This is a great “musical” about the Spitzer telescope created through NASA and CalTech. Yes, it’s a song about a space telescope! It describes its purpose and how it operates, awesome! One interesting note is that it needs liquid helium to cool its instruments down to operational range, which is around -450 F. Even though the fuel all ran out a few years ago, a few the instruments are still able to collect data.
Also, it was the first telescope to directly capture light from an extrasolar planet.
The entire universe is estimated to be about 13.7 billion years old. I don’t know about you but that is not a very long time to for the existence of well, everything. It’s funny how 13 billion can seem small but, it kind of is! There are probably 200 billion stars in OUR OWN galaxy. There are trillions of cells in a single person’s body for crying out loud. Our own national debt drawfs the age of our universe as does the amount of data on your hardrive. I’m just talking about time measured in years here. The sheer complexity and quantities of “stuff” in the universe is beyond crazy, as well as the distances, no question. But the time that has elapsed since the beginning? That’s not very long for everything to have happened. That is just my opinion though and the universe probably doesn’t care, we’re just lucky to be a part of it.
I started thinking about all of this because of this excellent article and slideshow about the James Webb telescope.
Biotechnology is something I’ll probably mention alot on this science blog. It is a field that is absolutely booming. In the 6 years since I have been out of school I’ve seen new departments and new buildings devoted to it at universities throughout the country. Houston itself has 3 giant research buildings in the heart of the city being constructed for further research. The signs of its growth are everywhere. The National Institute of Health budget has gone from 17 billion in the year 2000 to 32 billion in the 2011 budget. This is amazing. Remember the Human Genome Project? It was a massive 3 billion project devoted to sequencing exactly 1 person’s entire genome. The goal was to document every nucleotide of a single person’s DNA. Each person has billions of nucleotides of DNA and so the project was seen as a massive undertaking, Clinton even compared it landing a man on the moon. Well it was completed 13 years later in 2003, again for 3 billion dollars. In 2008 there was another government initiative to sequence 1000 human genomes for 50 million. In a few months it will cost around 5,000 dollars. This type of unbelievable innovation has not been seen in industry since electronics. That is interesting because all of this growth is working with the growth in the computer sector. As the space in hardrives improves every week, more and more data is created by the national biotechnology effort. Computers are now needed to model the unbelievably complex interactions in biology. We are lucky that these two technological revolutions are happening at the same time. In 10 or 15 years alot of the drugs and therapies discovered because of this will be in hospitals. Who knows, maybe sooner? I noticed there are already brand new programs for a job called a “genetic nurse”.
I remember reading that Archimedes was so absorbed while taking a walk and looking at the stars that he fell down a well. It always makes me smile when I think of that. This month the stars are basically in the same positions he saw them in. I haven’t fell down a well while looking at them but during long drives in the middle of Texas I’ve probably looked up and out of the windshield longer than I should have.
It’s always fun to know what planets are up at night. Looking at the stars is one thing but looking at a point of light and KNOWING it’s a planet, a place, makes it a little more satisfying. This month Venus will be an evening star, look for it just after sunset in the west. It will be the brightest thing out there by far. As the days drift by this month Venus will rise higher and higher until it’s a full 12 degrees high half an hour after sunset at month’s end. Mars will be high in the sky at mid evening and brighter than any other star except Sirius. Actually on March 11 Mars will actually “stop” moving relative the background stars. It’s a quirk of the relative orbital motion, so that’s neat to know. It will remain visible as a bright pale red for most of the evening. Then last but not least is Saturn. It will be rising at around 7:30pm in the southeast. Interestingly, it’s rings are only at a 3 degree incline to our line of sight. This will open up though to 10 degrees by the end of the year. It will reach opposition on March 21st, the day after the vernal equinox. This means it will be opposite of the sun and thus the closest to earth… meaning its’ disc will appear especially large in telescopes! This is a picture of it would look through a telescope today using JPL’s solar system simulator.
As for Jupiter you will have to get up half an hour before sunrise to catch a glimpse of it low in the eastern sky.
