Science Education Pedagogy Seminar

Launched on January 19th, 2006 the New Horizons Space Probe was the first mission since Voyager to launch to an unexplored planet!

Designed, built and operated by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), New Horizons also features instruments from: SwRI (Southwest Research Institute), NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Colorado, Stanford University and Ball Aerospace Corporation.

(Images from: WordPress and Wikipedia)

New Horizons is comparable to the size of a piano. It is 27 inches tall,  83 inches long and measures 108 inches at its widest. It weighs about 1,054 pounds.

New Horizons made a brief swing by Jupiter in February 2007 to pick up some data and a bit of a gravity boost (Juno-the second New Frontiers mission- launched on August 5, 2011, is focused on finding more in-depth data about Jupiter) before continuing with its “required” objectives in the Pluto System.

On July 14, 2015, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto (7,750 miles away from the surface). It’s primary objectives were to:

• Characterize the global geology and morphology of Pluto and Charon
• Map chemical compositions of Pluto and Charon surfaces
• Characterize the neutral (non-ionized) atmosphere of Pluto and its escape rate

and while we’ve gotten a lot of data, New Horizons could take as long as 16 months to get all of the data back to us (it can only transmit 1 to 2 kb/s)-that means we won’t have it all until November of this year! And then of course there is the time it takes for analysis.

But never fear, in the mean time, New Horizons is continuing onward ( at 9.02 miles/s)  in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. The hope is that New Horizons will be able to get observations of a Kuiper Belt Object- PT1 (2014 MU-69) in January 2019.

More Info:

See Where New Horizons Currently Is

More About New Horizons (from NASA)

NASA Fact Sheet about NH

NASA Press Kit on NH

New Horizons (Wikipedia)

New Frontiers (Wikipedia)

Have you ever sat around and wondered, where are all the aliens? Well, you certainly aren’t the only one. In 1950, Enrico Fermi came to the realization that “any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire galaxy” according to SETI.  His theory, known as the Fermi Paradox, has four main points. The first is that the Sun is relatively normal, typical star and there are approximately 200-400 billion stars in the Milky Way, along with 70 sextillion stars in the observable universe, many of which are way older than Earth. The second point is that there is a high probability that some of these stars will have Earth-like planets, and some might develop intelligent life, if one thinks Earth to be a typical planet. The third point is that some of these intelligent civilizations, have they been around long enough, might develop interstellar travel, which we are working on now. The fourth and final point is that even at a slow interstellar travel space, the Milky Way Galaxy could be traversed in about a million years, which is a small fraction of the Universe’s 14 billion year old life.

This all leads back to the question of where are they? According to this theory, we should’ve already been contacted by or have some proof of aliens. Hmm.

The Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) telescope is one of the newest telescopes that allows us to get 3D views of the universe. MUSE is installed on the European Southern Obserbatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile. It took over a decade to design and develop it but finally went online in March of 2014 and captured a string of incredible images, one of which is pictured above. In the picture above, you can see that there is blue light on the left, and red on the right. This is because MUSE has split the light from each part of this galaxy into component colors to show the chemical and physical properties of each point. In order to accomplish this, the telescope uses 24 spectrographs to split the galaxy’s light into its spectra which then allows it to assemble images and spectra of different regions in the sky. As we talked about in class, the studies of these spectra can tell us about the composition and movements of any object in the sky.

gravity has found itself grounded in a great deal of pop culture recently. from depictions in cinematic blockbusters to the recent historic breakthrough at LIGO, gravity has become somewhat of a household/cocktail party topic of conversation.

being a physics major, over the years i’ve come to think of cosmological things in visuals, or colors, or little mind models i have for myself. quantum mechanics is grey, and there is always a potential well in the image i conjure up. classical mechanics is a pulley, and it’s green. not the pulley, just the thought. e&m i don’t think of very often because i hate it, but when i do i imagine a gaussian cylinder. it’s always the same one.

so what are we thinking of when we think of gravity?

is it fun bouncy times with color like in the new ok go video?

is it a destructive thing of despair like in the clooney/bullock blockbuster?

is it a higher dimension hitherto inaccessible to us humans in our current plane of existence but manifests as the power of love in a tesseract?

is it a product of the curvature of space? if i stand still i am moving in one direction (forward in time !!) – similarly if i am right above earth i am moving downward – falling. time and space are part of the same fabric.

is it the love force of sara bareilles and john mayer? why do we romanticize it this way? why does it make us feel this way?

is it a force mediated by the imaginary graviton? if we find it will it help us unite quantum mechanics with general relativity?

so many questions, so much time and space. as one professor puts it, this is a matter of serious gravity.

The Milky Way and Andromeda are currently hurtling at one another at 110 km/s. In roughly 4 billion years, the galaxies will collide and subsequently form a single, larger galaxy. Though this collision may seem like it will be the end of times, in reality, there is a very small chance that the Solar System will even be effected.

(Rendition of the Milky Way and Andromeda Collision)

This is due to the fact that galaxies, generally speaking, are not very dense. Andromeda is roughly 260,000 ly in diameter and contains about 1 trillion stars. The Milky Way is roughly 100,000 ly in diameter and contains about 300 billion stars. Though the number of stars is much denser near the center of galaxies, the average distance between these stars is still about 160 billion km. Thus, the chances of any star colliding is extremely small.

On the other hand, the super-massive black holes at the centers of Andromeda and the Milky Way will definitely merge.  This is because the black holes are located at the center of mass in both of the galaxies. Since the two galaxies are attracted to the other’s center of mass, these two black holes are moving directly toward one another and thus will merge. A new, even more massive black hole will be created and gravitational waves will be released as these black holes get within one light year of one another.

On a warm night this summer on Edisto Island, SC, my friends and I took to the beach to go shrimping. The after-dark escapade turned into a feeding frenzy, reaping monstrous crustaceans with beady, red eyes. The younger kids eventually took turns in the water, and I sat on a sand dune and looked up at the clear sky. I could make out the outline of our galaxy, thousands of stars, and what I thought might be planets.

Planets don’t twinkle, right? Stars do. But satellites definitely blink. Wait, what’s the difference between twinkling and blinking? Maybe if I stop blinking my eyelids I’ll be able to tell.

I sat on that dune for two hours trying to figure out which white dots in the sky were stars or planets, based on whether they scintillated or not.

What I didn’t understand is that, in reality, stars don’t twinkle at all.

Light penetrates Earth’s atmosphere and makes its way toward us. Yet, the way down is a pretty bumpy ride, all because our atmosphere is so alive. “Turbulence” occurs when the air above us is constantly moving and mixing in different ways. The light we see from stars and planets gets twisted in that turbulence, hence our “twinkling” or shaking image of stars. The longer the light has to travel through Earth’s atmosphere to get to you, the more chance the light has to experience turbulence, and the more twinkly it might be. Then why doesn’t everything we see twinkle? Our Sun doesn’t blink or vibrate in the sky, and that’s because its angular size is very big compared to that of stars far away from Earth. Similar reasoning explains why planets, to the naked eye, don’t seem to twinkle (or experience scintillation) as much as stars. Planets also have a significant angular size from our point of view, so they stay pretty still. Though it’s less poetic to say, stars don’t twinkle – our atmosphere just jiggles.

my little brother wants to be an astronaut and swim in the shadows of titan and calypso in the silk sheen shadow of saturn but sometimes we face-off across the little coffee table with the etch marks i made when i was ten and the ones he made when he was ten.

“i have so many questions,” he says.

“i know. i want to talk to you about gravity waves. but you have to learn about the nitrogen cycle now.”

his science book is splayed open hopelessly on the table between us. plants and animals need nitrogen to live. it helps plants make chlorophyll, which lets them make food and energy.

“read that again,” i urge.

“i don’t get it…” he’s eleven.

“do they just want you to memorize it?”

“i think so… it’s so hard.”

he huffs, crossing his arms. i decide to try something different.

“ok…” i venture. “what do you wanna learn about?”

instantly his eyes alight. “black holes… and dark matter… and why haven’t we found aliens yet?”

“whoa there buddy… one at a time. let’s see… let’s start with something simple. do you know how the seasons work?”

“yeah! i read about it in encyclopedia brittanica. it’s because earth is kinda tilty so one side is closer to the sun in the summer and the other side is far away from the sun in the winter.”

i chuckle. “you know, it isn’t really about how close it is. it’s all about how much direct sunlight it’s getting.”

“ahhh….” he leans back heavy in his chair, he is chubby. “that makes sense ok. now gravity waves i saw it on your facebook.”

i spend the night telling him all i know about “gravity waves”. how they were theorized by einstein 100 years ago and how we can finally hear them. how two black holes got married more than 1 billion years ago and this is the whispering of their love. i tell him he should read more brittanica. i am frustrated. why isn’t he allowed to talk about how cool science is at school? instead of memorizing the nitrogen cycle without understanding the science behind it, why don’t they invest in the inherent human curiosity that these kids clearly have? instead of squashing it out like an ant or a cockroach? here in my hometown of beirut, there is a painfully apparent lag in scientific literacy among all age groups. people don’t understand global warming. they don’t think evolution is “real” to “provable”. they don’t understand the scientific method. they want to stay in their bubble and ingest blindly the politics of their religious leaders. they don’t want to look up at the sky and wonder. in the pedagogy seminar we talk a lot about the importance of instilling a love for scientific curiosity and inquisitiveness at a very young age. if we can’t satiate kids’ curiosities, at the very least we ought not to siphon them dry by wrongful and misguided attempts at teaching science.

The use of gravity assist has been an integral part of space exploration. Gravitational slingshots have been used time and time again to send spacecraft to areas that would be impossible to get to otherwise by providing the spacecraft with increased speed. Accordingly, spacecrafts are able to get places faster and use less fuel.

(Voyager aircraft performing gravitational slingshots)

Gravity assist, does, though, have its limitations. First and foremost, relying on the use of a gravitational slingshot means that the mission has to take place in a relatively small window of time. For instance, if we wanted to perform a slingshot around Jupiter in order to get to Pluto, it would make  sense to time the mission so that all three planets were closest to one another. This means that NASA (or whoever else is launching the probe) has to keep to their schedule very tightly or risk having to potentially wait years.

Furthermore, there are limits to how much speed a spacecraft can obtain through performing gravitational slingshots in our Solar System. The most speed a spacecraft can gain through one gravitational assist is the speed at which the planet orbits the Sun. Thus, the most that Jupiter can be used to accelerate a spacecraft with one gravitational assist is about 13 km/s. Though this is extremely fast, it is still not nearly fast enough to make interstellar travel feasible. If we wanted to perform multiple gravitational slingshots to further accelerate a spacecraft , we would need to develop more fuel efficient travel methods since performing multiple gravitational slingshots would take too much fuel.

Be it an elementary school sleepover or a university orientation, there’s always a place and time for the infamous question: If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Some people say they’d love to fly or breathe underwater, but one of the most popular answers is X-ray vision.

The entire process behind X-ray “vision” is based on the varying energies different types of light possess. No, this isn’t referring to the brightness of a fluorescent light VS outdoor lighting. Instead, I refer to the Electromagnetic Spectrum, a visual placement of different types of light we can and can’t see.

According to “The Cosmic Perspective” by Jeffrey Bennett, the length of light visible to us is extremely small. “ROY G. BIV,” the collection of visible light we know (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet), is nearly a billion times shorter than all the light that falls between X-ray and radio.

The different types of light that appear on our scale include gamma, x-ray, ultraviolet, visible, infrared, microwave, and radio. Gamma rays are the strongest, meaning that they have shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies than the other types of light. X-rays, then, are pretty intense and can even harm the human body, causing cancer and mutations in some individuals. For this reason, doctors and technicians take precautions when issuing “X-rays” to patients by covering them with lead aprons. However, x-rays are not typically strong enough to penetrate through our bones – which makes sense considering x-ray images show events like fractures in our bones or cavities in our teeth. Yet, the images are produced on a film that records the light that passes through our body.

Sweet. So Superman could bend science at his will to look at things through walls, right? 

Wrong. Without a film behind whatever he’s observing, he wouldn’t be able to see anything special with his vision. The x-ray images we see are merely representations of the process of x-rays passing through a body, being unable to get past bone, and thus leaving an imprint or outline of the bony barriers on the film. The objects Superman would want to see or look through, like walls, don’t give off x-rays. Therefore, Superman’s vision wouldn’t pick anything up, and he’d look straight through the important stuff.

I guess that kills a lot of kids’ dreams (including mine). Now I think I’ll have to answer with a more realistic superpower, like flying.