Wow...Lego Man Made It Into Near Space!

Lego Man took a jaunt around Toronto end January. The 4-cm plastic toy, which traveled to near space courtesy of Toronto teens Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, is going on a tour to capitalize on his newfound celebrity. 

The Canadian high school students have successfully launched this Lego man almost 80,000 feet above sea level - high enough to capture video of the plastic toy hovering above the curvature of the Earth.

Now the results of their experiment (video in time lapse) have gone viral, racking up more than 600,000 views on YouTube in just two days and inspiring the young engineers to make their small astronaut his own Facebook page - Lego Man in Space.

The Toronto Star reports that the two teens, Matthew Ho and Asad Muhammed, were inspired to do the project about a year and a half ago when Ho saw a YouTube video of MIT students who sent a balloon to near space. Ho wanted to see if he could do it too.

The friends spent four and a half months working on the project, mostly on Saturdays. In a video interview with the Star, they said the hardest part was making the parachute, which they decided to hand-sew, even though neither of them had any sewing experience.

They also constructed a lightweight Styrofoam box to carry three point-and-shoot cameras, a wide-angle video camera and a cellphone with a downloadable GPS app. They purchased a professional weather balloon for $85 online. The helium that would lift it up came from a party supply store. For launch, they put two mitten warmers in the Styrofoam box to keep the cameras working at that altitude. The whole project cost them about $400.

After the balloon was constructed, the two waited until weather conditions would ensure that the Lego man would land in Canada and not somewhere in the U.S. because they didn't want to take their chances with U.S. Homeland Security, the Star reports.

Ho and Muhammed estimate that it took their balloon craft one hour and five minutes to climb 80,000 feet before it finally popped. The descent took a little more than 30 minutes. Besides online notoriety, the two also received a congratulatory note from Lego.

-torontostar-

More photos of the Solar Storm!

The images above show a HUGE solar flare as observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 0327, 0342, and 0412 GMT on January 23 (10:27 p.m., 10:42 p.m. and 11:12 p.m. EST on Jan. 22).

This video still from a NASA space observatory video shows one of many views of a powerful M9-class solar storm that unleashed a coronal mass ejection toward Earth in the early hours of Jan. 23, 2012 (GMT).

This SDO image (AIA 193) shows an M9-class solar flare erupting on the Sun's northeastern hemisphere at 03:49 UT on Jan. 23, 2012... just 4 days after a previous strong CME that sparked aurora around the world on the 22nd. More geomagnetic activity is expected for the 24th.

The Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured the coronal mass ejection (CME) from a huge solar flare on Jan. 23, 2012.

The NOAA-operated GOES-15 spacecraft captured this X-ray image of a massive solar storm on Jan. 23, 2012.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory observed the massive solar flare that erupted on the sun on Jan. 23, 2012 (0359 GMT; 10:59 p.m. EST).

Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth

The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption. The solar flare occurred at about 11 pm EST and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times.

Doug Biesecker, a solar physicist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Weather Prediction Center, says the storm may reach a level that could render natural light displays visible as far south as Idaho and New York, and even Illinois and Oregon, in the United States.

The biggest issue is radiation. The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from the flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Jan 25. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005. The radiation in the form of protons came flying out of the sun at 93 million miles per hour. "The whole volume of space between here and Jupiter is just filled with protons and you just don't get rid of them like that," Biesecker said. That's why the effects will stick around for a couple days.

A solar eruption is followed by a one-two-three punch according to physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and Catholic University. First comes electromagnetic radiation, followed by radiation in the form of protons. Then, finally the coronal mass ejection - that's the plasma from the sun itself - hits.

Usually that travels at about two or three million kilometres per hour, but this storm is particularly speedy and is shooting out at six million kilometres per hour. It's the plasma that causes much of the noticeable problems on Earth, such as electrical grid outages. 

In 1989, a solar storm caused a massive blackout in Quebec. It can also pull the northern lights further south. But this coronal mass ejection seems likely to be only moderate, with a chance for becoming strong, Biesecker said. The worst of the storm is likely to go north of Earth.

-newsday-

Planet found orbiting habitable zone

Well it seems the most Earth like planet is discovered circling a star 600 light years away....does it means life exist beyond Earth? A light year is the distance light travels in a year, about 6 trillion miles (10 trillion km). The planet called Kepler-22b is the smallest and the best positioned to have liquid water on its surface. It is 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientist are doing the follow up studies to determine if it is solid, like Earth, or more gaseous like Neptune.

A diagram comparing our own solar system to Kepler-22, a star system containing the first "habitable zone" planet discovered by NASA's Kepler mission released by NASA, Dec 5, 2011 - Reuters