A New Set of Eyes in Space

Posted on March 31, 2016 by HB

Or perhaps a new set of mirrors would be more accurate.

Today, a scientist and an engineer from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) visited Vanderbilt and gave a talk about what they hope to discover using the telescope and the sheer feats of engineering that made the telescope a reality.

The JWST in an infrared telescope that will orbit the Sun 1 million miles from earth. Using its infrared technology, scientists hope to:

  • Discover the first galaxies formed after the Big Bang
  • Understand how galaxies form and how they got to where they are now in terms of size and composition
  • See stars as they’re born
  • Further investigate the compositions of exoplanets

people

The above picture is the telescope picture with the team who helped create it. The hexagonal primary mirrors span a diameter of 6.5 m and are made of beryllium and coated with gold, which absorbs a great amount of infrared light. The mirrors have a collecting area of 25 m² – the current Hubble telescope has a collecting area of about 4.5 m².

The JWST is set to launch in 2018 and you can learn more about it here!


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7 Things You Should Know About the Kuiper Belt

Posted on March 31, 2016 by HB

1. The Kuiper Belt is an elliptical band of objects beyond Neptune’s orbit extending from 30 to 55 AU. It is similar to the asteroid belt except the objects in the Kuiper Belt are made more from ice than rock. Pluto is a part of the Kuiper Belt and comets can be found there as well.

kuiper-belt

2. The first Kuiper belt object was discovered in 1992 by a pair of scientists, Jane Luu and Dave Jewitt, at the University of Hawaii – nicknamed “Smiley,” it was orbiting the Sun at a distance of 44 AU.

3. The Kuiper Belt is made out of “leftovers” from the birth of our solar system that were swept out by the gravity of Jupiter and Saturn. Scientists and astronomers believe that these objects could hold valuable information about what our solar system was like at its formation (kind of like dinosaur fossils here on Earth).

4. Eris, an object in the Kuiper Belt that is larger than Pluto, was discovered by astronomers in July of 2005. Eris’ namesake was the Greek goddess of discord because Eris (the object) forced astronomers to rethink their definition of what constitutes a planet.

5. Short period comets, which are comets that take less than 200 years to orbit the Sun, originate in the Kuiper Belt. Halley’s comet is a short term comet.

6. The New Horizons Spacecraft, which reached Pluto in the summer of 2015, observed a Kuiper Belt object later that year in December. The object is 90 kilometers wide and is named 1994 JR1. It is located approximately 3.3 billion miles from the Sun.

7. I share a name with the Kuiper Belt – my mom’s side of the family is Dutch and her maiden name is Kuiper!


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Big Bang, Small Seconds

Posted on March 28, 2016 by hallesolar
walkthroughspace-312x204
Adler Planetarium

Most of us have an awareness of the basic concept of the Big Bang Theory from a very young age. I am not referring to the CBS show, but I suppose children learn about that fairly young nowadays as well.

Anyway, although I’ve always had a basic understanding of what the Big Bang Theory entails, I didn’t realize how nuanced the associated timeline is until recently.

Last weekend, I was had the pleasure of visiting the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and went to its exhibit called “The Universe: A Walk Through Space and Time.” I was shocked to see that scientists have an understanding of what happened in the moments following the Big Bang, pinned down to minuscule fractions of a second.

This chart from the University of Northern Iowa explains these events very well. Some interesting ones to consider are the birth of gravity at 10^-35 seconds after the Big Bang and full proton and neutron formation at 10^-7 seconds after the Big Bang. It is absolutely incredible to me that scientists are able to understand these events with such chronological specificity!


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Jupiter’s Less Popular Moons

Posted on March 28, 2016 by hallesolar
jegic_520x306
NASA

Io, Europa, Ganymede and Castillo get a lot of love, but the 63 other members of Jupiter’s posse are often overlooked.

This NASA webpage provides in-depth information about each of Jupiter’s 67 moons. 50 of them are official moons and have names to reflect that status. However, the other 17 are mere “Provisional Moons,” which are named by a series of letters and numbers. These include objects such as S/2003 J4 and S/2011 J2.

I want to highlight the attributes of these two randomly selected Provisional Moons, to illustrate what some of these objects are like and to give them a bit of the spotlight that they are so often deprived.

S/2003 J4 bears this name because it was Jupiter’s fourth (J4) satellite (S) discovered in 2003 (2003). Fun facts about S/2003 J4 include that it is thought to be a fragment from an ancient object that was much larger and it orbits Jupiter on a distinct incline every 755 Earth days.

S/2011 J2 was the most recently discovered of the bunch, Jupiter’s second (J2) satellite (S) discovered in 2011 (2011). We don’t know very much about this satellite, except that it orbits Jupiter in the direction opposite the planet’s rotation.

I hope that you take the time to get to know not only these moons, but also the many others that orbit Earth’s Jovian peers.


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The Hunt for Extrasolar Planets

Posted on March 27, 2016 by danielicopeland

The Hunt for Extrasolar Planets

extrasolar planets

2098 extrasolar planets have been discovered starting in 1988. Extrasolar planets are planets that exist on stars other than the sun. Because these are relatively small and dark object that orbit much larger bright objects so very far way they can be very difficult to find. Astronomers can discover them using ingenious techniques that measure the star near the planet that detect subtle changes that an orbiting planet can have on its star. The three methods used are radial velocity, transit photometry and microlensing. Radial velocity is currently the most effective method for detecting extrasolar planets. This method relies on the star having a slight movement due to the gravity from the surrounding planets. This movement causes light from the star to be either red or blue shifted. These shifts in wavelength can be measured and the size of the planet can be estimated. Transit photometry detects extrasolar planets by measuring the slight dimming of the star that the planet orbits when the planet passes between the telescope and the sun. Microlensing is the only method for determining planets that are thousands of light-years away from earth. This works by using a distant sun’s light, which is bent when it passes by a star suspected of having an extrasolar planet. The light is bent differently depending on which side of the extrasolar planet and the star it passes by. There is an image at the bottom of the page that describes the bending of this light.

 

finding planets.png

 

 

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Voyager 1- Interstellar Travel

Posted on March 16, 2016 by Ahmed A

In 2013, after almost four decades of space traveling, Voyager 1 became the first man-made object to leave our solar system. The most amazing detail of this great accomplishment? The Voyager has 175,000,000 million times less computing power than the Apple iPhone 5 and its “memory card” is measured in kilobytes.  For those who aren’t familiar with digital units, there is 1000 Kilobytes in megabyte and 1000 megabytes in a gigabyte. Your iPhone has minimum 16 gigabyte. In other words, The Voyager is basically a 250 million dollar Nokia, but hey it works. Voyager 1 has flown by Jupiter, Saturn, Titan, and  has also explored the outer edges of the Heliosphere. Voyager 1 is expected to loose contact with us in 2025, but until then it will continue to send us information on magnetic fields, plasma waves, and cosmic rays.  Even though the Voyager has entered intersteller space, it will be 40,000 years before it encounters any planetary systems. The greatest part of Voyager 1 is that it carries  a golden phonograph ( an ancient type of record player) loaded with 115 pictures of Earthly goods as well as 90 mins of  music and greetings in many languages. Its crazy to think that if Intelligent life forms come in contact with Voyager 1 they will be 40,040 years behind.Voyager 1Voyager 1 ( Google Images).


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Climate Change

Posted on March 16, 2016 by siyuan2016

vulcan-laki

Image Source

Volcano activity is one of the most important factors that affect global climate change. Strong volcanic eruptions will release huge amounts of SO2 and sulfate aerosols that will strongly absorb solar radiation into the stratosphere, creating a global layer of sulfuric acid haze and cooling the Earth’s climate for more than 1 year. In this blog, I’ll introduce a volcanic eruption that somehow affected the global climate and historical progress.

From 8 June 1783 to 7 February 1784, the Laki volcanic system in Iceland continuously erupted for 8 months, outpouring more than 120 million tons of SO2 into the atmosphere and leading led to the formation of “Laki haze” across Europe. Besides from the local influence that 20%-25% of Iceland’s population died in the famine and fluoride poisoning in the coming winter, this unexpected volcanic eruption also contributed significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. For example, in France, under the dual effect of “Laki haze” and strong El Niño phenomenon, farmers suffered from continuous droughts in 1785. And the poverty and famine caused by these serious droughts may have contributed to the French Revolution in 1789.And in North America, the winter of 1784 became the longest and coldest on record. The extreme cold weather even delayed Congressmen in coming to Annapolis to vote for the Treaty of Paris.


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Climate Change

Posted on March 16, 2016 by siyuan2016

vulcan-laki

Image Source

Volcano activity is one of the most important factors that affect global climate change. Strong volcanic eruptions will release huge amounts of SO2 and sulfate aerosols that will strongly absorb solar radiation into the stratosphere, creating a global layer of sulfuric acid haze and cooling the Earth’s climate for more than 1 year. In this blog, I’ll introduce a volcanic eruption that somehow affected the global climate and historical progress.

From 8 June 1783 to 7 February 1784, the Laki volcanic system in Iceland continuously erupted for 8 months, outpouring more than 120 million tons of SO2 into the atmosphere and leading led to the formation of “Laki haze” across Europe. Besides from the local influence that 20%-25% of Iceland’s population died in the famine and fluoride poisoning in the coming winter, this unexpected volcanic eruption also contributed significantly to several years of extreme weather in Europe. For example, in France, under the dual effect of “Laki haze” and strong El Niño phenomenon, farmers suffered from continuous droughts in 1785. And the poverty and famine caused by these serious droughts may have contributed to the French Revolution in 1789.And in North America, the winter of 1784 became the longest and coldest on record. The extreme cold weather even delayed Congressmen in coming to Annapolis to vote for the Treaty of Paris.


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Nuclear Fusion

Posted on March 16, 2016 by siyuan2016

reactor-640

Image Source

Since the discovery of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, people have thought to use nuclear reactions that release energy to generate heat for industrial production. Up to 2015, nuclear power has provided more than 10% of world’s electricity. Since fusion involves the merging of atomic nuclei and it’s so hard to get it hot enough and contain the chain reaction on Earth, most of the nuclear power stations use nuclear fission nowadays. But even under various supervising and protecting measures, sometimes inconspicuous negligence and natural disasters can still cause irrevocable disasters. And in this blog, I would like to introduce a level-7 (highest level) nuclear accident that happened almost 30 years ago.

On 26 April 1986, an explosion in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere that spread over almost Europe for a long time. This accident occurred during an experiment that scheduled to test a potential safety emergency core cooling feature. Unfortunately, there came a sudden and unexpected power surge that couldn’t even be suppressed by emergency shutdowns and led to the following reactor vessel rupture and steam explosions. The released radioactivity brought lasting impacts both on human and nature. Harmful leaked radio-nuclides like iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 tended to concentrate in thyroid and milk glands, causing significant increase of thyroid cancers in contaminated areas. And due to their long-term exposure to radiation in the following years, local vegetations in Chernobyl area began to show abnormal features. The ever-increasing gene mutations have significantly affected the growth, reproduction and survival rates of trees, making them more unbearable to extreme weather conditions. Even after 30 years, such tragedy still reminded people of the importance of using nuclear power safely and appropriately.


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Nuclear Fusion

Posted on March 16, 2016 by siyuan2016

reactor-640

Image Source

Since the discovery of nuclear fission and nuclear fusion, people have thought to use nuclear reactions that release energy to generate heat for industrial production. Up to 2015, nuclear power has provided more than 10% of world’s electricity. Since fusion involves the merging of atomic nuclei and it’s so hard to get it hot enough and contain the chain reaction on Earth, most of the nuclear power stations use nuclear fission nowadays. But even under various supervising and protecting measures, sometimes inconspicuous negligence and natural disasters can still cause irrevocable disasters. And in this blog, I would like to introduce a level-7 (highest level) nuclear accident that happened almost 30 years ago.

On 26 April 1986, an explosion in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere that spread over almost Europe for a long time. This accident occurred during an experiment that scheduled to test a potential safety emergency core cooling feature. Unfortunately, there came a sudden and unexpected power surge that couldn’t even be suppressed by emergency shutdowns and led to the following reactor vessel rupture and steam explosions. The released radioactivity brought lasting impacts both on human and nature. Harmful leaked radio-nuclides like iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 tended to concentrate in thyroid and milk glands, causing significant increase of thyroid cancers in contaminated areas. And due to their long-term exposure to radiation in the following years, local vegetations in Chernobyl area began to show abnormal features. The ever-increasing gene mutations have significantly affected the growth, reproduction and survival rates of trees, making them more unbearable to extreme weather conditions. Even after 30 years, such tragedy still reminded people of the importance of using nuclear power safely and appropriately.


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