Space Humor

It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up on decoding its meaning. It came from a well-respected friend of mine, so I responded with a short reply:

"What!?"

"You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." The answer came promptly.

My CRT was large and heavy, and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way, so after a little brainstorming of the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal.

I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise.

"Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly, and after realizing the picture, the big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back:

"Wow!"

I didn't have to wait long for the next message:

"LOL!"

"What!?" I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realized I was too uninformed about new internet fashion, so I canceled the message and opened a new Netscape window instead, called www.altavista.com, and 'googled' new internet words. Ever since then, LOL has been at the top of my list of favorite acronyms. Along with all those cute ASCII faces. ;-)

In my case, and probably with many people as well, laughter is one of those most powerful cures for everything. The almighty vaccine for all diseases. Especially boredom and poor moodiness. LOL moments somehow come naturally with live social occasions and in movies, but in books they have one extra dimension. I really can't explain why that is. Perhaps funny moments in the written world often come unexpectedly and are more genuine. Take, for instance, Andy Weir's "The Martian." The hilarious parts in the book were genuinely funnier than in the film. At least with me... Well, nevermind that. So, to get to the chase, last month I read three extraordinarily funny books in the realm of science fiction and space exploration. So here they are in this short review, sorted by the count of LOL moments I had during reading. In descending order, of course.

The first one was "Where the Hell is Tesla?" by Rob Dircks. I stumbled on this one by accident, and boy, I am glad I did. Nikola Tesla is one of my favorite men in the history of people, science, and engineering, and here in Serbia, especially during my childhood, Tesla was idealized and always portrayed in a too serious manner. Anyhow, when I saw the title with Tesla playing the major role in the comedy story, I couldn't resist, and I didn't regret a single penny. It was by far the funniest book I read in a while. It had it all: decent science fiction based on cutting-edge scientific theories of the multiverse, the romance and friendship within different storylines, cute aliens, sci-fi battles of enormous proportions, great style of writing, Nikola Tesla in the most entertaining meaning of the word, and of course... Chip. I am not going to spoil the reading for you, but I will tell you this. On one occasion, I almost dropped my Kindle on the hard floor because of one of the strongest LOL moments. Enough said.

The second is "Jazz of Artemis." In the context of today's post, this is how I would name the book if I were Andy Weir. Of course, his new book is not a comedy per se. But it is not "The Martian" as well. However, in the realm of the funny moments, it is a decent sequel. Way better and much funnier. Jazz is... let me find the right word... an extraordinary girl on multiple levels. I enjoyed her adventures fully, and I do hope for the real sequel this time. I mean, with Jazz around, what can go wrong on the Moon? I really hope there will be a movie after this one as well, but not solely because of the entertainment part and all the LOL moments, especially with that Svoboda guy and his ability to manufacture various devices that do or do not belong to ESA blueprints and worksheets.

But seriously, what Andy Weir did with creating a fully functional city on the moon with both working technology and society organization is amazing and also extraordinary. It definitely deserves the motion pictures, and I am sure filming the movie that takes the entire story and action on the moon is another challenge. I am sure Ridley Scott is buzzing his mind with this as we speak.

Finally, and to use the cliché, last but not least comes the good old British humor. Something I grew up with was all the great TV shows like "Monty Python" and "Only Fools and Horses" or short comedy sketches and skits by Dave Allen, Benny Hill, Rowan Atkinson, and others. But in the flashlight of the parody novels, the throne is still with Douglas Adams and his "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This was the first book I experienced LOL moments with, way before the LOL acronym was ever invented. "The Worst Man on Mars" by Mark Roman and Corben Duke was probably the most similar novel I read in a long while.

This is also a parody, but not really as much as its famous predecessor. This book follows plausible science fiction and doesn't go into wild imagination, like the restaurant at the end of the universe or "42". I really did like many technological backgrounds inside, like artificial intelligence or a space elevator, for example. But the humor with this one comes first, and the robots in their sitcom on Mars are something I do recommend warmly.

:-)

Refs:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25053578-where-the-hell-is-tesla
http://www.andyweirauthor.com/books/artemis-hc
https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Man-Mars-Mark-Roman/dp/1536930970
http://www.milanzivic.com/2013/06/dave-allen.html
https://www.space.com/38725-artemis-andy-weir-author-interview.html

Gravis Gravity by Gravitons

Don't take this title too seriously. It's wrong on multiple levels. Grammatically and scientifically. Nonetheless, it fits perfectly for this post. As for grammar amiss, I used the Latin root word 'Gravis', which means heavy, and it is actually the perfect adjective for gravity as we perceive it here on Earth. As for the scientific issue, the rest of the title might be all wrong. If we glimpse into the features of the three main natural forces of the universe, it is obvious that they work in more or less the same fashion—they use carriers or elementary particles to mediate the force through the force field. The photon is one of them, and it carries electromagnetism, while strong and weak forces in the nucleus, respectively, are mediated by gluons and W/Z bosons, and they are all confirmed in experiments. Gravitons are supposed to be the same thing as gravitational force, but they are never found and confirmed either directly or consequently. Ever since Einstein, we have had second thoughts about whether or not gravity is acting as a 'normal' force at all or if it is something entirely different.

Think about this: you are located in the spacecraft far in space outside of the big, heavy planets and stars and truly experience microgravity. You start the engine, and your fancy spaceboat starts accelerating with about 10 m/s, and each second increases the speed with 10 m/s more. Actually, the right number is 9.806 m/s per second, which is the measurable 1 g force of the planet Earth. In our thought experiment, a spacecraft that works in a fashion that always uses constant acceleration and half the journey from, i.e., Earth to Mars, pushes with 1g, and the other half turns around and uses backthrust with the same 1 g, could not only provide a normal human environment inside the craft, but it would also be very fast and reach the red planet in just three days*. If you can't imagine how this would be working in real space travel, I will only state the name of one fictional spaceship from the sci-fi literature. Its name is Rocinante**, and it is one great piece of interplanetary Corvette from the amazing franchise "The Expanse".

Well, science fiction aside, the point here is that gravity and acceleration seem to be one thing. The obvious conclusion in this chain of thoughts is that Earth and Rocinante are both capable of creating gravity of one steady g. At least it looks the same from the observer's point of view. However, we know for sure that Earth is round and rotates, and no matter where you are standing, it will pull you toward its center without accelerating anything. It's just enormously big and does something to the very fabric of spacetime itself, which is actually pulling you by invoking some mechanism we don't understand yet. Perhaps by using gravitons—our friendly force carriers from the title? Actually, both particle and string theories predict gravitons as real things. In the former case, it is a massless boson with spin-2, while in one of the string theories, it is sort of a closed string with a low-energy vibrational state. I will not go into further scientific details in both theories, but it is evident that a massless particle or low-energy string is very hard to observe, as it either never or extremely rarely interacts with other particles on subatomic levels. Let's compare it with neutrinos for a moment—an elementary particle with no charge and the tiniest mass we can detect. Their large, super-awesome underground detectors, like the Super-Kamiokande Neutrino Detector in Japan, detect only a handful of neutrino interactions with regular matter over a long period of time. For example, when light from the Big Kaboom from supernova SN1987A reached the Earth, Kamiokande detected the sum of only 19 neutrinos from this super explosion. And to use Carl Sagan terminology, there were billions and billions of neutrinos only from that event. Detection of a single graviton, even if we consider some theories that suggest gravitons with non-zero mass, would be extremely hard.

Ever since Einstein's general theory of relativity, scientists have been struggling to find the best description for gravity. If we are looking at it as a fourth natural fundamental force, compared to the other three, it is the weakest by far; for example, gravity is about 36 orders of magnitude weaker than electromagnetic force, and it probably has a trivial influence on subatomic particles. However, it is cumulative and always attractive and therefore plays the major role in the macroscopic realm, making it possible for planets to orbit their stars, and it is behind the recently experimentally confirmed gravitational waves by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) experiment. Einstein himself first noticed the difference in behavior of four fundamental forces and spoke of gravity as not a 'normal' force per se but more as a fictitious (or apparent) force that is observed only as a consequence of the curvature of spacetime caused by the presence of large masses or energy throughout the universe. A very nice example of one apparent force is the Coriolis force, or Coriolis effect. It is observed as a force, but in reality it is just an apparent deflection of an object that is moving in the spherical system, such as Earth, that rotates. Deflection is caused by the fact that the rotating speed of the Earth is faster for a moving object located near the Equator than for one near the pole. In simple words, the system you are moving in is also in its own motion that must be included when you want to calculate the actual path of yours; otherwise, you will never reach your intended target. And in the universe, everything is in motion. Gravity could be just that—an apparent force that is caused by the interaction of large moving masses with the fabric of the universe itself that might be in its own motion as well. Or perhaps gravity could be the outcome of the interactions of mass with the potential energy of that fabric itself. In science fiction and also in the quantum science realm, this is known as zero-point energy, quantum vacuum zero-point energy, or simply vacuum energy. If I understand this correctly, by applying Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (we can only know the position or velocity of a moving particle, but never both), every quantum system to sustain this principle must have minimum non-zero energy. In the case of a vacuum, this is the minimum energy of all fields in the universe, including the necessary Higgs field needed to provide the existence of every mass everywhere in the cosmos in the first place.

In the conclusion of the scientific part of this post, I am hoping that whether the future will confirm gravitons and 'pronounce' gravity as a real fundamental force or we finally find how big masses influence the tiny quantum world of the universe's fundamental ingredients, in the end we will have our answers, which might bring more challenges and questions for future generations. Maybe even ways of mastering it by applying some ingeniously clever engineering of future gravity-related devices and tools. Of course, how exactly the world would be changed with full understanding of gravity and gravity-based appliances; perhaps the best vision is in the science fiction of the amazing futuristic thriller "Influx", written by Daniel Suarez.

I am always eagerly acquiring novels with gravity premises in the background if the plot teaser is interesting enough, so I bought 'Influx' a while ago and stored it in my Kindle's queue for future reading. I was a little busy with my work and reading a couple of other novels, but now I have this regret of why I didn't read it sooner. It was really amazing! Just exactly as comprehensive and entertaining as I was hoping for when I saw the book cover in the first place. The science behind the gravity mirror or deflector invention in the book is perfect and just in the realm of sci-fi plausibility I am always looking for. It was explained perfectly well in both the science behind the invention and also in the workflow of all engineering vehicles, armor, satellites, and other appliances that were built on it. If you add to the main 'gravity' twist all 'regular' sci-fi inventions such as AIs, robots, cold fusion, quantum computers, futuristic weapons, immortality, and other non-sci-fi thriller stuff, please believe me that my additional regret after reading this book was that it had only 500+ pages. I wouldn't mind if Daniel added more stories to it and created a sequel. I read somewhere that FOX is interested in the movie, and hopefully this will see the daylight in the end. It perfectly fits for a motion picture, not just because of the science and story but also because of the potential artistic and visual aspect of gravitational falls in all directions that was extraordinary.

Image refs:
https://www.artstation.com/artist/deningart
http://www.thethoughtarchitects.com/2014/04/14/detecting-neutrinos-neil-degrasse-tyson/
http://www.thedaemon.com/

In-text refs:
* http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2012/08/30/flying-to-mars-in-three-days/
** http://expanse.wikia.com/wiki/Rocinante

Refs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graviton
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/01/08/national/science-health/japans-super-k
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/coriolis_effect.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2mec3vgeaI

Solar System Weirdness

Do you know how big our solar system is? I can't be sure, of course, but there's a strong possibility that common knowledge about our planetary neighborhood ends with enumerating most of the planets—one dwarf planet and a couple of named moons, asteroids, and comets. Amazingly, the truth is far, far beyond that, and believe it or not, if we include the Oort cloud, the solar system, with us representing its only living residents, is approximately 3 light-years in diameter. This is, more or less, equal to 3e+13 kilometers, or 30,000,000,000,000 km. The distance is about 100 million times bigger than the distance to the Moon. It is tremendously huge and just about one and a half light-years shorter than the distance from our sun to the nearest star!

The layout of the solar system*

So next time when you, through your polluted sky, look up and see the Moon, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and occasionally some comet tail or shooting star, remember that what you see is just a fraction of all the weirdness of everything that is gravitationally bonded to the Sun and to each other. So let's see what we don't see with our eyes and check out some weird places, some of them not so far away from our own Earth. And just to be clear, the words 'weird' and 'weirdness' I added in the title and throughout the post are here more for theatrical reasons. Surely, the fact is that what's weird to me and you is only natural behavior and property of the physics of the solar system. We are just trying to understand it.

In such a way, let's start with the first and probably the oldest mystery of the orbiting laws around the Sun. Back then, in the 19th century, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier tried to study Mercury's orbital motion around the Sun in order to post an orbital model based on Isaac Newton's laws of motion. It happened almost a century before Einstein's theory of relativity, which is a current, state-of-the-art mathematical model of gravity and orbital physics, but back then, Verrier's model simply failed to match the observations. In short, Mercury refused to spot itself on predicted spots on the skies, and in every orbit, its perihelion (or orbital spot where the planet is closest to the sun) moved away from predicted places by a small amount. Unfortunately, instead of doubting the equations, like many times before and after in the history, Verrier posted a theory of a new planet or a large orbital body 'inside' Mercury's orbit that might be responsible for Mercury's misbehavior. He even proposed the name 'Vulcan' because of its potentially very hot orbit so near the Sun. This triggered a series of searches for the Vulcan, and until Einstein came up with the theory of relativity (and its predictions of heavily banded space and time continuum near the heavy objects) that perfectly explained all the observations of one system so close to the massive Sun observed from the distance, many professional and amateur astronomers claimed that they found the Vulcan and spotted its transit over the main star. Perhaps the final dots to the mystery were posted by the SOHO and STEREO solar missions, and neither of them found anything planetoid-ish inside Mercury's orbit. Recent calculations go even further and rule out any asteroid revolving around the Sun inside Mercury's orbit that is bigger than 6 km in diameter.

Lagrange points *2

The next weirdness of the gravitational three-dimensional geometry of the solar system (and all the other star systems out there) is called Lagrange points. Physics was observed and defined by the great Italian mathematician and astronomer Joseph-Louis Lagrange in the 18th century. He identified five points in the orbital system of two massive bodies from the perspective of a third small mass. In short, if we consider, for example, the Sun and Earth, there are three points on the connecting line between the star and the planet (L1, L2, and L3) and two more, L4 and L5, positioned on the top of equilateral triangles where two other vertices are occupied by the Sun and Earth. Now, what is special about these places is that small objects positioned in those points would be able to maintain a stable position relative to the large masses. If you check the image to the left, a small rock positioned at point L1 would be able to revolve around the sun with the same orbital period as the Earth. The same goes with the other four points. However, the first three points are pretty unstable, and objects positioned there would tend to fall out of orbit due to gravitational potential energy shown in the image as well with red and blue arrows. L4 and L5, on the other hand, are completely different stories and very stable, and while a spaceship parked in the first three points would need to fire engines constantly in order to stay put, the same spaceship in L4 and L5 would be able to shut the engines down and park it there for eternity. Think of it like the 'egg vs. equinox' myth: even though you can balance the egg on short or narrow ends (and not just on the equinox), this position is pretty unstable, and even a little vibration would knock the egg out of balance. Similarly, L4/5 points would be like putting the egg in the eggcup. Scientifically speaking, within the Earth-Sun system, L1 is very interesting as the point of monitoring the Sun without any orbital interruptions (SOHO is located there), L2 is a great place for orbital telescopes (Planck and the James Webb Space Telescope), and L3 is pretty useless as it is always hidden by the Sun and therefore the origin of all science fiction stories with a counter-Earth located in that very point, sharing the orbit with us while we would always be unable to see it. Of course, there is no planet on the other side of the sun; otherwise, we would detect its gravitational influence. However, if some aliens exist on the mission of monitoring humankind, they would pretty much choose this place to hide their mothership.

Of course, the solar system is crowded with plenty of large orbiting objects, and Lagrange points, i.e., the Sun-Earth system, are not really points per se, and due to gravitational influences of other planets, they vary in position depending on the current positions of other planets in their orbits. The same goes for the Lagrangian system of Earth-Moon with their L4/5 points, for example, suffering additional complications due to the influence of the Sun. But still, these points are ideal for some futuristic space cities orbiting the Earth, and some 40 years ago, Carolyn Meinel and Keith Henson founded 'The L5 Society' around the idea of Gerard K. O'Neill to build a colony that would be positioned in a tiny orbit around the L5 point in the Earth-Moon system. In addition, there are also plans to use L1 and L2 points in the system to build lunar elevators with appropriate counterweights and 'cables' with the use of materials that already exist in production today since they don't require a lot of strength in the process.

Jupiter and inner-solar system asteroids *3

Lastly, the absolute winner in the weirdness competition of the solar system related to Lagrange points is Jupiter and its L4 and L5 points, or in this case, regions. Due to the nature and stability of the orbits within, Jupiter is using them as a, well, sort of, garbage collector. Believe it or not, these two regions are home to more than 6,000 asteroids. They all travel around the sun with the same speed as their father, Jupiter. By astronomical convention, these asteroids are named after the Trojan War, and therefore the entire regions are called 'Jupiter Trojans'. Surely, the three largest asteroids in there are conveniently named Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector, and the region around L4 is called the 'Greek camp', while all the others in L5 belong to the 'Trojan camp'. Other planets also collect junk, dust, and small and big asteroids in their L4/5 points, and even Earth owns one (discovered so far). It is a rock 300 meters in diameter orbiting the Sun along with Earth in L4. There are also space rocks detected in Saturn's moons and their L4/5 points, as well as the dust detected in the moons. It will be interesting what we will find in the (far) future when we start exploring the solar system for real. Lagrange points will surely be on the top of all lists to explore, study, and use. I am more than positive that lots of L4 and L5 points throughout the solar system will be used for various space lighthouses, radio beacons, and a wide variety of communication devices. Besides the large number of asteroids caught by Lagrange, there is one more group of 1000+ asteroids gravitationally bonded with Jupiter. Their name is Hildian asteroids, and they are in so-called orbital resonance with the solar system's biggest planet. In this case, it means that Hilda's aphelion point (the farthest distance from the elliptical center) is in resonance with the planet, and on every third orbit it is positioned directly opposite from Jupiter. The story with inner system asteroids doesn't end here, and if we travel a little bit inside the Jupiter orbit from Trojans and Hildas, soon enough we would stumble into a famous asteroid belt with more than a million rocks larger than 1 km in diameter. At the beginning of the 19th century, among certain groups of astronomers, including Heinrich Olbers, the so-called Bode's law stated that each planet in any star system would be approximately twice as far from the star as the one before. Remarkably, it fits nicely in the solar system with the exception of Neptune and the planet between Mars and Jupiter. Bode initiated a search for the planet to confirm the theory, and when, during the years 1801 and 1802, Ceres and Pallas were found in more or less the same orbit, Olbers suggested that they might be remnants of a large planet named Phaeton. The theory flourished in later years, especially after the discovery of other belts's large and small asteroids. Today we know more about asteroids in the belt and their composition and mass (which is around 4% of the mass of the Moon), and the current theory is that Phaeton never existed and that it was more likely that it was never formed due to heavy attraction from nearby giants. Nevertheless, both Vulcan and Phaeton continued to live in the sci-fi realm and also a couple of mythologies.

If we continue our travel toward the outer edges of the system and pass four gas giants, around 30 AU starts another belt full of heavy objects. Actually, astronomers identified two separate subsystems, one named 'Kuiper belt' and the other 'Scattered disc'. Just like the main 'inner' asteroid belt, they contain many rocky objects and dwarf planets, with Pluto as the most famous one, but also objects composed of methane, ammonia, and water ice. The scattered disk can be described as an elongated subset of the Kuiper Belt containing objects with highly eccentric orbits, like short-period comets that orbit the Sun in less than 200 years. The best-known comet from this bucket is no doubt Halley's Comet. The Kuiper Belt was discovered only recently, in the late 20th century, and its discovery owes a big thank you to conspiracy theorists and science fiction writers. Actually, after the last gas giant, Neptune, is found by following the lead of the deviations in Uranus's orbit that were caused by Neptune, the same lead is pursued further, following similar perturbations in Neptune's orbit. This directly led to the discovery of Pluto, but as soon as it was found that its mass wasn't enough, the search continued further, and many were sure that there was another big planet further away, conveniently named Planet X. In the fiction, its name was 'Nibiru', with connections to 'ancient astronauts' theorists who gave it an orbit of 3600 years with a pure doomsday scenario, as once in a while it crosses with Earth's orbit and creates a living hell and pretty much the end of life as we know it. Of course, this was just another nonsense and pseudoscience, but eventually, and most thankfully to astronomer and unofficial father of the 'Kuiper Belt', Mike Brown, who discovered lots of small trans-Neptunian objects beyond Pluto, we today know a great deal about the Kuiper Belt, and in this regard, I will just quote Mike Brown: 'Eris (the biggest TNO along with Pluto so far), and Pluto and all of the rest of them have only a trivial impact on our solar system. You could get rid of any of them (I have a vote which ones, too), and nothing much would change.' Recently, with more precise measurements of Neptune's mass, a new calculation of its orbit accounted for all observed perturbations and deviations. However, this didn't mean Planet X doesn't exist. The new theory just pushed it more beyond toward the edge of the solar system, and it earned a new name. This time it is called Tyche, and its location might be somewhere in the Oort cloud. But before we encounter this final system's weirdness, let's first see what happens just after the Kuiper Belt in the very region where a couple of man-made robots are currently still flying!

Solar system Heliosphere *4

Gravity is, of course, the main property of any star system, but from the 'weird' point of view, our path brings us to the region of the solar system just outside the most eccentric orbit from the swarm of all objects within the scattered disk. And it has nothing to do with rocky objects, tidal forces, or orbital physics. Its name is heliosphere, and it's the first boundary of our system we can positively identify. This is the real edge of the system, where ultimately solar winds finish their travel. Solar wind represents ionized particles emitted by the solar corona, and they start traveling at around four times the speed of sound in the interstellar medium. Geometrically speaking, the heliosphere is actually a bubble around the sun and all the planets and other objects, and it starts from the point where solar winds, due to interaction with solar system particles, slow down to the subsonic speed and end at the point when they fully stop, or more precisely, reach pressure balance with the interstellar medium. What is interesting about the heliosphere bubble is that it is not really spherically shaped. The sun is traveling around the center of the Milky Way, and this bubble follows, forming a comet-like shape with a tail called a heliotail, composed of particles that escaped the heliosphere, slowly evaporating because of charge exchange with interstellar media and particles from other stars. It was also speculated that throughout solar system travel, the front edge might create a turbulence edge, a bow shock, similarly to the meteors or satellites that enter the Earth's atmosphere and burn on top. The bow shock is still not confirmed, and perhaps it doesn't exist, as the sun might not travel with enough speed to form it. But it was observed in the motion of a star system called Mira, a red giant in the constellation Cetus, by GALEX, an orbiting ultraviolet space telescope, in the previous decade. Thanks to both Voyagers, we today know more about the composition and pressure of interstellar gases. Voyager 1 already 'crossed' the heliosphere edge, while Voyager 2 is still inside in the so-called "Heliosheath" region.

However, if solar wind stops at the outer edge of the heliosphere, the sun's gravity goes on and influences much further. The proposed boundary where the sun's gravity weakens and loses its dominance is at about 1.5 light-years from the sun. This edge is also the edge of the theoretical Oort cloud, a spherical disk filled with remnants of the original protoplanetary disc from around the Sun at the time of solar system creation, about 4.6 billion years ago. Due to the large distance, it is suggested that it might contain objects captured from other stars from the time of the 'birth cluster' or the beginning of the solar system and other systems while they were in the process of departing from each other. The Oort cloud, even though not scientifically confirmed today, could start with its inner circle at about 2000 AU or so. One day, when Voyager 1 reaches the region (in about 300 years), it will need another 30000 years to pass it through entirely. Unfortunately, V'Ger will not be operational by then (unless something happens to its power source, like in the first Star Trek movie from 1979). The Oort cloud is so big that its outer circle is not only influenced by the sun's gravity alone but also by the gravity of nearby stars as well as all the influences of the tidal forces of the entire Milky Way.

Imagined view of the Oort cloud *5

In a nutshell, the Oort cloud is one giant swarm of icy objects and the potential source of all long-period comets. It is also suggested that many, if not all, short-period comets originated also from the Oort cloud and were captured by gas giants, especially Jupiter. The story of long-period comets is the one responsible for the new planet X location, or Tyche, I mentioned before. Some 15 years ago, astrophysicists John Matese, Patrick Whitman, and Daniel Whitmire proposed a theory that long-period comets, instead of coming from Oort clouds in random orbits caused by gravitational perturbations originating in galaxy tidal forces, might be fully clustered and notably inclined to orbital planes of planets. As the solution to this clustering or grouping of long-period comets, they proposed the existence of one giant planet inside the Oort cloud that is either similar to Jupiter, only 3-4 times bigger, or even a brown dwarf, a failed star that would count our solar system as a sort of binary star system, which is the most common system in the galaxy. However, this theory, even though the most plausible of all encountered, to add more big planets into our solar system, lacks enough data to spot clusters of long-period comets, as their orbital periods are in the realm of thousands of years. Additionally, within the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope mission and its all-sky infrared survey data, no such dwarf or big planet was found. Even more, WISE ruled out the possibility of a Saturn-sized object at 10,000 AU and a Jupiter-sized or larger object out to 26,000 AU. If it still exists, Tyche might be even further away, which also might mean that it could also harbor large moons of its own. Another bold theory, but more likely, is that it doesn't exist at all, and we just need to learn more about Oort cloud complex physics to understand it fully.

I will be careful while concluding anything substantial out of this post. The fact is that I am not a real scientist or astronomer and definitely not a conspiracy theorist or pseudo-science admirer. To be on the safe side, I can say this: posting new theories in astronomy and cosmology from the surface of Earth is way easier than confirming them. We are talking about a vast region of space, and while astronomical instruments, along with science itself, are more sophisticated and better every year, I have no doubts that the real breakthrough in this realm will come only when we eventually rise up and approach closer 'and see' for ourselves. I also have doubts that this will not happen any time soon, especially not in my or your life span.

Until then, metaphorically speaking, we will continue peeking out of the window and doing math from a distance. And continue to dream about the wonders and weirdness of the heavens, waiting for us to come, see, and finally understand.

Image credits:
* Credit: Charles Carter/Keck Institute for Space Studies
   https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/news/1400/interstellar-crossing-the-cosmic-void/
   http://www.universetoday.com/32522/oort-cloud
*2 http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/mission/observatory_l2.html
*3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_trojan
*4 http://sci.esa.int/ulysses/42898-the-heliosphere/
*5 http://www.sciencemag.org/mysterious-oort-cloud-objects

Refs:
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/new-planets
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/astronomers-skeptical-over-planet-x-claims/
http://www.universetoday.com/89901/pluto-or-eris-which-is-bigger/
http://news.discovery.com/space/alien-life-exoplanets/mike-brown-planetx-pluto.htm
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/where/
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/36092/why-are-l4-and-l5-lagrangian-points-stable
http://www.astrosociety.org/edu/publications/tnl/62/equinox2.html
http://www.nss.org/settlement/L5news/L5history.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L5_Society
https://www.nasa.gov/content/nasa-s-ibex-provides-first-view-of-the-solar-system-s-tail
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Brown

Science of Life in Solar System

There will come one day in the future. Relatively and astronomically speaking, it might come sooner than we think. It could happen way before we realize that there is no turning back. The day when Mother Earth will simply say, Sorry guys, I have no more energy to sustain this kind of life anymore, and when most of the biodiversity cocoons on Earth will reach the ultimate hazard and start imploding back into themselves. Air and water pollution will help a lot, and not even the planet's regular motions will be able to take us into another interglacial cycle. It is as much inevitable as what we are going to do next. We will take a long look toward the stars and say, "Well, we have to do this sooner or later. It's time to leave the Earth. Time to jump into Christopher Columbus's shoes again. And find the new home."

But we will not get far. There will be no warp drives, "phasers on stun", robots, AIs, or artificial gravity like in sci-fi blockbusters, and there will be no scientific breakthroughs that will bring Moon or Mars gravity to the comfortable number of 1. No, we will be completely helpless in all our efforts to terraform other planets and gas giants' moons. Not at first. Or fast. Or to make large asteroids rotate. Or to initiate Mars' core to fire its lost magnet. Or to make Venus act a little less than hell.

Artificial biodomes of Eden in Cornwall, England^*

Scientific Copenhagen

Do you have that strange feeling when you are about to visit a new city abroad and are a little afraid of what you will stumble upon when it comes to simple things? Like how to use the metro line or how to buy a bus ticket or how to identify your next destination? Or how to book your flight back to your home? Or how to handle a simple dilemma: should you exchange the money to the local currency, or is it wise to put your card in every ATM or any other 'slot' machine on your way?

Hello™ at Microsoft Campus Days, 2014

Ericsson, a Swedish multinational provider of communications technology and services, has the answer for you. And me too. Last week, I took my entire family on the trip to Copenhagen for both business and pleasure hours in the Danish capital. During my previous visits I didn't have much time for tourism or any off-work activity for that matter. So I did a little research this time, and Ericsson's "Networked Society City Index" helped a lot. With the well-developed ICT infrastructure, economy, and social development, as well as environmental progress, Copenhagen is located in the top five within the NSC index, among 31 well-developed worldwide cities. After our visit we left Denmark with a feeling that everything, or most of it, went perfectly smoothly and the applied IT was extremely helpful, simple, and useful. Unified communications (UC), integrated into people's business life from within smart gadgets and laptop computers, were also a big part of it, and I can proudly say that, in a way, I took part in the active development of Rackpeople's* Hello™ for Microsoft® Lync®—UC software that integrates with Microsoft's Lync and Exchange and presents video conferencing within a single click on a wide variety of screens and devices. The business part of last week's Copenhagen trip was to visit Microsoft Campus Days, where Hello™ had a big feature presentation and successfully presented what it can do in the current edition. From the developer's point of view, I have a good feeling that this project will have a long life with plenty of room for more versions in the future, especially if Skype and Lync integrate and create space for non-business users as well.

However, Copenhagen, besides the business side of the medal, has plenty more to offer. History, arts, sport and music events, amusement parks, museums, royal and naval sites, shopping streets and malls, restaurants, walks along the canals, sightseeing from the sea, and many more, but this time we chose to glimpse the city's unique scientific side. With a seven-year-old boy in our small family, along with me being a big fan of science and skeptical of society, our stay was really special. If you add last week's Black Friday hysteria, which brought an enormous smile on my wife's face all day long, I can safely say that we spent one of those memorable times you never forget.

The Rundetårn, a 17th-century astronomical observatory**

The very first day we went to see Rundetårn, an almost 400-year-old observatory built by King Christian IV after the first major success of naked-eye astronomical observation of planetary motion, performed by famous astronomer Tycho Brahe. His incredibly accurate measurement of 6 planets motion at the time was used by Johannes Kepler after Tycho's death in 1601, and for the first time in astronomy, three laws of planetary motion were established, including the one that all planets in the solar system move in elliptical orbits with the Sun at a focus. Even though there are still suspicious thoughts about honest relations between Brahe and Kepler and even uncleared circumstances related to Tycho's death (traces of mercury in hairs from his beard were found in the 1901 autopsy), these two colorful characters of the early 17th century made crucial contributions to our understanding of the universe, including the discovery of Newton's law of gravity, which was a direct outcome of Kepler's laws.

Anyway, the Round Tower in the heart of Copenhagen is still active and one of the oldest functioning astronomy observatories. The dome is 6.75 meters high and 6 meters in diameter and contains a refracting telescope with 80–450x magnification with an equatorial mount. Without an elevator or stairs, walking up and down its unique 209-meter-long spiral ramp that spins 7.5 times is something special I never saw before. Not to mention we had the opportunity to look through the 'scope with two very friendly astronomers who warmly welcomed us and patiently answered all the questions we had.

Apollo 17's moon rock

The next stop in our astronomy tour was the Tycho Brahe Planetarium. It is located not too far away from the observatory and hosts 'The Space Theater' with a 1000-square-meter dome-shaped screen, and seeing a giant 3D Earth rotating in front of you or 30+ meter high mammoths in "Titans of the Ice Age" is the experience you don't want to miss. They also hosted an "A Journey through Space" program and permanent exhibition with meteor specimens and one of the largest moon rocks from the Apollo 17 mission (in the above image).

Science is not science if you don't experiment in the lab, and to have at least a feeling of what scientists do on a daily basis, you have to visit Experimentarium City. The main exhibition last week was "The Brain", with tons of posts waiting to be explored and played with. Needless to say, my favorite was the game with the cool name "Mindball"—in which you have to push the ball only by using brain wave sensors. The more you are relaxed and focused, the more it will get into your control and move in the desired direction.

Mindball—moving the ball with brain activity

If you like to have your brain scanned and to see which part is activated when you move fingers, or if you want to see really cool optical illusions, or to learn more about scientific facts and how stuff works, or to play memory games, or... simply to experience a great family time, visiting Experimentarium City is mandatory.

Finally, no trip to Copenhagen would be allowed to have the adjective 'scientific' in the title without visiting the national aquarium and the zoo. Opened last year, Den Blå Planet, National Aquarium Denmark, located near Copenhagen's airport in Kastrup, is something you would need to see to believe. Especially if you came from a continental country like Serbia. Equally interesting was the zoo, which went viral earlier this year when they decided to euthanize Marius, the young giraffe, because of a duty to avoid inbreeding, approved by the European Breeding Programme for Giraffes. Right or wrong, it is not mine to say, but we humans are responsible for the health of the animal life, and at least it is a good thing that there are scientific organizations that are taking the breeding of animal species seriously. Anyway, perhaps the best impression in both the wild animal and fish exhibitions, to me, was their climate-controlled environments—in the zoo their "Tropical section" with jungle climate conditions, and in the case of the aquarium, it's the "Amazonian region" with tropical plant life, strange-looking fish, and lots of piranhas.

The Little Mermaid

Finally, I want to thank all my coworkers at Rackpeople for having a good time on and off the office, especially Lasse, who invited us for a visit and gave me the opportunity to spend my yearly bonus in Copenhagen. Trips like this are also a great opportunity to learn more about the country and region you are visiting, and I mean not just about the sites, history, monuments, and other attractions, but also about people, hospitality, and friendship. Sometimes, the result is more than you hope for... sometimes less. Perhaps the best advice when you are visiting abroad, no matter if you are doing it as a pure tourist or within a business agenda, or both, is to leave high expectations at home. Nevertheless, Copenhagen is one great corner of the world, more than worthwhile to visit, and this scientific side I wanted to show in this post is something not many cities in the world can offer.

Image references:
Scientific Copenhagen, 2014

References:
* http://www.rackpeople.com/
http://www.ericsson.com/res/docs/2013/ns-city-index-report-2013.pdf
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rundetårn
http://www.rundetaarn.dk/en/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tycho_Brahe
http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/17/was-tycho-brahe-poisoned