My younger brother alerted me to the fascinating news that mezuzot will be going into outer space next month.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a mezuzah is a small case placed upon the doorpost of a Jewish home. The mezuzah itself is mostly decorative, but inside the mezuzah is placed a scroll with a passages from Deuteronomy (chapter 6 verses 4-9 and chapter 11 verses 13-21). The mezuzah is not a good-luck charm, or anything like that; it is simply an indication that the family living in the home is Jewish and chooses to follow the commandment to place the mezuzah on the doorpost.

It turns out that astronaut Greg Chamitoff, who is Jewish, has decided to take two mezuzot into space next month when he travels on the shuttle Discovery to the International Space Station. The mezuzot were designed by artist Laura Cowan; one looks like the Apollo spacecraft, and the other is shaped like the space shuttle.

Wisely, it appears that Chamitoff is not going to attempt to place the mezuzot on the outside of the space station hatch. But just having them present is nice symbolism.

Some references:
The Kosher Space Shuttle (Israel Jewish Scene, Ynetnews)
Up, up and oy vey – how I sent my mezuzot into space (Jewish Chronicle)
Tel Aviv mezuzot to blast off into the heavens (Jerusalem Post)

Tags: jewish, science, space

As readers here know, despite my being very involved in local politics I don't often post about politics on my blog. The main reason I don't is that it can be far too easy for political discussion to cross the line from informative respectful disagreement to personal attacks.

However, as of yesterday I find myself in something of a bind. Next Tuesday I'm voting in the Massachusetts Democratic Primary, and the candidate I was planning to vote for, John Edwards, has dropped out of the race.

When people asked me why I was voting for Edwards, I usually responded with the following joke: it's about time a Christian white male had a chance at the presidency. The fact that a major party's presidential candidate is going to be either a woman or an African-American, and that most of the country casually accepts this achievement, is a wonderful thing. I haven't been this excited since the election of 1872. (What happened in 1872, you ask? Go look it up. I'll wait. If you can't find anything on your first search, try the name "Victoria Woodhull.")

Despite the obvious excitement and intensity Clinton's and Obama's supporters have for their chosen candidates, however, I was most interested in Edwards's populist, anti-poverty message. Yes, I know he's rich and has his flaws; so do all the candidates. But I was impressed with his stand on certain issues and the way he presented himself. In particular, I was pleased to hear about how he addressed the Writer's Guild of America in person during not just one, but two of their rallies. Union support runs deep in me ever since my father died while he was on strike and the union took care of us; it's an emotional connection that I will never shake.

So Edwards was the candidate I had chosen to support, and now he's gone. And I find myself with the dilemma of deciding who to vote for next week, Clinton or Obama. On most of the issues that I've been following, there's nothing to help me differentiate between the two of them. So I decided to do what any self-respecting science-fiction writer would do, and judge them based on their proposed plans for space exploration.

There doesn't seem to be much out there, but I have found two relevant documents so far. First, there is Barack Obama's Plan for American Leadership in Space, released three weeks ago. According to the document, Obama supports the development of the Orion CEV and completion of the International Space Station. He also supports more robotic missions and enhanced science and mathematics education here on Earth. But nowhere in this statement does he speak to the question of manned missions. I want to see humans return to the moon in my lifetime, and I want to see the beginnings of a mission to Mars. On both of those, Obama's statement is disturbingly silent.

Sadly, though, Hillary Clinton doesn't seem to be that interested in my core issues either. In her October press release, Ending the War on Science, Clinton does say that she'll take what I consider a better approach towards supporting science and scientific research than the current administration. But while she says she is committed to the same things Obama mentions (she just uses different language), and she refers to "future human exploration," again there is no specific mention of manned missions to either the moon or Mars.

So in the end, I'm still a newly-minted undecided voter. If anyone out there can give me good reasons to support either candidate over the other, based upon the core issues of manned space exploration, I'd like to know.

Per aspera ad astra.

Tags: history, personal, politics, science, space

For those of you just tuning in, the NASA Messenger spacecraft will be doing its first flyby of Mercury today. It's the first spacecraft from Earth to visit Mercury since Mariner 10 in 1974.

I've been seeing contradictory reports about when the closest approach will take place; I've seen both "around noon" and "2:04 PM EST." If anyone has more accurate information, I'd appreciate it.

Messenger is supposed to settle into orbit around Mercury in 2011, but it's scheduled to make two more passes of the planet before then. I'm looking forward to the new science – and the new pictures!

Tags: astronomy, science, space

Since I'll be offline starting tonight through Saturday night, I thought I'd take the time today to acknowledge tomorrow's fiftieth anniversary of Sputnik, which was launched into space on October 4, 1957.

For those of you who don't know much about Sputnik, I've listed a few references at the end of this post. I also found this fascinating page, The New York Times on AOL: Sputnik, which the Times apparently put together for the fortieth anniversary ten years ago. It includes links to some of their original news coverage and audio files of Sputnik's signals.

The image of the Times's front page of October 5, 1957 pretty much sums up the event in its three-line, full width headline:

SOVIET FIRES EARTH SATELLITE INTO SPACE;
IT IS CIRCLING THE GLOBE AT 18,000 M.P.H.;
SPHERE TRACKED IN 4 CROSSINGS OVER U.S.

I wasn't alive at the time of the Sputnik launch, but I have read about how much it frightened Americans at the time. The fact that the Soviet Union hit this milestone before the United States did spurred the country into action. Suddenly, more funding was found for science education and for our own fledgling space program, and of course, when Kennedy was elected president in 1960, he set the goal for a manned moon landing before the end of the decade. The space race was on.

There's a lot I could discuss here, such as the Cold War paranoia that I and others of my generation experienced in our own lifetime, or the sad state of our space program after the Apollo missions ended. But instead, I'll leave analysis to others, and just mark this milestone with that sense of wonder at human achievement.

Look what we've done. Look what we can do.

References:
Wikipedia: Sputnik Program
Wikipedia: Sputnik 1
NASA's Sputnik page

Tags: personal, science, space

On September 5, 1977, thirty years ago today, Voyager 1 began its journey to explore our solar system. Today, it continues to fly through space, bringing a message of humanity's existence to the stars.

I remember the excitement of growing up during this mission, as we got to learn about the planets of the outer solar system and what they looked like up close. The first good pictures of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all came from the Voyager missions.

Godspeed, Voyager 1.

(For more information, see NASA's Website on Voyager.)

Tags: astronomy, history, personal, science, space

Exactly one year ago today, the International Astronomical Union, at their General Assembly in Prague, voted to demote Pluto from planet to dwarf planet.

(An excellent post about the public's reaction since can be found at The Enduring Power of Pluto.)

Tags: astronomy, history, pluto, science, space

On this day exactly ten years from now, a total solar eclipse will be visible over much of the continental United States. The eclipse's path will start in the Pacific ocean, and will pass through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, the northeast corner of Kansas, Missouri, southern Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, northeast Georgia, and the Carolinas. Millions of people will be able to see the eclipse, assuming the weather holds out.

The duration of the eclipse will be about two and a half minutes at maximum, at the center line. The width of visibility will be about 115 km.

This will be the first total eclipse to pass over any part of the United States since 1991, when a total eclipse passed over Hawaii. Plan your trip now! (Ten years into the future is not as far out as you think...)


References:
USA Total Solar Eclipse 2017, everything you need to know to plan to see the eclipse, including links to details maps, courtesy of Dan McGlaun
Hermit Eclipse: Total Solar Eclipse: August 21 2017 (with some excellent maps)
Path of Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 Aug 21 (a NASA website with coordinates, which links to a map of the globe with the eclipse's path)
Wikipedia: Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017

Tags: astronomy, history, science, space

Yesterday, Science published a paper by Michael E. Brown and Emily Schaller, reporting that Eris is actually more massive than Pluto, which would imply that if Pluto were to be considered a planet, Eris would have to be one as well. Anne Minard wrote an article on this discovery for the National Geographic News, and as it so happens she called me to get my opinion as the president of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet (SP3).

Minard's article can be found at Pluto Smaller Than Nearby Dwarf Planet Eris, Study Finds. I'm actually found on page 2, and the article pretty much sums up where I stand:

Michael A. Burstein is president of the Society for the Preservation of Pluto as a Planet, which goes by the acronym SP3. The group of astronomy buffs formed in the spring of 2006, when rumors first started circulating that Pluto was in trouble.

Burstein preferred the IAU's initial idea for a planet definition, which was never voted upon at their solar-system-shattering meeting last August.

By that definition—that a planet should directly orbit a star and be massive enough to be round—Pluto would still be a planet, as would dwarf planets Eris and Ceres, a large, round asteroid orbiting near Jupiter.

It's fine if we end up with 50 or even 100 planets as new objects are discovered, Burstein said. We could keep the math easy by calling the old guard, including Pluto, "classical planets," he added.

For now, Burstein's group is laying low to see what the pros do—under the guidance of New Horizons' Alan Stern. Stern is leading the charge of professional astronomers to dismiss the IAU's ruling.

"People just aren't using the IAU definition because it's so substantially flawed," he said. "Even their own members, and I'm one, aren't using the IAU definition."

The debate over a better definition was a hot topic at the April meeting of the European Geophysical Union. And it's already part of the agenda for the February 2008 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Tags: astronomy, personal, pluto, science, space

As folks might recall, I'm a big fan of Dr. Carolyn Porco, the planetary scientist who is the leader of the Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission and director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations.

In honor of the 45th anniversary of John Glenn's orbit, Dr. Porco has an op-ed piece in today's New York Times: NASA Goes Deep by Carolyn Porco (permalink; no registration required). The piece is definitely worth reading, and I commend it to your attention. The gist of her piece is that there should be no conflict between manned exploration and robotic exploration of the solar system, but that we should pursue them both as we move through the early years of the 21st century. In a way, she forgives the human race for abandoning manned exploration once we reached the Moon in 1969, as she points out that this is part of a pattern that has existed throughout history. But it is now time for us to return to the Moon, and this time to stay.

My hope is that Porco's vision of the future will come to pass. As she herself points out, her vision requires "adequate financing and a long-term cross-administration commitment that supports steady, uninterrupted progress." The cost of space exploration sounds large when presented as final budget numbers, but these numbers often pale in comparison to the amounts spent on other government programs. I hope the American people, and the citizens of the world, will make the commitment to reach for the stars. Because if we don't, in five billion years, all traces of our existence, that we were once here, the we mattered – all of that will be wiped out in an instant.

Tags: science, space

A year ago today, NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto. Therefore, this is a good time to remind folks about The Great Pluto Debate coming up on February 4.

I know that sometimes this journal might seem like all Pluto, all the time, even though we have the savepluto LiveJournal for Pluto news. But I want to mention the Debate here, because the event will be of interest to anyone fascinated by astronomy and our solar system. It's not just for Pluto supporters, but for anyone interested in the question of how we should classify Pluto.

The flyer for the event is posted at http://savepluto.livejournal.com/10943.html. I have to say that I am very impressed by what the Clay Center Observatory managed to do. Panelists for the debate include Owen Gingerich, the chair of the IAU Planet Definition Committee, and Brian Marsden, the Director of the Minor Planets Center. Both of these gentleman have agreed to come over from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to participate, which boggles my mind as much as it delights me.

I'm asking for your help in publicizing it, especially if you're local to Boston. If you're a teacher or a parent, please bring this event to the attention of your school. The Debate is appropriate for ages 8 and up, and schools may find it valuable to send their students.

And if you're interested in attending, please go to http://www.claycenter.org/astro and make sure to register for the event. Seating is limited, so register as early as you can.

Tags: astronomy, history, pluto, science, space