Wednesday 20 May 2015

Rocks that glow in the dark

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The story behind the luminiscent minerals display in Rudolph Hall There’s a small room in Rudolph Hall that

The post Rocks that glow in the dark has been published on Technology Org.

 
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Supernova ignition surprises scientists

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Scientists have captured the early death throes of supernovae for the first time and found that the universe's benchmark explosions are much more varied than expected.The scientists used the Kepler space telescope to photograph three type 1a supernovae in the earliest stages of ignition. They then tracked the explosions in detail to full brightness around three weeks later, and the subsequent decline over the next few months.
via Science Daily
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Supernova collides with its companion star

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Type Ia supernovae, one of the most dazzling phenomena in the universe, are produced when small dense stars called white dwarfs explode with ferocious intensity. At their peak, these supernovae can outshine an entire galaxy. Although thousands of supernovae of this kind were found in the last decades, the process by which a white dwarf becomes one has been unclear.
via Science Daily
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Stellar birth seen in flash of light from supernova slamming into nearby star

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Using a "roadmap" of theoretical calculations and supercomputer simulations, astronomers observed a flash of light caused by a supernova slamming into a nearby star, allowing them to determine the stellar system from which a Type Ia supernova was born. This finding confirms one of two competing theories about Type Ia supernovae birth.
via Science Daily
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Protons set to collide at 13 TeV to prepare for physics

Over the next 24 hours, beams of protons should collide in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the record-breaking energy of 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV) for the first time. This is one of the many steps required to prepare the machine before the LHC's second physics run can begin. The LHC Operations team plans to declare "stable beams" in the coming weeks – the signal for the LHC experiments to start taking physics data at this new energy frontier.

"We begin by bringing the beams into collision at 13 TeV, and adjusting their orbits to collide them head-on," says Ronaldus SuykerBuyk of the Operations team.

Last month proton beams were back in the accelerator for the first time after two years of intense maintenance and consolidation. The first beam at the record energy of 6.5 TeV circulated on 10 April, and the first collisions – at the lower beam energy of 450 gigaelectronvolts (GeV)  followed.

The team has already checked and fine-tuned all the beam instruments, magnets and collimators along the 27-kilometre accelerator for collisions at 900 GeV. But when beam energy increases to 6.5 TeV, the beam parameters and orbits change significantly as compared to 450 GeV. In addition, the beams are focused down to a much smaller spot size within the experiments and as a consequence the location of collisions changes.

"When we start to bring the beams into collision at a new energy, they often miss each other," says Jorg Wenninger of the LHC Operations team. "The beams are tiny – only about 20 microns in diameter at 6.5 TeV; more than 10 times smaller than at 450 GeV. So we have to scan around – adjusting the orbit of each beam until collision rates provided by the experiments tell us that they are colliding properly."

The design of the LHC allows more than 2800 bunches of protons to circulate in each beam at a time. But the LHC Operations team will start collision tests with just one or two bunches per beam at the nominal intensity of 1011 particles per bunch to ensure that all is running smoothly.

Once they have found the points at which the beams interact optimally to give the most physics data, collimators have to be positioned accurately around the beam orbits to intercept particles that stray from the beam before they can hit magnets or detectors. "When the positioning of all collimators has been validated the LHC will switch over to production mode," says Wenninger, "and become a 'collision factory', delivering data to experiments." At this point, the experiments will switch on fully, and LHC Run 2 will begin.

In the meantime, the large LHC experiments  ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb will use the test data to check specific parts of their detectors for the upcoming physics run.

"The collisions at 13 TeV will allow us to further test all improvements that have been made to the trigger and reconstruction systems, and check the synchronisation of all the components of our detector," says CMS spokesperson Tiziano Camporesi. 

“These data are precious to complete the fine tuning of the preparation for the run,” says ALICE spokesperson Paolo Giubellino. “ALICE has installed new detectors during the shutdown, and has significantly upgraded the trigger and readout. The validation of the new hardware will greatly benefit from the first data.”

"Although these collisions are not used for physics studies, they are useful for refining the synchronization of the readout time of different parts of the calorimeters and muon detectors," says LHCb spokesperson Guy Wilkinson.

"These 13 TeV data allow us to work on further improving the ATLAS detector readiness, following the recent 900 GeV collisions," says ATLAS spokesperson Dave Charlton. "The higher energies mean that we expect more active and energetic events, which will let us probe more deeply into the detector, for example."

Declaring "stable beams" will be only the beginning for the LHC Operations team. "We’re still working on the injection chain to the LHC, and finalising the collimators," says Wenninger. “And the machine evolves around you. There are little changes over the months. There’s the alignment of the machine, which moves a little with the slow-changing geology of the area. So we keep adjusting every day."

This week's collisions at 13 TeV are to check that CERN's flagship – the LHC – is sea-worthy. But we haven't yet begun the voyage to new frontiers.


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/05/protons-set-collide-13-tev-prepare-physics

Crop-based biofuels will take years to truly help the environment

Science Focus

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The push for renewable energy has led to the generation of biofuels from cellulose-rich biomass, algae, and crops. Currently, crop-based biofuels are limited to those derived from agricultural products: corn, soybean, rapeseed, and surgarcane. An increase in the demand for crop-based biofuels will require either an increase in the amount of agricultural land or an increase in crop production on existing land.

An expansion of agricultural land can only occur if whatever is presently on the land is sacrificed—this can mean abandoned lands, pastures, or natural systems. Natural systems such as grasslands and forests store large amounts of carbon; if turned into agricultural lands, this carbon could be released into the atmosphere. Though crops also store carbon as biomass during their growth, regular harvests do not allow for long-term carbon storage. From a climate perspective, this could be problematic.

Do the carbon and nitrogen emissions that result from the deforestation and land-use intensification offset the environmental benefits of displacing fossil fuels? One way to assess this issue is by calculating carbon payback times, which represent the period over which the total greenhouse gas savings due to the displacement of fossil fuels equals the initial losses in ecosystem carbon stocks caused by land conversion.

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Researchers toss around rugby-shaped hohlraums for ignition experiments

Science Focus

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For several years, the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has pursued an indirect

The post Researchers toss around rugby-shaped hohlraums for ignition experiments has been published on Technology Org.

 
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 » see original post http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechnologyOrgPhysicsNews/~3/S16Y_18RCvQ/
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Asteroid research benefits from Gaia satellite mission

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Astronomical research on asteroids, i.e. minor planets, is also benefiting from the large-scale Gaia mission of the European Space Agency (ESA). Even though the astrometry satellite's main purpose is to precisely measure nearly one billion stars in the Milky Way, it has tracked down a multitude of minor dwarf planets in our solar system.To determine its current position in space and thus ensure Gaia's extremely high measurement accuracy, images are taken every day of the regions of the sky where the very faint satellite is located.
via Science Daily
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Controlling light: Scientists tune light waves by pairing exotic 2-D materials

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Researchers take control of light emission using paired 2-D materials.
via Science Daily

Stellar Nurseries RCW120 Rectangular Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, nebulae, gstlnrsr, rcw120, breathtaking astronomy images, star nurseries, ionised gas clouds, star forming regions, european southern observatory, clusters of stars, galaxies, starfields, eso, vista

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series

A fantastic set of stickers, with a monogram for you to change, featuring a colour composite image of RCW120.

It reveals how an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps where new stars are then formed.

The 870-micron submillimetre-wavelength data were taken with the LABOCA camera on the 12-m Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope. Here, the submillimetre emission is shown as the blue clouds surrounding the reddish glow of the ionised gas (shown with data from the SuperCosmos H-alpha survey). The image also contains data from the Second Generation Digitized Sky Survey (I-band shown in blue, R-band shown in red).

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Image code: gstlnrsr

ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA www.eso.org
Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

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Tiny batteries made in nanopores manage ions and electrons for high power and extended life

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Tiny batteries formed inside nanopores demonstrate that properly scaled nanostructures can use the full theoretical capacity of the charge storage material. These nanobatteries delivered their stored energy efficiently at high power (fast charge and discharge) and for extended cycling.

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Astronomy: The dreadful beauty of Medusa

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Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile have captured the most detailed image ever taken of the Medusa Nebula. As the star at the heart of this nebula made its transition into retirement, it shed its outer layers into space, forming a colorful cloud. The image foreshadows the final fate of the Sun, which will eventually also become an object of this kind.
via Science Daily
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A Cliff Looming on Comet 67P

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Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

The Orion Nebula iPad Cases

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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A lovely detailed image of the Orion Nebula in infrared thanks to NASA/Hubble.

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The dreadful beauty of Medusa

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Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile have captured the most detailed image ever taken of the Medusa Nebula. As the star at the heart of this nebula made its transition into retirement, it shed its outer layers into space, forming this colorful cloud. The image foreshadows the final fate of the Sun, which will eventually also become an object of this kind.

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Counting on Shreveport Bugs on Non-Stick Wing Coatings

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Researchers from NASA’s Langley Research Center are in Shreveport, Louisiana, with the Boeing ecoDemonstrator 757 aircraft looking for

The post Counting on Shreveport Bugs on Non-Stick Wing Coatings has been published on Technology Org.

 
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A Stunning View of the Orion Nebula Print

Here's a great poster featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: astronomy, space, hubble, nasa, print, prints, posters, beautiful, photographs, pictures, gifts, miscellaneous

A Stunning View of the Orion Nebula Print. This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright central region is the home of the four heftiest stars in the nebula. The stars are called the Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern. Ultraviolet light unleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. Located near the Trapezium stars are stars still young enough to have disks of material encircling them. These disks are called protoplanetary disks or "proplyds" and are too small to see clearly in this image. The disks are the building blocks of solar systems. The bright glow at upper left is from M43, a small region being shaped by a massive, young star's ultraviolet light. Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebula has four such stars. Next to M43 are dense, dark pillars of dust and gas that point toward the Trapezium. These pillars are resisting erosion from the Trapezium's intense ultraviolet light. The glowing region on the right reveals arcs and bubbles formed when stellar winds - streams of charged particles ejected from the Trapezium stars — collide with material. The faint red stars near the bottom are the myriad brown dwarfs that Hubble spied for the first time in the nebula in visible light. Sometimes called "failed stars," brown dwarfs are cool objects that are too small to be ordinary stars because they cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. The dark red column, below, left, shows an illuminated edge of the cavity wall. The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colors, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. The ACS mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon. The Orion observations were taken between 2004 and 2005. Source:NASA.

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Cubesat: Small-satellite technology to observe physical phenomena far from Earth

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Although scientists are increasingly using pint-size satellites sometimes no larger than a loaf of bread to gather data from low-Earth orbit, they have yet to apply the less-expensive small-satellite technology to observe physical phenomena far from terra firma. Scientists are now advancing a CubeSat concept that would give scientists that capability.
via Science Daily
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Tadpole Nebula, Auriga Constellation Square Sticker

Here's a great sheet of stickers featuring a beautiful image from deep space


tagged with: envelope sealers, star forming activity, awesome astronomy images, tnitac, tadpole nebula, auriga constellation, interstellar gas clouds, new born stars, hot young stars, star nursery, dust clouds

Galaxies, Stars and Nebulae series An awesome outer space picture featuring the Tadpole Nebula, a star forming hub located about 12000 light years away in the Auriga constellation.
This nebula is brimming with new-born stars, many as young as only a million years of age. It's called the Tadpole nebula because the masses of hot, young stars are blasting out ultraviolet radiation that has etched the gas into two tadpole-shaped pillars, called Sim 129 and130, the yellow forms that seem to be swimming away from the three red stars close to the centre of the picture.

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image code: tnitac

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

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What’s causing Ceres’ white spots? (Synopsis)

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“One of the dreariest spots on life’s road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you.” –Faith Baldwin

Bet you thought you knew it all about the asteroid belt. These frozen, ice-and-rock worlds orbit farther out from Mars, closer in than Jupiter, and occasionally get hurled towards the inner Solar System by gravitational interactions. But the largest world, Ceres, at just about half the diameter of the Moon (or the size of Texas), exhibits an unusual surprise: a brilliant set of white spots at the bottom of one of its largest craters.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA.

While the speculation abounds from simple (water-ice) to the astounding (aliens!), there are only three realistic possibilities given what Dawn has seen so far. What’s even more exciting? It’s already got the equipment on board to decide which possibility is the right one!

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA / montage by Tom Ruen.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA / montage by Tom Ruen.

Come find out the whole story behind Ceres’ white spots — so far — over at Starts With A Bang!



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Secret Vessel to Test Durability of Materials in Space, NASA Says

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The X-37B, a secret unmanned spacecraft operated by the Air Force, is expected to take off from Florida on Wednesday.








via New York Times

Galaxy M82 iPad Mini Case

Here's a great iPad case from Zazzle featuring a Hubble-related design. Maybe you'd like to see your name on it? Click to personalize and see what it's like!


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Colorful composite image of M82 that was released around the time of Hubble's 16th anniversary.

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