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Articles, Australian Space Agency, Research, Science, Science News, Space News

Australian Space Agency Jobs

By NeilA

Australian Space Agency Jobs

Australian Space Agency

If you haven’t heard, Australia now has an official department called the Australian Space Agency (launched 1st July 2018).

Of course, we’ve been heavily involved in space work since at least early last century. Even our tracking stations were instrumental in getting the moon landing event’s signal to Earth. The signal was received at Goldstone, Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra, and the Parkes Radio Astronomy Site in New South Wales, and then retransmitted. Without Australia’s help, the rest of the world wouldn’t have been able to see Neil Armstrong on the moon live.

So, we’ve been involved in Space for a very long time!

RAAF Woomera Range Complex

But, while we’ve had many space related disparate systems in place for decades, the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in South Australia is probably one of the longest.

Having been established in 1947 (hmm, that year sounds familiar), and also known as the Woomera Rocket Range, it’s always seemed to me to be a futuristic space port.  Military weapons testing and experimentation, and lots of reported UFO activity (well, testing of advanced technologies at the very least.)

As the complex is over 400 kilometers away from Adelaide, it is quite a forgotten and seemingly secret area. In fact, you could even say that the area could be classed as Australia’s answer to Area 51. It’s not so secret though. You can find out more about the RAAF Woomera Range Complex history here

Rocket launch 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPOK3R-JtwI

Rocket launch 1967

I’d love to work there, from a fantasy point of view. But the reality is that it is hard, dangerous work, and you need to have a certain strong mindset to be able to do it. (It is a military research base, after all.)

Australian Space Jobs

And so, the Australian Space Agency has been set up for those who want to play in the business field of space, rather than do the grunt work of putting interplanetary missiles together.

If you’ve got great management and negotiation skills, and know how to sell technology, and space services, and you’re an Australian citizen with plenty of government work experience to executive level 1 or APS level 6, you could be what they’re looking for.

Find out the latest Australian Space Agency jobs here

Launched 1st July 2018

The Australian Space Agency is temporarily based in Canberra, until the other Australian states have finalised and submitted their proposals. Personally, I’d love the agency to be close to where I live, but as this is for the future of all Australians, and the world, it should be somewhere that can generate the most business and jobs.

Here’s my take on where the first agency could be set up.

Adelaide, South Australia

Arguably, Adelaide is currently set up to be the best location for a department focused on innovation and science, as well as being so close to Woomera. There are already multiple aerospace organisations there, such as Boeing Defence, and the local government is strongly focused on making South Australia a city of the future.

Melbourne, Victoria

Melbourne would come a close second with so much research and development going on in multiple universities. Not to mention having the largest population of people interested in space in Australia. (Asgardia Melbourne Member List) With so many students in Melbourne happy to work there for free, there is ample opportunity to build it on a shoestring and expand it quickly, investing spare money into R&D. (Australian Space Agency? Work for free? What are you talking about?! I’d pay to be able to work there! LOL)

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory

In regards to being an easy stop for officials, Canberra is best placed for this, and has plenty of space to expand. I think it’ll remain in Canberra for quite some time before branching out.

Darwin, Northern Territory

For having all the action in one place, and for bringing much needed investment into the area, I’d say Darwin would be a great location for not only a space agency, but also a working space port. Mainly due to it having a lot of convenience, plenty for tourists to do, a lot of opportunity for international businesspeople to make deals, and close to the equator, thereby reducing the cost of rocket launches thanks to having the already boosted Earth speed spin of over 400 kilometers an hour. However, the city is way too hot for many so if you plan to work a long time there, I hope you have plenty of melanin to cope. (I’d personally prefer a job in the antarctic rather than go anywhere near the equator again, or at the very least have my own personal refrigerator and sun protection suit!)

West Kimberley Region, Western Australia

Perth is currently too far away from everything, direct flights to London notwithstanding, and firing rockets above the Indian ocean for safety, against the spin of the Earth, isn’t financially feasible. But Western Australia generally has some great places a space port could be set up. You could have the agency in Perth, and the Port three thousand kilometers away in the West Kimberley region. A great place could be the abandoned Ellendale Diamond Mine. You could set up a space port there, and while building it, dig for diamonds – killing two birds with one gemstone! Some of those underground tunnels would be ideal for a refit as a secret underground base.

Cape York, Queensland

Then again, if money saving and safety is key, then Cape York in Queensland is ideal. Closest point to the equator, near an already built airport, not many people nearby and plenty of space either side of the peninsula for the occasional faulty rocket.

Spaceport Australia

My personal feeling is that the main location of the Australian Space Agency will end up being all over Australia. Especially as each state can offer unique benefits. I’m sure the current lobbying to get the first official location will be long forgotten when we have an outpost in every city. And with over 60,000 abandoned mines across the country, there are plenty of places where underground departments could be built for data storage, and keeping computer systems cool for launches. Every town could have a space port!

And, if we act now, we could begin converting all of Australia into one combined continent-port where interplanetary moon-sized ships could easily ‘dock’ in our million square kilometers of deserts, depending on their mass and gravity strength!

(Trivia. Yes, Australia is wider than the moon, and even if it docked with the outback, the curvature of the moon would still put it above all our cities. When we finally work out how to control gravity, we could bring it down and mine it! Hmm, I feel a story coming on.)

Update 060718. Check out this awesome article about Australia’s space exploits here from Business Insider

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Alien Life, Aliens, Articles, Science

Alien Life Found!

By NeilA

Alien Life Found!

The Viking Missions

“Alien Life Found” should have been the title of a news report in 1976 regarding the Viking Missions landers. Unfortunately, due to our level of understanding of the chemical reactions recorded, and the results obtained at the time, the soil was deemed to be dead. No sign of life or, more hopefully, inconclusive.

However, Joop Houtkooper from Justus-Liebig University in Giessen Germany, has gone over the evidence and believes that the Viking spacecraft did actually encounter life. A strange life form based on hydrogen peroxide. Download the research paper here: Arxiv.org pdf

Further research suggests that at least 0.1 percent of Mars land could harbor biological life. Maybe more.

Now that scientists are widening their scope of what is considered life, thanks to unusual bacteria surviving in the most inhospitable regions on Earth, it’s highly likely that NASA did discover life on Mars in 1976. (Extremophiles Las Cumbres Observatory)

Unfortunately, until the Mars 2020 mission gets there to find additional evidence, it’ll stay as ‘inconclusive’.

Alien Life Found rating: 87%

234 Alien Signals

Ermanno Borra and Eric Trottier have claimed, after analyzing 2.5 million stars in a number of galaxies, that 234 of them seem to be emitting regular pulses of light. As the stars of those systems are similar to our own, the researchers suggested the possibility that the pulses are laser messages from aliens.

The Breakthrough Listen project backed by Stephen Hawking turned its attention to these stars in an effort to figure out whether they are indeed message pulses, or whether there is a new star reaction that scientists aren’t yet aware of.

This project is still ongoing. However, the Breakthrough Listen project does give these results a Rio scale of 0 to 1, so maybe not. Read the accessible write up at (Futurism)

Alien Life Found rating: 27%

Alien Megastructure Star

KIC 8462852, known as Tabby’s Star, features some strange dimming and lightening of its light, and a slow reduction of its overall light over several years. While this may be able to be explained by a massive storm of comets constantly hitting the star, or even a ring of matter, a slightly more wilder and more interesting theory is that a megastructure is slowly being built around it. Perhaps even a Dyson Sphere. If the star completely disappears in the next 10 years, then this explanation will gain greater weight.

However, recent scientific research has confirmed that it is actually really fine dust. Sadly. More details at this (news.com.au) write up.

Alien Life Found rating: 0%

Alien Life Found on the International Space Station

Russian cosmonauts, on a number of occasions, have been able to swab bacteria, and even things higher up the chain like plankton, from the outside of the ISS. Are they coming from space? Or are they more likely being dragged up to lower Earth orbit by air currents? Or simply brought there by successive astronauts on their tablets? Hardy bacteria can survive just about anywhere, so it’s more likely that anything found in lower Earth orbit is from Earth. A great write up is at (National Geographic.)

Maybe the atmosphere extends a lot further for microbes, and there could even be a network of microbial space traveling currents between Earth and the Moon. I personally like the idea that space is just a huge bacteriological soup and not finding life somewhere is the more likely scenario. All those new viruses and bacteriological infections that appear out of nowhere probably simply floated down. (Wikipedia Panspermia)

Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to believe it, I don’t think the cosmonauts found ‘alien’ microbes. Even if they’re unrecognisable, maybe they found some old Earth microbes we haven’t had the chance to study yet.

Ancient Aliens TV Show finds Extraterrestrial Bacteria

This was also explored in another way recently in an episode of Ancient Aliens. A weather balloon was sent up, and the microbes brought back were ‘confirmed’ as alien, purely due to their size. This has yet to be scientifically disproved, (inconclusive) but knowing that plankton can exist on the outside of the ISS suggests just about anything can be floating about in lower Earth orbit.

Until I can see conclusive results of a sample of something containing DNA made from something other than adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G) and cytosine (C) or even something alive with no recognisable DNA, I’ll be crossing my arms and frowning.

Alien Life Found rating: 27%

Octopuses (Octopi) are aliens

Nope. Unfortunately. Or, if they are, so are we all, as they appeared in Earth’s history around 135 million years ago, and we probably started eating them about a million years ago. (Independent.co.uk) has a good write up.

Alien Life Found rating: 0%

Official Alien Life Found? Not yet, but we’re ready.

So, at this stage, it is just the 1976 Viking Mission results that give the highest possibility of proof. And I’m really excited by the idea of a hydrogen peroxide based bacteria.

Now that plumes of water have been confirmed as coming from Jupiter’s Moon Europa (abc.net.au) , TESS has been launched to look for more exoplanets (Aljazeera), and (NASA) has its Mars 2020 plan to look for alien life on the planet, it’s just a matter of time before we know for sure.

I guess the governments of the world have decided that humanity is now ready, and there’ll be an ‘official’ announcement with scientific proof in 2020.

Finally!

 

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Articles, Parallel Worlds and Alternate Realities, Science

When Parallel Realities Become Mainstream

By NeilA

When Parallel Realities Become Mainstream

Parallel Realities and Alternate Worlds

One of the things in science fiction that has fascinated me for a long time is the concept of parallel realities. Until recently, it has just been a fictional idea, perhaps one where all our alternate selves are evil and have goatees. Yes, even the women.

Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog

Now, however, Stephen Hawking and Thomas Hertog have been able to prove with mathematics that there are, indeed, multiple universes. They were even able to indicate ways we can build research stations in space to be able to detect them.

The late Stephen Hawking had also theorized that black holes could be a place that easily connects you to an alternate reality. However, being crushed to the size of atoms, and having just the record of me pop out the other side, doesn’t sound so enticing.

Portals to Other Dimensions

Ancient Alien theorists suggest these doorways to alternate realities are everywhere, and all we need is the right frequency to access them. No massive black holes required.

Sounds good to me.

And, in esoteric circles, there is a belief that each Planck second is static, and that it is only our consciousness, passing through billions of these static parallel worlds a second, that makes reality look like it’s moving. So, we’re already in a parallel reality, and again, and again.

Sounds even better!

It looks like accepting parallel realities as fact is a bold new change to our perception of the world. I, for one, welcome our new alternate reality friends.

But, where will this lead? Will I be able to say ‘Sorry, I haven’t had time to read your book yet, but my other me has, and he thought it was great!’? That would save a lot of embarrassment at parties!

Alien Characters

Awhile ago, I released a series called Alien Characters, (friendly aliens for children) Two of the books had alternate realities as the main theme.

In Alien Rex, Alien Rex takes people on tours to alternate realities in their street, but runs into a consortium of Alien Rexes across space / time (at the local mall) that want to prevent him from taking all their customers.

In Alien Jack, Alien Jack needs Alien Rex’s help to find out why there is such a terrible radiation leak that seems to be coming from nowhere. Alien Rex discovers it is a radiation leak across multiple realities bleeding into this one, and takes Alien Jack through several parallel world doorways, with the leak getting stronger, until they find… 😉

Science Fiction Weekly

And, one of my most popular short stories, (based on reader traffic on various sites) is Interrelations. I’ve put it on this site for you to enjoy for free. Or, you can get one for your ebook here for about US0.99 Science Fiction Weekly #6 Interrelations

In it, Cindi is a trade negotiator, and swaps bodies with another version of herself to complete a trade with another version of herself. However, she finds that her alternate self doesn’t treat her body as well as she would have liked while she’s not using it, and that her boss is deliberately sending trade girls to different realities to swap with particular versions of themselves who are already having a relationship with the boss in that world. She’s also approached by a dayer, who needs her help to find out why there is an ongoing destruction of multiple Earths, with hers being next. After that, it gets complicated!

If you have a moment, please read Interrelations and let me know if there are any other books out there that similarly deals with the complexity of multiple realities. But if you don’t have time, please ask one of your other selves who might have already read it and can answer. Would love to read their thoughts, though, I guess, being from parallel reality, the story might be better written than the one in this one, so the review may not count. 😛

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Aliens, Science, SF Related TV

Review of Ancient Aliens “Earth’s Black Holes”

By NeilA

Review of Ancient Aliens “Earth’s Black Holes”

Playgrounds for Exotic Physics

One of my guilty pleasures is chilling with a glass of wine while watching the latest Ancient Aliens. For a science fiction writer, it is full of pieces of gold that could be weaved into the next short story, or a one-liner that helps expand on a futuristic environment. I thoroughly recommend it, if only to broaden your perceptions.

Earth’s Black Holes

Earth’s Black Holes was surprising in that it not only gave some really serious science (with actual interviews with real scientists) and some fantastic imagery of black holes (along with some dramatic voice-overs) it was creative and accessible enough that I’m sure many kids would have loved this episode.

Physicists

An integral part of the first section was the research done at the SLACK national accelerator laboratory. Commentary was provided by Michael Dennin Ph.D Physicist at the University of California – Irvine, and John Brandenburg Ph. D Plasma Physicist at Orbital Technologies. Fascinating stuff.  I had always thought that black holes were collapsed stars, involving intense gravity, and the cessation of various physical laws. But black holes can be created by other means, especially via just about any kind of vortex. Gravitational, electromagnetic, you name it. Get rid of some electrons in a certain way, and a vortex or hole will automatically appear.

Portals through space / time

I was interested in the idea that the SF trope about black holes being a portal through space / time could actually be true in a smaller sense. The environment of Earth, even just the weather, is ripe for portal creation. The idea of any part of the environment forming a vortex that could transport you through space / time is quite attractive for me, and has probably contributed to thousands of Science Fiction and Fantasy stories over the decades for other writers, too. (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, anyone?)

Aliens!

Of course, the basic premise of Ancient Aliens is to make sure that any idea mentioned ends up making some kind of connection with aliens. So, of course, these portals or pockets created by electromagnetic squalls would be ideal for aliens to visit Earth via, say a quick hi, drop some knowledge, then split again. There was discussion about the South Atlantic Anomaly, and how it is a localized reversal of the EM field across South America, information about how nature can create its own electrodynamic space/time portals, and a lot more.

Compelling Stuff!

Skipping Journeys

I personally loved it because it used an idea that has been a feature of many of my stories for over 10 years, namely finding a way to either flash to another location through instant teleportation, or space folding, or wormholes, or tunnels through space and time. Essentially, I’ve always wanted to get rid of any boring ‘travel’ or unnecessary ‘journey’ paragraphs. (Yes, I’m one of those who has never made it past the first few chapters of Lord of the Rings – OMG a journey??? Saw it at the cinema instead!)

When I was a kid, I used to find stairs so boring that I would simply jump flights of them. My friends would slide or skate down the banisters, but even that was a bit slow for me. Now, if I could find a way to physically and instantly travel almost anywhere in the universe, I’d be very happy, (As would my hips, and probably later my replacement hips.) I’d love to jump about one of the Magellanic Clouds one day!

Ancient Aliens Convention

In its 13th year, the series has become popular enough that it now has its own annual convention, called Alien Con, not only featuring presenters of the programme, but also X-Files and Star Trek luminaries. At the time of writing, David Duchovny, Gates McFadden and Robert Picardo for the June 2018 convention. The marketing is USA-only, so I had to set up a fake USA address to find out more from the robot system, but I’ve since been in contact with one of the organizers of the convention, and things look like they’re going to be pretty wild.

As a brand, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos is well known, and it would be great to rub shoulders with him, learn a bit about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on. Meeting Erich Von Daniken would also be a highlight, and he’s not in as many episodes as I’d like. I read his book in the 70s, and was quite taken with it. Chariots of the Gods. It has probably influenced quite a lot of my SF writing over the years, so I’m sure a convention would elicit more interesting insights from him that would not otherwise be seen in a restricted 40 minute format.

Unfortunately, beyond my budget

Most tickets have already sold out (US$549 Gold Pass!) A 14h flight from Melbourne to Pasadena (AU$1500) plus accommodation (US$200pn) plus food and drinks and local travel (probably lots of drinks!) I’d be expecting to pay, at a bare minimum, about AU$4000 for the weekend. So, hopefully there’ll be some Youtube videos afterwards.

If you want to know more about the Ancient Aliens Convention, check out the website here:

The Alien Con

Being a writer, I wanted to know how much I could advertise my book Alien Frequency in their programme guide for. Unfortunately, a bit beyond my budget. US$1000 for a page – more than I earn in a month! (Quarter pages available for US$300)

Maybe next year.