Theory of Everything...so far

I know this isn't strictly an astronomy video but it is amazing to look back at all we have accomplished. There is some relevant astronomy stuff in here too. The video is a bit dated (since we have found the Higgs boson) but still very interesting to watch and reminds me of when and why I got into physics.

Warp Drive

One step closer to interstellar travel. I must say, I have been waiting for the day where this would be possible. My original goal in studying physics was to help find a way to get people off of Earth and on to another planet, giving the human race more time to learn and create. This idea came from the problems we have with our planet (I was mainly concerned by overpopulation and global warming) and I wanted to do something to help the human race, but I wanted it to be something that would last. So why not just find a way to a new Earth? We could split the population or depending on how bad our Earth has become, maybe we could look for a more suitable planet for our entire human family. Of course, traveling through space has always been a difficult task. Getting people around our solar system is still unreasonable and we would need to look to other star systems to find a new home, which would be light years away. Fitting everyone in the ship for this trip would be a different problem. 

Well, it seems researchers are on their way to solving our space travel troubles. After crawling through mathematical loopholes, scientists have devised a way to test the possibility of creating a warp drive that will allow a ship to travel at a speed faster than that of light. As you may or may not know, we cannot travel at the speed of light or faster. There is a simple reason for this, to not jump over anyone's head (including my own), particles of light (photons) have no mass and because of that they are able to move through space at this incredible speed. If you take a person, which has mass, and attempt to move them, the faster you want them to move, the harder you have to push. It takes a lot of energy to move something at a speed close to that of light and because the object moving has mass it will take an infinite amount of energy to get it to reach the speed of light. This is why the bubble warp drive is necessary. Instead of pushing on the object and getting it to move at incredible speeds, which is impractical, scientists want to try to compress and expand space around the object, effectively moving the object through a warped space and not actually doing anything to the object (if there are people in the object, they will not feel as though they are moving). 

This is similar to sound waves in the air. When you clap your hands, the action of bringing your hands together quickly causes the air between your hands to be compressed. The compressed air is at a higher pressure than the air around it and high pressure air always wants to get to a lower pressure. This pressurized air pushes out and creates more high pressure air in the direction it is traveling and lower pressure air behind it. This action/reaction continues causing a wave of pressure to propagate outward from your hands. You hear it when it reaches your ear, but the particles in the air are not traveling from your hands to your ear, the energy you put into the clap is. It is traveling at the speed of sound and similarly, I'm assuming, the ship using the warp drive will take advantage of this mechanic. I do have a question though.What if this just creates a wave in space and it doesn't move the ship at all? But this question comes from the fact that I am trying to simplify the idea by comparing it to something somewhat different. I am doing this in order to simplify the idea and because physics, like history, tends to repeat itself, so the mechanics of compressed and expanded space may be similar to other mediums.

Let's hope their research comes through for the good of space exploration, human relocation and maybe even extra stellar vacation.

Thanks to Alexi Parker for the link.

http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive?utm_source=deadspin.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

Astronomer Job Description

So first I'll describe, roughly, my initial ideas about what a modern astronomer's job would include. The main thing that comes to mind would be actually looking at stars or other objects in the night sky with powerful telescopes. I'm sure a lot of astronomers do this, but I doubt they spend most or even a large fraction of their time looking into the night sky (maybe they do on their free time). Surely, they must spend most of their time analyzing data and thinking about models that apply to the data, but what else would they do? Well, someone has to teach us this stuff so an astronomer might teach or do research at a school. What else is there to do for a person interested in discovering the underlying framework of the universe?
According to this website I found, using something called "The Internet", astronomers are useful to society in a few other ways. Some astronomers work in observatories, planetariums, and museums and bring their knowledge to the general public. Personally, I think this is extremely important to the progress of mankind; exposing the public to new and exciting ideas will keep them interested and wanting to support scientists, in general, in their work. Astronomers have improved weather forecasting, the way we measure time and its accuracy, and navigation on land, air, and sea. These contributions are incredibly helpful, not only to scientists, but everyone. With a smartphone, we don't have to worry about getting lost or being unsure of what to wear for the day's weather (some of us are still unsure but that might be a personal problem not easily fixed by astronomers). Knowing more of our environment enables us to make more efficient decisions and set our minds to worry about greater things than "is this tiger gonna eat me?" or "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?" and spend that brain power on societies' bigger problems.
 Back to research and new discoveries. Astronomers are in charge of deciding what to study and how to study it, astronomy related. This includes developing new techniques to make better use of the equipment already being used and coming up with new technologies or methods leading to more accurate data. More accurate data leads to better theories and better theories lead to a more fundamental understanding of the universe, which intern leads to different ways of progressing as people. A beautiful circle of progress, starting from an interest in the unknown, going through the process of discovery, and ending at something learned and possibly used for the benefit of someone or something. Then it starts all over again.

http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/386/Astronomer.html