Picture of the Day #1

I present to you one of the greatest pictures I have ever seen, and trust me, I've seen a lot of really great stuff. I've been on the internet before.

That's right, it's Godzilla playing basketball.

This glorious (and official) image comes from a special 1992 issue by Dark Horse Comics entitled Godzilla vs. Barkley. Apparently it's based on a Nike commercial from that same year in which Godzilla played Charles Barkley in a little one on one.

I'm hoping to do this on a fairly regular basis, find some picture, either one I found or one I took myself, and post it up on here. You know, something to break up the long pauses between more substantial content, like my ongoing updates on Pluto, or my golf course reviews.

Big News for Exoplanet Enthusiasts

It's one thing whenever Kepler finds a potentially habitable exoplanet around a star several hundred light years away. That's cool, but there's nothing we can realistically do about it. The technology to move things fast enough to get that far in human amounts of time doesn't exist, won't exist anywhere in the near future, and is barely even theoretically possible outside of your crazier fringe physics. Those planets will most likely remain mere curiosities for the rest of our lives. It's another thing entirely when we find a potentially habitable exoplanet orbiting the star Proxima Centauri, which if you couldn't deduce it from the name, is the Sun's closest stellar neighbor.

Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser

Now, this is no slam dunk, "oh, it's definitely Earth 2.0" moment. The habitability of planets orbiting red dwarfs has always been in dispute, and the Proxima Centauri system features many of the red dwarf flaws. Proxima Centauri b orbits just 4.7 million miles from its star, which is okay since Proxima Centauri is a wet match compared to the Sun's 60 watt bulb, but it does mean that the planet will be tidally locked, either showing only 1 side to its sun or, if we're lucky, in a 3:2 resonance like Mercury (3 planetary rotations for every 2 orbits). If Proxima Centauri b is tidally locked in a 1:1 resonance like the Moon is, it means that one side of the planet will be constantly in the sun, and the other will never see sunlight. An atmosphere mitigates most of the vast temperature differential this situation causes, but we're not sure a planet formed in these conditions can maintain an atmosphere, which brings us to our second problem.

Many red dwarfs have issues with solar flares. They shoot off big, powerful flares at a much higher rate then the Sun does. Proxima Centauri has this issue, and as a result, Proxima Centauri b currently experiences high level radiation 100 times more intense then Earth currently does. A powerful magnetic field would protect the planet, but we don't know if it has one, or if the solar flares were even more intense earlier in the star's history. It's possible intense solar radiation stripped the planet of any atmosphere when the the planet was young, and there's nothing there now but barren rock.

So, what should you take away from this? First, anyone who says we found a new Earth right next door are wrong. We don't know what this is, and even if it does turn out to be habitable, it won't be anything like Earth. Habitable doesn't necessarily mean pleasant, and I can pretty much guarantee that life on Proxima Centauri b would be hard, for us or for native life. Plant life would be black instead of green, since most available light would be in the infrared rather then risible spectrum, and high winds would constantly blow from where the sun is directly overhead towards the night side. But you know what? If Proxima Centauri b does turn out to be this hard-scrabble, bleak world where life has to struggle to get by, it would still be the discovery of the century. I hope it works out, I really do, but let's wait until we get more information before we start planning a trip out there.

Maybe It's a Good Thing all the "Name Brand" Golfers Dropped Out of the Olympics

Credit: Miriam Jeske/Brasil2016.gov.br/CC 3.0

Let's be honest here, men's golf has been sort of a punching bag at the Rio Olympics. Only 4 of the current World Top 10 are in attendance, with the top 4 all skipping this week. It's not a good look for golf, and it doesn't bode particularly well for golf's future in the Olympics. That brings up a fair question, why should golf be in the Olympics if the best golfers can't be bothered to show up? They can bring up Zika all they want, but I doubt that's the only reason people skipped out. They just weren't that interested, and you know what? I get it. From the point of view of an elite golfer who has won one of golf's actual majors and makes millions from commercial endorsements, a gold medal really doesn't mean too much. Zika was just a convenient excuse.

So, how is all that a good thing for Olympic golf? How is it a good thing that the best golfers in the world right now are not in attendance? It's a good thing because it forces us to look at this from a different perspective. We've been looking at Olympic golf as a counterpart to the 4 majors, treating it as if it was another major. But I think that's the wrong way to look at it. Golf is a truly worldwide sport, played in many countries, but how often do you actually hear about golfers from most of them? Golf on the major level is dominated by the U.S, the U.K, South Africa, and Australia. Of the 68 majors played from 2000 on, only 12 were won by someone not from those four countries. If we throw in other former British possessions (New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, and Fiji, strangely enough. Did not know that), we're left with Angel Cabrera of Argentina, winner of 2 majors, Y.E Yang of South Korea, winner of the 2009 PGA, and Martin Kaymer of Germany, who also won 2 majors. If we go back to 1990, we can add Spain and Jose Maria Olazabal (Zimbabwe is a former British possession, for you Nick Price fans).

I may have gotten off track with that little history lesson. Let me get back to my main point here. Golf has traditionally been dominated by a few golfers from a few different countries. Those top 4 golfers who skipped out this week? We've got an Australian, two Americans, and a Brit (Northern Ireland is still part of the U.K, last time I checked). That, and the near complete abandonment of the the Olympics by Australia and South Africa means that the traditional golf powerhouses are going into this week with their second stringers. As I write this, an Australian is on top of the leaderboard, but we've got a Swede (Henrik Stenson, world number 5 and 2016 British Open winner), a Belgian, a Frenchman, a German, a second Swede, and a Taiwanese man in the top 10. These are people who are proud (presumably) to play for the country, and as people who for the most part haven't experience the glory of winning a major and probably never will, this represents a golden opportunity. Without the "best" players in the world, this tournament is wide open, and could be won by any number of people from any number of countries.

That is what I think Olympic golf should be, not a major, not a gathering of the best players in the world, but a gathering of nations, a tournament where anyone could win, and countries with a bit less golf saturation have a real chance to bring home a medal. I think that if one of the "big 3" (or 4) (or 5) (or whatever) won this thing, it would have made Olympic golf feel less prestigious, not more. The gold medal would just be another bauble to add to the trophy collection. I think there's a significant group of people who thought that the field this week should have been made up of amateurs instead of professionals, people for whom a gold medal would represent a pinnacle of achievement. I should know, I'm one of them. In a strange way, by not attending, golf's current elite have achieved a similar effect. And that is why I'm sort of glad the "good" players chickened out of the Olympics.

Note: None of this applies to the women's side of the Olympics, since not even the best women golfers get the respect they deserve for their achievements. People have trouble caring about women's majors, but a gold medal is universal. Win a dozen women's majors, get a footnote, win a gold medal, get glory. It's not fair, but that's how the world works.

Want to Go to the Moon? Now You Can!

Okay, well, you can't. Nobody has a rocket that could do the heavy lifting necessary to send a spacecraft to the moon, and no one has a spacecraft capable of making the journey. But, the U.S Federal Aviation Administration has given the company Moon Express permission to send commercial cargo to the moon.

In the short term, this really doesn't mean much. But in the long term, it means that future Moon-based commercial ventures will be governed by the same laws as companies conducting business in low Earth orbit. There will be no further bureaucracy or red tape, basically, as long as you can pass the FAA inspection, you can send payloads to the Moon and do business without further government interference.

Now, you might not be so thrilled to hear about how the U.S is opening up space to commercialism, depending on your views on such things. But let's be honest. The future of space is commercial. NASA can't do everything, and it shouldn't do everything. So long as NASA's budget remains small, it should be focused more on exploration, and not on colonization and commercialization. But still, increase NASA's budget. Space exploration is cool, and we should be doing more of it.

Martian Gullies Not Water-Based

It's pretty well known that Mars once had plenty of liquid water, and still does, though it doesn't sit around on the surface. But science is strange sometimes. Sometimes, the obvious answer isn't correct. Take the numerous Martian gullies. They look like dry creekbeds, and a lot of scientists sort of assumed that hey, these features that look remarkably like a feature we see on Earth probably formed the same way. They were taken as proof that liquid water existed on the surface of Mars in recent history, and that seemed like the end of the story.

But this is science, and in science, the story never ends. Someone dug deeper, did more research, and concluded that the gullies formed through the constant freezing and thawing of carbon dioxide frost, not liquid water. Using spectroscopy from the HiRISE space probe, scientists discovered no evidence that the gullies had deposited any sort of clay or other mineral associated with running water, and that any clay associated with the gullies were ancient and had been exposed during the formation of the gullies. I take this as a reminder that science is never easy, and that even if the answer seems obvious, you should always check to make sure.