Japan’s Space Elevator Expected to Be Built By 2050
In 1979, famed science fiction author, Arthur C. Clarke, wrote a book titled The Fountains of Paradise, in which a future society builds an elevator to space from a tiny island on the equator. Now, Clarke’s vision may soon come to fruition when a Japanese company begins work on its own space elevator.
What is a Space Elevator?
A space elevator is hypothetical for now, but Japanese construction giant, Obayashi Corporation, believes the necessary technology to build one could be ready in the next 10 to 12 years. The biggest hurdle at this point is developing a material strong enough to build cables 60,000 miles long and capable of transporting 100-ton cargo.
The elevator would essentially consist of a space station tethered between an anchor and a counterweight in Earth’s orbit. Dangling down from the station would be a series of cables made of carbon nanotubes – a real material developed 20 years ago that is stronger than steel by a factor of nearly 10. The only problem is that we haven’t quite figured out how to scale the technology. At the moment, we’ve only been able to create a few-centimeter-long stretch of them.
Once those tubes are scaled, which Obayashi believes will happen by 2030, an anchor would be built on Earth somewhere along the equator that would attach to the space station and a counterweight further up. The station would reside in what’s called Clarke orbit, or geostationary orbit, named after the sci-fi author himself. In this scenario, an object remains in orbit over a single point on the equator, an obvious necessity for a space elevator to be feasible.
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Obayashi’s concept
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The elevator cabin itself would ascend at about 120 miles per hour and carry a maximum capacity of about 30 people. For propulsion, it might be powered by a laser shot up from Earth that would supply it with the energy needed to climb the cables.
The trip would take about a week and function as a platform for scientific research, a launch point for space travel, and a mode of space tourism. The elevator could cut the cost of transporting materials into orbit by a factor of 100, which could propel space programs and colonization efforts at an astounding rate.
One man who has devoted his life to studying the viability of space elevators is Michael Lane, and he’s raised over $100,000 on Kickstarter to work on models and prototypes. Laine wants to first build a space elevator on the moon, because a weaker material could be used for the cables, like Kevlar.
On the moon there’s little gravity and no ice or wind, presenting ideal conditions for an elevator. Also the setup would only require roughly the strength of a strong man to hold the system in place. Laine’s idea proposes that rare earth elements could be harvested and brought back to earth, creating a booming space mining operation.
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Is the Space Elevator Possible?
The Obayashi Corporation believes it can have the space elevator functioning by 2050 if carbon nanotubes become scalable by 2030. The company says that it holds competitions among university students to encourage them to study and advance the technology. Although over the past several years, advancements in AI like ARES (Autonomous Research System), allow scientists to let robots conduct, analyze and test hundreds of experiments autonomously, adding to the chance that nanotubes will be scaled within Obayashi’s timeline.
Obayashi is a massive construction and development firm in Tokyo that is responsible for a number of large scale engineering feats across the world. One structure designed by the company, the TOKYO SKYTREE, is the largest free-standing tower in the world, at just over 2,000 feet.
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According to the company’s plan, there will be a series of anchors to counterbalance the elevator. The space station that would serve as the final destination would be situated at about 22,000 miles above Earth. Further out would be the anchor at an altitude of about 60,000 miles. Before the primary station there would be additional hubs at altitudes where one could experience the level of gravity on the moon and on Mars, which would be ideal for conducting experiments for future missions.
Not everyone believes that a space elevator will be built as easily as Obayashi does. Elon Musk has scoffed at the idea, saying that until someone builds a structure made of carbon nanotubes longer than a footbridge, he won’t consider the possibility of a space elevator. Musk also says he believes that until we have a carbon nanotube trans-oceanic bridge, say between LA and Tokyo, we shouldn’t be talking about building space elevators.
A trans-oceanic bridge seems rather silly though, considering we have the ability to fly across oceans in a much more efficient manner. Why would anyone want to spend days driving from LA to Tokyo when they could fly? Even bullet trains aren’t fast enough for a transoceanic bridge to be meaningful.
But no major technological feat has ever occurred without its detractors and naysayers who claim these visions to be impossible or impractical. Maybe Musk is right and rockets or alternative jet propulsion will reign supreme over space elevators, but Obayashi plans on continuing its lofty aspiration, with others following suit. Will Arthur C. Clarke’s vision one day come to be realized?
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72 New Galaxies Discovered in Hubble Ultra Deep Field
Back in 2004, the Hubble telescope peered into a dark part of the universe in the Fornax constellation just below Orion. After staring at this dark patch of space for nearly two weeks, it delivered an amazing view of the cosmos, packed with galaxies, stars, and planets. Now, astronomers have pointed a spectroscopic telescope at that same point in space resulting in 72 new galaxies discovered, increasing our chance of finding extraterrestrial life.
A Number of New Galaxies Discovered
Originally obtained in the early 2000s, Hubble’s images of a vast array of galaxies was a profound discovery that became known as the Hubble Ultra Deep Field or HUDF. With this data, scientists were able to take a step back in time, much closer to the beginning of the universe when galaxies were originally formed.
Within the HUDF, scientists captured light from 1600 new galaxies, some of which were nearly 13 billion years old.
Some of the galaxies seen in this deep field were different than the typical spiral-armed galaxies we’re accustomed to seeing, like the Milky Way. These galaxies were shaped like bracelet links and toothpicks at a time when the universe was starting to calm down from its initially chaotic phase.
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Now, astronomers from the European Space Organization (ESO) at Chile’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have applied a technology known as spectroscopy to the HUDF, in order to see galaxies that are only visible in certain ultraviolet light, known as Lyman-alpha light. Prior to employing spectroscopy, these galaxies were invisible to the Hubble telescope, even though they were perfectly within its frame.
A spectroscopic telescope splits up the light it takes in into an array of individual colors. This allows scientists to glean details about galaxies and stars, such as their distance, age, and the elements they’re composed of. This discovery by the VLT was the most in-depth spectroscopic analysis yet.
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The Potential for Finding Life
The sheer vastness of the universe is practically incomprehensible except when described in what are essentially abstract numbers. The billions of galaxies, containing billions of stars, and subsequently trillions of planets aren’t easy for us to fathom.
Despite the difficulty in wrapping our heads around this quantity, one can at least revel in the fact that we’ve reached the point of being aware of the magnitude of our universe. And the data also provides for a greater opportunity that extraterrestrial life is likely to exist out there.
With the new discovery of 72 previously unknown galaxies, we’re upping that probability significantly. If we consider the estimate that, within the Milky Way alone, there are anywhere between 100 million to 400 million stars, with an average of 8 planets orbiting at a reasonable distance (if we use our solar system), then there are anywhere from 800 billion – 3.2 trillion planets in our galaxy alone.
Take that number and apply it to these 72 new galaxies discovered and there are anywhere from 57 – 230 trillion or more potential planets. This makes the chance that we’re alone in this universe sound pretty unlikely. The question is whether we’ll ever make contact.
In addition to furthering our search for extraterrestrial life, the ESO has employed Chile’s VLT to study dark matter, the enigmatic force that perpetuates the expansion of the universe. This dark matter also makes up about 75 percent of the matter in the universe, theoretically. Scientists have debated about what dark matter could be, classifying it into two types, WIMPs and MACHOs – so clever with their acronyms.
WIMPs are weakly interacting, massive particles, while MACHOs are massive, astrophysical, compact halo objects. WIMPs are more elusive and different from matter as we know it, acting through electromagnetic forces. MACHOs are matter like dead or dying stars, black holes, and neutron stars. These are more familiar matters that aren’t as luminous as other cosmic phenomena of their ilk, therefore they could be nearly invisible to us.
The VLT has imaged these MACHOs in action and believes they are the culprit behind the enigma of dark matter. Sometimes this dark matter is so strong that it can warp the fabric of space-time itself as seen in a recent Hubble picture of a galaxy cluster known as Abell 2537.
What other discoveries might this novel spectroscopic technology provide for us?
