Photons streaming outward from the Sun can impart momentum, which is how a solar sail works. But even more subtle effects produced by the warming of irregular objects may have visible results. A new study of asteroid moons and how they form invokes the tongue-twister...
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John Wheeler and the Umpires
Is observation critical to existence? Niels Bohr believed that it was the collapse of the wave function that gave particles like electrons their distinct reality. John Wheeler, who knew and worked with the great figures of quantum mechanics, summarized the gap between...
Red Dwarfs: Dust, Details and Habitability
Budding astrobiologists should be thinking about the significance of red dwarf stars as they approach their careers. Let's say, as pure speculation, that one out of every thousand stars in class M has a planet in the habitable zone. That works out to 75 million...
Time, Tides and Habitability
Keep your eye on Gliese 581. Not that the news is necessarily good for our hopes for habitability around that star -- in fact, a recent paper suggests quite the opposite. The red dwarf exploded into the public consciousness with the announcement that one of its...
Arecibo Watches the Skies for Space Rocks
By Larry Klaes Tau Zero journalist Larry Klaes now looks at recent activity in near-Earth space, where a variety of objects have turned up just this year to remind us of the potential danger of impacts on our planet. With good connections at Cornell University, Larry...
Reconfigurable Structures in Space: Q & A
Cornell aerospace engineer Mason Peck captured the attention of Centauri Dreams readers recently when Larry Klaes wrote up his ideas on modular spacecraft and self-assembly. Peck has talked about using the technology, which draws on a property of superconductors...
A New Earth Crosser and an Old Impact
With the news that an asteroid called 2007 TU24 will pass 538,000 kilometers from Earth on January 29, attention turns to the Catalina Sky Survey, which discovered this near-Earth object last October. The asteroid is thought to be between 150 and 600 meters in...
Binaries, Gas Giants and Habitable Worlds
Alpha Centauri A and B have a mean separation of 23 AU. In Solar System terms, that gives you a spacing a bit further from the Sun than the orbit of Uranus. But with the two stars moving around a common center of mass, the distance between them varies over time....
Remembering Robert Bussard
A note from James Benford, soon to be followed by e-mail from other interstellar advocates, tells me of the death of Robert Bussard. The creator of the Bussard ramjet concept, Bussard (1928-2007) died of cancer in Santa Fe just a few days ago. Benford, who knew...
Hawking: The Need for an Interstellar Mission
About to receive the Royal Society's Copley Medal, Britain's highest scientific award, Stephen Hawking told a BBC radio audience that if the human race were to survive, it would be necessary to go to another star. Here's a quote from a story on this in the Daily Mail:...