The Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has been all snapped together and stuff and is ready to be launched into outer space from Vandenberg in November. This will be a major eye in the sky for cosmology, since it will be able to see things that heretofore only space insects could see….
Details in the following NASA press release:
Continue reading WISE Mission Assembled and Preparing for Launch
Some time ago there began an effort to build a state of the art Planetarium and Space Discovery Center in Minnesota, most likely in Minneapolis. These plans have been set back by the usual forces, but are nonetheless moving ahead. (It certainly is a good thing John McCain did not win the election, or all Planetaria would be DOOMED!)
Well, now, the movers and shakers behind the planetarium have arranged an event intended to raise awareness of their project. Here are the details, and I hope to see you there!
Summer Solstice Celebration
Monday, June 22
4:00pm – 8:00 pm
Minneapolis Central Library
300 Nicollet Mall
This event is co-sponsored by the Library Foundation of Hennepin County. Here is your chance to — travel past the Sun out into the universe through the Society’s ExploraDome sky theater, that has been wowing school kids throughout Minnesota — learn something new about astronomy and telescopes from the Minnesota Astronomical Society, and — expose your kids to the world of Astronomy through astronomically-related games. We also hope you’ll take this opportunity to see the future site of the Minnesota Planetarium and learn more about how we can make it a reality.
ExploraDome shows will be held on the half-hour. The dome holds 25 at a time, so reservations are recommended. To reserve your spot, please send your name, phone number and time (by the half-hour) to the sally@mplanetarium.org OR 651-999-7300.. The 6:30pm show is a special presentation in Pohlad Hall featuring our planetarium colleagues live from around the world, and is open to all.
The Mars rover Opportunity has explored Victoria crater, a ~750-meter eroded impact crater formed in sulfate-rich sedimentary rocks. Impact-related stratigraphy is preserved in the crater walls, and meteoritic debris is present near the crater rim. The size of hematite-rich concretions decreases up-section, documenting variation in the intensity of groundwater processes. Layering in the crater walls preserves evidence of ancient wind-blown dunes. Compositional variations with depth mimic those ~6 kilometers to the north and demonstrate that water-induced alteration at Meridiani Planum was regional in scope.
Such a report on Earth would be fairly run of the mill, but on Mars, every study of every geological field site moves us palpably closer to understanding the past, and seemingly dynamic, geological processes on the planet most likely to have ever harbored live in our solar system, other than our own.
This report is published in today’s issue of Science. It is based mainly on dta acquired by the robot Opportunity during a traverse along the northern rim of the crater during which time the rover photographed cliff faces. Here’s a map of the rover’s path:
From Figure 1 of the cited paper. Opportunity’s traverse at Victoria crater. Image acquired by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment camera. [image is rotated 90 degrees to fit on blog]
The paper is detailed and interesting, but not OpenAccess. But, it is fairly technical and a very good press release is available here. Here are the important findings, paraphrased from the release:
Continue reading New Geo Paper from Mars Rover “Opportunity” Out Today
This is very funny (as you might expect). Chad Orzel posted it because of the references to CERN’s super duper collider. (Go see Chad’s commentary.)
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It is theoretically impossible to observe all of the different aspects of state of matter at the subatomic “quantum” level. This means that at the tiniest level of spacetime, bits and pieces of stuff and action can only be vaguely known, and therefore, if you wanted to build a quantum computer you would have some interesting challenges.
A solution to this problem would be a key step in quantum engineerig. According to Anthony Lang, of Bristol Universtiy, “Apart from providing insight into the fundamentals of quantum physics, [such] work may be crucial for future quantum technologies. How else could a future quantum engineer build a quantum computer if they can’t tell which circuits they have?”
A paper in Physical Review Letters that came out a few days ago pruports to use entanglement and a few other tricks to overcome this limitation.
An Astronaut is blogging from space:
I am going to try to paint a picture in words of what I saw. Close your eyes and imagine yourself here on ISS with me looking out of the docking compartment window. You are positioned so the Earth is passing by below and you can see the horizon as well with the night sky behind it. Here is what you see:
It is completely night. There are thunderstorms across Africa and lightening is everywhere; bright flashes are going cloud to cloud illuminating the clouds as it arcs from one to the other. It is a private fireworks show.
Here.
I won’t even try to comment on this:
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We know where Dora’s monkey is…. She’s over at Fermi Lab throwing a wrench in Teh Physics:
… scientists have detected a new, completely untheorized particle that challenges what physicists thought they knew about how quarks combine to form matter. They’re calling it Y(4140), reflecting its measured mass of 4140 Mega-electron volts.
“It must be trying to tell us something,” said Jacobo Konigsberg of the University of Florida, a spokesman for Fermilab’s collider detector team. “So far, we’re not sure what that is, but rest assured we’ll keep on listening.”
There has always been Oxygen on the earth, but it was not floating around free in the atmosphere as it is today (most of it still isn’t). Indeed, it is kind of strange that the earth is blanketed in a mixture of toxic, corrosive liquid (water) and equally corrosive gas (the oxygen in the atmosphere). Imagine showing up at a planet without an atmosphere or liquid water, and splashing the water and spraying the air from he earth all over that planet. Depending on the planet, it could be like throwing vinegar into a bowl of baking soda. Third grade science fair time!
In fact, this could be a test … non-gaseous planets that have previously supported earth-like life would not fizz so much under this test, but those that never had life would be likely to fizz like crazy. Or maybe I’m just crazy.
Anyway, Bad Astronomy Blog has a piece on “When did Earth’s oxygen atmosphere appear?” Check it out.
Assuming that the electrons are not, themselves, part of an elaborate computer simulation taking place somewhere, somewhen.
The Free Will Theorem can be read here.
Here is the imagery, and below is some info for you Saturn moon watchers.
On Feb. 24, 2009, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope took a photo of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The pictures were taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, developed and built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
In the new view, the giant orange moon Titan casts a large shadow onto Saturn’s north polar hood. Below Titan, near the ring plane and to the left, is the moon Mimas, casting a much smaller shadow onto Saturn’s equatorial cloud tops. Farther to the left, and off Saturn’s disk, are the bright moons Dione and the fainter Enceladus.
These rare moon transits only happen when the tilt of Saturn’s ring plane is nearly “edge on” as seen from Earth. Saturn’s rings will be perfectly edge on to our line of sight on Aug. 10, 2009, and Sept. 4, 2009. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the sun to be seen by viewers on Earth at that time. This “ring plane crossing” occurs every 14 to 15 years. In 1995 to 1996, Hubble witnessed the ring plane crossing event as well as many moon transits, and even helped discover several new moons of Saturn.
The banded structure in Saturn’s atmosphere is similar to Jupiter’s.
Early 2009 was a favorable time for viewers with small telescopes to watch moon and shadow transits crossing the face of Saturn. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, crossed Saturn on four separate occasions: January 24, February 9, February 24, and March 12, although not all events were visible from all locations on Earth.
These pictures were taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on Feb. 24, 2009, when Saturn was roughly 1.25 billion kilometers (775 million miles) from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometers (190 miles) across on Saturn. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.
Fermi lab has observed a single top quark. If you know anything about quarks, especially top quarks, you will know that this is extraordinary. Top quarks, generated using the Strong Nuclear Force have been observed in the past, but a single top quark is generated with the Weak Nuclear Force. This is apparently very hard to do, but Fermilab has done it.
The following is, apparently, what a top quark … a single top quark … looks like:
Its in there somewhere, trust me.
Details here: Take That LHC: Fermi Scores Again In Discovering Rare Single Top Quark
… hiding in a Ring of Saturn.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn’s G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists believe it is a main source of the G ring and its single ring arc.
Cassini imaging scientists analyzing images acquired over the course of about 600 days found the tiny moonlet, half a kilometer (about a third of a mile) across, embedded within a partial ring, or ring arc, previously found by Cassini in Saturn’s tenuous G ring.
The finding is being announced today in an International Astronomical Union circular.
You can see the moon as a bright dot in three different locations in the arc of a planetary ring in this photo:
See an uncropped version of this photo here and here, and more information here.
Late word out of the IAU’s Minor Planet Center: a small asteroid will pass close to Earth [on] …March 2nd … at 13:44 Universal Time. How close? The MPC’s Timothy Spahr calculates that it’ll be 0.00047 astronomical unit from Earth’s center. That’s only about 40,000 miles (63,500 km) up — well inside the Moon’s orbit and roughly twice the altitude of most communications satellites!
This object is about 30 meters across. If it struck a dinosaur, it would probably kill it. But, unlike this object that struck the earth recently, this asteroid is going to fly by.
Apparently, people in Tahiti will have/had a close enough look to read the serial numbers.
