Space News 16 December 2020 Theories about the universe just keep coming out. I heard a great one recently, great in that it was very unusual and there was no way to prove it. I am not saying I agree with it either, but one scientist asks the question was the universe created by some ancient alien race as an experiment? It just seems so absurd an idea that any race could have that kind of power that I had to mention it. Lately there are theories the universe is artificial and this is just another one. Some even suggest it is a lot smaller than we believe and the distant stars and planets are some kind of an illusion. Some scientists are asking the question should we be sending signals into space to announce our existence? Stephen Hawking was against this idea from the beginning because he believed aliens might treat us the way we treated other less civilized races. I certainly do not think I am as smart as he was, but I still think it doesn’t make any difference because we have been sending out messages ever since the radio was invented. Not that we do this on purpose, but they go out never the less and have been for over 100 years. They do not travel faster than the speed of light, so in cosmic terms none of our broadcasts or messages have even reached more than a relatively few star systems. If we add the television signals, cell phones and computers to the mix, there is no way of silencing this stuff. Japan’s rock and soil gathering mission to an asteroid was very successful. I have to wonder if a small part of the mission was dedicated to perform a more spectacular rock gathering mission than the Chinese one, which has gathered rocks from the moon. The Japanese sent a probe named Hayabusa to an asteroid named Ryugu and conducted a mission which lasted for over a year by the asteroid as it orbited the body and collected samples twice before being sent back to earth. The vehicle made a successful touchdown and the first samples were examined and contained soil and small pebble rocks. The Japanese scientists will examine their treasure. They were also able to capture gas from the asteroid. They will examine the second group of samples they captured and returned sometime later. After about a year the Japanese said they will send some samples to other nation’s space agencies including NASA. As of the writing of this article the Chinese vehicle containing the samples is on the way back to earth and won’t take long since the trip is so short. Moon rocks have been examined many times before and by a few different agencies, but this is not the first time a robotic mission has returned moon rocks. The Soviets accomplished this in 1970. These same Soviet moon rocks were sold by Sotheby’s for $442,500 in 1993. The Chinese could have bought them at auction at the time. This was the only known legal auction sale of moon rocks. Lately, space missions seem to have gotten more successful. They are almost reaching the point of routineness some feel. If you look behind these missions and what they entail, you would not feel this way. In the old days there were a lot of failures. The United States had a hard time in the beginning and couldn’t keep up with the Soviets who had a big lead in technology. Our rockets were less powerful and even more important less reliable, they blew up a lot. The Soviets had explosions also but far fewer. I remember one Soviet explosion which killed a general and his staff. During one of the launches the general refused to go into the block house for protection and had a folding chair set up too close to the rocket. His staff not wanting to look like cowards joined him. When the rocket was about to launch it blew up killing all of them. So much for misplaced bravery. It took years for us to catch up to the Soviets but we did and in the end their economy just couldn’t afford the costs involved with a full fledged all on space program like Apollo. It is said President Kennedy was going to announce a joint space program with the Soviets, but was assassinated before this happened. Imagine if the world could get together on a goal for a space program and all contribute with money and expertise. It would advance our space programs by many years. The biggest space telescope ever just finished some significant tests. NASA has just finished testing the structure which will unfurl the telescope and deploy it. The James Webb telescope uses a mirror and is a reflector telescope. The mirror is 21 feet in diameter or 252 inches. The biggest telescope in the world for many years was the one at Mount Palomar Observatory and that was 200 inches in diameter. Putting a telescope into space gives it advantages over earth based ones. These advantages include the fact the telescope doesn’t have to look through the atmosphere. Another advantage is the absence of light. The Webb telescope will become the go to instrument for astronomers if it has a successful launch into space. The Webb telescope will replace the Hubble telescope as the biggest one in space. The Hubble has a mirror with a diameter of 94.5 inches. Astronomers had hope that the nearest star to the sun, Proxima Centauri might have planets which could host life. These hopes were dashed when a planet orbiting that star which was thought to be in the habitable zone was found to be 20 times closer to its star than the earth was to the sun. This means that world would be a hell. It is now felt no life could exist on the surface of that planet, but remember we are deciding this based on human and animal biology which exists on our planet. It is turning out there is a problem with some of the astronauts and how they react to things. It has been said being in space affects astronauts and they are never quite the same when they return to earth. Some say it is the constant radiation which might be killing brain cells. Other scientists think because the astronauts are outside of the protection of the atmosphere there could be other things affecting them which we haven’t discovered yet. One example of this was when an astronaut on the space station Sky Lab had an episode which lasted for a little while. This has happened even more recently.
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