Falling Satellite?!?!

NASA has reported that the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, will be plummeting to Earth in the next couple of days. This make it the largest satellite in thirty years to crash into Earth. NASA suspects the bus size satellite will crash into earth sometime Friday. The chances of any debris hitting anyone, anywhere is a 1-in-3200 chance because earth is mainly covered with ocean or unpopulated areas which makes the chances very low. But the chances that you will get hit is a completely different statistic of 1-in-several trillion. They say that the risk is very modest because the chances are very low. The Bus size satellite was a 750 million dollar research satellite that was launched in 1991 to study the ozone layer and earth upper atmostsphere. It was only suppose to last for three years but outlived that and was finally decommissioned in 2005.

Can We Travel In Time?

Can we travel in time? Well there are many theories on this from yes we can we just need the right equipment to its completely impossible and it will never happen. Scientist has proved that gravitational pull slows down clocks. So think about it like this, on earth your clock is moving one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi but an astronaut’s watch in space will move at double that speed. That is pretty crazy to think about that no one's time is the same at different elevations. So to get to the question can we travel in time? Scientist believes that if we travel at the speed of light we could make this happen. When you travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) time slows down. Scientist have said that if leave earth going the speed of light for one year that when you return to earth it would be 20 years later while you only aged one year. This happens because of Einstein’s theory of relativity. This theory is that time is relative to one person. Lets use the leaving the earth example. If Tom and Bill are both 20 years old and Tom leaves on a spaceship and travels at the speed of light for a year. It would feel like a year to both of them but Tom would return to earth and Bill would have aged 20 years to his 1 year. This happens because Tom’s clock moves slower than Bill’s because time slows down when traveling at the speed of light. The theory of relativity kicks in at while Tom is traveling at the speed of light it still feels like a year to him but what he does not notice is that his clock has slowed down. But to finalize the crazy thought of traveling in time is that we will never know until we are able to travel at the speed of light.

Space Junk

The space age began 54 years ago and already 22,000 objects of space junk is orbiting earth and that is only counting the ones NASA can track. Space junk can travel up to 17,000 miles per hour in earth's orbit. These can very threatening to human-carrying spaceships and satellites. How in such a short amount of time can the space programs from all around the world pollute the entire Earth's orbit? Scientist noticed that this could be a problem and came up with agreements to limit the amount of space junk. Overtime the space junk moves closer and closer to earth's atmosphere and burns up and is eliminated. This plan was working until two terrible events occurred. In 2009 two satellites collided and in 2007 Chinese anti-satellite weapon test used a missile to smash an aging weather satellite. This put 150,000 pieces of space junk into orbit at about 1 centimeter. Imagine 150,000 pieces of space debris traveling at 17,000 miles per hour. There are a few ideas of cleaning the space junk up by sending a satellite with nets to catch the debris like a "catcher's mitt.' Other ideas consist of harpoons, nets, tethers, magnets and an umbrella shaped device. 

Here is a picture of space junk orbiting the Earth.