Saturday, February 1, 2014

Quiz: what is the oldest manmade object in space?

Answer: this copper Lincoln penny, a 1909 US one-cent coin, launched into space on November 26, 2011, aboard the Curiosity Mars rover.

American geologists have long used Lincoln pennies as scale indicators in photographs. In homage to tradition, a 1909 one-cent coin is attached to Curiosity’s camera calibration target.

The second oldest human-made object in space, and until 2011 the oldest, is Vanguard 1, a satellite launched in 1958. It functioned until 1964, and is predicted to remain orbiting the Earth until the year 2198, when its orbit will have degraded so much that it falls in. It will presumably burn up in the atmosphere. But supposing any part reaches the ground and is picked up, by whom? Someone so technologically advanced we wouldn't recognise them, or by a cave dweller?

Came across this little nugget when researching space archaeology as part of a lecture I am due to give to an astronomy club next month.

Friday, January 31, 2014

I anx over wrong response to Syria pictures

The Umayyad mosque in Aleppo dates from 11th to 14th centuries.
The minaret, disappeared on the second picture, was built in 1090.
Martin Chulov’s recent article in The Guardian “Syria's heritage in ruins: before-and-after pictures” is a must-read. The pictures reveal how the seemingly unstoppable war in Syria is laying waste to a world heritage built over 5,000 years.

But stop! The war has claimed more than 130,000 lives. Which is more important?

And here's what makes me queasy: that the pictures that impact me most are those of the Umayyad mosque in Aleppo. The same Guardian article has a before and after of a hospital, even more comprehensively destroyed than the mosque; and then what of the pictures of the dead and refugees that we have seen so many of?

So what's wrong with me, that out of all this, when I seem to most mourn is the loss of the historic buildings???