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For the past few days, the sun has been very quiet. Quiet, however, doesn't mean boring. Low solar activity can have a huge effect on Earth. During periods of sustained quiet, cosmic rays increase, space junk accumulates, and the ionosphere collapses. To learn more about the surpising potency of the spotless sun, read "The Solar Cycle Turned Sideways".
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Shawyer was never able to get anyone interested in his device, despite numerous demonstrations. His critics simply rejected the device entirely, pointing out that it violates the conservation of motion.
The Chinese quietly tested their own version of the EMDrive at up to 72 grams of thrust, which is enough to be a satellite thruster. This device has not yet been reported on in too many places and few believed it to be possible. The Cannae Drive seems to have been developed independently of the EMDrive, though it works just about the same way. In the NASA Test, they demonstrated that on Cannae drive was able tp produce a thrust of less than one thousandth of the Chinese version. But it demonstrated definitively that it worked. NASA explains: “Test results indicate that the RF resonant cavity thruster design, which is unique as an electric propulsion device, is producing a force that is not attributable to any classical electromagnetic phenomenon and therefore is potentially demonstrating an interaction with the quantum vacuum virtual plasma.” That’s all just a fancy way of saying that we’re not completely sure. Wired speculated that the process involves pushing against a cloud of particles and anti-particles that are constantly popping in and out of empty space. And that’s about the point where this humble writer is lost. The big question is: can these drives be scaled up and used in space travel? Maybe. More research will be needed. http://higherperspective.com/2015/03/nasa-engine.html#buupmCMxLeH4IIzj.99 This image shows the star-studded center of the Milky Way towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The crowded center of our galaxy contains numerous complex and mysterious objects that are usually hidden at optical wavelengths by clouds of dust — but many are visible here in these infrared observations from Hubble.
However, the most famous cosmic object in this image still remains invisible: the monster at our galaxy’s heart called Sagittarius A*. Astronomers have observed stars spinning around this supermassive black hole (located right in the center of the image), and the black hole consuming clouds of dust as it affects its environment with its enormous gravitational pull. Infrared observations can pierce through thick obscuring material to reveal information that is usually hidden to the optical observer. This is the best infrared image of this region ever taken with Hubble, and uses infrared archive data from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, taken in September 2011. Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Brammer Last Updated: April 25, 2015 Editor: Karl Hille Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be in the earliest phase of its development. The eruption, scientists say, reveals a sudden accumulation of gas and dust by an exceptionally young protostar known as HOPS 383. Stars form within collapsing fragments of cold gas clouds. As the cloud contracts under its own gravity, its central region becomes denser and hotter. By the end of this process, the collapsing fragment has transformed into a hot central protostar surrounded by a dusty disk roughly equal in mass, embedded in a dense envelope of gas and dust. Astronomers call this a "Class 0" protostar. "HOPS 383 is the first outburst we've ever seen from a Class 0 object, and it appears to be the youngest protostellar eruption ever recorded," said William Fischer, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Infrared images from instruments at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO, left) and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope document the outburst of HOPS 383, a young protostar in the Orion star-formation complex. Background: A wide view of the region taken from a Spitzer four-color infrared mosaic. Image Credit: E. Safron et al.; Background: NASA/JPL/T. Megeath (U-Toledo) The Class 0 phase is short-lived, lasting roughly 150,000 years, and is considered the earliest developmental stage for stars like the sun. A protostar has not yet developed the energy-generating capabilities of a sun-like star, which fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. Instead, a protostar shines from the heat energy released by its contraction and by the accumulation of material from the disk of gas and dust surrounding it. The disk may one day develop asteroids, comets and planets. Because these infant suns are thickly swaddled in gas and dust, their visible light cannot escape. But the light warms dust around the protostar, which reradiates the energy in the form of heat detectable by infrared-sensitive instruments on ground-based telescopes and orbiting satellites. HOPS 383 is located near NGC 1977, a nebula in the constellation Orion and a part of its sprawling star-formation complex. Located about 1,400 light-years away, the region constitutes the most active nearby "star factory" and hosts a treasure trove of young stellar objects still embedded in their natal clouds. A team led by Thomas Megeath at the University of Toledo in Ohio used Spitzer to identify more than 300 protostars in the Orion complex. A follow-on project using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, called the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey (HOPS), studied many of these objects in greater detail. This article can be read in its entirety at : http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellites-catch-growth-spurt-from-newborn-protostar/#.VREU_xZ1tV4
All week long, sunspot AR2297 has been crackling with solar flares. Yesterday it produced a really big one. On March 11th at 16:22 UT (09:22 PDT), Earth orbiting-satellites detected an X2-class flare. The blast zone was larger than Earth tself:
Later today, March 12th, NASA will launch a fleet of spacecraft to investigate the mystery of magnetic reconnection: On the sun, magnetic field lines cross, cancel, reconnect and—bang! A solar flare explodes. How does the simple act of crisscrossing magnetic fields trigger such a ferocious blast? The Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission aims to find out. Get the full story from Science@NASA. www.spaceweather.com March 6, 2015 : NASA PRESS RELEASE 15-034 Ceres is seen from NASA's Dawn spacecraft on March 1, just a few days before the mission achieved orbit around the previously unexplored dwarf planet. The image was taken at a distance of about 30,000 miles (about 48,000 kilometers). Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
In addition to being the first spacecraft to visit a dwarf planet, Dawn also has the distinction of being the first mission to orbit two extraterrestrial targets. From 2011 to 2012, the spacecraft explored the giant asteroid Vesta, delivering new insights and thousands of images from that distant world. Ceres and Vesta are the two most massive residents of our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The most recent images received from the spacecraft, taken on March 1 show Ceres as a crescent, mostly in shadow because the spacecraft's trajectory put it on a side of Ceres that faces away from the sun until mid-April. When Dawn emerges from Ceres' dark side, it will deliver ever-sharper images as it spirals to lower orbits around the planet. "We feel exhilarated," said Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "We have much to do over the next year and a half, but we are now on station with ample reserves, and a robust plan to obtain our science objectives." Dawn's mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission For more information about Dawn, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn
The southern season for noctilucent clouds (NLCs) has come to an end. NASA's AIM spacecraft observed the last wisps of electric-blue over Antarctica on Feb. 20, 2015. The end of the season was no surprise: the polar clouds always subside in late summer. Looking back over the entire season, however, reveals something unexpected. In an 8-year plot of Antarctic noctilucent cloud frequencies, the 2014-2015 season is clearly different from the rest: These data come from the AIM spacecraft, which was launched in 2007 to monitor NLCs from Earth orbit. The curves show the abundance ("frequency") of the clouds vs. time for 120 days around every southern summer solstice for the past 8 years.
"This past season was not like the others," notes Cora Randall, a member of the AIM science team and the chair of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of Colorado. "The clouds were much more variable, and there was an enormous decrease in cloud frequency 15 to 25 days after the summer solstice. That's when the clouds are usually most abundant." What does this mean? Previous research shows that NLCs are a sensitive indicator of long-range teleconnections in Earth's atmosphere, which link weather and climate across hemispheres. The strange behavior of noctilucent clouds in 2014-2015 could be a sign of previously unknown linkages. "Preliminary indications are that it is indeed due to inter-hemispheric teleconnections," says Randall. "We're still analyzing the data, so stay tuned." Now attention turns to the northern hemisphere, where the season for NLCs typically begins in May. Will the northern season ahead be as strangely variable as the southern season, just concluded? Says Randall, "I can't wait to find out." www.spaceweather.com FULL WOLF MOON: There's a full Moon tonight and according to folklore it has a special name: the Full Wolf Moon. Arcing high through the winter sky, the bright orb turns night into a simulacrum of day and shines through freezing clouds, producing spectacular ice halos. Go outside, take a look, and try not to howl. www.spaceweather.com
Monitor Spaceweather.com's photo gallery for Venus-Mercury snapshots from around the world. Better yet, go outside and see for yourself. www.spaceweather.com Green comet 'Lovejoy' lights up the New Year sky : Kiran Moodley : The Independent, UK : 01 Jan 2015
Big sunspot AR2242 erupted on Saturday, Dec. 20th @ 00:27 UT, producing an intense X1.8-class solar flare. This picture taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory shows a plume of material flying away from the blast site: Radio emissions from shock waves rippling through the sun's atmosphere suggest that a CME is en route. However, we are still waiting for data from SOHO coronagraphs to confirm the existence and trajectory of a massive storm cloud. If a CME is coming, it will probably take 2 to 3 days to reach Earth.
There has already been one Earth-effect: extreme UV radiation from the flare ionized our planet's upper atmosphere and blacked out HF radio communications over Australia and the South Pacific. Below 10 MHz, transmissions were strongly attenuated for more than two hours. Stay tuned for updates. www.spaceweather.com Dec. 16, 2014: Since 2012, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three 'tsunami waves' in interstellar space. The most recent, which reached the spacecraft earlier this year, is still propagating outward according to new data. It is the longest-lasting shock wave that researchers have seen in interstellar space. "Most people would have thought the interstellar medium would have been smooth and quiet. But these shock waves seem to be more common than we thought," said Don Gurnett, professor of physics at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Gurnett presented the new data Monday, Dec. 15 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three "tsunami waves" in interstellar space, causing surrounding ionized matter to ring like a bell. A "tsunami wave" occurs when the sun emits a coronal mass ejection, throwing out a magnetic cloud of plasma from its surface. This generates a wave of pressure. When the wave runs into the interstellar plasma -- the charged particles found in the space between the stars -- a shock wave results that perturbs the plasma. "The tsunami causes the ionized gas that is out there to resonate -- to "sing" or vibrate like a bell," said Ed Stone, project scientist for the Voyager mission based at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
This is the third shock wave that Voyager 1 has experienced. The first event was in October to November of 2012, and the second wave in April to May of 2013 revealed an even higher plasma density. Voyager 1 detected the most recent event in February, and it is still going on as of November data. The spacecraft has moved outward 250 million miles (400 million kilometers) during the third event. "This remarkable event raises questions that will stimulate new studies of the nature of shocks in the interstellar medium," said Leonard Burlaga, astrophysicist emeritus at NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who analyzed the magnetic field data that were key to these results. It is unclear to researchers what the unusual longevity of this particular wave may mean. They are also uncertain as to how fast the wave is moving or how broad a region it covers. The second tsunami wave helped researchers determine in 2013 that Voyager 1 had left the heliosphere, the bubble created by the solar wind encompassing the sun and the planets in our solar system. Denser plasma "rings" at a higher frequency, and the medium that Voyager flew through was 40 times denser than what had been previously measured. This was key to the conclusion that Voyager had entered a frontier where no spacecraft had gone before: interstellar space. "The density of the plasma is higher the farther Voyager goes," Stone said. "Is that because the interstellar medium is denser as Voyager moves away from the heliosphere, or is it from the shock wave itself? We don't know yet." Gurnett, principal investigator of the plasma wave instrument on Voyager, expects that such shock waves propagate far out into space, perhaps even to twice the distance between the sun and where the spacecraft is right now. Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft and is expected to enter interstellar space in a few years. Credits and more information:Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA JPL, a division of Caltech, built the twin Voyager spacecraft and operates them for the Heliophysics Division within NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information on the Voyager mission, visit http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov Geminid meteor activity is picking up as Earth moves deeper into the debris stream of rock comet 3200 Phaethon. During the past 48 hours, NASA's network of all-sky cameras have detected 40 Geminid fireballs over the USA. Last night, this one disintegrated inside a Moon halo over the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona:
The sigma Hydrid meteor shower is underway. Peaking every year in early December, this minor shower is caused by debris from an unknown comet. The display in December 2014 may be less minor than usual. Over the weekend NASA's network of all-sky meteor cameras detected 9 sigma Hydrid fireballs over the USA.
Sky watchers are encouraged to be alert for fast meteors emerging from the head of the serpent (constellation Hydra) during the hours between local midnight and dawn. [meteor radar] www.spaceweather.com By: Nidhi Goyal | December 12th, 2013 The 18-mile bridge is said to have been passable by foot until the 1400s. Image courtesy NASA The NASA Shuttle has imaged a mysterious ancient bridge between India and Sri Lanka. The bridge was purportedly passable on foot until 1480 AD when a cyclone moved the sand around.
This recently-discovered bridge has been found to be made of a chain of limestone shoals. Its unique curvature and composition by age reveals that it is man made. The bridge currently named as Adam’s Bridge (most popularly known as Ram Setu) is about 18 miles (30 km) long.This information is a crucial aspect for an insight into the mysterious legend called Ramayana, according to which the bridge was built under the supervision of Lord Rama who is supposed to be the incarnation of the supreme. This bridge starts as chain of shoals from the Dhanushkodi tip of India’s Pamban Island and ends at Sri Lanka’s Mannar Island. Water between India and Sri Lanka is only 3 to 30 feet (1 to 10 meter) deep. Owing to shallow waters, this bridge presents a problem in navigation as big ships cannot travel in the shallow waters of the Pamban channel. The discovery of this bridge is not only important for archaeologists, but it also gives an opportunity to the world to know an ancient history linked to the Indian mythology. Nidhi Goyal Nidhi is a gold medalist Post Graduate in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. You can also find Nidhi on Google+. On Nov. 11th, Tony Phillips of spaceweather.com flew from California across the USA to attend a science communications meeting in Washington DC. As an experiment, he decided to take a radiation sensor onboard the plane. The results were eye-opening. During the apex of his flight to DC, cruising 39,000 feet above the desert between Reno and Phoenix, he recorded a dose rate almost 30 times higher than on the ground below: There was no solar storm in progress. The extra radiation was just a regular drizzle of cosmic rays reaching down to aviation altitudes. This radiation is ever-present and comes from supernovas, black holes, and other sources across the Milky Way.
In a single hour flying between Reno and Phoenix, the passengers on Phillips's flight were exposed to a whole day's worth of ground-level radiation--or about what a person would absorb from an X-ray at the dentist's office. That's not a big deal for an occasional flyer, but as NASA points out, frequent fliers of 100,000 miles or more can accumulate doses equal to 20 chest X-rays or about 100 dental X-rays. Lead aprons, anyone? The radiation sensor is the same one that Earth to Sky Calculus routinely flies to the stratosphere to measure cosmic rays. It detects X-rays and gamma-rays in the energy range 10 keV to 20 MeV. These energies span the range of medical X-ray machines and airport security scanners. Indeed, when the sensor passed through TSA security at the airport, it began to buzz loudly, signaling a heavy dose of X-rays in the carry-on baggage scanner. TSA agents gathered around the instrument to investigate and they were quite interested when Phillips explained its function. Several wanted to know if they themselves were exposed to radiation in the vicinity of the scanner; a quick scan of the area revealed no leaks. After boarding the plane, Phillips monitored radiation levels closely. Dose rates tripled within 10 minutes of take-off and remained high for the duration of the flight. This simple experiment shows that space weather can touch us even when the sun is quiet. Imagine what an actual solar storm could do.... www.spaceweather.com Justine Alford : IFLScience : 03 Nov 2014 © BBC You probably know that two objects dropped in a vacuum fall at the same rate, no matter the mass of each item. If you've never seen a demonstration of this, then you really should, because it's incredible to watch. Here is perhaps the perfect example, brought to us by physicist Brian Cox. He checked out NASA's Space Simulation Chamber located at the Space Power Facility in Ohio. With a volume of 22,653 cubic meters, it's the largest vacuum chamber in the world. In this hypnotizing clip from the BBC, Cox drops a bowling ball and a feather together, first in normal conditions, and then after virtually all the air has been sucked out of the chamber. We know what happens, but that doesn't stop it from being awesome, especially with the team's ecstatic faces. Brian Cox visits the world's biggest vacuum chamber Published on 24 Oct 2014
Programme website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0276q28 Brian Cox visits NASA’s Space Power Facility in Ohio to see what happens when a bowling ball and a feather are dropped together under the conditions of outer space. |
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