Trying to Make Sense of The Big Bang Discovery? This May Help.

The discovery was made using a special detector installed on the South Pole Telescope.
My photo of the telescope from Amundsen-Scott Station, South Pole, Antarctia.

The discovery that seems to confirm inflation has made word-wide news and for a good reason. It’s likely to result in some Nobel Prizes as well. NATURE made a good video that explains the basics: (see below:)

Want to know more?? Joe Hansen at “It’s OK To be Smart” has a more in-depth summary of why this is such a BIG deal and some links to other posts from some physicists who work in this field. Astrophysicist Ethan Seigel’s is superb and recommended reading. Physics teachers, this is where you send your brightest students who are craving more!

It was a nice summer day at the South Pole when I snapped this pic. -23°F with a wind chill of -50°.

I visited the South Pole Telescope in 2010, and I can tell you it is an amazing machine in a very hostile environment. The South Pole is like another planet, and those working there sometimes have to spend 30 minutes just getting dressed to make the short trip from Amundsen Scott Station to the telescope. The photo above is mine, and was taken from Amundsen Scott Station. In the long polar night (with a temperature of -90°F and winds of hurricane force), that trek can be dangerous and getting lost deadly.

The cold is so intense that your body requires almost double the number calories, and I can tell you the food is good! The telescope is there because the South Pole is at nearly 3,000 meters elevation, and in the middle of one of the driest deserts on Earth. To make infrared images of the cosmos you want cold and dry, and that’s just about the best spot on the planet for it.

ORIGINAL: A.G.U. American Geophysical Union

by Dan Satterfield

ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone

ORIGINAL: Kickstarter

The first publicly accessible space telescope! Take amazing photos of space or have your photo displayed above the Earth.



06-02-2013 – Let’s spread the word!
Big Thank YOU to everyone who has pledged their support to make a publicly-accessible ARKYD space telescope a reality! Many of you have asked how you can help support ARKYD. We've put together a supporter's resource to help reach more people. You'll find translations of the various materials prepared by our community and learn how you can connect with other supporters.


Since the formation of Planetary Resources, our primary goal has been to build technology enabling us to prospect and mine asteroids. We've spent the last year making great leaps in the development of these technologies. These advancements have presented us with the opportunity to engage in another passion of our team:

to make space exploration accessible to everyone.

Space has always been something that most people only dream about. Very few ever get the chance to experience space — to feel that overwhelming sense of awe described by astronauts. Our challenge and vision is this: how can we make
that a reality?

Introducing: The ARKYD — [ahrk-kid]

The ARKYD is a technologically advanced, orbiting space telescope that will be controlled by YOU, the crowd, through your pledges and community involvement! You can even direct your telescope time to non-profit science centers and universities for use in your communities!

Just think about the true impact of this endeavor for a moment. Together we can provide access to technology that costs tens of millions of dollars into the hands of students, scientists and a new generation of explorers, who will use it in ways we can’t even fathom yet!

At Planetary Resources, our primary focus is mining asteroids, and we’re pushing the boundaries of what is possible by vertically integrating and applying innovations from consumer-based industries. It’s our goal to reduce the cost of space observatories many times over, allowing anyone to access them for their own use. We want to empower the crowd to solve the big problems of our time — and this is the first step to making that a reality.



The first publicly accessible space telescope! Take amazing photos of space or have your photo displayed above the Earth.

Our primary mission is to develop low-cost robotic spacecraft to explore and mine resource-rich asteroids within our reach. The first step to making this possible is the launching a fleet of ARKYD spacecraft to identify asteroids that are ripe for further exploration. This same capability has numerous other potential applications in education and research. The goals that we want to achieve with this Kickstarter mission are four-fold:

To give students access to space capabilities — Whether studying planets in a 5th grade class or writing a graduate thesis, students of all ages will have the ability to direct the telescope and explore what interests them! We’re planning some exciting new educational opportunities just for K-12 educational programs.

To support important research and discovery — There are thousands of institutions and researchers in need for greater access to in-orbit space observatories. The ARKYD will provide a new, low-cost resource to help observe distant galaxies, search for alien planets, and monitor the skies for potentially dangerous asteroids. Researchers at MIT, the University of Washington, and across the globe have shown interest in using the ARKYD to further their important research.

To build excitement about space and all of its potential — The ARKYD is designed to be a fun and interactive experience that is accessible to anyone. This kind of direct access to a satellite is unprecedented. Our backers will be the first people in history to control a public space telescope!

To give YOU a say — What makes this mission unique is that we’re putting control of the telescope in YOUR hands. You’ll get the opportunity to help decide which science centers and museums are the beneficiaries of ARKYD telescope time, what photos to take, and more. We’re putting YOU in control! By pledging toward this mission, you’ll receive access to our website and mobile apps allowing you to follow along with the progress of the satellite, sneak peaks at photos and videos, and get voting access to make your voice heard in the future direction of the satellite!

The engineering and development of the telescope itself is being covered by Planetary Resources, and we're investing millions of dollars in research and development to develop the ARKYD with advanced capabilities like photographing deep space and searching for asteroids. However, a publicly accessible satellite is very different from those that we intend to launch for the purposes of locating asteroids. The engineering and technological needs for doing each of those jobs are quite different.

Here's where we need YOUR help: The proceeds from this campaign will go to several different areas:

1. To actually launch the satellite into space. 
2. To support the spacecraft over its lifetime — including manpower to facilitate the photos, "selfies", monitoring the spacecraft and training the staff at the chosen science center that will take over control. 
3. To create an easy-to-use Control Interface that will allow ANYONE to access and control the satellite. 
4. To fund the creation of an incredible, interactive educational experience that can be used by schools anywhere, to enable students to experience space in a way that's never been possible.

Grants help scientists explore boundary between science & science fiction

ORIGINAL: Berkeley

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | October 5, 2012

BERKELEY —

Two University of California, Berkeley, scientists have received research grants to explore areas of science that bleed into science fiction.

Lasers in use by telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. If aliens elsewhere in the galaxy use lasers for astronomy or communications, we may be able to detect them from Earth. Courtesy of Keck Observatory.

Lasers in use by telescopes atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. If aliens elsewhere in the galaxy use lasers for astronomy or communications, we may be able to detect them from Earth. Courtesy of Keck Observatory.

Astronomer Geoff Marcy, who kicked off the search for extrasolar planets 20 years ago, plans to rummage through data from the Kepler space telescope in search of evidence for civilizations advanced enough to have built massive orbiting “solar” power stations.

Theoretical physicist Raphael Bousso will look for ways of detecting universes other than our own, and try to understand what these alternate universes, or multiverses, will look like.

Marcy and Bousso are among 20 innovative researchers who will share more than $4 million in New Frontiers in Astronomy & Cosmology International Grants that were announced Thursday, Oct. 4, by the University of Chicago. The grants were made possible through funding from the Pennsylvania-based John Templeton Foundation as a way to encourage scientists and students worldwide to explore fundamental, big questions in astronomy and cosmology that engage groundbreaking ideas on the nature of the universe.

Many of the recipients, including Marcy, will describe their projects during a joint conference Oct. 12 and 13 at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Joining these presenters will be high school and college students, including UC Berkeley undergraduate Taro Yamaguchi-Phillips, who wrote winning essays about the universe and its habitats for a contest also sponsored by the University of Chicago. His essay, “From Bang to Brain: How Complexity Arises in the Universe,” won an honorable mention. UC Berkeley Nobel Laureate Charles Townes, professor emeritus of physics and 2005 Templeton Prize recipient, will help present the essay prizes.

“Through these awards, the program aims to support bold, innovative research with the potential to expand boundaries and catalyze breakthrough discoveries, as well as inspire students to pursue scientific knowledge and become original, forward-looking big question thinkers of tomorrow,” said Donald G. York, the Horace B. Horton Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago, who led the competition.

Marcy, a professor of astronomy, is a member of the Kepler space telescope team that is observing the light from 160,000 stars in our galaxy in search of ones that dim periodically because of a planet passing or transiting in front of them.

Marcy realized that the Kepler data might also reveal stars with orbiting power stations called Dyson Spheres: megastructures that orbit a star and capture a large proportion of its energy. They were proposed by physicist Freeman Dyson more than 50 years ago as a likely way for advanced civilizations to power their power-hungry societies. Marcy will look at 1,000 of Kepler’s extrasolar systems in search of solar arrays that pass in front of stars and make them wink on and off.

Cosmologist and string theorist Raphael Bousso and astronomer Geoff Marcy are exploring areas of science bordering on science fiction.

“Kepler has now discovered over 2,000 new worlds around other stars, most of them smaller than twice the size of Earth, and many probably having water,” Marcy said. “This flood of nearly Earth-size planets offers the first opportunity for us humans to hunt for other intelligent species that may have evolved on them.”

Marcy’s grant - $200,000 for two years – will also pay for time on the enormous Keck telescopes in Hawaii to take spectra of 1,000 planet-hosting stars in search of laser emissions from advanced civilizations,

“Technological civilizations may communicate with their space probes located throughout the galaxy by using laser beams, either in visible light or infrared light,” he said. ”Laser light is detectable from other civilizations because the power is concentrated into a narrow beam and the light is all at one specific color or frequency. The lasers outshine the host star at the color of the laser.”

Bousso, a professor of physics, is known for his proposal with Joseph Polchinski, a UC Berkeley Ph.D. now at UC Santa Barbara, that string theory implies that the universe is comprised of possibly an infinite number of multiverses, each with its own physical characteristics but operating under the same laws of physics. Though we are unlikely to be able to visit them or even see them with the largest telescopes – light hasn’t had time to travel that far since the universe began – he is optimistic that it’s possible to find predictions of the hypothesis that can be tested. His two-year, $125,000 grant will help him explore the implications of his hypothesis.

“People were initially skeptical of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, but now, decades later, your GPS runs on it and it has led to incredibly profound questions in physics, such as how the universe began and what happens inside a black hole,” Bousso said. “We are just at the early stages of this multiverse theory, but it is a very serious, plausible proposition that we have to take seriously and test – and try to shoot down as hard as we can.”