Sunday, April 26, 2015

NASA's Accidental Warp Bubble

  3 days ago, NASA may have accidentally created a warp bubble. If you don't know what a warp bubble is, it is essentially the expanding and contracting of space which allows objects to move faster than light speed. NASA was firing a laser into the resonance chamber of their EM Drive when the lasers appeared to be moving faster than the speed of light. If this is true, it would mean that modifying the EM Drive would create a Faster-Than-Light engine which would allow us to easily travel to Mars and beyond our Solar System!

http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/

   If you have read all of my articles, then you realize that I talk a lot about space and future technology. It really is exciting to know that it is possible to move beyond our star system without travelling for hundreds or thousands of years. We could be meeting alien people in this century! Exploration and curiosity are both natural traits of humans beings; it is very comforting to know that we can put those traits to good use.

Thursday, April 16, 2015

First Reusable Rocket Landing Test... So Close!

   Two days ago, the private space flight company SpaceX launched the rocket Dragon. This was a rocket which was launched on a test route to the ISS and back to earth, successfully landing on a drone ship. Unfortunately, the rocket was going too fast so it toppled over and exploded. SpaceX is scheduled to launch the Falcon 9 rocket on June 22nd and we will then see if a rocket can successfully land back on earth.




http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/14/8417621/watch-spacex-falcon-9-rocket-landing

     This is great news for anyone involved in space flight. I think that this will be a great opportunity to increase the frequency of launches since the rockets will be recovered and reusable. Maybe someday, we could actually reach out past our Solar System and travel into Interstellar Space. I'm looking forward to a day when exploration is our main focus, not defensive tactics or politics.

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

"Life" Found in Deep Space

http://www.space.com/29049-life-ingredients-found-around-star.html

    A couple of hours ago, on April 8th for any of you reading on a different day, astronomers found complex organic molecules around a young star called MWC 480. If you don't know what this means, the astronomers basically found origins of life that could explain the beginning of our existence. They found carbon-based molecules too,  which means that the life forms would develop into something biologically similar to animals on Earth (although evolution would allow them to adapt to their environment so their features would be determined by the nature of their planet).

       This discovery is truly amazing and could mark the beginning of new scientific research in biology and many other fields. It's wonderful to know that there is a possibility that we share this universe with species from different planets. Maybe someday we'll be out searching the stars for people who are willing to be our friends. But in the meantime, small discoveries like this keep me hopeful and optimistic about the future of exploration and space travel!


Thursday, March 26, 2015

The lli Pika, Cute and Endangered

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/23/asia/china-endangered-pika/
lli Pika of China
     In 1983, the lli Pika was discovered by conservationist Li Weidong in the mountains of Xinjiang China. The Pika is a silent, introverted animal that lives in caves of the mountains by itself. The species has been reduced significantly because global warming has forced them to move higher into the mountains. There are now fewer than 2,000 Pikas remaining.


   The Pika is a species that is struggling to survive partly because of us. Global warming has killed them off and we are the main contributors to global warming. CO2 emissions created by us cause global warming. The pika is only one of the things that is being affected by our failure to preserve the Earth. I am not much of an environmentalist, but it would benefit everyone if we could stop producing so many greenhouse gasses and create a new fuel that emits water vapor.



Thursday, March 19, 2015

Myself and Other Things

     Hello there, my name is Ben Bayer and I am a 15 years old. I live out in the suburbs of Omaha (around Bennington to be exact). I am the youngest member of a family of three (two boys and one girl). I love to do many activities and projects, most of them scientific. I love pretty much anything that has to do with science fiction. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not the guy sitting in a basement eating Cheetos and watching Star Wars, I'm more passionate about it (I don't even like Star Wars anyway). I like to write stories and watch different shows that deal with Sci-Fi (StarGate SG-1, Dune, Star Trek, and many more). Science fiction seems to strike a fancy to me, not so much because I like science, but more because of the image it portrays of the future. For instance, traveling beyond earth, curing all diseases, aliens invading earth, and even a world where apes rule supreme. Some people do look at me "differently" if I'm watching something like Star Trek in public because they think it's so "socially awkward" when in reality, I'm just doing what I love. 

   Currently, I am a member of a PR team (Public Relations) for a game called Excalibur that has been in the process of development for over 10 years. Since the game is based on a science fiction game called "Bridge Commander" from 2001, it makes me all the more interested. I played it as a kid and I also watched older shows including: Lost in Space, Star Trek the Original Series, Doctor Who Original, and Gilligan's Island (which is not Sci-Fi, but I loved it anyway) so this game kind of makes me nostalgic. 

     I also love to explore new topics in my free time to expand my knowledge and understanding of different things. Most of the time, I go to nasa.gov to research topics about new things that are being developed, like a cure to aging or even FTL (Faster-Than-Light) travel. Even though I do still love to go outside and play sports or ride my bike, I have a deeper desire for the unknown and new discoveries; after all, on the topic of exploration, Nasa does say that it,  "involves not just science but philosophy, for our answer has to come out of our view of life, out of our concept of history, out of our understanding of human progress, and mostly out of instinctive awareness that we can always do better than we are doing if we emancipate ourselves from our fears in order to search the horizon for new prospects." I am sorry if I ranted too much about science, but if I did have a word to describe myself, it would be have to be "scientific". Well, that's all for today, stay tuned for my latest blogs and look at for any news. Have a nice day!