DailyDirt: I Should've Changed That Stupid Lock, I Should've Made You Leave Your Key...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Some people are astonishingly lucky, but it depends on your point of view whether that luck is good or bad. Surviving after falling out of a plane without a parachute has happened to a surprising number of people, but not all of them have fully recovered. Some folks win extraordinary jackpots from the lottery, and then file for bankruptcy shortly afterwards. Maybe it's easier to survive an asteroid field if you don't know the odds.

• Ann Hodges is the only person in history confirmed to have been hit by a meteorite. In 1954, a softball-sized rock crashed through the ceiling, bounced off a radio and hit Hodges. She survived the impact, sued to keep the meteorite, but didn't quite thrive after her fifteen minutes of fame. [url]
• Tsutomu Yamaguchi survived the first nuclear bomb that hit Hiroshima, and then he made his way back to his hometown of Nagasaki -- and survived another nuclear detonation. About 150 people were unlucky enough to watch both nuclear bombs, and only a handful experienced both events within the 1.5 mile blast zone of intense radiation. [url]
• Roy Sullivan, aka 'Lightning Man' or the 'Spark Ranger', was a ranger at Shenandoah National Park famous for being struck by lightning SEVEN TIMES (not in a row). He's listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, but no one is encouraging anyone else to try to get struck by lightning, so Sullivan will probably be the only record holder for this category. The odds of being struck 7 times is estimated to be 4.15 in 10^32 -- but if you've been struck just once, there's actually a support group for survivors. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: ann hodges, guinness book of world records, life and death, lightning strike, meteorite, nuclear bombs, radiation, roy sullivan, survivors, tsutomu yamaguchi

DailyDirt: Playing With Asteroids

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The idea of mining asteroids has been around for quite some time, but only recently has it been considered a somewhat practical (and possibly profitable) venture. It's possible that private space companies could make it to an asteroid before NASA gets to one, and it'll be interesting to see what happens if asteroid mining operations succeed in bringing back significant quantities of valuable metals. But we're not quite there yet. Here are just a few links on the baby steps we might need to take to start playing with asteroids.

• Astronomers have identified about a dozen easily-captured asteroids (or Easily Retrievable Objects -- EROs) that could be nudged into an Earth orbit with existing rocket technologies. We could bring about 1,500 tons of space rock right to our front door for mining operations... as long as we don't miscalculate and cause a nuclear winter by turning them into meteorites. [url]
• Not that long ago, a 10,000 ton meteoroid landed near the city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,500 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. Researchers have back-tracked the path of this space rock to its origin as an Apollo-class asteroid -- one of many objects near our planet that could come crashing down on us. Maybe we should focus more on preventing huge meteorites? [url]
• The Keck Institute for Space Studies has studied the feasibility of capturing a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) to a high lunar orbit by 2025. They estimated the cost of such a mission would be around $2.6 billion. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: asteroid, astronomy, chelyabinsk, ero, meteorite, meteoroid, nea, orbit, rocket technology, satellite, space, space mining
Companies: nasa, planetary resources

DailyDirt: Life On Other Worlds

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The origin of life is a pretty enormous mystery. There are several theories for how life might have come about, but it's difficult to design experiments to narrow down these options. In the meantime, researchers continue to look for clues and evidence for life that didn't originate on our planet. Here are just a few examples that could one day lead us in the right direction.

• Meteorite fragments found in Sri Lanka *might* contain extra-terrestrial fossils -- if you kinda squint and tilt your head, the algae-like fossils support a panspermia theory for the origin of life. This isn't the first time a peer-reviewed journal has published a story like this, and it won't be the last. The real question is when will these papers actually be convincing to skeptics.... [url]
• In 1996, a rock named ALH84001 made a lot more headlines when scientists claimed that it might contain evidence of life from Mars in the form of microfossils. Since then, the ALH84001 debate seems to have settled on the view that those small fossils weren't necessarily created by ET life, and the media hoopla re-affirmed that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." [url]
• Maybe we'll see evidence of life outside our solar system by looking for evidence of asteroid mining operations around other stars -- if we see unusual amounts of dusty debris, it could mean intelligence life has been exploring for interplanetary resources. It might be hard to determine the difference between natural and unnatural debris, though. [url]
• NASA's Curiosity rover has discovered that Mars once had an environment suitable for life. This is an important find, and it raises questions of why Mars doesn't seem to have ubiquitous life now. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: alh84001, aliens, asteroids, astrobiology, biology, et, life, mars, meteorite, microfossils
Companies: nasa