Welcome to the Mastrianni Web Site
Welcome the our web site. Here you'll find information on who we are and what we do. Use the links on the left side of the page to navigate the site.
Music has always been a part of our family. You'll find a collection of some of our music taken from early Edison recordings, wax cylinders, 78RPM records, and a few more modern formats. Take a trip back to 1937 when the Mastrianni children performed in New York City at the Major Bowes Variety Show, one of the earliest precursors to American Idol.
Debra Mastrianni is an award-winning quilter and designer who specializes in unique, one-of-a-kind quilt designs and specialty items such as Hebrew wimples. With a background in computer graphics programming and fashion design, she is able to leverage the capabilities of various graphics software to help create unique qulting designs. You can browse through a gallery of her quilts and contact her if you're interested in having some quilting done.
I'm a computer scientist, researcher, instructor, and programmer with many years of experience in mobile devices, enterprise systems, cloud systems and services, realtime data acquisition, device drivers, graphics, embedded systems, database technologies, medical imaging systems, and airborne flight controls.
I'm also a wanna-be physics geek. I am hooked on astrophysics, thanks to a professor who showed me the stars (Thank you, Bob!). I wrote a tiny little paper on the Ekpyrotic Universe and I've been lost in the cosmos since. I read everything I can from the likes of Brian Greene, Andrei Linde, Paul Steinhardt, Ed Whitten, and Stephen Hawking. I would love to really understand dark matter, string theory, and parallel universes. My biggest disappointment in life is that I was born a thousand years too early.
The Crab Nebula (courtesy NASA)
Humans are essentially insignificant. Many of us go to work each day fighting traffic, struggling to acheive financial and social success. We think of ourselves as the center of our universe, the masters of our planet. Yet the Earth is so small that explorers from another planet or solar system would likely miss our planet entirely because it is so small. Even the galaxy which we are part of - the Milky Way, which is some 120,000 light years in diameter - is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31, is some 2.5 million light years from Earth. A radio signal sent from within the Andromeda galaxy would had to have been sent 2.5 million years ago to be reaching us today. If there were beings there able to observe the Earth today, they would be seeing Earth as it was 2.5 million years ago. It is estimated that M31 alone contains over one trillion (1012) stars. It is estimated that the unverse is continuing to expand. How fast? Using Hubble's constant, it is expanding at about 73(km/s)/Mpc. That is, the rate at which the unverse is expanding increases 74km/s for every million parsecs from an observable position.
What does that mean to us on Earth? The Earth has only been around for some 4.5 billion years, formed out of stellar dust and gas that accumulated after the Sun was formed. It will likely sustain life for another 4 billion years or so until the Sun eventually becomes a red giant. I probably won't be around to see the end, but it is fascinating to think about. Yet Earth hardly matters. The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, part of the constellation Orion, with a diameter of approximately .05 arcseconds is almost as large as our entire solar system. Yet it is only one of the billions of stars in the observable universe. The Earth, with its 6,371km diameter, is 109 times smaller than the Sun and 11 times smaller than Jupiter. While our Milky Way is 120,000 light years in diameter, it is only one of the trillions of galaxies in the observable universe, some of which are as large as 325,000 light years in diameter and separated from each other by trillions of light years. There are likely over 200 nillion stars in the Milky Way alone. Many of these stars have planets orbiting them. While many of these planets don't lie in the habitable zone, there are probably millions of them that do. The search for the 'Goldilocks' planets continues. Without a way to travel faster than the speed of light, however, it is unlikely that we'll be able to look outside our own galaxy. And our own galaxy is only one of the billions, perhaps trillions of galaxies in the universe. Relatively speaking, that makes the Earth at best nothing more than a speck of dust.
We have continually demonstrated the ability to butcher our own species at the drop of a hat to possess what others have. Instead of using our lives in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, we fritter it away in the pursuit of wealth and power. History is filled with wars. So many have died for the sake of religion or political views. We glorify soldiers and military leaders, and elevate them to lofty positions of power while our poor go hungry and homeless.
No wonder aliens have not stopped by to say hello on their quest to find intelligent life. One look at the people of Earth and they would determine it wasn't even worth the effort. There's no intelligent life down here.
NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet’s surface. Kepler also has discovered more than 1,000 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Ten of these candidates are near-Earth-size and orbit in the habitable zone of their host star. Candidates require follow-up observations to verify they are actual planets. The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets. Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars. "This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe." Kepler discovers planets and planet candidates by measuring dips in the brightness of more than 150,000 stars to search for planets that cross in front, or "transit," the stars. Kepler requires at least three transits to verify a signal as a planet. "Fortune smiled upon us with the detection of this planet," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., who led the team that discovered Kepler-22b. "The first transit was captured just three days after we declared the spacecraft operationally ready. We witnessed the defining third transit over the 2010 holiday season." The Kepler science team uses ground-based telescopes and the Spitzer Space Telescope to review observations on planet candidates the spacecraft finds. The star field that Kepler observes in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra can only be seen from ground-based observatories in spring through early fall. The data from these other observations help determine which candidates can be validated as planets. Kepler-22b is located 600 light-years away. While the planet is larger than Earth, its orbit of 290 days around a sun-like star resembles that of our world. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler. Of the 54 habitable zone planet candidates reported in February 2011, Kepler-22b is the first to be confirmed. This milestone will be published in The Astrophysical Journal. The Kepler team is hosting its inaugural science conference at Ames Dec. 5-9, announcing 1,094 new planet candidate discoveries. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter. The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates. Kepler observed many large planets in small orbits early in its mission, which were reflected in the February data release. Having had more time to observe three transits of planets with longer orbital periods, the new data suggest that planets one to four times the size of Earth may be abundant in the galaxy. The number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates has increased by more than 200 and 140 percent since February, respectively. There are 48 planet candidates in their star's habitable zone. While this is a decrease from the 54 reported in February, the Kepler team has applied a stricter definition of what constitutes a habitable zone in the new catalog, to account for the warming effect of atmospheres, which would move the zone away from the star, out to longer orbital periods. "The tremendous growth in the number of Earth-size candidates tells us that we're honing in on the planets Kepler was designed to detect: those that are not only Earth-size, but also are potentially habitable," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif. "The more data we collect, the keener our eye for finding the smallest planets out at longer orbital periods."
The Kepler mission's science team announced its latest finding at a press conference on Monday, Dec. 5, 2011. The team announced the confirmation of Kepler-22b, its first planet found in the "habitable zone," the region where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth, orbits around a star similar to our sun and is located 600 light-years away. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets. The planet's host star belongs to the same class as our sun, called G-type, although it is slightly smaller and cooler. Kepler also has discovered 1,094 new planet candidates, nearly doubling its previously known count. Since the last catalog was released in February, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler has increased by 89 percent and now totals 2,326. Of these, 207 are approximately Earth-size, 680 are super Earth-size, 1,181 are Neptune-size, 203 are Jupiter-size and 55 are larger than Jupiter. The findings, based on observations conducted May 2009 to September 2010, show a dramatic increase in the numbers of smaller-size planet candidates.
(By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP) WASHINGTON -- Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilocks zone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.
Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.
It's just right. Just like Earth.
"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.
The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.
Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?
Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.
"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harboring life.
Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.
But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star – 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.
Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between – in the land of constant sunrise – it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."
The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.
The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview.
That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare.
Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.
With an estimated 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.
Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in the sweet spot in between, Vogt said.
With the star designated "a," its sixth planet is called Gliese 581g.
"It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's World."
The star Gliese 581 is a dwarf, about one-third the strength of our sun. Because of that, it can't be seen without a telescope from Earth, although it is in the Libra constellation, Vogt said.
But if you were standing on this new planet, you could easily see our sun, Butler said.
The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said.
"It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions," Vogt said.