THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25. 2013
PAGE 7A
ENVIRONMENT
Comet ISON headed toward sun, celestial show possible
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — For months, all eyes in the sky have pointed at the comet that's zooming toward a blisteringly close encounter with the sun.
The moment of truth comes Thursdav — Thanks giving Day.
The sun-grazing Comet ISON, now thought to be less than a mile wide, will either fry and shatter, victim of the sun's incredible power, or endure and quite possibly put on one fabulous celestial show.
Talk about an astronomical cliffhanger.
Even the smartest scientists are reluctant to lay odds.
Should it survive, ISON, pronounced EYE*-sahn, would be visible with the naked eye through December, at least from the Northern Hemisphere. Discernible at times in November with ordinary binoculars and occasionally even just the naked eye, it already has dazzled observers and is considered the most scrutinized comet ever by NASA. But the best is, potentially, yet to come.
Detected more than a year ago, the comet is passing through the inner solar system for the first time. Still fresh, this comet is thought to bear the pristine matter of the beginning of our solar
system.
It's believed to be straight from the Oort cloud on the fringes of the solar system, home to countless icy bodies, most notably the frozen balls of dust and gas in orbit around the sun known as comets. For whatever reason, ISON was propelled out of this cloud and drawn toward the heart of the solar system by the sun's intense gravitational pull.
The closer the comet gets to the sun, the faster it gets.
In January, it was clocked at 40.000 mph.
Right around the time many Americans will be feasting on turkey, the comet will zip within 730,000 miles of the sun, less than the actual solar diameter. In other words, another sun wouldn't fit in the missed distance.
By last Thursday, with just a week to go, it had accelerated to 150,000
mph.
By the time ISON slingshots around the sun, it will be moving at a mind-boggling 828,000 mph. Whether it survives or is torn apart, earthlings have nothing to fear.
The comet will venture no closer to us than about 40 million miles, less than half the distance between Earth and the sun. That closest
approach to Earth will occur Dec. 26. Then it will head away in the opposite direction forever, given its anticipated trajectory once it flies by the sun.
ISON is named after the International Scientific Optical Network, used by a pair of Russian astronomers to detect the comet in September last year. But it officially is known as C/2012 S1, a designation indicating when it was discovered.
Take heart. The "C" means it is not expected here again.
NASA wasted no time jumping on ISON. The space agency's Deep Impact spacecraft observed ISON back in January from a distance of
about 500 million miles.
Since then, the observations have stacked up.
Among NASA's space telescopes taking a look: Swift, Hubble, Spitzer, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory or SOHO, Chandra, Mercury-orbiting Messenger, and the Stereo twin spacecraft.
"Every spacecraft that has a camera, we're turning on it," said John Grunfeld, NASA's science mission director.
CRIME
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Inmates learn to launch tech firms from Silicon Valley pros
An inmate looks over materials on a business model canvas during a session of The Last Mile at San Quentin State Prison in San Quentin, Calif., on Nov. 7.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
SAN QUENTIN, Calif. — The budding entrepreneurs wear blue sweatpants labeled "prisoner" and huge, flapping blue shirts. Their doors are triple locked, and lunch is a stale peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Complicating matters, participants in this growing Silicon Valley startup incubator are barred from the Internet.
Nonetheless, the program, launched by successful tech entrepreneurs for inmates north of San Francisco in the decaying San Quentin State Prison, has expanded, and a new session began this month in the gritty, downtown Los Angeles Twin Towers Correctional Facility.
The reason they're growing is simple: Graduates, now trickling out of the penal system, are landing real jobs at real dot-coms.
The rigorous, six-month training teaches carefully selected inmates the ins and outs of designing and launching technology firms, using local experts as volunteer instructors.
"We believe that when incarcerated people are released into the world, they need the tools to function in today's high-tech, wired world," says co-founder Beverly Parenti, who with her husband, Chris Redlitz, has launched thriving companies, including AdAuction, the first online media exchange.
The pair were Silicon Valley pioneers in the 1990s, and they tap their many high-level connections to help with the prison program they started the program after Redlitz was invited into San Quentin in 2011 for a guest lecture and was overwhelmed by the inmates' desire to learn.
"I figured, 'We work with young entrepreneurse every day. Why not here?' he recalled.
After discussions with prison administrators, Parenti and Reditz decided to add a prison-based firm to their portfolio, naming it for the precarious journey from prison to home: The Last Mile.
Now, during twice-a-week evening lessons, students — many locked up before smartphones or Google — practice tweeting, brainstorm new companies and discuss business books assigned as homework. Banned from the In
ternet to prevent networking with other criminals, they take notes on keyboard-like word processors or with pencil on paper.
The program is still "bootstrapping," as its organizers say, with just 12 graduates in its first two years and a few dozen in classes in San Quentin and Twin Towers. But the five graduates released so far are working in the tech sector.
They are guaranteed paid internships if they can finish the rigorous training program, which requires prerequisite courses, proven social skills and a lifetime oath to lead by positive example.
In one recent class, while thousands of inmates exercised or played chess in San Quentin's prison yard, students worked their way through a business model, pitching different technology concepts.
Tommy Winfrey, 35, who is serving 25 years to life for second-degree murder and hopes to be paroled in 2018, adjusted his eyeglasses and raised a tattooed arm. "I think an important part of our brand is going to be to give our customer a voice," he said, suggesting they share ideas on social media.
"What are the distribution channels?" challenged seminar leader Andrew Kaplan, a product marketing manager at LinkedIn. "What platforms or networks do we need to think about? Who are we trying to engage?"
On a Silicon Valley-style Demo Day, the startup students present ideas to investors, a demonstration that convinced former California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation director Matthew Cate he made the right decision to approve the training course.
"This program will go a long way to not only providing these guys
with jobs, but it is my hope that they hire people like them who have changed their lives and are now ready to contribute to society, pay taxes, follow the law, support their families. All those things contribute to the economy," he told participants after watching the 2012 Demo Day.
Inmates also learn the essential startup skills of blogging, in part by answering questions on Quora, a website that allows users and experts to communicate, by having volunteers input their entries. Without real businesses to discuss, thousands of readers ask the inmates questions such as: "What does it feel like to murder someone?"
"Murdering someone was the ultimate release for me," blogged David Monroe, 30, who killed a 16-year-old when he was 15. Over the long term, he added, the murder "has forever pitted my heart with regret and covered it in shame."
Just months after serving 24 years for repeat drug offenses and weapons possession, Chrisfina Kenyatta Leal fed his cat and ironed his shirt before hurrying off to catch a Bay Area Rapid Transit train in to his office in San Francisco.
Writing publically about their crimes, organizers say, helps the inmates move forward once they are released.
Like the other entrepreneurs hurrying to meetings, tapping on computers and talking on smartphones at startup RocketSpace. Leal has a passion for technology and the possibilities it holds.
"I always had an entrepreneurial fire in my belly, I just used it in the wrong way," said Leal, 45.
He just acquired his skills in a very different classroom.
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