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Principium the Newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies™ Principium The Newsletter of the Initiative for Interstellar Studies™ Issue 10 | August 2015 o News - Dragonfly, Pluto and Dysprosium o Wormholes come to London (2) o Wormholes - Stargates to the Cosmic Neighbourhood o i4is goes Stratospheric o Icarus Interstellar: Project Voyager o What we did at the WorldCon (2) o How do we survive on a distant world? o What’s in Principium 11 Scientia ad sidera Knowledge to the Stars www.i4is.org A letter from Kelvin F. Long a high quality looking web site, attended or organised It has been a very exciting time for i4is and many events, including Dysprosium, The World as we approach our three year anniversary in Science Fiction convention, The Philosophy of the September, it is appropriate to reflect on all that has Starship symposium, the Physics of Wormholes been achieved by our outstanding team. symposium. Our team continues to produce other We have formalised our core committees and output, including outstanding art, music albums, each is now doing productive work focused towards books, smart phone app - there are so many activities our mission of interstellar flight. The educational that we are having to pause and consider how best to academy committee led by Rob Swinney is working manage the organisational development for improved with multiple schools and universities, including the sustainability and growth. International Space University. They are also I am really excited about all that has been developing an innovative curriculum which we hope achieved, and also the work we do with our partners, to launch next year. particularly the British Interplanetary Society and the The technical committee, led by Andreas International Space University. Then with successful Hein, is pushing forward multiple small projects, and achievements in spaceflight, such as the amazing our flagship Project Dragonfly, for which we have just New Horizons arrival at Pluto, and the continued completed a highly successful crowdsourcing discovery of exoplanets around other stars,....it really campaign and the delivery of four excellent technical does feel like the time for the stars is approaching. I team reports looking at laser-sail based propulsion. can't wait to begin the next three years work and I The Sustainability & Development want to thank everyone in our team for their committee, led by Professor Rachel Armstrong, is contributions, too many to name, although Gillian looking at more Starship Cities events and how we Norman, John Davies, Alex Storer, Terry Regan and can best work with architects to emerge Starship Angelo Genovese deserve a special mention in technologies from the ground up. dispatches. The Enterprise (business) committee, led by As I close this introduction for the current issue of myself is thinking carefully about how to best our in house magazine Principium, don't forget to incubate new ventures and innovations and to assist look up the Icarus Interstellar Starship Congress the next generation of entrepreneurs to fulfil their Hackathon which takes place 4-5 September, Drexel dreams. University, Philadelphia (see News item below). It's In addition to our committees, we have our sure to be a lot of fun for those involved. defined our own legal constitutional articles, created Kelvin F. Long Executive Director The Initiative for Interstellar Studies Principium | Issue 10 | August 2015 Page 2 Editorial In this edition you will find the account of the thrills and spills on you the former next time and your second part of the account by Kelvin the way to the show. editor will be doing his best to find a Long of our Wormhole symposium, "How do we survive on a distant reporter from the next TVIW! "Wormholes Come to London". This world?" by Roger Dymock considers Our front cover feature is "i4is includes the contributions of Silke what we might face on a habitable goes Stratospheric" with a brief Britzen, Tiffany Frierson, Remo planet of another star. account of the balloon experiment Garattini and John Davies. Our News this time begins with which, amongst other achievements, On a related theme, we have the the upcoming Starship Congress displayed the i4is logo at its greatest feature "Wormhole-Stargates: and the New Horizons triumph at altitude so far! More about this in Tunnelling through the Cosmic Pluto - there is a connection! We our i4is Goes Stratospheric! And for Neighbourhood" by Eric W. Davis. also mention another SF outreach, the rear cover we have Pluto and We very much welcome an this year's UK Eastercon. And Charon as seen from New Horizons, account by Zachary Fejes of the finally an item about the Dragonfly courtesy of NASA, of course. These Icarus Interstellar Project Voyager, a workshop of June 2015. We will be images join the work of other talents software development for covering Project Dragonfly in more who have kindly provided their work interplanetary and interstellar detail in later editions. We have to to Principium - Stavros Hios, David navigation. disappoint readers who were Hardy, Alex Storer, Jon Lomberg Our first major international expecting a meditation on the and Adrian Mann. We will be event, the 2014 WorldCon, the interstellar implications of the featuring the best work from these World Science Fiction Convention, Rosetta comet probe and its Philae and other visual authors in future took a lot of preparation and we lander and a report from the 2014 editions of Principium. hope you will be entertained by an Tennessee Valley Interstellar We have now reverted to 3 Workshop (TVIW). We hope to bring column layout; give us your views. John I Davies, Editor Principium News of just over 12,500 km. We'll be Starship Congress analysing the implications of Project Dragonfly this major stepping stone to the 2015 stars in later issues of Workshop Principium. In this issue we Dr Ralph McNutt, a congratulate the team on their Project Dragonfly is the first distinguished interstellar design and execution of this international contest to let advocate, will be a keynote mission and feature a composite students shape the future of speaker at Starship Congress of Pluto and its companion interstellar travel. 100 backers 2015. Dr McNutt is Co- Charon on our back cover. pledged £6,387 (€9,000, Investigator of the New Horizons $10,000) via Kickstarter to help mission to Pluto (see below and i4is at Dysprosium bring this project to life, our back cover). He led the NASA including a most generous NIAC (NASA Institute for As we promised, i4is contribution from Dr Vinton G Advanced Concepts) project "A continues its outreach to the Cerf, one of co-creators of the Realistic Interstellar Explorer" in science fiction community with Internet. The four finalist 1999. Starship Congress 2015, attendance at the national UK student teams came to London Interstellar Hackathon, annual Eastercon. This year it to present their concepts for a September 4-5, Drexel was Dysprosium at London's laser-push probe to a jury and University, Philadelphia, PA, Heathrow Airport. John Davies interested peers on Friday, July USA. See the ad at the end of explained how to derive 3rd. Written reports were this issue of Principium Tsiolkovsky's rocket equation by assessed beforehand and, taking including the supporting cheating (slightly), we sold many into account the presentations Kickstarter. copies of Beyond the Boundary at the workshop, the final (see our ad at the end of this ranking was - 1. Technical New Horizons - Pluto issue) and we met the endlessly University of Munich, 2. imaginative SF community CranSEDS (Cranfield University July 2015 saw the NASA New again. More in the next issue of UK and associates) 3. UC Santa Horizons spacecraft successfully Principium. Barbara 4. Cairo University. execute a flyby of the dwarf More in our next issue. planet Pluto to within a distance Principium | Issue 10 | August 2015 Page 3 Participating teams & i4is staff at the i4is Project Dragonfly Laser-Sail workshop Judging panel members at the i4is Project Dragonfly Laser-Sail workshop Principium | Issue 10 | August 2015 Page 4 Feature: Wormholes Come to London, "Interstellar Wormholes: Physics and Practical Realisation" Part 2 Kelvin F. Long The first report from our November 2014 event, "Interstellar Wormholes: Physics and Practical Realisation" was in Principium 9. Look there for the first presentation "Space- Time Metrics from Black Holes to Worm Holes and the Einstein-Rosen Bridge". Observations of Black Holes – Towards the Event Horizon Our second speaker at the include the static, neutral telescope may even be able to detect Wormhole event was Dr. Silke Schwarzschild black hole (1916), a so-called black hole shadow, Britzen, of the Max-Planck Institute the static but electrically charged which is caused by the photon for Radio Astronomy, from Bonn, Reissner-Nordstrom black hole sphere around a gravitating object. Germany. Her topic was (1918), the rotating but neutral Kerr Finally Professor Britzen electromagnetic radiation covering black hole (1963) and the rotating discussed an innovative paper titled the whole spectrum from the radio but charged Kerr-Newman black “Distinguishing black holes and up to Gamma-rays, and the spectral hole (1965). wormholes with orbiting hot spots" energy distributions of Active For these objects the black hole (Zilong Li and Cosimo Bamb, May Galactic Nuclei (AGN) such as mass is hidden within either a ring 2014) which discussed the Seyfert 1, Blazar Mkn 501 and or point singularity and in general possibility that supermassive black Quasar 3C273. The Global Very they were defined by the ‘no hair’ hole candidates at the centre of Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) theorem which simply states that galaxies might be wormholes forms a virtual telescope with an objects can be fully defined by their created in the early universe, Earth-like diameter to give the mass, spin and charge.
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