NASA has found water on Mars

Today, on the 29th of September 2015, we have found water on Mars. This is the first time the life giving liquid has been confirmed on another body than our own planet. To say this is one of the most amazing discoveries in science is an understatement. Life has existed on our planet for billions of years, only possible by the liquid water which covers two thirds of our planet. If we are to ever discover life out there in the Universe, the day we first found water on a planet other than our own will be remembered as the first step!

But let's calm down. What exactly has NASA found? Well, NASA has been looking at the large slopes on the surface of the red planet and have noticed something interesting. Using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite orbiting Mars, scientists have been studying these slopes and specifically looking at the chemicals present. What they've found is that in the summer months, long trails of salt appear, cascading down the slopes. The cause of this? Salt water trickling down the slopes, depositing the salt behind, before disappearing. The fact these only appear in the summer and disappear in the winter suggests Mars is warm enough in the Summer so that salt water can exist in liquid form. This is therefore evidence that liquid water does still exist on Mars!

Streaks of salt down the side of slopes on Mars are signs of water flow.

But where does this water come from each summer? Well we're still not quite sure, but it could be that the salt itself absorbs the water from the atmosphere. Whatever the reason, water is some how collecting in large enough quantities to create these metre long streaks down the sides of slopes on Mars.

But think back to your school days. Remember when your teacher told you Mars was beyond the orbit of Earth, beyond the goldilocks zone, where less of the Suns energy reaches the surface of the planet. Here, without a thick atmosphere like Earth, any water on Mars is frozen solid. We know this because we can see frozen water ice caps at the poles of Mars. So, how then has NASA found liquid water? Well, some months ago NASA found deposits of salt on Mars and this is the key to the freezing problem. Salt water, like in the oceans on Earth, has a lowest freezing point than pure water. This means whilst pure water on Mars is frozen solid, salt water will remain as a liquid.

We believe that Mars was once covered by a huge ocean of water, millions of year ago when it was warmer. This is far from the case today, but it now seems that at warm points on the planets surface, small trickles and steams of water exist on the surface.

So, if there is water on Mars, is there life? This is a tricky question. We know complex life doesn't exist on Mars (unless there's a colony of super animals living beneath the surface) (which there isn't), but simple life like bacteria is more possible. Whether they could live with such infrequent amounts of water is unknown. The harsh conditions on the surface, a mixture of radiation and extreme temperature, mean that even with a constant supply of water, life might still be impossible.

But this is a problem for another day, today is all about celebrating the discovery of liquid water on Mars. NASA and other space agencies have spent billions of pounds and dollars sending satellites and rovers to Mars, some designed specifically to find evidence of water or life on the red planet. And today all the hard work, by the thousands of NASA and space workers, has been a success. With several rovers still going and even more set to land on Mars in the future, there is still lot's of work to be done to understand this lone little red planet and find out whatever mysteries it still holds!

Want to find out more? Watch my latest YouTube video:

That's no Moon! Oh, wait...

All the worlds doomsayers have been on high alert for the last week as the asteroid 2004 BL86 passed close to the Earth. Of course, when we say close we mean in space scale, which was 1.2 million kilometres, or around 3 times the separation of the Moon and the Earth. The asteroid unsurprisingly passed safely past, as expected (there are many organisations that focus on predicting the paths of asteroids, to watch out for any dangerous ones).

After the panic period, many people were able to spot the asteroid in the night sky last night, which was relatively bright. Such bright asteroids are a rather rare sight, so its always a treat to be able to spot one. But whilst many of us were trying to spot the asteroid with our eyes or binoculars, the team at NASA's Deep Space Network antennae was taking some incredible radio images of the asteroid. Radio waves are reflected off the asteroid which can be seen by the antennae, allowing scientists to see the asteroid even if it isn't illuminated by visible light form the Sun.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/asteroid/20150126/2004BL86-640.gif

The radio images have allowed scientists to measure the size of the asteroid and study some of the details of its surface. But it was one unique feature that they didn't expect to see. The asteroid has a moon! Just as the Earth has a large body orbiting around it, our very own Moon, the asteroid 2004 BL86 also has a piece of rock orbiting around it. It's had to think of a body 1/40th the diameter of the Earth having enough gravity to have its own visible moon. You can see a time lapse of the asteroid above, where its moon can be seen as the bright spot moving down from the top of the image.

But whilst it was a surprise to the scientists that this particular asteroid has a moon, it's not overall a surprise, as many moons have been found orbiting around asteroids in our Solar System already. Still, it's not something we get to see very often, let alone around an asteroid that we can see clearly in the sky. 

Water water everywhere, but not a drop on mars

....yet. News from NASA this week that they have discovered ice on the surface of mercury. Its hard to believe that the closest rock to the sun can harbour ice, when on earth we are beginning to worry that our icecaps are melting.

It appears that the cool shadow of the craters at the pole of the planet protects the ice from the sun, keeping it at a nice cool stable temperature.

I saw this meme a couple of days ago, and after chuckling to myself for a second, I did feel I should point out that we do know there is ice on mars, also located at the poles. We are even confident that it contains water ice. However the recent observations of mercury suggest that it's water ice, but there is still an uncertainty on this. On Mars we are looking for liquid water, or traces of its existence at least.

The surface of mercury, it has to be said, maybe isn't the most exciting in the solar system, but it does seem to still hold some secrets for us!

With great computer-power comes great waste-ability.

I have been a unbeliever of Apple products for some time now. I see that they work well, they are powerful and simple to use (though this is probably also their biggest weakness). However my usual criticism is of the astronomical (pun entirely intended) prices they charge for something which is the same as the same product with a picture of an orange on it rather than an apple.

Which is why I now feel a hypocrite as I type this blog on my new iPad.

Admittedly this blog is less about Apple and more about the use of technology in science, and I guess businesses as a whole. For the last few years I have found myself ever increasingly dependant on printers as a way to prove how clever I am to my supervisors. Rushing to their offices with a stack of of pretty graphs and data tables does make one feel very smug. Unfortunately however it also makes the environment feel a little bit sicker. I really do try to do my bit for the environment, but when it comes to this area of environmental heroism I find it hard to change.

So to change this habit I have bought an iPad. My aim is to start flaunting my pie charts on its beautiful high resolution screen, rather than on dead vegetation. I'm not sure how well the iPad is set up to do many of these things, especially how good it is and linking up to my unix based work machine, but I'm going to try. If all else fails, I will become the true master of angry birds.

I hope that just as apple seems to have introduced content for the iPad for people in business and education, such as university lectures, that someone will take this a step further and allow people to fully integrate their day to day work with a tablet. Not for cash in their pockets, but trees in the forests.

I still believe iPads are too expensive. But in a philosophical tone, isn't the cost to the environment even more costly.

Physics isn't the only science

We have plenty of seminars and meetings at University to encourage to keep and interest in other areas of Astrophysics and Physics. It's through this knowledge of other disciplines that links and connections can be made, producing new areas of research involving the whole department.

However one also has to remember that there are other sciences out there other than Physics! So this brief post is dedicated to the Science of Biology. To illustrate the incredible nature of Biology I present to you this video made by Harvard University (from what I can gather).

Video from Youtube, courtesy of Harvard University.

This incredible video is an artists simulation of the inside of a cell, though based on real research and knowledge. I had to have the various things in the video explained, but a brief explanation is as follows.

The video shows the inner working of a single cell. Your body is made up of over 50 trillion cells, which is incredible enough, without knowing what happens inside them. Most of the little things you can see in the video are proteins, all with various different jobs to make your cells do what they're supposed to, in turn making your organs perform as a whole. 

It's these kind of videos which really make science and research appealing to people, yet I never saw this at school or college; it took till my PhD in another discipline to first see this video! It's a shame, but if you search hard enough gems like this can be found and hopefully shared to everyone else!

4 sunsets, 4 times the romance!

1 sunset on earth is beautiful enough, but imagine being able to see 4 different suns set. On the other hand anyone who knows anything about orbit mechanics will know that it's hard enough to imagine a planet in a binary star system (2 suns, 1 planet), but 4 stars and 1 planet seems impossible. Well, not surprisingly, such a system has been discovered (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19950923), and so we welcome planet PH1 to the ever growing list of exoplanets (planets around other stars apart from our own Sun). This is a fascinating system as planets need to sit in stable orbits, that is a repeating orbit which will save it from being flung out into dark empty space. This isn't easy to imagine when you have 4 strongly attracting Stars nearby, nor how it formed in such a system.

Image courtesy of BBC. This is an Artists Impression of PH1, the new exoplanet found with 4 suns!

This is a nice example of Observation and Theoretical Astrophysics combining: observation discovers a phenomenon, allowing theorists to begin modelling it, now knowing that it is indeed possible in nature.

Incidentally, the PH name comes from Planet Hunters, a website (http://www.planethunters.org/) where you can, very simply, look for exoplanets. I just spent some time doing this and it's mildly addictive and fun to do.  All you have to do is look for dips in a collection of data points, pointing to a planet passing in front of a star. If you find one you even get your name mentioned!

 If they had only called it 'Angry Exoplanets' I'm sure many more people would play around with it!