Way Out

          graphic: European Space Agency/Rosetta Mission

SLEEP WELL, LITTLE LANDER: Unfortunate but not unexpected news today from the European Space Agency, "Silent since its last call to mothership Rosetta seven months ago, the Philae lander is facing conditions on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from which it is unlikely to recover."

We have followed the remarkable Rosetta mission with great interest. I mean, you have to love a spacecraft that is so well engineered that it's able to travel to a moving target (Comet 67P) and then launch a lander onto the comet's surface!

During its brief period of activity (64 hours from launch to landing), Philae took detailed images of the comet from above and on the surface, sniffed out organic compounds, and profiled the local environment and surface properties of the comet, providing unprecedented insights. 

Rosetta will continues its scientific investigations of the comet until September, when it will crash itself (well, with programmers' help) into the surface, joining Philae forever.

ALL TOGETHER NOW: Neat video from NASA today, showing the assembly of the James Webb Space Telescope's mirrors from start to finish. 

Photographer Chris Gunn and Producer Michael McClare, both from NASA Goddard collaborated to produce the video. Over a three-month period, they captured 141,639 images for the time-lapse at a rate of one image taken every 30 seconds between November 11, 2015 and February 1, 2016, a total of 83 days.

"Months before the mirror installation began, I looked for the perfect time-lapse camera placement, one that would give viewers an unprecedented look at the mirror integration of the space telescope," Gunn said. "When I decided that the best place to mount the camera would be on the 'over deployment fixture' directly above telescope structure I expected the mirror integration team to reject the proposal. After they verified the safety of our proposed camera set-up they were just as enthusiastic about the idea as I was.”
https://youtu.be/1d1sHLkmNQI

Each of the telescope's hexagonal-shaped mirror segments measures just over 4.2 feet (1.3 meters) across and weighs about 88 pounds (40 kilograms). Once in space and fully unfolded/deployed, the 18 mirrors will work together as one large 21.3-foot diameter (6.5-meter) mirror.

POP ART: Today's physics lesson came courtesy of the musical group OK GO. Their music videos are always an over-the-top spectacle, but their newest one is an absolute eye popper.

For their song, "Upside Down & Inside Out," the video was recorded inside an accelerating aircraft to produce a zero-G environment. Per stories we read today, there were 15 parabolas per flight. They spent the first 7 parabolas rehearsing, and then ran the entire dance all the way through for the last eight.

The video wasn't available anywhere but the band's Facebook page initially, so I don't have a YouTube link for you right now, unfortunately. But I can share some behind-the-scenes videos.

OK Go - Upside Down & Inside OutHello, Dear Ones. Please enjoy our new video for "Upside Down & Inside Out".  A million thanks to S7 Airlines. #GravitysJustAHabit
Posted by OK Go on Thursday, February 11, 2016

The filming made a terrible mess, and between flights (two per day), the interior of the plane was hosed down, resulting in a wet, cold plane, like a "frigid, stinking swamp" per one of the crew working on set. https://youtu.be/aRhchsKmoPg 

Einstein FTW

An artist's impression of gravitational waves generated by binary neutron stars.

Credits: R. Hurt/Caltech-JPL

"EINSTEIN SCORES AGAIN": That was the headline on a Seattle Times' post regarding today's ground (space) breaking announcement regarding the detection of gravitational waves. "Einstein was right" read the headline on  Pacific Science Center's social media post.

Today's news is a game-changing discovery in our quest to fully understand gravity, ushering in a new era for astronomy. For the first time, scientists have observed the warping of space-time generated by the collision of two black holes more than a billion light-years from Earth.

Think about that: The warping of space-time!

Over a half century ago, Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in his general theory of relativity. Since then, scientists have been attempting to detect these waves. 

Einstein pictured these waves as ripples in the fabric of space-time produced by massive, accelerating bodies, such as black holes orbiting each other. When two black holes collide, they release massive amounts of energy in the form of gravitational waves that last a fraction of a second and can be "heard" throughout the universe - if you have the right instruments.

https://youtu.be/i1-3eClv_TY

This movie shows a simulation of the merger of two black holes and the resulting emission of gravitational radiation. The colored fields represent a component of the curvature of space-time. The outer sheets (red) correspond directly to outgoing gravitational radiation, which was recently detected by the NSF’s LIGO observatories. 
Credit: NASA/C. Henze

Finally, the event of black holes colliding was detected, per the National Science Foundation (NSF) announcement that the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of ground-based observatories in Hanford, Washington, and Livingston, Louisiana, picked up that activity. Per the report, the ‪#‎LIGO‬ project heard the hallmark "chirp" of black holes colliding, fulfilling Einstein's General Theory of Relativity - the last part of his theory that had yet to be proven!

Today, we read many articles and watched multiple videos about the discovery. We started with a great story from the British Broadcasting Company: Einstein's gravitational waves 'seen' from black holes by Pallab GhoshScience correspondent, BBC News. There are multiple videos embedded in the story. We watched them all, including an interview with physicist Stephen Hawking about what this discovery means.

We also checked out a great TED talk: What Are Gravitational Waves?

There's also a great National Public Radio article (with photos and video) here: http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/11/466286219/in-milestone-scientists-detect-waves-in-space-time-as-black-holes-collide

We'll definitely be reading more on the topic in the days/weeks/months/years to come. This announcement is something I've been thinking about since, oh, around 1972-ish, when I read Madeline L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time."  

Sweet Stuff

PARTY HEARTY: This afternoon, the kids participated in a super fun Valentine's themed party.  

We arrived early to help set up and CJ was quickly (and happily) conscripted into being the party's BINGO caller. 

I was a little nervous about how that might go, because I think he'd only even played BINGO a couple of times before, but he handled it like a pro (thanks in large part to a super helpful dad of some classmates' excellent supervision). He kept at it for 1.5 hours with nary a break.

Meanwhile, Annabelle made the party rounds, making arts and crafts, including enjoying a cookie decoration station.

There were Valentines to be distributed. Annabelle made an army of cute pet rocks (see lead photo for a few examples). CJ passed out 50 fishbowls (see below for a couple). The glare in the photo makes it kind of hard to read but they say, "I'm glad we're in the same school."

Figuring there would be LOTS of sweet treats around, we opted to bring some savory stuff, and "made" heart shaped cheese, sausage, peppers and pita with various sized cookie cutters. I think I have permanent heart-shaped impressions on my palms.

Of course, the best part of a Valentine exchange is checking out all the cool cards from others afterward.

Much fun!

Warming Up

LIKE A HEATWAVE:  Seattle set a record today - at 63 degrees, it was the warmest Feb. 9 on record. There were wispy clouds above, while fog tried to hang 'round the lower parts. Mt. Rainier looked like it was floating today.

We had to take a nice long walk this afternoon, soaking up the sun and warmth and the signs of a mild winter. (I sure wish I'd had a real camera with me instead of my dying cell phone's crappy lens.)

Rosemary in the neighborhood is blossoming with pretty little purple flowers.

Some neighbors' Japonica are also getting their bloom on.

  To the north and east, we could see snow capped Cascades in the far-off distance.

PLAY TIME: Yesterday afternoon, while I was at the dentist, Christian took the kids to a matinee play by Taproot Theatre's Road Company.  Below, CJ tells you a bit about the performance.

"Camp Super Friends" is a play by a group called the Taproot Theatre Company about a summer camp for those with superpowers, and the play's message is about bullying. 

In the play, a boy named Marvel visits the camp, but a more popular kid at the camp named Jet is acting mean to him. Marvel begins acting like Jet does, but does not earn any "friends" like Jet has. 

He learns that Jet's "friends" are just with him for things like candy he buys for them. When Marvel shows Jet how to make real friends that care about you, they team up to stop the evil Professor Nemesis.

My Funny Valentine

ROCK ON:  It may only be February 8, but we were getting our Valentine's Day on big time this morning. The kids each had to make 50 (!) Valentines for friends.  That's a lot. 

Naturally, we could have gone to the store and bought boxed cards, but why would we do that when we could spend more time and money hand making cards? - ha ha ha.

A few days back, we combed the Internet for D-I-Y Valentine ideas. Annabelle loved one we found that was a little googly-eyed rock with a heart-felt 'you rock!' greeting. That meant we were going to need some rocks. 

Fortunately, we live near multiple rocky beaches. 

Yesterday, before Super Bowl 50, we went down to Smith Cove and found a couple dozen. 

And then this morning, we headed to the kayak launch in Magnolia  and found some other candidates.

They have all now received eyes and mouths. Cheeks will be 'installed' tomorrow.

CJ, on the other hand, chose a cute design that featured a fish bowl. Annabelle and I drew one in Adobe Illustrator. 

We printed out 50 copies and the kids cut them out and stuffed them into globe-shaped treat bags we happened to have in stock. 

CJ grumbled something about us running a Valentine 'sweatshop.' 

Once the cards were cut out and carefully tucked into the bags, it was time to add the goldfish. Then we used silver twist-ties to close the bags' tops. They were pretty darn cute when we were done!