Quantumaniac is where it’s at - and by ‘it’ I mean awesome.
Over here I post a ton of physics / math / general interesting science related posts. I try to be as informative as possible, all while posting fascinating things that hopefully enlighten us both a little to the mysteries of our truly wondrous universe(s?). Plus, how would you know if the blog exists or not unless you observe it? Boom, just pulled the Schrödinger’s cat card. Now you have to check it out - trust me, it said so in an equation somewhere.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Saturn’s Moon Phoebe has Interesting Origins
More than 60 moons are known to orbit Saturn, varying drastically in shape, size, surface age and origin. Scientists had their first close-up look at Phoebe when Cassini began exploring the Saturn system in 2004. Using data from multiple spacecraft instruments and a computer model of the moon’s chemistry, geophysics and geology, scientists found Phoebe was a so-called planetesimal, or remnant planetary building block.
Phoebe was born within the first 3 million years of the birth of the solar system, which occurred 4.5 billion years ago. The moon may originally have been porous but appears to have collapsed in on itself as it warmed up. Phoebe developed a density 40 percent higher than the average inner Saturnian moon.
Cassini images suggest Phoebe originated in the far-off Kuiper Belt, the region of ancient, icy, rocky bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. Data show Phoebe was spherical and hot early in its history, and has denser rock-rich material concentrated near its center. Its average density is about the same as Pluto, another object in the Kuiper Belt. Phoebe likely was captured by Saturn’s gravity when it somehow got close to the giant planet.
Objects like Phoebe are thought to have condensed very quickly. Hence, they represent building blocks of planets. Saturn is surrounded by a cloud of irregular moons that circle the planet in orbits tilted from Saturn’s orbit around the sun, the so-called equatorial plane. Phoebe is the largest of these irregular moons and also has the distinction of orbiting backward in relation to the other moons. Saturn’s large moons appear to have formed from gas and dust orbiting in the planet’s equatorial plane. These moons currently orbit Saturn in that same plane.
Objects of Phoebe’s size have long been thought to form as “potato-shaped” bodies and remained that way over their lifetimes. If such an object formed early enough in the solar system’s history, it could have harbored the kinds of radioactive material that would produce substantial heat over a short timescale. This would warm the interior and reshape the moon.
Phoebe likely stayed warm for tens of millions of years before freezing up. The study suggests the heat also would have enabled the moon to host liquid water at one time. This could explain the signature of water-rich material on Phoebe’s surface previously detected by Cassini.
The new study also is consistent with the idea that several hundred million years after Phoebe cooled, the moon drifted toward the inner solar system in a solar-system-wide rearrangement. Phoebe was large enough to survive this turbulence.
(Source: dailygalaxy.com)
Here’s Your Chance to Use a Space Shuttle as a Ferry
NASA is tentatively targeting Friday, April 27 as the date of the historic ferryflight of Enterprise from the Washington, DC area to the New York City metropolitan area, if the weather cooperates. “Managers shifted the flight from Wednesday to Friday because of a large region of low pressure dominating the East Coast. The weather is predicted to be more favorable Friday,” NASA said in a statement today.
Enterprise is a full scale prototype space shuttle orbiter that carried out critical approach and landing tests in California in the late 1970’s, setting the stage for the first shuttle blast off in 1981.The orbiter is named after the famed “Starship” in the iconic TV series “Star Trek”.
Space Shuttle Enterprise is already piggybacked atop NASA’s modified Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC and awaits the GO command to take off for New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Visitors to Dulles Airport can get an exquisite view of Enterprise strapped aboard the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) from the upper levels of the Daily Parking garage. Go see it in these few extra days before it departs forever.
Originally the ferry flight had been scheduled for Monday and then switched to Wednesday, April 25. But a powerful storm swept through the US East Coast over the weekend and continuing poor weather has further disrupted the flight plans.
NASA and the FAA are coordinating the flight which is expected to arrive and conduct a series of breathtaking low flyovers over and near various landmarks and historic sites in the New York City between 930 and 1130 a.m, including the Statue of Liberty and the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum – her permanent final home and resting place. The exact route and timing depend on weather and operational constraints.
When the flyover is complete, the SCA will land at John F. Kennedy International Airport and more than 1500 dignitaries are expected to be on hand to welcome Enterprise to the Big Apple.
In the weeks following the arrival, Enterprise will be “demated” from the top of the 747 using a pair of heavy duty cranes and placed on a barge for a dramatic seagoing voyage and will be moved by tugboat up New York’s Hudson River to the Intrepid museum in June. The shuttle will be lifted and placed on the flight deck of the Intrepid, where it will be on exhibit to the public starting this summer in a temporary climate-controlled pavilion.
The Intrepid museum is constructing a permanent exhibit facility nearby to showcase Enterprise and the museum’s space-related exhibits and education curriculum.
Sombrero Galaxy Discovered to be “Two Galaxies in One”
New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both rotund and a slender disk like our spiral Milky Way, The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is one of the first known to exhibit characteristics of the two different types. The findings will lead to a better understanding of galaxy evolution, a topic still poorly understood.
“The Sombrero is more complex than previously thought,” said Dimitri Gadotti of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and lead author of a new paper on the findings appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. “The only way to understand all we know about this galaxy is to think of it as two galaxies, one inside the other.”
The Sombrero galaxy, also known as NGC 4594, is located 28 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. From our viewpoint on Earth, we can see the thin edge of its flat disk and a central bulge of stars, making it resemble a wide-brimmed hat. Astronomers do not know whether the Sombrero’s disk is shaped like a ring or a spiral, but agree it belongs to the disk class.
“Spitzer is helping to unravel secrets behind an object that has been imaged thousands of times,”said Sean Carey of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “It is intriguing Spitzer can read the fossil record of events that occurred billions of years ago within this beautiful and archetypal galaxy.”
Spitzer captures a different view of the galaxy than visible-light telescopes. In visible views, the galaxy appears to be immersed in a glowing halo, which scientists had thought was relatively light and small. With Spitzer’s infrared vision, a different view emerges. Spitzer sees old stars through the dust and reveals the halo has the right size and mass to be a giant elliptical galaxy.
While it is tempting to think the giant elliptical swallowed a spiral disk, astronomers say this is highly unlikely because that process would have destroyed the disk structure. Instead, one scenario they propose is that a giant elliptical galaxy was inundated with gas more than nine billion years ago.
Early in the history of our universe, networks of gas clouds were common, and they sometimes fed growing galaxies, causing them to bulk up. The gas would have been pulled into the galaxy by gravity, falling into orbit around the center and spinning out into a flat disk.Stars would have formed from the gas in the disk.
“This poses all sorts of questions,” said Rubén Sánchez-Janssen from the European Southern Observatory, co-author of the study. “How did such a large disk take shape and survive inside such a massive elliptical? How unusual is such a formation process?”
Researchers say the answers could help them piece together how other galaxies evolve. Another galaxy, called Centaurus A, appears also to be an elliptical galaxy with a disk inside it. But its disk does not contain many stars. Astronomers speculate that Centaurus A could be at an earlier stage of evolution than the Sombrero and might eventually look similar.
The findings also answer a mystery about the number of globular clusters in the Sombrero galaxy. Globular clusters are spherical nuggets of old stars. Ellipticals typically have a few thousand, while spirals contain a few hundred. The Sombrero has almost 2,000, a number that makes sense now, but had puzzled astronomers when they thought it was only a disk galaxy.
The Eagle Nebula
Catalogued as Messier 16 (M16) and NGC 6611, the Eagle Nebula is a young, open cluster of stars located in the constellation Serpens. The nebula was discovered by Jean-Phillippe de Cheseaux in 1745-1746. The name “Eagle” is derived from its shape, apparently resembling the upper body of an Eagle.
The Eagle Nebula is the subject of the Hubble Space Telescope’s famous “Pillars of Creation” photograph, shown in the collection above. This region of active current star formation is about 6,500 light-years from Earth. The tower of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers high. The brightest star in the nebula has an apparent magnitude of +8.24, easily visible with good binoculars.
The longest of the ‘Pillars’ is seven light years long, and because of their massive density interior gasses contract gravitationally to form stars. At each ‘pillars’ end, the intense radiation of bright young stars causes low density material to boil away, leaving stellar nurseries of dense EGGs exposed. Due to the huge distance between us, the Pillars of Creation may already be gone, and instead a stellar star nursery could have taken its place. In early 2007, scientists using the Spitzer discovered evidence that potentially indicates that the Pillars were destroyed by a nearby supernova explosion about 6,000 years ago, but the light showing the new shape of the nebula will not reach Earth for another millennium.
The Surface of Mars
Google Goes into Space?
This upcoming Tuesday, during a press conference at the Charles Simonyi Space Gallery (located in the Museum of Flight in Seattle), a new company called Planetary Resources will come into existence.
Two of the men behind the mystery project are Larry Page and Eric Schmidt of Google. Others involved include director James Cameron, Chief Software Architect of Microsoft Charles Simonyl, Google Board of Directors member K. Ram Shiram, and Chairman of the Perot Group Ross Perot, Jr.
The cryptic press release didn’t give any details save a name and vague description of the company’s goals. It will “overlay two critical sector – space exploration and natural resources – to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP.” It goes on the say that the innovative startup will “create a new industry and a new definition of natural resources.”
It may be convoluted, but it’s enough information to give some scientists a pretty clear idea of what Planetary Resources might do. It’s likely an asteroid mining company. That’s really the only thing in space that we need on Earth and could redefine natural resources.
Scientists have long suspected asteroids, which are believed to be made of material leftover from the Solar System’s formation or a mystery planet’s destruction, might hold valuable resources. There are tens of thousands of astroids in orbit between Mars and Jupiter – the so-called asteroid belt – and occasionally one comes close enough to Earth to pose a threat. But, they also come close enough to make a sample or resource collection mission possible.
The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at CERN
Jupiter’s Moon May Have Clues of Life
Europa, Callisto and Jupiter’s largest moon, Ganymede, are all believed to have liquid oceans beneath their icy shells, as well as organic chemistry and possible sources of energy beyond the dim amount of sunlight that reaches their distant surfaces. These are all conditions that may be required for life in much more distant planetary bodies.
A newly proposed mission, The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, nicknamed JUICE, would send a spacecraft to study the three moons and their habitability.
Mission planners selected Ganymede as an archetype of an exoplanet water world like GJ 1214b, a super-Earth discovered last year circling a star about 40 light-years from Earth.
Europa poses an intriguing model to those exploring the possibility of alien life because its buried ocean is believed to be in direct contact with the moon’s silicate mantle, a source of salts and other elements. Europa is thought to be like exoplanets that are between water worlds and Earth-like bodies.
Callisto was selected because it is the only known example of a non-active, but ocean-bearing world, Prieto Ballesteros said.
JUICE’s job will be to characterize the moons using cameras, multiple-wavelength spectrometers for chemical analysis, magnetic field detectors, particle sensors, sounders and radio science instruments. With them, JUICE will be able to assess the moons’ underground liquid reservoirs and analyze their surface chemistry, including any organic compounds.
This week, the European Space Agency’s Science Program Committee selected JUICE from among three projects vying for funding. It will now be considered by representatives from the European Space Agency’s 19 member states on May 2.JUICE’s competitors are an X-ray telescope for high-energy physics called ATHENA and the NGO observatory designed to search for gravitational waves.If selected, JUICE would launch in June 2022 and reach Jupiter in 2030. The mission is designed to last 3.5 years.
(Source: news.discovery.com)
Sun ‘Tornado’
This enormous tornado erupting from the surface of the sun is big enough to swallow the Earth. In fact, it could swallow five Earths.
