Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. 61E & 62E: Mars 2020 Rover & Space Aliens Listening To Our Sun
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- Mars has a surface which about the size of the land areas on Earth. It has has a climate which has changed dramatically over the eons.
- Suppose that a space alien were so far from us that our Sun appears as a tiny point of light in its night sky. What would the space alien receive if it pointed its radio antennas at our Sun?
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
61E: Mars 2020 Rover
In the 50 years that human made Travelers In The Night have been visiting the planet Mars we have discovered a wealth of interesting information about our neighbor in space. Mars has a surface which about the size of the land areas on Earth. It has has a climate which has changed dramatically over the eons. We have literally just begun to scratch its surface.
NASA has begun planning for the Mars 2020 Rover which will based on the successful Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity Mars rovers. Two of these roving scientific laboratories are still operating on the red planet. The new rover will have advanced geological instruments to access the landing site for human astronauts. It will also have a new generation of instruments which will allow it to directly search for signs of ancient life.
The new Mars rovers will collect soil samples and rocks and store them for a possible future mission which would take them to Earth for further study.
An experiment aboard the new rover will be conducted to determine the feasibility of producing oxygen from the carbon dioxide in the martian atmosphere. This may be the method that future astronauts will use to will obtain some of what they need to explore the red planet.
Today you can participate in the exploration of Mars by visiting the Opportunity, Curiosity, and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter websites. You could very well discover something in one of the images that no one else has noticed.
62E: Space Aliens Listening To Our Sun
Suppose that a space alien were so far from us that our Sun appears as a tiny point of light in it’s night sky. What would the space alien receive if it pointed it’s radio antennas at our Sun?
If the space alien is more than 200 light years from our Sun it would be receiving radio waves produced by a normal Sun like star and perhaps bursts of radio waves created by lightening on Jupiter.
If the space alien were located less than 50 light years away, it would discover a pattern in the radio waves from the direction of our Sun that is getting more complex and repeats every 24 hours. When the Earth is oriented so that the Pacific ocean is pointing in the space alien’s direction the pattern would be at a low point. When the TV transmitters from Japan and China come into its line of site there would be an increase in the strength of the signal. There would then be a dip over Siberia and another peak when the TV stations in Europe come into view. This would be followed by an Atlantic ocean dip and then two peaks from the US East and West coasts. The pattern discovered by the space alien would shift slightly in time as the Earth orbits the Sun.
For almost 30 years scientists and members of the SETI Institute have been working to search for intelligent life on other planets by looking for radio signals from stars that have an unusual pattern. Nothing that cannot be explained by natural physical processes has been discovered.
The pattern in radio waves that the space alien receives will probably fade as human communications shift to satellites and fibers.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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