Accelerating Returns

In August, Richard Dell and Alan Rich from the Google Lunar X-Prize team STELLAR came to our school to talk about their proposal for lunar exploration. In the course of the discussion, some students questioned whether or not the progress Mr. Dell and Mr. Rich were talking about could possibly occur so quickly. Mr. Dell argued that we can expect that rate of progress, and referred to Kurzweil’s law. It might be worth looking into what that “Law” really is.
In a nutshell, it proposes exponential growth in technological progress. But a nutshell doesn’t really do it justice, so we must step back a bit first. Have you heard of Moore’s Law? This states that the capabilities of digital electronic devices will increase exponentially, doubling every two years. Capabilities include such factors as computer processing speed, but also things that are found in consumer electronics such as memory storage capacity, or pixels in a digital camera. Moore’s law was formulated and stated in a paper by Intel co-founder in 1965. It has pretty much been true for electronic hardware. (an argument has been made that software complexity slows things down faster than hardware speeds things up, but that’s another blog entry…)
Ray Kurzweil takes this idea one step farther, and extrapolates to before the invention of the integrated circuit, and beyond to technologies that haven’t yet been invented. He argues that the rate of change is accelerating; that the technological progress during the 20th century (think: Henry Ford and the Wright brothers to Bill Gates and the Space Shuttle) will be exceeded by a factor of a THOUSAND in the 21st century. It even suggests a “technological singularity”, technological progress hastened beyond anything ever seen as a result of machines smarter than humans learning to improve their own designs…
This is not to say that everyone accepts Kurzweil’s Law, there are plenty of criticisms and you can find them in some of the web sites referenced below. Thanks to Richard Dell for helping with the research for this posting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Singularity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Kurzweil#The_Law_of_Accelerating_Returns
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0610.html?m%3D1

No Sunspots- a 50 year low!

In class we discussed sunspot and other solar activities. I set up the refractor telescope after class in order to image the sun so that you could see some sunspots; but there appeared to be nothing there!  Nothing.  I thought that was very strange, so I did some research.  Guess what?  Just this month NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center announced that we are in the midst of a deep minimum of the solar cycle the likes of which have not been seen since BEFORE the launch of Sputnik (see earlier blogs), even before Mr. Mueller was born!  You have to go back to 1954 to find a year with a quieter sun. If the trend continues, it could end up being the quietest year for solar activity in a century.  Having said that, they believe that the 20th century was a particularly active time for solar activity, and that this may be more of a normal level of sunspot activity.  It turns out that solar wind is also at its lowest level in 50 years.  Coincidence?

  

On the right is the sun on September 27 2001; on the left Sept 27 2008.  Notice the total lack of sunspots. (Credit: ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO))

Sources: 

Phillips, Dr Tony. "Spotless Sun: Blankest Year Of The Space Age." UPI Space Daily. 03 Oct 2008. n/a. eLibrary Science. Proquest. UMI - INTERNAL ELIBRARY SCIENCE TRIAL ACCOUNT. 16 Oct 2008. .

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081006184638.htm 

Hubble: time to say goodbye?

A couple of weeks ago, the famous Hubble Space Telescope developed an equipment malfunction that prevented it from returning data to earth. Although the equipment had been operating contiuously since 1990, and in spite of the fact that there is already a spare part on board, some have been calling for the venerable spacecraft to be put out to pasture. As you might expect, much of the argument comes down to money.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, at a cost of about $1.6 billon. Since that time another $8.4 billion has been invested. To service the telescope this year will cost another $900 million dollars. A new infrared telescope due to be launched in 2013 is estimated to cost $4.5 billion, so the Hubble repairs are a lot cheaper than a new optical telescope would be. In addition, it would extend the Hubble's life expectancy anohter six or seven years.

I have seen several accounts of who made the decision, but recently a "Top Ten" of Hubble images has been available. You can see all ten at the link below, but I've copied a couple of my favorites below.

http://www.cosmiclighthouse.com/jun08/articles/hubble_top10

In 1995, after just five years in operation, NASA also announced the "Top Ten" discoveries made by Hubble:

1*Offered the first conclusive evidence for the existence of immense black holes, millions or billions of times the mass of Earth's Sun. 2* Showed that the universe might be much younger than had been previously thought. This was accomplished by calculating the universe's expansion rate based on an accurate Hubble distance measurement to a remote galaxy. 3* Gave the first direct visual evidence that the universe is evolving as predicted in Big Bang cosmology, by resolving the shapes of the farthest galaxies ever seen. 4* Discovered that quasars, very distant and remarkably bright objects, are even more mysterious than commonly thought because many do not dwell in the cores of galaxies, but are isolated in space. 5* Suggested that dark matter in the universe is more exotic than previously thought, by finding that nature doesn't make enough of the extremely small Red Dwarf stars that were once a leading candidate for the universe's "missing mass." 6* Supported the Big Bang theory by refining estimates of the amount of deuterium in space, an element created in the initial cosmic fireball that gave birth to the universe. 7* Solved the mystery of intergalactic clouds of hydrogen by showing that they are really gigantic halos of galaxies. 8* Implied that planets, and presumably life, might be abundant in the universe by discovering disks of dust that might be embryonic planetary systems around young stars. 9* Provided important details and surprising findings of the spectacular collisions of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter last year. 10* Revealed dynamic weather changes on nearly all the planets with a clarity once attainable only with spacecraft flybys. Scientists found that most planets' atmospheres are much more active than previously believed, and the ability of Hubble to 'revisit' the planets allows frequent monitoring similar to Earth weather satellites. http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/1995/95-56.txt

http://www.space.com/news/080930-hubble-worth-saving.html

MESSENGER shows details of Mercury!

More of Mercury is now known than ever before. Monday the MESSENGER spacecraft came within 27,000 km of Mercury- that's 17,000 miles- one fifteenth the distance between the earth and the moon. Very close. It certainly does look a lot like the moon. Go to the link below, and follow the hyperlink to "MESSENGER photo gallery" to see some great high resolution pictures.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/07oct_firstresults.htm

"Unbelievably large" telescopes proposed for the Moon

It might sound like cutting edge science, but this idea was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton hundreds of years ago! The idea is that instead of a solid mirror, a mirror be made of a rotating bowl of liquid- the surface will naturally form a curved parabolic shape needed to focus incoming light. The only disadvantage is that the telescope can only point in one direction- straight up!



It turns out that this design is not so novel, though- The University of British Columbia has a six meter rotating liquid mirror in their Zenith telescope- making it the third largest optical telescope in North America. Six meters is about 18 feet, well over 200 inches- our school telescope has an eight inch mirror!
Furthermore, there is another telescope that only points up- the massive 1000 foot ( 12,000 inch!) Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, the largest single dish telescope of any kind on the entire planet- the largest in the universe as far as we know! That telescope has technology to allow it to be pointed a little bit- otherwise the rotation of the Earth determines where it is pointed.

Of course, if a lunar telescope were placed near one of the moon's poles, it would get a changing view every 18 years or so. The moon, like the earth, wobbles ("precession"). The moon's wobble is completed about every 19 years. Further, of the telescope were located inside a grater, it could stay in the cool dark all the time; solar panels could be placed on illuminated mountain peaks nearby to produce the electricity needed to run it.

So how big is "unbelievably large"? Well, the first proposed would be a 20 meter ( 60 foot) telescope, much larger than any optical telescope on Earth, but others proposed are up to 100 meters across- larger than the length of a football field!




http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/09oct_liquidmirror.htm?list65645