With space tourism right around the corner, space is becoming an increasingly tangible possibility for more people on the planet. What are the current challenges and research going on in that field? This session will be about designing for spatial habitat, studying the sun, listening to space and the conquest of space.
- Speakers:
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Honor Harger, Listening to the sound of space.
Honor is actually a Brighton artist. People understand the world through stories, not facts – we don’t have astronomy columns in the newpapers, we have astrology columns.
Honor wants to understand space through sound. Why have so few people heard space?
- The sun when there is a solar flare – sounds a bit like a baby’s heartbeat. http://bison.ph.bham.ac.uk/sounds/rawnoise.au
- Jupiter – sounds like Popcorn popping.
- A pulsar – sounds like an old 78 that has got the end of the record.
[My descriptions, Honor actually plays the sounds!]
When Watson was inventing telephones in Boston, they had a half mile wire aerial that picked up all sorts of crackles, pops and noises that were coming from the earth and space. This was before we had any capability to transmit our own radio waves.
Later, Karl Jansky worked out that a mysterious hissing on his receiver was appearing 4 minutes earlier every day. This led to the realisation that the noise must be coming from outer space.
At Bell Labs in the 1960s, their radio telescopes were picking up a strange hissing noise. They thought initially that this was because there were pigeons were nesting on the dish. Even after getting rid of the pigeons, there were still noises. This is actaully the oldest noise in the universe, the noise of the big bang.
Listen!: http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BigBang/BBSnd500.wav
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Lucie Green, Researching and studying the sun
This is a brilliant talk but it is so visual that you need to watch. Astonishing visuals of how we have been able to understand the sun and physics by watching and recording the sun.
If you want to feel humbled, small, insignificant and awestruck by nature spend a spare 20 minutes to watch some of the coolest home movies of the sun EVER. I don’t believe in God but I do believe in physics and I definitely feel very, very small now. 🙂
P.S. Lucie says, look out on Sunday 6th February at teatime. We will be able to see a full 360 version of the sun from then and for the next 8 years as this will be the first time that there are satellites monitoring the sun from every angle.
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Jennifer Magnolfi, Programming space habitat. Technology and the Human Factor
Thanks a colleague, “Although our work takes place on, literally, different planets…”
Talking about design and architecture for humans in space. There is a long, long way to go. Literally.
Technology steps to space
Our biggest challenges in deve
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