We’re the kind of species that needs a frontier — for fundamental biological reasons. Every time humanity stretches itself and turns a new corner, it receives a jolt of productive vitality that can carry it for centuries
— Carl Sagan
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft
At the top left of the plate is a schematic representation of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen, which is the most abundant element in the universe. Below this symbol is a small vertical line to represent the binary digit 1. Thisspin-flip transition of a hydrogen atom from electron state spin up to electron state spin down can specify a unit of length (wavelength, 21 cm) as well as a unit of time (frequency, 1420 MHz). Both units are used as measurements in the other symbols.
On the right side of the plaque, a man and a woman are shown in front of the spacecraft. Between the brackets that indicate the height of the woman, the binary representation of the number 8 can be seen (1000, with a small defect in the first zero). In units of the wavelength of the hyperfine transition of hydrogen this means 8 × 21 cm = 168 cm.
The right hand of the man is raised as a sign of good will. Although this gesture may not be understood, it offers a way to show the opposable thumb and how the limbs can be moved.
The radial pattern on the left of the plaque shows 15 lines emanating from the same origin. Fourteen of the lines have corresponding long binary numbers, which stand for the periods of pulsars, using the hydrogen spin-flip transition frequency as the unit. Since these periods will change over time, the epoch of the launch can be calculated from these values.
The lengths of the lines show the relative distances of the pulsars to the Sun. A tick mark at the end of each line gives the Z coordinate perpendicular to the galactic plane.
NASA’s Curiosity rover has explored a new area on Mars called Yellowknife Bay, which shows plenty of evidence of flowing water. The rover is preparing to drill into a rock nicknamed “John Klein” in the location in the next couple weeks, investigating its composition and searching for organics. This will be the first time that engineers have drilled into the surface of another planet.
Scientists already know that Curiosity’s explorations have taken it to a place that was basically an ancient riverbed. Now they are uncovering the complex geologic history of the area and have stumbled across many interesting features.
“The scientists have been let into the candy store,” said engineer Richard Cook, project manager for Curiosity, during a NASA teleconference on Jan. 15.
For the last few weeks, the rover has been moving from the plateau it landed on down a slope into a depression. As it descended, it passed through layers of rock that are increasingly older, taking it backwards into the planet’s history. Geologists are finding a lot of different rock types, indicating that many different geologic processes took place here over time.
Some of the minerals are sedimentary, suggesting that flowing water moved small grains around and deposited them, and other evidence suggests water moved through the rocks after they had formed. Tiny spherical concretions scattered through the rock were likely formed when water percolated through rock pores and minerals precipitated out. Other samples are cracked and filled with veins of material such as calcium sulfate, that were also formed when water percolated through the cracks and deposited the mineral.
“Basically these rocks were saturated with water,” said geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, Curiosity’s project scientist, who added that these rocks indicate the most complex history of water that researchers have yet seen on Mars.
Curiosity brushed some of these rocks to remove their dust covering and then peered at them close-up with its high-resolution Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera. The rocks are sandstones containing larger grains up to 2 mm long surrounded by silt grains that are “finer than powdered sugar but coarser than sugar used to make icing,” said geologist R. Aileen Yingst of the Planetary Science Institute, a scientist on the MAHLI team.
Many of the grains are rounded, suggesting they were knocked about and worn down somehow. Because the grains are too large to have been carried by wind, they were most likely transported by water flowing at least 1 meter per second (2.2 mph). All these investigations suggest if you could go deep into Mars’ past and stand at the same spot as the rover, you’d probably see a river of flowing water with small underwater dunes along the riverbed.
The next step for Curiosity is to drill 5 centimeter holes into some of these rocks and veins to definitively determine their composition. Grotzinger said that the team will search for aqueous minerals, isotope ratios that could indicate the composition of Mars’ atmosphere in the past, and possibly organic material.
The drilling will probably take place within two weeks, though NASA engineers are still unsure of the exact date. The procedure will be “the most significant engineering thing we’ve done since landing,” said Cook, and will require several trial runs, equipment warm-ups, and drilling a couple test holes to make sure everything works. The team wants to take things as slowly as possible to correct for any problems that may arise, such as potential electrical shorts and excessive shaking of the rover.
Yes yes yes! I mean look at the last picture, it sooo looks like there was a small pond of water under that rock! I wish Carl Sagan could see all this…
— Carl Sagan
The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent
Fuera cual fuera la razón que puso en marcha el programa Apolo y con independencia de lo compromeyido que se hallara el nacionalismo de la guerra fría y con los instrumentos de la muerte, el ineludible reconocimiento de la unidas y de la fragilidad de la Tierra constituye su claro y luminoso dividendo, el inesperado regalo final del Apolo. Lo que empezó en mortífera competencia nos ha ayudado a comprender que la cooperación global es una condición esencial para nuestra supervivencia
Viajar resulta instructivo.
Ha llegado la hora de hacer de nuevo las maletas
Carl Sagan played a leading role in the American space program from its very beginning. He was a consultant and adviser to NASA beginning in the 1950s — he briefed the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon.
Yesterday, November 9, 2012, The visionary would have been 78. Carl was often described as “the scientist who made the Universe clearer to the ordinary person.” He helped to popularize science through the writing of hundreds of articles and over two dozen books. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for his book “The Dragons of Eden.” His television series “Cosmos” was one of the most watched shows in public television history. It was seen by more than 500 million people in 60 different countries.
“Carl was one of the greatest intellects behind the genesis of space exploration generally and specifically the Galileo mission,” said Dr. Torrence Johnson, a Galileo mission team member. “He was part of the original group that got together to promote the mission to NASA and he served as an interdisciplinary scientists on the mission team from the beginning. He was a great human being who shared with everyone his excitement about the exploration of the Universe.”
I watched the first episode of Cosmos thinking it would be another space documentary. I was utterly mistaken, in 13 episodes I deeply fell in love with the energy of his words, the amazement in his voice, his beautiful idea of life on Earth, and his curiosity for the wonders of outer space.
He is the scientist I admire most, and his philosophy of knowledge and truth is an inspiration for me.
Every time I see a space related breakthrough I think of him, and how much I’d love to tell him how, even though slowly, we are advancing upon his dream.
We will always remember you, and as soon I finished watching Cosmos, I already missed you.
— Carl Sagan
It’s finally mine! Awesome!
The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft from a record distance of about 6 billion kilometers from Earth. In the photograph, Earth is shown as a tiny dot against the vastness of space. The Voyager 1 spacecraft was commanded by NASA to turn its camera around and to take a photograph of Earth across a great expanse of space, at the request of Carl Sagan.
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known, so far, to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1997
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
