The Year of the Jellyfish

It's the New Year, and as we all look forward to our new and improved lives, pay vigorous attention to our resolutions, and intensely focus our efforts on altering our lifestyles (yeah right), there is one crucial detail that we should beware: the Jellyfish.

Watch out - they're going to get you!

The number of jellyfish in our oceans is rising (see news article here). I think they might take over the world. Scientists say it's just a cycle - every 20 years or so the number of jellyfish reaches a high - but I don't believe it. Maybe scientists are plotting to take over the world using jellyfish. Maybe the dolphins are about to launch a massive offensive against humans, as a test of which species' intelligence is really higher. Maybe the CIA is training jellyfish to carryout stealth missions against other countries. Maybe NASA is secretly imitating the way jellyfish move to create some sort of awesome spaceship... or are going to use jellyfish as spaceships. Or maybe aliens have tapped into the jellyfish mind and are going to use them to take over Earth.

I mean, imagine it - weird wobbly fish with the ability to zap you with magical poisonous lightning, increasing in population to the point that the ocean water just bubbles with their round little heads - and then they all suddenly ATTACK.

Perhaps 2013 will be the end of the world.

At any rate, here is my New Year's advice: don't get behind on your resolutions, and watch out for jellyfish!

*Picture from here.

Why We Should Go to Space, Part 2

Recently, there have been a few things to inspire me. One is this little girl, speaking on behalf of the future to the UN:

The second thing was this quote by President Obama. He said this in 2009:

“Reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation is essential to meeting the challenges of this century."

So my thought is this: let's reaffirm and strengthen America's role as the world's engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation by going to space as much and as often as we can. Let's go to the moon--we did it once, we can do it again (maybe this time we'll find the giant metal aliens that like to pretend to be cars). Let's land on an asteroid and pick up some platinum or palladium or some element we've never seen before. Let's go to Mars and set up a place to live (and hopefully not get infected by an intelligent water virus). Let's go to another planet and find life--micro or macroscopic--let's find that the universe, which seems so huge and empty, is actually teeming with life and possibilities.


And in the meantime, let's find a way to take care of our beautiful Earth.

Pinwheel Galaxy, NASA: 

Fish... or Alien?

Last week I went to the Boston Aquarium. It was amazing. Giant fish. Lobsters. Jellyfish. Sting rays. Turtles. Frogs. PENGUINS. Dragon fish. Sharks. Luckily, they were all safely contained, so I didn't get eaten. I did, however, get to touch a sting ray.

While I was there, I couldn't help but think about aliens. "Why?" you ask. 

Well, if you've ever been to an aquarium, you shouldn't have to ask why.

For starters, look at this fish: 

It's an Angler Fish.

Now look at this fish:

It's a Mexican Walking Fish. I found the name by Googling "creepy pink fish".

Now what do you get if you add together the Angler and the Mexican Walking Fish? This:

In real life it's a giant Isopod. In unreal life...

You wake up one morning and check the news. It won't work. You have no electricity. Your phone didn't charge and neither did your computer. So you do the next best thing: go find a living person. As you step outside, you notice that the sky is a strange pink, and it is darkening slowly into a blood red. Your neighbor sees you and begins to gesture frantically. You run over. He is watching a news report on the remaining battery life of his computer.

A giant cocoon, larger than any space ship or animal on earth, is plummeting through the sky. It lands gently in the Mojave desert where it is greeted by a team of UN special forces. The ship opens slowly and out crawl giant bugs, the size of elephants, with glowing white eyes and thick, pink crustacean shells...

All of a sudden, a swarm of tiny, thick-shelled bugs land outside your apartment. Apparently, they can fly. Flying fish. Oh good. Just what you always wanted.

An Ode to Writer's Block

Next time, watch for an Ode to the Shuttle Discovery and It's Last Flight Around Washington DC.

The Universe is Awesome and So Are We

Today I am going to share with you a series of super cool pictures that you probably haven't seen before. I will also be kind, generous, and nice, and tell you what the picture is of, who is in it, and why I think it is cool.

This is Apollo 17 astronaut Ronald Evans. In this image, he is retrieving a film canister during a space walk. Now think for a minute about the evolution of photography. He is in space--in 1972. First of all, going to space is an amazing accomplishment. At this time, however, not only have we been in space, but we've been to the moon, orbited, done all kinds of crazy, amazing things. In fact, we still look to these guys as the heroes of modern space technology. But, he's retrieving a film canister. Now, film canisters are for art majors--we have digital everything. I find this an interesting juxtaposition between a technology which was far beyond it's time, and a technology that was right on time.

Below you will see Dr. Robert Goddard at Clark University in Worchester, MA. Year: 1924. This was long before space travel. Dr. Goddard taught physics. In 1920 he had a paper published by the Smithsonian Institution, wherein he asserted that rockets could be used to send payloads to the moon. Of course, you know the press--they mocked him and began calling him "Moon Man." Eventually, when rocket science became real, scientists began to realize that it was nearly impossible to build a rocket or launch a satellite without acknowledging Dr. Goddard.

I think we should probably start listening to physics professors more often.

This is Harrison Schmitt, astronaut from Apollo 17, collecting Lunar Rock samples. That is also a giant moon rock. It's too bad he couldn't get the entire thing. Or maybe he did... 

At any rate, every time I look at this picture, I see that rock... and it's fantastic. December 14, 1972

This is James Irwin, saluting beside an American flag. Look at that giant space bug behind him. You know what has always awed me about their equipment? It looks like gold tinfoil. Their space vehicles aren't shiny and rock solid looking as scifi would have us believe. They're real. Every time I see them I am reminded that they're real.

This is the launch of the bumper V-2, a critical moment in the history of space travel. The bumper V-2 was the first ever rocket launch from Cape Canaveral. This two stage rocket (V-2 missile on the bottom with a WAC Corporal Rocket on the top) exploded from the ground, then detached from itself, and the top half could fly to nearly 400 kilometers, which is even higher than modern rockets can fly.

While you're thinking about that, look at those guys. Look at that equipment.It's incredible. It looks like equipment from the 1950s! Oh, did I mention? They sent this rocket up July 24, 1950. Amazing.

Below is the Lunar Prospector spacecraft on its way to the moon. I think that this picture is beautiful. You can't see the spacecraft, but you can see its tail and the Earth in the distance behind it. It's incredible. 1998.

This is a solar powered airplane. Amazing. It was tested in 2001. It looks so weird, like an alien space ship or something. No wonder people are always seeing UFOs. If I saw this, I would think aliens had landed, too.

This astronaut is floating in space. I want to float in space.

This astronaut is floating in space, having his picture taken next to Earth. I want to have my picture taken next to Earth. Instead, I will have to be satisfied with having my picture taken on Earth.

Below is a picture of the Eagle Nebula, also called the Pillars of Creation. This is one of my favourite nebulae; it is extremely photogenic, too. These pillars of dust are the birthplace of stars, although their star formation peaked several million years ago. The red represents low energy, the green represents medium energy, and the blue represents high energy.

I could stare at this all day.

 This is Earth. This is where we live. This is the thing that provides us everything we could ever possibly need and then some. This is what keeps us safe, and quite warm, as you can see. This image is a false colour depiction of long wave heat escaping from Earth. If the heat didn't escape, the Earth would become as hot as the sun. It's beautiful. And it's ours.

We live in an amazing universe. So let's explore.


You can find all these pictures and more here.

My Cat, the Hacker-Mob Boss

Most people know what their cats do when they're at home alone. Eat, sleep, and sleep, are three very common examples.

My cat, on the other hand, Goblin, is a very suspicious sort of cat. When I come home, she always runs away. When I am in the bathroom or kitchen, she just sits there and meows. The rest of the time, she sits in the corner, under my desk or in awkward places and just stares at me. She doesn't move or blink. Just stares. For hours.

Like this:

When I'm sleeping she either sits on my head, sits on the window sill above my head, or races back and forth maniacally chasing Christmas bows that don't move and pieces of string that don't fight back.

So then I wonder: what does Goblin do while I'm gone?

Here's the thing: NASA was hacked 13 times last year, and 48 NASA laptops were stolen in the past two years. Do I think my cat stole them? No. I think she paid someone to do it. I think she was the hacker, however. She's like a hacker-mob boss who runs a ring of ridiculously smart criminals that are trying to take control of the space station. NASA claims that the space station is safe, but if Goblin can speak Russian, then they had better watch out.

""But why?" you ask. "Why would Goblin want to take control of the space station?

"Don't you read the news?" I reply. 

Look at these headlines: Hundreds of Cats Rescued in Animal Cruelty Case at Caboodle Ranch, Cat Count Nears 70 at Elmer Avenue, President of California Fish and Game Commission Shoots a Cat: Now He Is the One Up a Tree, 200 Cats Removed from NY Home, and worst of all, Japanese Cat Lovers Snarl at New Law which puts a curfew on the public appearance of animals. They have to be home by 8:00pm!

Goblin the Hacker-Mob Boss is merely trying to command a new life for cats of all breeds. By taking control of the International Space Station, she knows she can negotiate for a cat-sized spaceship which she will then command, taking as many cats as possible away from here to start a new life on a far away planet--a planet of milk and fish. I wish her luck.

Backpack Across the Universe

The other day, I was thinking about Scotland. It's full of castles and sheep. I wish I could take Rutherford there--maybe then he could find himself a girlfriend.

While in Scotland, Leslie and I rode on trains. I was inordinately excited about this, because I had never been on a train before (except for that time in third grade which I don't remember) and because trains are a rather weird form of transportation. Basically, somebody takes a bunch of boxes, hooks them together, and drags them across the countryside on really, really long metal rods. And people sit in them and eat and read and play bridge. I spent a lot of time looking out the window. I saw castles and sheep and a few beehives.

I fully believe that humans will go to space, one day, and build colonies and eat weird tasting potatoes grown in an artificial environment or eat weird tasting potatoes that aren't actually potatoes because they are native to Caprica, not Earth. All the common theories of space travel tend to lean towards space ships: big ones, small ones, ones with sails and nuclear engines and jump drives that allow them to skip over massive chunks of space or fly faster than the speed of light (a very useful trick, considering the size of the universe).

But what I want is a space train--a number of boxes run together in a chain and dragged from here to there by a massive engine harnessing the power of a star.

It makes sense: each car would explode away from Earth separately, and they would then be assembled while in orbit. Once assembled, the engine would leave orbit dragging a number of boxes and people behind it. Then, if one car exploded while taking off, only a few people would die, but the whole train wouldn't be ruined. If it were a big enough train, entire colonies could start out, ready and willing to colonize New Scotland and New China and New New England.

And when they look out the window of this train--the space train--instead of sheep and castles and beehives, they would see stars and spaceships and gravity whales, and on their way to New Scotland, they could make a stop at New New York and visit the black statue of liberty that sings when the wind whistles through her teeth, or visit the Big Apple which is actually the original, red spaceship that brought everyone to this planet.

New Scotland would be a planet of rolling hills and sparkling crags, with boiling water in Equatorial Ocean, and massive spheres of ice in the North, home to a particularly ornery species of furry dinosaurs. They would keep their royal crown, scepter, and stone in a sacred box hidden in a secret spot on the highest mountain in the world, and Great Britain would not rule over her any more. Then children would learn how their ancestors escaped from the rule of the Queen of England by traversing a billion miles across the universe and settling here, on the beautiful blue-green planet of New Scotland.

So if we could maybe hurry our technological advancement up a bit, then maybe someday, instead of backpacking across Scotland, I could backpack across the universe.

And for your entertainment, I have included this video about the Scottish boy in the Scottish McDonalds. 

Administrative Note: posting schedule will be changing, but I don't yet know to what. Thanks.

Top Ten Reasons to Become an Astronaut

NASA just posted a blog titled "Top Ten Reasons to Become an Astronaut". Their top ten reasons are great. But here are my top ten reasons. They are better.

10. You get to eat freeze dried food.

9. You get to go to space.

8. You get to wear a really classy, sexy suit sometimes. You get to be a rocketman!

7. You get to go to space.

6. It's confirmation that you're an intelligent, valuable, and wanted member of society.

5. You get to go to space.

4. You get to ride in or drive the fastest vehicle in the known universe. A ROCKETSHIP.

3. You get to go to space.

2. You get to see the world, FROM SPACE.

And the number 1 reason: 

You get to GO TO FREAKING SPACE.

I realize there are dangers: exploding spaceships, loss of oxygen, aliens attacking your vessel, crazy mutant diseases that sneak into the water supply. But here's the thing: have you ever watched a scifi show? Or read a scifi book? Would any one of the characters in those shows say it wasn't worth all those dangers to go to space?

No. It's worth it. Let's go to space. Everybody.

For your convenience I have links to four different companies with space program job openings. If you're qualified, then by all means: APPLY. Speaking Russian is also a plus.

NASA Job Description 

Virgin Galactic Job Openings

SpaceX Positions

Blue Origin Hot Jobs

Joining the Military might also be an option. But talk to a recruiter. Be smart.

One day, I'll be carried away...

Fission Rockets. Deep Space. Opportunity.

Technology is a weird animal.

Look at some of these recent headlines:

"NASA Rover Spends Winter Probing Inside Red Planet"

"Beijing Releases Air Pollution Data""

"Nike Unveils Wristband that Measures Athletes' Movements"

"Congress Shelves SOPA, PIPA"

"Project Bitfrost: Rockets of the Future?"

"Internet Uprising Shuts Down Piracy Bill"

"1st Private Rocket Launch to Space Station Delayed Until March"

"Rescuers Use Explosives to Open Costa Concordia Wreck"

"Senior Al Queda Figure Killed In Drone Strike"

Talking about it can sound like a foreign language, but technology allows us to do an awfully lot. We can change the structural shape of our faces. We can travel anywhere--to China, to Antarctica, to the top of Mount Everest, to the bottom of the ocean, to space. We can make the blind see and the deaf hear. We can destroy entire cities. We can build entire cities. We can build machines to do our work for us--from calculators, to computers, to oil drills, to remote surgery, to robots, to space probes.

But you know where we've failed? Rockets.

Look at it this way: if you bought a computer last year, it's already old. This form of technology is progressing so rapidly that in the last fifteen years we've gone from giant clonky old things with very limited storage space and processing power to the average consumer having instantaneous access to information and being able to store multiple terabytes of it with their own equipment. The phones we carry around with us everyday have more processing power than a room full of computers did in the 1980s. Playing music in the last twenty years has gone from 8track tapes to regular tapes to CDs to ipods.

But since the Cold War, since we put Buzz Aldridge and Neil Armstrong on the moon, how far has our rocket technology come? To answer this question, let me quote Tabitha Smith, research lead for project Bifrost: "The rockets that sent men to the moon were powered by chemical combustion, which in its most powerful form ignites hydrogen with oxygen. The space shuttle main engine, essentially the state of the art for rocket propulsion, uses the same chemicals." In other words, this technology hasn't progressed very far. This method of propulsion, while it does its job getting us beyond the atmosphere and into the empty space beyond, can't take us very much further.

Rockets are not only used for spaceflight but for war. We use rockets for warheads and rocket sleds, fireworks and ejection seats, satellites and jet packs. So why have we neglected research in this area? Probably because it's expensive.

There are new technologies on the horizon. Currently, scientists are working on Project Bifrost, which is a method of rocket propulsion that uses fission instead of combustion. If this technology succeeds, it would allow scientists to man deep space missions, to go search for and visit all the new planets the Kepler telescope is finding, to explore nebulae and galaxies and to experiment with time by orbiting a black hole.

I want to go to space. But more than that, I want us to go to space. I want humans to spread out and multiply, to occupy other planets, other galaxies, other worlds--to explore the universe.

Here's why:

It's beautiful, it's magnificent, it's breathtaking. It's a risk--one that I hope we are willing to take.

After Curiosity Killed the Cat, She Got a Masters in Astrophysics

Yesterday I was at work. I was lying on the ramp on stage right, waiting for the bloody-long counting house scene to finish, and staring up through the grid at the ceiling--arched-brick vaulted ceilings are very cool. A bit of light bled from stage, but otherwise the only colours immediately visible to my eyes were various shades of black. I started imagining that I was not looking up, but instead looking down.

I kept looking down--down 25 feet with nothing to stop me from falling into the arched-brick trench, except for one lonely pipe sticking out from the grid. It was awesome. I love space--and not just outer space, but all kinds of space (another reason why the ocean is so magnificent).

This should help you understand why I am jealous of the Mars Rover. Curiosity not only gets to soar into the atmosphere and look down on Earth from way up in the sky, but she has blasted completely through the atmosphere into the great vacuum of space surrounding our little tiny planet, and has managed to already (in less than a month!) travel more than 31 million miles towards Mars. That said, she still has over 300 million miles left to traverse. To top it off, she gets to land on a completely different planet and explore miles and miles of countryside more or less untouched by humans.

While I may be a little jealous, I am also extremely excited. Curiosity has a lot of technologically advanced equipment on board. This is what she has planned for us here on Earth:

• Information about rocks (you probably guessed that one)
• What is all this methane from? A theory about whether life does or doesn't exist on Mars. (Finally! Evidence one way or the other!)
• Pictures. IN COLOUR. Let me repeat that. COLOUR PICTURES. Panoramic ones, too! Not just pictures of the rocks, but of the landscape and terrain, and already they are planning to stitch them together. Somebody buy me a poster!
• COLOUR VIDEO. Did you catch that one? COLOUR VIDEO. We get to WATCH the scenery of MARS, as well as the descent from outer space to the surface. Also, let me add this: it's HIGH DEF. I hope it comes out in theatres.
• Best yet, it's going to EMAIL IT TO US FROM MARS. Okay, email might not be quite what is happening, but you get the drift. It's going to send it to us. We don't have to wait. Well, I might have to wait. But the scientists don't. And the sooner the scientists get it, the sooner they share!

Curiosity has three cameras, four spectrometers (which measure light), two radiation detectors, an environmental sensor, and an atmospheric sensor. The size of a small SUV, she has 6 wheel drive, can turn 360 degrees in place, and has the ability to climb steep hills. Basically, she's the coolest robot we've ever made.

Currently, the rover is on a steady, unhindered track towards Mars, and is already working to monitor the effects of radiation while protected by the spaceship, with the hope that this will help us understand how this sort of trip might affect a human.

One day I hope to travel to Mars, although I doubt the chances of that are particularly high. For now, I'll just stare up into the deep dark heights of the theatre, and imagine I'm looking down from a spaceship at the dark arched-brick vaulted side of Mars.