Monday 14 August 2017

Your Playlist for the Solar Eclipse

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Eclipses provoke strong feelings that make us reckon with the awesomeness of space. Here are some songs that might give you the feeling of totality.
via New York Times

How to Watch the Eclipse Online if You’re Stuck Indoors (or It’s Cloudy)

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Whether you live somewhere you won’t see it or the weather is terrible, here’s how to see the eclipse online — and when to tune in.
via New York Times

Scientists to Take Flight for Longer Views of the Eclipse

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Specialized jets will be used to grab data about the sun that cannot be collected from the ground during the Great American Eclipse.
via New York Times

The Illuminating Power of Eclipses

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With the sun obscured, eclipses can be revelatory: Starting at least over 2,000 years ago, they have been fodder for significant discoveries.
via New York Times

Out There: During an Eclipse, Darkness Falls and Wonder Rises

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A total solar eclipse brings tears, screams, even reverence to those in its path.
via New York Times

A fleeting blue glow

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In the 2009 film 'Star Trek,' a supernova hurtles through space and obliterates a planet unfortunate enough to be in its path. Fiction, of course, but it turns out the notion is not so farfetched.
via Science Daily
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Studying the Sun's atmosphere with the total solar eclipse of 2017

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A total solar eclipse happens somewhere on Earth about once every 18 months. But because Earth's surface is mostly ocean, most eclipses are visible over land for only a short time, if at all. The total solar eclipse of Aug. 21, 2017, is different -- its path stretches over land for nearly 90 minutes, giving scientists an unprecedented opportunity to make scientific measurements from the ground.
via Science Daily
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Two-faced 2-D material: flat sandwich of sulfur, molybdenum and selenium

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Mterials scientists replace all the atoms on top of a three-layer, two-dimensional crystal to make a transition-metal dichalcogenide with sulfur, molybdenum and selenium. The new material has unique electronic properties that may make it a suitable catalyst.
via Science Daily

New 3-D simulations show how galactic centers cool their jets

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Scientists have developed new theories and 3-D simulations to explain what's at work in the mysterious jets of energy and matter beaming from the center of galaxies at nearly the speed of light.
via Science Daily
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ATLAS observes direct evidence of light-by-light scattering

A light-by-light scattering event measured in the ATLAS detector (Image: ATLAS/CERN)

Physicists from the ATLAS experiment at CERN have found the first direct evidence ofhigh energy light-by-light scattering, a very rare process in which two photons – particles of light – interact and change direction. The result, published today in Nature Physics, confirms one of the oldest predictions of quantum electrodynamics (QED).

"This is a milestone result: the first direct evidence of light interacting with itself at high energy,” says Dan Tovey(University of Sheffield), ATLAS Physics Coordinator. “This phenomenon is impossible in classical theories of electromagnetism; hence this result provides a sensitive test of our understanding of QED, the quantum theory of electromagnetism."

Direct evidence for light-by-light scattering at high energy had proven elusive for decades – until the Large Hadron Collider’s second run began in 2015. As the accelerator collided lead ions at unprecedented collision rates, obtaining evidence for light-by-light scattering became a real possibility. “This measurement has been of great interest to the heavy-ion and high-energy physics communities for several years, as calculations from several groups showed that we might achieve a significant signal by studying lead-ion collisions in Run 2,” says Peter Steinberg (Brookhaven National Laboratory), ATLAS Heavy Ion Physics Group Convener.

Heavy-ion collisions provide a uniquely clean environment tostudy light-by-light scattering. As bunches of lead ions are accelerated, an enormous flux of surrounding photons is generated. When ions meet at the centre of the ATLAS detector, very few collide, yet their surrounding photons can interact and scatter off one another. These interactions are known as ‘ultra-peripheral collisions’. 

Studying more than 4 billion events taken in 2015, the ATLAS collaboration found 13 candidates for light-by-light scattering. This result has a significance of 4.4 standard deviations, allowing the ATLAS collaboration to report the first direct evidence of this phenomenon at high energy.

“Finding evidence of this rare signature required the development of a sensitive new ‘trigger’ for the ATLAS detector,” says Steinberg. “The resulting signature — two photons in an otherwise empty detector — is almost the diametric opposite of the tremendously complicated eventstypically expected from lead nuclei collisions. The new trigger’s success in selecting these events demonstrates the power and flexibility of the system, as well as the skill and expertise of the analysis and trigger groups who designed and developed it.”

ATLAS physicists will continue to study light-by-light scattering during the upcoming LHC heavy-ion run, scheduled for 2018. More data will further improve the precision of theresult and may open a new window to studies of new physics. In addition, the study of ultra-peripheral collisions should play a greater role in the LHC heavy-ion programme, as collision rates further increase in Run 3 and beyond.​


via CERN: Updates for the general public
http://home.cern/about/updates/2017/08/atlas-observes-direct-evidence-light-light-scattering

Eclipsing the Sun

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On August 21, the moon will paint a swath of North America in darkness. The Great American Eclipse.
via New York Times

Charon Flyover from New Horizons

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What if you could fly over Pluto's moon Charon -- what might you see? The New Horizons spacecraft did just this in 2015 July as it zipped past Pluto and Charon with cameras blazing. The images recorded allowed for a digital reconstruction of much of Charon's surface, further enabling the creation of fictitious flights over Charon created from this data. One such fanciful, minute-long, time-lapse video is shown here with vertical heights and colors of surface features digitally enhanced. Your journey begins over a wide chasm that divides different types of Charon's landscapes, a chasm that might have formed when Charon froze through. You soon turn north and fly over a colorful depression dubbed Mordor that, one hypothesis holds, is an unusual remnant from an ancient impact. Your voyage continues over an alien landscape rich with never-before-seen craters, mountains, and crevices. The robotic New Horizons spacecraft has now been targeted at Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU 69, which it should zoom past on New Year's Day 2019.

Zazzle Space Gifts for young and old

Space eclipse

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Space Science Image of the Week: Get ready for the total solar eclipse next week
via ESA Space Science
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2017/08/A_partial_solar_eclipse_seen_from_space