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Paul McCartney during the recording of ‘Hey Jude’ at Trident Studios, July 1968.

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How to talk to me when I have headphones on: Don’t.

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I am part of the transitional boundary between two generations.  I‘m not quite a Millennial, but I do not identify as Gen Z by any means.  I am old enough to vaguely remember the 90s, but not to appreciate them; I grew up on reruns of 90s shows, and watched movies from the 80s and 90s because that’s just what my parents owned when I was born.

I saw the fall of analog and the rise of digital; I grew up with a VCR (which I still own to this day), and witnessed the transition to DVD.  We are currently in the middle of a new transition away from physical media entirely, and I’m not sure I like it; I want to be able to have things, not just to license a copy that can be taken away at the studio’s whims.  Everything is a rights license or a subscription now, bleeding you dry so you can have access rather than ownership.

Cellphones became ubiquitous in my lifetime; when I was a kid, nobody had one, they were big and expensive, and you had to pay for each minute.  If you went over your monthly allotment, you would either be charged an arm and a leg or your phone would just stop working, dropping all calls because you just don’t have any time left.  Does anyone remember when they had text limits?  It was the dark ages!  I didn’t get a cellphone until I was in high school, and now I can’t imagine letting your kids leave the house without one.

Smartphones didn’t even exist until I was in middle school, and now they’re the default, the standard.  They’ve revolutionized the way we communicate, they’ve gotta be the most influential technology of the 21st century, hands down.  It peaked early.  That said, smart devices are the bane of my existence because now we live in an Orwellian surveillance state where the government and private companies basically own you.  It’s depressing.

I’m sure every generation goes through phases like this; what is history if not one prolonged period of change.  Nothing is static, there is no long term status quo, everything keeps moving forward no matter what.  The progress of time is the most predictable thing in existence, yet we are almost always blindsided by it.  Like, I know 2008 was 11 years ago, but I haven’t really internalized that fact, it’s abstract, because 2008 is simultaneously yesterday and ancient history from a lifetime ago.

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If you need a more down to earth way of finding out the time check out the smart watches, amazfit at https://bit.ly/3eXrHo3 and phones at nordgrenexperience.com  

Five Things You Need to Know About the Deep Space Atomic Clock

We are set to send a new technology to space that will change the way we navigate spacecraft — even how we’ll send astronauts to Mars and beyond. Built by our Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Deep Space Atomic Clock is a technology demonstration that will help spacecraft navigate autonomously. No larger than a toaster oven, the instrument will be tested in Earth orbit for one year, with the goal of being ready for future missions to other worlds.

Here are five key facts to know about our Deep Space Atomic Clock:

1) It works a lot like GPS

The Deep Space Atomic Clock is a sibling of the atomic clocks you interact with every day on your smart phone. Atomic clocks aboard satellites enable your phone’s GPS application to get you from point A to point B by calculating where you are on Earth, based on the time it takes the signal to travel from the satellite to your phone.

But spacecraft don’t have GPS to help them find their way in deep space; instead, navigation teams rely on atomic clocks on Earth to determine location data. The farther we travel from Earth, the longer this communication takes. The Deep Space Atomic Clock is the first atomic clock designed to fly onboard a spacecraft that goes beyond Earth’s orbit, dramatically improving the process.

2) It will help our spacecraft navigate autonomously

Today, we navigate in deep space by using giant antennas on Earth to send signals to spacecraft, which then send those signals back to Earth. Atomic clocks on Earth measure the time it takes a signal to make this two-way journey. Only then can human navigators on Earth use large antennas to tell the spacecraft where it is and where to go.

If we want humans to explore the solar system, we need a better, faster way for the astronauts aboard a spacecraft to know where they are, ideally without needing to send signals back to Earth. A Deep Space Atomic Clock on a spacecraft would allow it to receive a signal from Earth and determine its location immediately using an onboard navigation system.

3) It loses only 1 second in 9 million years

Any atomic clock has to be incredibly precise to be used for this kind of navigation: A clock that is off by even a single second could mean the difference between landing on Mars and missing it by miles. In ground tests, the Deep Space Atomic Clock proved to be up to 50 times more stable than the atomic clocks on GPS satellites. If the mission can prove this stability in space, it will be one of the most precise clocks in the universe.

4) It keeps accurate time using mercury ions

Your wristwatch and atomic clocks keep time in similar ways: by measuring the vibrations of a quartz crystal. An electrical pulse is sent through the quartz so that it vibrates steadily. This continuous vibration acts like the pendulum of a grandfather clock, ticking off how much time has passed. But a wristwatch can easily drift off track by seconds to minutes over a given period.

An atomic clock uses atoms to help maintain high precision in its measurements of the quartz vibrations. The length of a second is measured by the frequency of light released by specific atoms, which is same throughout the universe. But atoms in current clocks can be sensitive to external magnetic fields and temperature changes. The Deep Space Atomic Clock uses mercury ions - fewer than the amount typically found in two cans of tuna fish - that are contained in electromagnetic traps. Using an internal device to control the ions makes them less vulnerable to external forces.

5) It will launch on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket

The Deep Space Atomic Clock will fly on the Orbital Test Bed satellite, which launches on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket with around two dozen other satellites from government, military and research institutions. The launch is targeted for June 24, 2019 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and will be live-streamed here: https://www.nasa.gov/live

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Solace Dreams is an incredible Silent Hill and Dark Souls inspired survival horror DOOM total conversion mod where each area is a totally different nightmare!

Check Out a Gameplay Video Here

Check out the meteor shower this week. At it ‘s peak tomorrow morning Aug 12 between 2 am and sunrise. nordgrenexperience.com

The Perseid Meteor Shower Is Here!

Image Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls 

The Perseids are at their peak this week!

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the biggest meteor showers of the year, will be at its brightest early in the morning on Wednesday, August 12. Read on for some tips on how to watch the night sky this week – and to find out: what exactly are the Perseids, anyway?

Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Your best chance to spot the Perseids will be between 2 AM and dawn (local time) the morning of August 12. Find a dark spot, avoid bright lights (yes, that includes your phone) and get acclimated to the night sky.

Your eyes should be at peak viewing capacity after about 30 minutes; though the Moon may block out some of the dimmer meteors, you should still be able to see up to 15-20 an hour. If you’re not an early bird, you can try and take a look soon after sunset (around 9 PM) on the 11th, though you may not see as many Perseids then.

Credit: NASA/MEO

If it’s too cloudy, or too bright, to go skywatching where you are, you can try again Wednesday or Thursday night – or just stay indoors and watch the Perseids online!

Our Meteor Watch program will be livestreaming the Perseids from Huntsville, Alabama on Facebook (weather permitting), starting around 9 p.m. EDT on August 11 and continuing through sunrise.

So… why are they called the Perseids?

Because all of a meteor shower’s meteors have similar orbits, they appear to come from the same place in the sky – a point called the radiant. 

The radiant for the Perseids, as you might guess from the name, is in the constellation Perseus, found near Aries and Taurus in the night sky.

But they’re not actually coming from Perseus, right?

Credit: NASA/Joel Kowsky

Right! The Perseids are actually fragments of the comet Swift-Tuttle, which orbits within our solar system.

If you want to learn more about the Perseids, visit our Watch the Skies blog or check out our monthly “What’s Up” video series. Happy viewing!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com