Sunday, May 27, 2012
Australia AND South Africa Both Win the Square Kilometer Array
In case you haven't hear the news, the site of the Square Kilometre Array, a massive synthetic aperture radio telescope that will greatly advance our understanding if the universe, has been awarded to BOTH South Africa and Australia.
This is a great outcome for both our countries, and science. We get the low
Of course, The Australian sees this result as a snub, not a win.
*Sorry, I wrote this at about 1 am, so I misunderstood what was going on. Australia basically gets to probe the very beginning of the Universe. Astroswanny has a much better article explaining what it means here.
Labels: Astronomy, miscelaneous, Radio Astronomy
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
Asteroid 2005 YU55 will also not Cause Earthquakes.
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As you can see from the latest images of asteroid 2005 YU55, it doesn't look much like a space ship, as claimed by certain internet personalities. Also, I'll remind you that the asteroid will not hit Earth or the Moon.
But will it cause earthquakes (or change the Moons orbit)? That's another persistent rumour flying around the bloggosphere. Lets look at it this way, the asteroid has a diameter of 0.4 km, the Earth.s diameter is 12742 km, something like 30,000 times that of YU55. Now, tidal force is proportional to the mass of the objects and falls off as the cube of the distance, and YU55 is 0.85 Lunar Distances away so we would expect that the tidal force of YU55 on Earth will be negligible.
But what about a control, we know of another massive object one Lunar Distance away, that's the Moon itself. The Moon diameter is 3476 Km, nearly 10,000 times that of YU55. Does the Moon cause Earthquakes? No.
If the Moon doesn't cause a significant number of earthquakes, then a lump of rock nearly 10,000 times smaller isn't going to either (and if YU55 hit the Moon, the effect on the Moons orbit will be negligible too, it would be like ramming a Hot Wheels car into an Aircraft Carrier).
Labels: asteroids, NEO, Pseudoscience, Radio Astronomy
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Poetry to the Moon and Back.
Stuart has just had his voice (or the electronic represenation thereof) bounced off the Moon. This is in preparation for poetry competition where the poems will be bounced off the Moon by the Jodrel Bank telescope. It's on today (late evening for us southern hemispherians), but I wish I could listen in.
Labels: Poery, Radio Astronomy
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