Final magazine format

The Nightly Sky December, 2016

Dragonfly 44 A peak into the dark matter galaxy Out of Sight Out of Mind How light pollution is making it harder for you to star gaze

Return for Space Exploration Possible?

Interest in space is starting to pick up again

Discovering the Unknown Making sense of black holes Difficulties of Space Travel Why we still don’t have Mars colonies

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Table of Contents 3

Letter From the Editor

4

Contributor’s Page

6

Galaxy Formation

11 Top 5 Black Hole Theories 16 Light Pollution Effects on Life 22 Build A Bottle Rocket 28 Timeline of Space Exploration 8

18 Return For Space

Dragonfly 44: A Dark Anomaly

Exploration Possible?

A new galaxy has been discovered that may change our percetion of dark matter forever.

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24 Difficulties of Space Travel

There are many problems that appear when it comes to traveling through space. These are why we have not made it to Mars yet.

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Light pollution has been the silent killer of our skies. We need to preserve our view of space before it’s too late.

The interest in astronomy has been declining since the end of the Space Race. Recent endeavors into space travel may spark interest, however.

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Discovering The Unknown

Black holes have always been under constant debate. Some theories have outshined the others through strict nit-picking and arguements.

This is the first and, most probably, last

issue of the Nightly Sky. While I can’t say that it was an easy experience, I can say with the utmost of confidence that it was gratifying. We exist to give you, the reader, the type of information that you want. We are a small team of just five people, including myself. We don’t have the flashiness that big name magazines have, so we thank you for reading our small compilation. We go to great pains to make sure that the content that you want and love is here (and correct). I can’t guarantee that this will be the best magazine, but I can say that we did it with a lot of heart.

The past 6 months have been a learning

experience for everyone at the nightly sky team.

In the beginning we were just 4 guys and a girl who had a loose idea for a magazine. Now we are happy to present this issue of the nightly times to you. It has occasionally been a bumpy road, I would be lying if I said it was always easy, but we eventually learned all we needed to. I have to thank our teacher here. She probably won’t be mentioned anywhere else in this magazine, so I’d like to take this chance to thank Ms. Florey for teaching us everything we needed to know. We really wouldn’t have been able to do any of this without her. So without further ado, I present to you the first issue of the nightly times.

Lucas Akers, Editor

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Contributors

Lucas Akers Lucas Akers is a freshman at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy. He has been interested in astronomy ever since he was young. He is always ready to learn anything new about anything, especially the universe. He has always been intrigued by the limits of what we know. That’s why he likes to focus so much on dark matter.

Camille Kao Camille Kao is a freshman at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy. She competitively plays chess on an international level. During her free time, she likes to draw and play the piano. Her favorite hot beverage is tea and her favorite ice cream flavor is mint chocolate chip. She is interested in technological advancements and how they can one day get humans on other planets and moons.

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Diego Aguilar Diego is a freshman at the Liberal Arts and Science Academy. A local native of Austin, he’s lived in the capital of the Lone Star State all his life. He enjoys spending his free time playing football, watching online videos, and figuring out a good mystery novel. His favourite subject at school has always been math, because of the straight forward answers. Now that he’s written a magazine, he’s become more open to more complex answers.

Rishi Kumar The reason I chose to write about light pollution is because I have always had an interest in the stars. All my life, I had wanted to see the milky way but I never had the chance too because of a simple problem known as light pollution. Because of the Austin light being flooded into the sky, the stars get blocked. I thought that this would be a topic that not many people know about and that it is something that needs to be talked about.

Marcos Porras All my life I have wanted to make a space magazine, and now I have. I love playing football and video games. They are a part of me. Ezine is one of my favorite classes to take. I have always wanted to get into editing and graphic design but have never had the chance, now that I have,Growing up, I’ve never been as interested in Astronomy as I am today. Creating the magazine has inspired me and has gotten me very interested into what astronomy has to offer. Black holes are very interesting and cool to learn about, and I look forward to learning more about them and astronomy, as well as editing and graphic design.

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The Flow of Galaxies Galaxy starts as several dust clouds. This is according to the widely accepted “bottom up” theory.

The galaxies are pulled together because of gravity. They naturally start rotating.

If the stars don’t orbit fast enough you end up with an elliptical Galaxy, which has no general rotation.

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The gas and other normal matter is pulled to the center. The dark matter stays on the edge.

With the distance lessened the center matter begins to rotate fast enough to create stars

The centripital force causes the mass of stars to thin out into a sort of a disc.

The galaxies might smash into another galaxy and create an elliptical galaxy.

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Dragonfly 44, a Dark Anomaly How a new galaxy is pushing our ideas on dark matter in galaxies.

An astronomer sits looking through a telescope. He is pointed at a section of space not too far away. It is a massive galaxy cluster, incredibly bright. Suddenly out of the blue, he sees a strange galaxy.

It is very faint. If he wasn’t using the dragonfly telephoto array he never would have seen it. The galaxy appears to be fuzzy. The stars seem far apart. That definitely shouldn’t be there.

It shouldn’t be there at all. In normal circumstances it would be ripped apart, which must mean that there is more to this galaxy than meets the eye.

The galaxy in question is dragonfly 44, a very low surface brightness galaxy. It resides in the Coma cluster, about 330 million light years away from Earth. It is only about 1 percent as bright as the Milky Way. Normally, we would just chalk this up to a diffuse galaxy, but it is in the Coma cluster, a fairly large group of galaxies. Under normal circumstances it would be torn apart by the surrounding, apparently, more massive galaxies. There must be something going on here that we can’t see. Astronomers think Dragonfly 44 is a dark matter dense galaxy. By measuring rotation speed they found it is about the mass of the milky way. That means that dragonfly 44 is 99.99 Percent dark matter.

Because it is such a dark matter dense galaxy, you can have a few stars spread out over a large area creating a fuzzy look.

There are so few stars in the galaxy that it has been put in the category very low surface brightness galaxy.

“They found a lot of very very low surface brightness galaxies that are about several thousand times fainter than the brightness of the night sky.” Stephen odewahn, an astronomer at the mcdonald observatory, said. “It seems to have about the mass that’s comparable to a big galaxy like our own, the milky way. So that’s why they are 8 | Nightly Times

By Lucas Akers

calling it a dark galaxy or a dark matter dominant galaxy.” It has a total mass of about a trillion times the mass of the sun, roughly the same size as our own milky way.

All of these facts are interesting, but how did they discover dragonfly 44 in the first place if it is apparently fainter than the night sky? They didn’t set out expecting to find anything like dragonfly 44, although originally the dragonfly telephoto lense was built to see low surface brightness galaxies. When you look at space through normal telescopes you see many normal to large galaxies, but those low surface brightness galaxies are washed out by the light from the brighter ones. Peter vandacum and roberto abraham, built the dragonfly telephoto array specifically for the purpose of being able to see llow surface brightness galaxies.

“They built this special instrument and they pointed it at the coma cluster of galaxies and, lo and behold, they found a lot of low surface brightness galaxies” odewahn said.

The discovery of all these smaller galaxies was a little bit strange, simply finding so many of them in one place was a little unexpected, but there was nothing completely out of this world about it. The real shock was when they found dragonfly 44, which was instantly different from the other galaxies. It was completely different from anything they expected to find in that region of the universe.

As they saw this completely unexpected anomaly they began to wonder how a galaxy like this came to be, and how useful it would be to astronomers to study it further.

The discovery of an anomaly like dragonfly 44 is really what drives astronomy to reach new heights and to push the boundaries of what we thought was possible.

“It seems to have about the Mass that’s comparable to a big Galaxy like our own, the Milky Way”

Image Credit NASA/ESA/Richard Massey.

A 3D map of dark matter distribution throughout the universe.

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“It’s good to have a galaxy like Fragonfly 44,” assistant professor at UT Michael Boylan Kolchin said, “but it’s really good to have several of them, to make sure that it’s not a big anomaly”.

Just because we don’t have anything like it, however, doesn’t mean that Dragonfly 44 isn’t useful to us. Dragonfly 44 is completely in a class of its own, but it does share a few similarities with other galaxies. There are a lot of small dark matter dominated galaxies throughout the universe, but they are what astronomers refer to as dwarf galaxies.

Dragonfly 44 is the first large galaxy like this. “It’s more likely to affect our ideas about galaxy formation than our ideas about dark matter — but we’ll have to see! Maybe it will affect both,” Boylan-Kolchin said. By discovering this Galaxy, mostly accidentally we were able to gain more insight into dark matter.

While we recognize that Dragonfly 44 is significant, we aren’t really sure what it means yet. It could affect all kind of ideas, or it could affect none. We really don’t know much about Dragonfly 44 yet. We have a general estimate of the mass and a pretty good idea of the shape and dark matter ratio, but ultimately we just need more time to study and observe Dragonfly 44.

Dark matter is a fascinating aspect of Dragonfly 44. We have never seen a galaxy on this scale with the amount of dark matter that Dragonfly 44 has. To really understand Dragonfly 44 you need a thorough understanding of dark matter.

Dark matter is a theoretical substance that can only interact with regular baryonic matter through gravity. We can’t see it in any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, or anything else for that matter. The only way we know it exists is through gravitational

A spiral Galaxy. the further out the stars are the faster they will spin.

Image Credit European southern observatory.

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“The total mass is [in the universe] *much* larger than the amount of normal matter. So, dark matter can’t be normal matter.”

anomalies throughout the universe. The first legitimate discovery of dark matter came from Swiss astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky. He observed the coma cluster when he realized that the outer orbits were much faster than they should be. He postulated the existence of a substance which we couldn’t see, but accounted for a large percentage of the universe’s mass. He calculated that the mass of dark matter to normal matter was 400 to 1. His actual numbers were shockingly wrong, but he was correct in assuming the large majority of matter in the coma cluster was invisible. The first robust substantiation of dark matter came from the astronomer Horace W. Babcock. He observed that the mass to light ratio was not in perfect equilibrium. He attributed it to light absorption in the galaxy, not missing invisible matter.

There is the possibility that dark matter doesn’t actually exist, maybe it is just that our ideas of Newtonian dynamics, the traditional understanding of the universe, are incorrect. There is a theory called M.O.N.D. modified Newtonian dynamics, that attempts to explain dark matter. “If we modify our theory of gravity — then we might not need dark matter.” Boylan-Kolchin said. “Most physicists believe dark matter is the right answer, though, because there is evidence for it in a number of different situations / times / length scales (from galaxies to the size of the Universe).”

“Most of the major discoveries in astronomy really came about by accident. By people who were studying everyday phenomena in radio wavelengths or optical wavelengths who find something weird.”

Professor Emeritus at UT Derek Wills said. “And you can either say “that’s weird I don’t understand that and ignore it or you can follow it up and find little strange things that turn up in everyday astronomy often are keys to a brand new topic or brand new type of object.” Astronomy is an amazing field with discoveries being made all the time.

Top

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Theories About Black Holes

Hawking Radiation was created Hbyawking radiation, as you can tell by the name, Stephen Hawking, and he describes he rela-

gives different amount of gravity on the object. There is more gravity on the end closest to it, and less on the farthest part.

That causes the closest part to stretch more than the other side which stretches it into a string the size of one atom.

tionship between virtual particles and the event horizon of black holes. What this theory explains is that even though it is known that nothing can escape a black hole, these things called virtual particles pop in and out of of existance in pairs can come into existance at the event horizon and when a pair pops up one of the virtual particles can become a real piece of a matter right at the edge of the event horizon and escape from the black hole.

Depiction of an astronaut experiencing Spaghettification

Information Paradox

Picture Depiction of Hawking Radiation

Spaghettification

S

paghettification. Things that enter a black hole theoretically never make it out. On the way into the black hole, the varying amounts of gravity from the black hole

T

he information paradox drescribes a paradox relating to black holes and the information and mass entering it. It is known that black holes absorbs mass and everything that it can get a hold of, and it is also known that mass, or information, cannot be created or destroyed. The information paradox talks about how information has never left a black hole, so how do we know that the information isnide of it is not destroyed or gone? This theory is a combination of the two very famous ones of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. Information could be permanently destroyed inside of a black hole and if this is true this could affect most things we know about science and other major theories.

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4

Firewall Theory

tion whereTsomeone he firewall theory is a theory that explains a situaor something would to enter a black hole

and travel past the event horizon they would encounter a high energy entity or source, otherwise known as the Firewall. This theory was proposed by Ahmed Almhieri and was proposed to be a possible solution to inconsistancy in black hole complementarity. This theory could be a soulution but it also causes a few violations with many other theories. For this theory to be true we would have to give up many other theories such as Einstein’s general relativity theory. This theory is a unique and intersting one and is looked into often adn researched alot.

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Worm Holes

into an unexplored Wormhole theories are theories that explore topic or completly known topic. It states that inside of a black hole could be a wormhole, which is a portal to another wormhole in a completly different area. This theory is completly possible, as no one completley knows what is inside of a black hole due to the event horizon preventing us to see inide of one. This is one of the most popular theory among alot of others, but falls short with lack of evidence and proof to show that this is actually true.

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Discovering

The Unknown

By Marc Porras

Theories Behind Black Holes

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stronomy is one of the life’s most mysterious subjects. There is so much to learn and to discover.

Most people don’t even know that there is such thing as a black hole the size of 500 billion suns.

One of the best subjects in astronomy is about black holes.

Black holes are very unusual and contain a vast amount of information. We have barely scratched the surface of the tons of information that black holes are hiding, varying from subatomic virtual particles, to giant formation of galaxies. Black holes could contain key features of information that open up our points of view on many different topics, they could reveal current day unknown factors of life and could question or confirm many theories as well as create many more.

One of the main, and most famous topic about black holes is something that lies within it. It is one of the most accepted, but also most questioned thing about black holes. It’s called the event horizon.

The event horizon helps in the part of the “mysterious” and “unknown” factors of black holes. Black holes are thought to have an extreme amount of gravity and they pull everything around it into a dense compact area of space inside itself. By everything, that includes light too. Which means that at a certain point in black holes, light would be pulled by gravitational force into the black hole with more force the closer it got, and eventually the light would come to a point where it cannot escape. That area is called the event horizon. By definition, it is the area of the black hole where nothing can escape it and where things are stored. This theory brings up many questions and many other theories based off of its logic. The most popular

topic is explanation of how the event horizon affects objects passing by it. One of the processes of of this of this is called “spaghettification”, which you can tell by its name, is about matter morphing into into a spaghettilike structure! Ms Earnhart explains, “The ship itself, as it falls into the black hole, is also- it’s my favorite word in all of science- called spaghettification, basically if you think about it, something, even as small as a pen, let alone a spaceship, if it’s falling towards a black hole, the gravitational fluxuation changes so rapidly that the gravity at the front of the spaceship becomes significantly stronger than the gravity at the back end of the spaceship, so it begins to be stretched out really

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most unbelievable thing about black holes is the mystery of what lies beyond it and some cases it could be a worm hole like in a lot of movies such as Interstellar and all of this information, all about this topic can open our eyes about what does lie beyond the event horizon and maybe one day we could have the technology to explore inside a black hole and find out if there is actually a worm hole” Something that we often overlook is that what lies behind a black hole could just simply be what we have known the whole time.That a black hole does indeed just compress matter into itself. Maybe black holes are

really hard, like a piece of taffy, until it’s literally stretched into a string one atom thick.”

Along with the Event Horizon theory and the topic of nothing being able to escape a black hole, there is also another theory that relates to it and also attempts to disprove it. It was also made by the man himself, Stephen Hawking! Hawking relates and makes a relationship between virtual particles and the event horizon, which resulted in the theory, Hawking Radiation. Virtual particles are very tiny particles that pop in and out of existence in pairs. Hawking related the pair forming at the event horizon edge, where one would be inside and the other would be on the outside. Professor Gebhardt expressed his opinion, ” Material can’t escape a black hole, but there are particles that we call virtual particles that can pop into existence, and you can have quantum effects just beyond the event horizon, not on the outside of course, and these quantum effects- they are able to extract energy from the black hole, and the way you do that is you get a particle radiating away from the black hole so it looks like the black hole is giving off energy, and that’s called Hawking radiation, and basically it’s the way the event horizon interacts at the quantum mechanical level, and it’s probably right, from all the work and scientists that have been working on it, that makes it convincing that, that is true, although we have never seen it observationally.”

Black holes don’t have to be the exactly what many people think they are. There is no way of knowing what is behind and inside a black hole, so possibilities are endless! The real mystery with black holes is what is behind them.

What is past that event horizon which ever so deliberately prevents us from seeing what in there?

Since nobody knows exactly what is behind black holes, there are many opinions, thoughts and theories around the topic. One of the most creative ones and likeable ones about it is the Wormhole theory. This theory expands on that beneath the black hole is a wormhole, a portal to another universe. A tear in space time. There is not much scientific evidence or explanation behind it, but it is still theoretically possible! Urban Solar Senior Erik attending Liberal Arts and Science Academy expresses his opinion on the topic, “The 14 | Nightly Times

“The most unbelievable thing about black holes is the mystery of what lies beyond it” -Erik simple structures, and we just overthink them.

Ms Earhart expands on her opinion on structures of black holes “There’s a couple different things that happen, you have to remember that as something is falling into a black hole, the only way that you see it, is that light is bouncing off of that object and then traveling all the way to you and going to your eyeball which allows you to see things, so the light that is coming off of that object as its falling into the black hole is being tugged on by the black hole itself, the gravity is so intense that the light is being slowed down, so it stretches out”

Overall, black holes are on of the most interesting and mysterious thing researched in astronomy.

Containing many different theories, from the Firewall theory, to Hawking radiation, there are more to come.

Though we may never know exactly what black holes are or how they work and what’s inside them, we can always still explore and wonder, wherever our imagination can take us.

The Biological Effects of Light Pollution

By Rishi Kumar Turtles Turtles these days have a hard time finding nesting grounds that are quiet and have barely any human activity. Along the sandy beaches are many turtle nesting grounds but there are also many hotels and other buildings. Buildings such as these produce a lot of artificial light which is very harmful to these turtles.

When the baby turtles hatch, they are attracted to the sun over the surface of the water so that they can be guided to the water. When they see lights coming from inland, the baby turtles can be attracted to them and instead travel towards the civilization. This results in the turtles either dying of dehydration or being eaten by predators.

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Insects A large portion of insects thrive in the sunlight such as butterflies.

Bringing in artificial light into ecosystems will decrease biodiversity by letting one organism become very superior to others. An example is that butterflies need the sunlight to reproduce and live but caterpillars live in the dark. When you light up the sky, you are increasing the butterflys’ activity which also means more reproduction. In doing so, you reduce diversity by risking some types of of butterflies to become more abundant than others.

Birds Many birds migrate and depend on the moon and the stars at night to guide them. Because of the amount of light pollution being released these days, migratory birds can’t depend on the night sky to guide them. Brightly lit cities and/ or buildings attract birds and the birds tend to stay in those places, even if it has a very low food supply for them.

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December, 2016 | 17

Return for

Sp

How interest in the subject has picked up after a large drop following the Space Race.

By Diego Aguilar

“Most of us

don’t walk around on our day-to-day lives thinking about how we’re actually living on top of this tiny speck of dirt, that’s rolling around an enormous fireball that’s out in the darkness of space. And when you really think about that, it changes everything else about how you think about life.”

This is how strongly Alison Earnhart, a Science teacher at LASA, feels about Astronomy. She created an elective for the subject and has been teaching it for eight years now. While her feelings remain strong, the same cannot be said for the general public.

During the Space Race, support for funding going towards space exploration was overwhelming. Many saw endeavours into space as the future of all mankind.

However, as time passed on, the US space program began to look more and more like a waste of government funding in the eyes of the public, as well as government officials. By the end of the Space Race, most saw Astronomy as a dead subject. According to the National Opinion Research Center, Americans are consistently more likely to state that the US spends too much money on space exploration. Even during the Space Race, Americans believed the Apollo missions were not worth the cost. Eventually, funding for the entire program was gone, and the United States focused their attention on more pressing matters happening at home.

In light of all this, opinions have been turning around for the subject. Thanks to missions related to interplanetary travel and

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pace Exploration possibilities of living on places besides earth, people in their teens are able to recognize the importance of living somewhere else.

Alison Earnhart has picked up on this trend in the form of her elective’s popularity. She’s noticed that her elective has never had less than two sections of the course full. She said that there are still students that are denied and must take the course another year. She finds that there are more and more people becoming interested in the subject of Astronomy which is the complete opposite of what was shown during the end of the Space Race. This pattern became apparent as soon as she began the Astronomy elective, which she started in 2008. This is well after the Space Race, which ended in the 1970s, and a couple of years after the Mars Curiosity Rover was launched in 2003 as well as it being confirmed that there’s frozen water on the planet in 2008.

Both of these events have contributed to the mass excitement over the possibilities of living on another planet. In an age where environmental awareness has barely begun, and the overconsumption of resources drain the earth, it may be required to find elsewhere to live. This is especially true for when the waste humans put out, as well as overpopulation, becomes too much to control. Although, not all believed that this excitement is even worth the effort. One student, Aytahn Ben-Avi, said that the subject is “more conjecture at this point,” and believes that there’s “no way that’s going to happen anytime. Within ten, twenty, even thirty years, it seems unlikely that any people would be going to Mars.”

Even though living on an entirely different planet isn’t in the foreseeable future, this does not mean that we cannot prepare for its coming.

NASA has done so with the Kelly twins. They have created a program in which two brothers, Scott and Mark Kelly, are simultaneously studied. One which spent time living in space for a year. Both were compared in order to study the effects of living in space for extended periods of time.

In fact, the brother living in space, Scott Kelly, returned early this year. An amazing feat, undoubtedly, since no American had previously accomplished this. However, this did not make Scott Kelly anywhere near a household name. Instead, it seems like a majority of the public even knows who he is, much less what he accomplished. Aytahn has acknowledged this after noticing the interests of his fellow students. “I’m sure if you talk to more people, definitely more people know Lance Armstrong than Scott Kelly.” Clearly due to a lack of exposure, it is no surprise that the astronomical community hasn’t yet been given all the recognition it deserves, especially for the community’s work in recent years.

This newfound closure of astronomy news has been a complete 180 from all the publicity previous NASA missions have had. At the time of the first dozen Apollo missions, national coverage was prevalent, as well as December, 2016 | 19

the missions being featured on multiple TV stations.

Nowadays, only channels such as BBC or National Geographic may even mention these newer missions in small segments. Roger Launius, a former chief historian at NASA, has said that funding has notably been decreased when compared to the years of the Space Race. He attributes this to the declining interest, and in turn, the government begins to see the programs that come out of NASA as less of a necessity, and more of a liability. But a more recent development is an Earthlike planet that orbits Proxima Centauri called Proxima B, which astronomers believe may be reachable by spacecraft. Instead of being discovered by NASA, however, this planet was discovered by a pair of Chinese astronomers.

A picture of Roger Launius, the former chief historian at NASA

Photo by National Air and Space Museum, Space Institution

“I’m a big fan of using astronomy to enhance people’s perspectives on their own lives, on humanity and society and the planet earth. That’s why I think studying astronomy is important. It’s all about perspective.”

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December, 2016 | 21

Build a Bottle Rocket By following these steps, you will be able to build a functional bottle rocket capable of flying several feet into the air. This is a science project that only requires materials commonly found in your home.

1. Materials

Feel free to experiment with other designs by changing the size of the fins, cone, and bottle.

You will need a 2 liter soda bottle, duct tape, scissors, paper, a cork, a bicycle pump valve, a bicycle pump, and cardboard.

4. Attach to the Bottle

5. Fill with Water

Take the soda bottle and tape the cone onto the base of the bottle. This will be the top of your rocket. Tape the fins (the 6 inch side taped to the bottle) to the bottle so that they are spaced evenly around the bottle.

Make sure the fins are low enough so that they hold the bottle off the ground.

Fill your bottle rocket about half-way with water. Push the cork into the opening of the bottle to seal it. You might have to trim the cork so that the bicycle pump valve can pass through it. Make sure it is tight enough so no air leaks out.

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By Camille Kao

2. Make the Cone

3. Cut Out Fins

Roll the paper into a cone shape and trim the bottom with scissors so that the base of the cone is uniform.

You can wrap duct tape around it to protect it.

Trace out four 6 inch by 4 inch right triangles onto the cardboard and cut them out.

6. Add Bicycle Pump Valve

7. Launch

Push the bicycle pump valve through the cork. Make sure the valve comes out of the other end otherwise you won’t be able to pump air into your rocket.

Attach a bicycle pump to the rocket and pump. Once the air pressure in the bottle is high enough, the cork will be pushed out and the rocket will fly through the air.

Caution: Do not stand directly over the rocket. Only launch the rocket outside in an open area. Do not aim the rocket at other people or animals.

December, 2016 | 23

The Difficulties of Space Travel Reasons Why We Don’t Have Mars Colonies

By Camille Kao

The Atlantis Space Shuttle Image Credit: NASA

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Space travel is a popular element in countless science fiction works, but traveling between planets isn’t as easy as pushing a button and going into warp drive. We still don’t have an energy and cost efficient way of getting space ships out of our atmosphere and being in space for long periods of time can cause our bodies to deteriorate: These are not the only factors preventing us from traveling to Mars.

1969 was a very exciting year for space exploration, as it was the year when astronauts first stepped on the moon. “But at that time the idea that by now we would not have thriving moon colonies just was not on anybodys mind, at least nobody I thought.” said Craig Wheeler, an astronomy professor at UT. The speed that space technology improved since the 1970’s is dramatically slower than other fields such as computer science and medicine. With space travel appearing less in public interest, investing millions of dollars to send people to space is not on top of the government’s priorities.

The health and safety of astronauts is an important factor to consider when planning a mission. Extended stays in space can cause the deterioration of bone and muscle tissue because the forces of gravity are so weak, your body doesn’t need them to stay supported. Apollo astronauts have also been shown to be at a higher risk of heart disease. Cosmic radiation and solar flares are a concern when traveling past the Earth’s magnetosphere. While these issues need to be addressed, an important side-effect of being in space that is more difficult to resolve is the psychological impact that long periods of isolation will have on astronauts. Traveling to Mars would take research that still needs to be conducted to see how people react to stressful environments and solutions need to be developed to ensure that a group can survive and function independently. We are capable of building shielding to protect astronauts from radiation, but it is very

expensive to get mass into space with our current rocket technology (Wheeler). Engineering mistakes and miscalculations cost the lives of astronauts as it did during the space shuttle Challenger launch.

One of the biggest engineering difficulties preventing us from traveling long distances is propulsion. 90% of the fuel on the launch pad is burned just to get a rocket into space (Fowler). Ion thrusters are currently one of the most efficient types of engines and are used to keep communication satellites in place. They produce thrust by ionizing propellent using electron bombardment. Even though it is capable of reaching high speeds, it has very low thrust, meaning it must operate for a long period of time in the vacuum of space to accumulate enough speed. It’s low thrust also means it can’t be used to launch rockets into space. Further development and research could help us send ships carrying astronauts farther into space.

Once we are able to leave the solar system and travel abroad, will we need to prepare for an extraterrestrial encounter? The most likely answer is probably not. “we know that the fundamental building blocks of making life are everywhere,” said Wheeler, “and we see absolutely zero sign of other civilizations like us.” One reason may be that the chemical reactions necessary to start life haven’t oc-

curred. Even with the right chemicals organisms need, there is still an extraordinarily small chance you will have lifeforms.

Besides internal engineering faults, there are lots of space debris that can damage ships when collided with. The Earth has over 500,000 piece of debris, each one traveling up to 175,000 mph. This becomes an issue when traveling at high speeds, as a collision with a small piece of debris can cause significant damage to a ship. Also, the further you travel from Earth, the longer it takes to communicate. Once you get far enough, it becomes next to impossible to communicate, something many science fiction works gloss over.

When traveling outside of Earth, you have to pass through the Van Allen Belt, a high radiation environment created by the magnetic fields surrounding Earth. High speed are needed to pass this belt because prolonged exposure to the radiation can cause health problems. Outside the protective barrier of Earth’s magnetosphere, you are subject to space radiation.

To add to the engineering difficulty of space travel, the Theory of Relativity states that nothing with mass can exceed the speed of light. Because of the extreme distances between stars, it can take

Astronaut Pier Sellers Image Credit: NASA

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“But at that time the idea that by now we would not have thriving moon colonies just was not on anybodys mind, at least nobody I thought.”

-Craig Wheeler

generations before we are able to reach them, even when traveling at high speeds. Scientists have proposed warping space to create a wormhole, but we currently do not have to knowledge or technology to do so. Traveling near the speed of light also requires an enormous amount of energy. The fastest recorded speed of a man made object was when the Apollo 10 Lunar Module re-entered Earth at 24,791 miles per hour. This is not even 1% of the speed of light.

Space travel can and has benefited us in many ways.

Many of the technologies developed for space travel have been incorporated into our daily lives such as LED’s and portable cordless vacuums. “One benefit is to establish ourselves as a multi-planet species so that if something were to happen to Earth mankind would still exist.” said Wallace Fowler a professor at UT who specializes in orbital mechanics. “I mean, real world benefits are some what limited, but I do think that just exploration for exploration’s sake has a lot of merit.” said Lucas, a student at LASA high school. Whether it is to explore the unknown or to discover new technology for the future, space travel, though difficult, can benefit the human race.

An artist’s interpritation of a Mars colony image credit: NASA

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Need a quick refresher on what’s happened in the astronomy world? Here’s a short runthrough of the main events.

Sputnik-1957 Now this started it all. Sputnik was the first ever space satellite to enter low-earth orbit. This piece of machinery was manufactured and shot into space by the still active Soviet Union. The United States saw this as a threat, and took it into their own hands to prevent the union from having a military advantage in space.

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Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin - 1961 First person to travel into space.

Sent aboard the Vostok 1 by the Soviet Union. Was actually a cosmonaut as opposed to an astronaut. Traveled in a shuttle called the Vostok that orbited around the earth.

Space Race: 1957 - 1975 This event began with the launch of the Sputnik space probe from Russia that was previously mentioned, which caused a competition with the US to outdo each other in space. Ended with the cancellation of an Apollo flight from the US due to cuts in funding.

SpaceX Landing - 2015 First successful landing of a shuttle by a nongovernmental organization. One of the many private companies to pursue space travel. Marked a great milestone and a break away from governmental endeavours into space exploration, as well as colonization.

History of Space Exploration Apollo 11- 1969 US spaceflight that landed on the moon. First time a human being walked on the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became first men to walk on moon. Other crew included Michael Collins. Michael orbited the moon while the other two left in a lunar module

Scott Kelly’s Year in Space 2016 Astronaut that participated in an experiment that studies the effects of remaining in space fo extended periods of time. For this experiment, he was required to live in space for an entire year, with his twin brother back on earth, also being studied.

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Out of Sight,

Out of Mind

By Rishi Kumar

The sun sets over the mountains and the stars begin to appear. One by one, tiny luminous dots in the sky. This is something almost everyone can experience but for future generations, this may not be something possible in the near future.

Why is this? Light Pollution is the reason we cannot see our own galaxy. About 50 years ago you would have been able to see the Milky Way 30 | Nightly Times

we live in and it would put you in a state of awe. Nowadays, we look up into our sky and see only a few stars that seem to glow brighter than the others. This is a problem that would only get worse unless extreme actions are taken.

Light pollution is taking its toll around the globe, whether it’s on living organisms or the study on the stars. With of the world being industrialized,

Map of where light pollution is most concentrated.

the more there is a need for things like light. More light coming from cities means more artificial light being put into the sky. The current method we humans are using to power our lives at this point in time is not very efficient. We flood the sky with unnecessary light that is harmful in many ways, but a big problem most people are not aware of what light pollution is and what it does.

A reason light pollution is a problem is because of the way we are lighting up our lives.

Inefficient lighting such as lamps that shine light up into the atmosphere are highly inefficient.

Light pollution expert, Pete Strasser explains, ”Considering the devices are already physically placed, the best thing to do is to modify or replace them. It’s never too late to deal with problem”. At International Dark Skies Association, Strasser promotes quality light application and design to save energy and money.

Liberal Arts and Science Academy teacher, Alison Earnhart remarks, ”Cities have started a movement to reduce light pollution. Austin has actually been changing out all of its street lights to high efficiency lighting that only shines light down and doesn’t

shine light up into the sky”. According to Earnhart, not only are cities taking a stand, organizations and businesses have also started addressing the issue. Earnhart explains, “Big companies use giant floodlights that are just shining everywhere all the time at night and some of those companies are starting to use capped and shielded lights”.

Enough talk about what we are doing, let’s take a look at what light pollution is doing. Because of this ongoing issue, studying the stars becomes really hard when there are unwanted factors such as artificial light. Because of light pollution, earth based telescopes would soon become useless.

Already, there are not many completely dark spots left on this planet and getting a telescope there can be very difficult. “There used to be this very great telescope built in Los Angeles back before it became the big city it is now, and it basically is useless at this point because when we are shining light from all of these cities, you just can’t get good data,” Earnhart says. “It’s why nowadays, telescopes are built high up in the mountains in places with little civilization.”

In an analogy used by Earnhart, ”Light December, 2016 | 31

Pollution is like sports, sometimes that ball gets lost in the light, just like you can’t focus on stars when there is too much light in the sky. This quote sums up what light pollution does to our technology. All of the extra noise coming from the outside interferes with the main topic trying to be studied, but we just can’t collect good data.

Although light pollution affects astronomy in a huge way, it’s not the only subject being damaged or harmed. Although not very noticeable, there is a cultural effect coming from light pollution. Strasser says, “There is a cultural view looking at what humanity has seen up until the last 60-80 years. Everyone saw the same sky: the depth and the awe of the milky way or the heavens as they referred to. And there was sort of a cultural connection that was made between all generations, but that is lost now.”

The notion of our universe is partially lost now because we are unable to see our own world that we live in. There are also biological effects such as artificial light harming the migratory birds and even baby sea turtles. Numerous sea turtles die every year only because of being naturally attracted to the light coming from the cities.

Apart for harming other animal, artificial light affects humans in a way. The effects artificial light has on the human circadian system. It’s proven

that light hitting your skin and eyes triggers your sleep patterns. If you are constantly around light, it means you wouldn’t be sleeping as well.

The way our community is treating light pollution, it seems as if this isn’t a problem. In order to truly experience the universe we live in, would have to travel to dark spots on our planet such as destinations with high altitude.

Liberal Arts and Science Academy senior and leader of the LASA Astronomy Club, Erin Teals explains how the average person can diminish this problem, “In an average home, a person can install ‘blackout blinds’ on their windows if they want to keep house lights on at night to help reduce the amount of light going outside. Cities can also use fewer streetlights to reduce the amount of excess light going up into the atmosphere.

Imagine living 50 years ago. Now try to imagine looking up and seeing the Entire Milky Way. It is hard to because most people today have never and probably will never see something like it. A problem like this could mean that our future generations will never see a star other than the sun or never even think about what could be out there. Something so amazing such as seeing the universe is an opportunity you can not miss so we need to give future generations a chance to see the same picture.

”Light Pollution is like sports, sometimes that ball gets lost in the flood lights, just like you can’t focus on stars when there is too much light in the sky”.

- Alison Earnhart 32 | Nightly Times

La Silla Observatory in Chile. Milky Way present in distance behind ESO 3.6 metre telescope.

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