysics as well as an Associate Director at Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Just what you need for a joint UK/Germany Astronomy event. We spoke mostly about the Square Kilometer Array
  • Professor Fran Bagenall. A planetary scientist from Colorado University. We spoke about the Juno mission on its way to Jupiter.
  • Professor Carl Murray. Amongst other things Carl’s interests include Planetary Dynamics. We spoke mostly about the Cassini mission currently (still!) in orbit around Saturn. Not in the recording but it was fascinating to talk to Carl about his time at Cornell and his contact in those days with the only other Carl I know in Astronomy – Carl Sagan.

My thanks to all three and I will tweet once the podcasts are online. Now back to NAM2012..

 

 

 

 

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From Dying Stars to the Birth of Life – Book Review

By Gurbir Dated: February 12, 2012 Leave a Comment

Title: From Dying Stars to the Birth of Life: The New Science of Astrobiology and the Search for Life in the Universe
Publisher : Nottingham University Press
Author: Jerry L Cranford
ISBN : 978-1-907284-79-3
Price: £24.99 [237 pages hardcover]

Subtitled as “The new science of astrobiology and the search for life in the universe”, this is an abundantly illustrated book that attempts to cover the immensity of the universe and the minuteness of a living cell. The author establishes at the outset that he is not an astronomer. A now retired professor with years of experience in psychology and “brain sciences”, he brings his expertise of academia and research to his childhood passion of astronomy.

Astrobiology is a relatively new and still developing interdisciplinary field that studies origin and evolution of life throughout the universe. This book attempts to deals with some of the most poignant questions of Astrobiology that have faced humanity from the beginning. Where did life come from? What does it mean to be alive? Are we alone in the universe?  So dramatic are the developments in science and technology over the last half century that for the first time in human history tangible experiments can now be performed that have the potential to answer them.

The first half of the book takes the reader from the Big Bang to the emergence of stars, galaxies, and eventually supernovae that generate the fundamental elements to the complex compounds necessary for the development of life.  I found chapters 3 and 4 that described the constituent parts of living cells and how they work particularly interesting.

The final chapter is more rewarding than the title “Some final thoughts from the author” may at first suggest. In it the author turns to the question of why, in the technologically rich 21st century, science has been unable to provide a definitive answer to Fermi’s paradox – given that the universe is old and big enough to have nurtured life elsewhere than just that on Earth, why is it that life on Earth is the only one for which evidence exists?

Written in a somewhat unusual style, it has a freshness that readers new to the field may find attractive. The author jumps about between using the first and third person, variously talking about himself as “I”, “we” and “the author”.  He also uses “the present author” or “the present book” — why not simply “the author” or “the book”?    Initially oddities like these and others are a distraction, but they are relatively easy to get used to.

In the preface the author acknowledges support from many, including Seth Shostak from the SETI institute. Additional input like that from other specialists e.g. cosmologists, evolutionary biologists or planetary astronomers would perhaps have introduced a greater authority to the final product.

Many of the illustrations are sourced from the public domain, a welcome trend which I hope will flourish. This book lacked the typical highly formal scientific approach that an astronomer would have taken.  The author’s highly personal approach and an abundance of genuine passion for this subject is his unique contribution in this book.  If you wondered what astrobiology is all about, this detailed and enthusiastic review from a dedicated amateur is a good starting point to the current state of the subject.

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Falling to Earth – Book Review

By Gurbir Dated: February 9, 2012 1 Comment

Title: Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 Astronaut’s Journey to Earth
Publisher: Smithsonian Books
Author: Al Worden & Francis French
ISBN: 13: 978-1588343093 & ISBN 10: 158834309X
Price: $29.95 [304 pages hardcover]

Back in 1966 there used to be an American western TV series called “Branded”. The central character, a West Point graduate and US army captain Jason McCord, is thrown out of the army falsely accused of cowardice. Each episode opens with a humiliating public scene. As his fellow soldiers watch, the captain’s hat is tossed aside, epaulets and buttons ripped off and his sword is ceremonially broken in two before he is cast out of the fort and the doors slammed behind him.

Following the successful return of Apollo 15, Al Worden was accused of unfairly profiting from illicit postal covers (envelopes carried aboard Apollo 15, stamped on day of launch and again on splashdown), in a deal prearranged with a German businessman. Virtually all astronauts had taken personal items on their flights and subsequently sold them for cash later. This was a tradition that NASA had sanctioned since the days of Mercury. But Worden became the fall guy. Abandoned by Deke Slayton (NASA’s Director of Flight Crew Operations), humiliated by Chris Craft (NASA flight director) and dumped by Dave Scott (his Apollo 15 commander), Worden was the only astronaut to be sacked by NASA for this infringement. He was “branded”.

“Falling to Earth“‘ is Al Worden’s autobiography, written with the British but USA based space historian Francis French.   To mark the 40th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 15, Worden has published the story of his mission as Apollo 15’s command module pilot  (CMP) and its immediate aftermath of what came to be known as the “covers incident”,  as the centre piece. With a foreword by Dick Gordon, an epilogue by Tom Stafford and further praise on the cover from Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and John Glenn, Worden has finally received the personal redemption from those that he considers matter most – fellow astronauts.

In this three hundred page book Worden describes how Apollo 15 commander Dave Scott arranged a deal with a German businessman for the whole crew. They would fly 100 postal covers to the Moon and back for him to sell privately and discreetly after the space program was over or they left NASA. In return he would set up a trust account of 7000USD in a German Bank for each astronaut to be used for their children’s education.  Within months after the flight it all went wrong. The covers were on the open market with Deke Slayton receiving queries about their authenticity from potential buyers.

Relegated to a desk job following this revelation, Worden describes the humiliating and painful events that followed. He felt ostracised from NASA and in his darker moments was left wondering if life was “still worth living” (p258). He reassesses the idea of honour and discipline he learnt at West Point and the tradition of loyalty within NASA as “bullshit” (p262).   His crewmate Jim Irvin retired and stepped out of the picture, his commander Dave Scott, despite having initiated the business deal, avoided any public castigation. Throughout the book, Worden charts Scott’s culpability in the incident whilst repeatedly emphasising his exemplary command integral to the outstanding success of their challenging mission. Tom Stafford indicates in his book (‘We Have Capture ‘, published in 2004) that this incident cost Scott the command of the USA/USSR joint flight (Apollo Soyuz Test Project) that Stafford went on to command. None of the Apollo 15 crew flew again.

Whilst this is the first detailed account of NASA’s infamous covers incident, there is much more. Worden describes his childhood on a farm in Michigan, homesteaded by his illegal immigrant grandfather Fred from Canada. He describes candidly the harsh reality of his early days at West Point military academy, and throughout the book uses terse and colourful language that he probably picked up there.  He describes with remarkable detail his time with the air force as a test pilot, including an exchange period to Britain, his selection and training as a NASA astronaut and his flight to the Moon. Like all the Apollo missions, Apollo 15’s was a mission impossible. With the heaviest payload and longest duration on the surface of the Moon, it was arguably the most scientifically ambitious lunar mission. It had its share of drama but ended with outstanding success.

This book offers the reader a clearer understanding of the role of the CMP.  As the Apollo 15 CMP, Worden was responsible for the science experiments installed in the specially developed Science Instrument Module (SIM) within the service module. He operated the cameras and instruments during his six days in lunar orbit, for three of which he was alone. During the return journey, whilst still 200,000 miles from Earth, Worden made the deepest of deep space walks to manually recover the film from the cameras in the SIM bay.

Worden insists it was never his intention to become an astronaut until the mid sixties. This ambivalence seems hard to accept from a 21st century perspective. Things were so different then. He describes his genuine fear that his impending divorce might cause him to lose his place on Apollo 15. He smoked then and continues to smoke today saying “if I could have found a safe way to do it, I would have smoked all the way to the Moon and back” (p75).  He too briefly deals with one of the mission’s many unique objectives, the launch from the SIM bay of a sub satellite prior to leaving lunar orbit.

Like any good wine, Worden’s story benefits from the long interval offering a deeper insight into the human element of human spaceflight. Written in a slick punchy style it is entertaining and remarkably informative equally for those who remember the Apollo era and those unfortunate to have been born after it was over.

Two dozen Americans visited the Moon between 1968 and 1972.  As their numbers dwindle and they age the astonishing achievements and sheer magic of that adventure is fading from living memory. Books like this not only introduce a new generation to one of humanity’s greatest adventures, but make a critical contribution to the collective record of that exceptional era by those who made it happen.

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Episode 35: 22nd July 2010: Dr Edgar Mitchell – Apollo 14

By Gurbir Dated: July 26, 2010 4 Comments

A man playing golf on the moon is one of the images permanently etched into the collective memory of humanity’s first exploration of the moon. The so called “golf player” was Alan Shepard the guy with him was Dr Edgar Mitchell whilst Stuart Roosa orbited the moon in the command module. Today, Ed Mitchell, two months away from his 80th birthday is the only remaining member of the Apollo 14 crew.

On a recent visit to Pontefract, organised once again by Ken Willoughby, he describes his personal journey to the moon. Amongst other things he highlights his javelin throw which, by a narrow margin, beat the golf ball, as a picture in his presentation illustrates. He spent nine hours on the surface of the moon during two EVAs on February 5th and 6th 1971. Apollo 14 was his only space flight and he left NASA in the following year.

Ed Mitchell is perhaps best known for his epiphany moment on the return journey to Earth when he experienced a unique spiritual sensation which has dominated his professional and personal life ever since. To help understand it, he left NASA and establish the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Over the last few years he has frequently spoken publicly about his interest in the paranormal, ESP and UFOs. He asserts that the Roswell incident was real, aliens have landed on the Earth and the US military is responsible for a cover-up.

It is strange that someone (a navy pilot and an Apollo astronaut) with a professional life dominated by leading edge science and technology can hold such an unscientific position. He appears oblivious to the contradiction in referring to himself as an astrophysicist and yet accepting Fred Hoyle’s Steady State explanation of cosmology, for which there is little evidence, over the Big Bang. I wonder how he explains Hubble’s law and the expansion of space, Cosmic microwave background radiation and the relative abundance of primordial elements.

I really should have asked him. I did not in part out of deference. Despite his age and unusual views, he remains a member of a unique group of individuals with a special contribution to human history. Who knows, he may well turn out to be right. In the meantime, the main road of science, directed by the sign posts of  observational evidence, is probably still the  best path to a more accurate understanding of the cosmos.

Dr Mitchell was kind enough to share his power point slides which I have incorporated into the hour long video presentation. Links to that presentation and a video version of this episode below.

====================================

An increasingly familiar quote from someone else who made a huge contribution to how we should go about understanding the cosmos. Carl Sagan.

“I believe that the extraordinary should be pursued. But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” .

https://media.blubrry.com/astrotalkuk_podcast_feed/p/astrotalkuk.org/wp-content/uploads/episode35.mp3

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Episode 35 – Video (10 minutes)

Dr Edgar Mitchell 2nd July 2010 from AstrotalkUK on Vimeo.

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