Recently in The big questions Category

I have never claimed to understand the detail of the theories making it neccessary but none the less I have always had trouble understanding the beauty of dark matter. The way it has looked to me dark matter has been introduced for the as a means of balancing an otherwise unbalanced equation. In that respect it is similar to the aether that was introduced as a medium for EM-waved to travel in. No one has, to date, been able to observe the aether or prove it acutally exists.

Now, according to an announced article by CERN casts doubts on the neccessity of introducing dark matter in order to model galaxies that stay "together" rather than dipurse due to centrifugal force of its own rotation. The paper, titled "General relativity versus exotic dark matter" promotes Einsteins general relativity as the only addition to the modelling of gravity compared to earlier models that require dark matter to be balanced. If the new theory stands for scrutiny than Occams razor should certainly select the new theory as preferarble to the one requiring dark matter to balance.

The blog DPT (in swedish only) comments on the american space programme. DTP considers the americans to have chosen the wrong path when they spend their funds persuing manned space flight.

The editors here at DPT have long had a clear opinion on this: unmanned space flight gives more scientific return and costs only about 1 % - 1 percent! - of what manned spaceflight costs. The sense of wonder and the national prestige that is surely the main objective of manned spaceflight (the whole concept is so 1962) can be accomplished with unmanned spaceflight.

At Klar Himmel we can not agree to this. We can perhaps agree to that it may be possible to achieve the same scientific results using unmanned space flight at only 1 percent of the cost of manned space flight and we at Klar Himmel do not want unmanned spaceflight to stop. What we do not agree to is that it is possible to reach the same level of "sense of wonder" or national prestige with unmanned space flight as with manned.

The pictures taken by the rovers on Mars or Huygens on Titan are indeed impressive but machines have one great disadvantage compared to humans. It is very difficult to imagenie yourself in the place of a machine. It is in any case more difficult than put yourself in the place of a human being. For one thing as the human being is actually there youknow that it would be physically possible to be there while the same doesn't go for a machine. Compare trying to put yourself in the place of a toaster on the surface of the moon to putting yourself in the place of a golf playing astronaut. The scientific benefit of either is doubtful but the "Sense of Wonder" accomplished by the astronaut will beat the toaster any day. One could argue that the comparison is not fair and that is possible to achieve so many other things by unmanned space flight. The pictures from Titan were awe inspiring but I believe that a lot of the "awe" inspired comes from the notion that this is what a future space traveller would actually see. For us here at Klar Himmel there is noting more awe inpiring than looking up at our own moon an consider that there has actually been humans walking on its grey dusty surface.

Showing off at things you pride yourself to excel in strikes as a good base line strategy to gain national prestige. The USA has long been the strongest economy in the world and probably the most technologically advanced society. Showing this off by persuing expensive and technologically advanced project must be optimal from that perspective. Unmanned space flight will reach deeper into space than manned will in the forseable time but 10 revers on Mars will only ever be seen as precursors to manned missions. Manned missions are "the price" of contemporary space flight. A million diamonds will simply not compare to the Star of India in terms of national prestige.

Expansion has always been an integral part of western civilisation and one that it has excelled in. Particularly in the USA the images and stories of "the wild west" and breaking new land is an integral part of the culture. As the land on the globe is now for the very most part explored there is not much room left to expand. Apart from the polar regions, the only option left is to expand vertically. (In this context it is really surprising to see how comparatively little is done to explore and expand into the depths of the sea.) Without human presense in space I believe that the western cultures would feel trapped and locked in. Space colonisation serves as a possible but distant opportunity for breaking new land.

Unmanned space flight cannot replace manned but will always serve as an important complement to it. Suggesting to stop manned space flight for the benefit unmanned with the arguments that DPT does is to try and reserve space for science alone. What DPT forgets is that space, the space endavour and the associated sense of wonder belong to and inspire all of us. To see space flight as something that solely belongs to science is to rob the rest of us of our dreams.

The space elevators impact on the space activities can in many ways compared to the impact that the internet has had on modern society. The internet may have caused a financial "bubble" and a lot of the predictions about what effects it could lead to turned out to be way off target. And some of its effects have come as total surprises, yet today most people say that they would much sooner give up their mobile phone than they would thier broadband connection.

The Space Elevator may turn out to have the same profound impact on space activities and, in time, on society. When the price of putting mass into space dwindles only the imagination will put a limit on what people will want to put in orbit apart from themselves. The Space Elevator will finally cement mans step into the space age.

In this mornings piece inthe Swedish TV-channel TV4, the host made the deeply existential question:

"Do you believe that there is life in the Universe?"

What could you possibly answer to that? Is she really aware of what she is asking? To say "no" would be close to denying the existance of the Universe. Luckily the representative for Rymdbolaget replied with a yes and so passed another instant of condensed space, philosophy and time.