Astro Gate

Seemingly, people in the space community have a tendency to push the boundaries of thought about all the possibilities that await us in the universe. Case in point: Geoffrey Landis. Landis is a scientist at NASA's Glenn Research Center who writes science fiction in his spare time. Last week Landis shared with us his ideas for using a solar powered airplane to study Venus. This week, Landis goes a step farther (actually, several steps farther) with his ideas about colonizing Venus. Yes, Venus, our hot, greenhouse-effect-gone-mad neighboring planet with a crushing surface pressure that has doomed the few spacecraft that have attempted to reach the planet's mysterious landscape. Landis knows Venus' surface itself is pretty much out of the question for human habitation. But up about 50 kilometers above the surface, Landis says the atmosphere of Venus is the most Earth-like environment, other than Earth itself, in the solar system. What Landis proposes is creating floating cities on Venus where people could live and work, as well as study the planet below.

Read the full article here: Universe today 

by Kevin Bonsor 

No engine is likely to generate superluminal speeds; the laws of physics prevent us from doing that (for now), but we will be able to go many times faster than our current propulsion methods allow. A matter-antimatter engine will take us far beyond our solar system and let us reach nearby stars in a fraction of the time it would take a spacecraft propelled by a liquid-hydrogen engine, like the one used in the space shuttle. It's like the difference between driving an Indy race car and a 1971 Ford Pinto. In the Pinto, you'll eventually get to the finish line, but it will take 10 times longer than in the Indy car.

In this article, we will peer a few decades into the future of space travel to look at an antimatter spacecraft, and find out what antimatter actually is and how it will be used for an advanced propulsion system.

What is Antimatter?
This isn't a trick question. Antimatter is exactly what you might think it is — the opposite of normal matter, of which the majority of our universe is made. Until just recently, the presence of antimatter in our universe was considered to be only theoretical. In 1928, British physicist Paul A.M. Dirac revised Einstein's famous equation E=mc2. Dirac said that Einstein didn't consider that the "m" in the equation — mass — could have negative properties as well as positive. Dirac's equation (E = + or - mc2) allowed for the existence of anti-particles in our universe. Scientists have since proven that several anti-particles exist. 

In 1954, a young Princeton University doctoral candidate named Hugh Everett III came up with a radical idea: That there exist parallel universes, exactly like our universe. These universes are all related to ours; indeed, they branch off from ours, and our universe is branched off of others. Within these parallel universes, our wars have had different outcomes than the ones we know. Species that are extinct in our universe have evolved and adapted in others. In other universes, we humans may have become extinct.
­­­ This thought boggles the mind and yet, it is still comprehensible. Notions of parallel universes or dimensions that resemble our own have appeared in works of science fiction and have been used as explanations for metaphysics. But why would a young up-and-coming physicist possibly risk his future career by posing a theory about parallel universes?

The theory of relativity states that as the velocity of an object nears the speed of light, time slows down. Scientists have discovered that even at the speeds of the space shuttle, astronauts can travel a few nanoseconds into the future. To understand this, picture two people, person A and person B. Person A stays on Earth, while person B takes off in a spacecraft. At takeoff, their watches are in perfect sync. The closer person B's spacecraft travels to the speed of light, the slower time will pass for person B (relative to person A). If person B travels for just a few hours at 50 percent the speed of light and returns to Earth, it will be obvious to both people that person A has aged much faster than person B. This difference in aging is because time passed much faster for person A than person B, who was traveling closer to the speed of light. Many years might have passed for person A, while person B experienced a time lapse of just a few hours.

If wormholes could be discovered, it might allow us to travel to the past as well as the future. Here's how it would work: Let's say the mouth of the wormhole is portable. Then person B in the example above, who traveled at 50 percent of light speed into space for a few hours, could carry one wormhole mouth into space, while the mouth at the opposite end of the wormhole would stay with person A on Earth. The two people would continue to see one another as person B traveled into space. When person B returned to Earth a few hours later, a few years may have passed for person A. Now, when person A looks through the wormhole that traveled into space, that person will see him or herself at a younger age, the age he or she was when person B launched into space. The cool thing about it is that the older person A would be able to step into the past by entering the wormhole, while the younger person B could step into the future.

READ MORE ABOUT TIME TRAVEL:

HowStuffWorks 

Wikipedia 

abc.net.au 

Teleportation — the term was first coined by American writer and paranormal investigator Charles Fort in his 1931 book "Lo!" — is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as: "The instantaneous transportation of persons, etc., across space by advanced technological means."

Sadly for sci-fi enthusiasts the work currently being carried out by scientists is not producing quite the sort of teleportation beloved of popular fiction.

Instead physicists — spurred on by the theoretical work of Charles H. Bennett and others — have been focusing on what is known as "quantum teleportation."

A brain-pulpingly complex and, at times, surreal field of study — one touching upon such knotty issues as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Effect and The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle — quantum teleportation involves the transmission not of actual matter, but rather of information.

"This whole area is surrounded by a sort of mystique that makes people feel they can't understand it, "says Bennett.

"In fact it is simpler than it sounds. What you have to note is that in this sort of experiment the atom itself is not teleported, but rather the delicate quantum information contained in the atom.

"In effect you are disembodying the complete quantum state of one atom and reincarnating it in another atom of the same sort."

 READ MORE HERE: CNN

By Robert Roy Britt

Paul Steinhardt's universe is a lot like the workaday world of many people, a cycle of early vigor, spent energy, exhausted return, and new beginnings. However, in Steinhardt's universe, there is absolutely no end to the cycle.

The Princeton physicist and his colleague, Neil Turok of Cambridge University, have developed a whole new theory for how the universe came to be. Their proposal seeks to explain recently uncovered flaws in the scientifically accepted model for the origin and evolution of all known things. It describes a series of big bangs and equally significant crunches that form a never-ending cycle of rejuvenation and destruction.

In this universe — our universe — time never ends.

The current leading theory for the universe holds that it emerged from a single Big Bang sometime around 12 billion to 15 billion years ago, undergoing an early and rapid period of inflation. That much remains widely accepted.

"However, the standard model has some cracks," Steinhardt and Turok write in a paper published today in the online version of the journal Science. Astronomers have in recent years learned that the universe is not just expanding, but is doing so at an ever-increasing pace.