Archive for the ‘Cosmology’ Category

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Celebrating Hubble’s 20th Anniversary!

Thursday, April 22nd, 2010

Twenty years ago, this month, the first of four Great Observatories launched into space aboard NASA’s space shuttle Discovery. Deployed 360-miles above the Earth by the crew of mission STS-31, the Hubble Space Telescope embarked on a journey that has taken us to places barely imagined and never before seen.

Through Hubble’s eyes, we’ve experienced the Universe in all its extremes – breathtakingly beautiful, extraordinarily complex, and exceedingly vast.  We’ve peered into stellar nurseries, looked at dying stars, and observed the remnants of long-past supernovae.  We’ve witnessed a disintegrating comet, discovered distant moons, and even journeyed back in time.  Through Hubble’s accomplishments, we’ve investigated mysteries, confirmed theories, and even raised new questions, about our Universe.  The Hubble Space Telescope has expanded our horizons, to put the Universe in our hands, like no other exploration, no other mission, and no other technology have ever done.

NASA EPO Specialist, Andrew Wolt, encourages us all to celebrate the wonders of Hubble on this 20th Anniversary and to share our events for a chance to win some fun Hubble swag!  Whether you’re hosting an astronomy club presentation, arranging an IMAX: Hubble 3D viewing party, video-casting Hubble’s finest targets through remote observing, or sharing Hubble’s discoveries in an educational environment, take a few minutes to note your event with a few details and pictures.  Your posts will encourage others to participate and may even introduce some people to Hubble’s spectacular successes Space Telescope for the very first time.  And who knows – you might even win a little bit of Hubble goodness!

Browse the Hubble Image Gallery

Explore Hubble’s online, interactive exhibit

Learn about Hubble’s five servicing missions

Read about the visionaries behind the Hubble Space Telescope

Track Hubble’s orbit

Classify Hubble galaxies

Follow Hubble news and updates on Twitter

Follow Andrew Wolt (aka @SpaceManAndy) on Twitter

Meet the next generation space telescope, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Web Space Telescope

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Posted in Cosmology, Hubble Space Telescope, NASA, Outreach, Space Shuttle Missions, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

1 Dusty Determination + 1 Serendipitous Solution = 2 Mysteries Solved!

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

An exhaustive study, led by the SETI Institute’s Peter Jenniskens and planetary scientist David Nesvorny of Colorado’s Southwest Research Institute, has solved two long-standing mysteries.   Interestingly, it was the study of one well-known phenomenon that serendipitously solved a second, lesser-known mystery.

The primary focus of the NASA-funded study was to determine the true origins of zodiacal light.  Originally attributed to the scattering of sunlight by solar system dust – an explanation recently refined to specify asteroid dust – the zodiacal light extends as a glowing cone up from the sunset or sunrise horizon to the ecliptic.  Although this ethereal light is so tenuous as to be rendered invisible by moonlight and light pollution, it is readily apparent in darker skies and even bright enough to be followed across the ecliptic in the very darkest conditions.

In their paper, Cometary Origin of the Zodiacal Cloud and Carbonaceous MicroMeteorites – Implications for Hot Debris Disks, Jenneskins and Nesvorny confirm the zodiacal cloud mass as originating primarily, not from asteroids, but from the past violent and repeated disruptions of Jupiter Family comets.  Moreover, these disruptions likely resulted in twenty-trillion-tons of dust, with hundreds-of-thousands of tons impacting our planet every day!

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Posted in Astrophysics, Comets, Cosmology, Earth, Meteor Showers, Meteorites, Night Sky, Uncategorized, asteroids | No Comments »

Quantum Leap: Orbits

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 011.
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(Continued from issue 010 – Charge!)

But there appeared something terribly wrong with Rutherford’s model of the atom.  The theory of electricity and magnetism predicted that opposite charges attract each other and the electrons should gradually lose energy and spiral inward.  Moreover, physicists reasoned that the atoms should give off a rainbow of colors as they do so.  But no experiment could verify this rainbow.

In 1912 a Danish physicist, Niels Bohr, came up with a theory that said the electrons do not spiral into the nucleus and came up with some rules for what does happen.  (This began a new approach to science because, for the first time, rules had to fit the observation regardless of how they conflicted with the theories of the time.)

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Posted in Astrophysics, Cosmology, Guest Blogger, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Quantum Leap: The Standard Model, part 2

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 009.
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So the question is, “what is Elemental?” In 1661, Robert Boyle determined that something that can’t be broken-down by a chemical reaction is an element, a notion, according to Wiki, that held for almost 300 years and a definition I still recall from high school chemistry class. This was a major moment in the process of understanding what the underlying building blocks of life are. Now, for the first time, man had a tool and a way to codify his approach to answering the questions of what is fundamental.

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Posted in Astrophysics, Cosmology, Guest Blogger, Quantum Mechanics, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Quantum Leap: The Standard Model

Friday, February 19th, 2010

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 008.

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With all of the unverified hypotheses regarding black holes, dark matter, and dark energy permeating the general discussions regarding particle physics, I thought it might be good to step back and take a look at what is actually known and tested in the world of quantum mechanics.  To do this, we need to take a look at The Standard Model.

When we seek to understand what is fundamental to life around us, it is a question of what exactly is the essence of our physical world.  If you break matter and energy down to the smallest component what is it that we are dealing with?

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Posted in Astrophysics, Cosmology, Guest Blogger, Quantum Mechanics | No Comments »

Quantum Leap: Blackholes Don’t Exist

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Guest author, Thomas Kennedy, features a twice-monthly series, Quantum Leap, wherein he guides readers through the fascinating world of quantum mechanics. This is issue 007.

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Despite the regular pronouncements in the popular press, there is a growing debate among physicists that, in fact, the mathematical models that at one time purported to clearly substantiate the existence of such, black holes are proving out to be false.

Black holes have provided “simple”  answers to, for example, the questions of angular momentum for galaxy formation.  Why is it that galaxies don’t fly apart, given the energy and resulting motions that are readily evident?  Well, the theory goes, if you have a sufficiently strong gravitational force at the center of a galaxy, that provides the stickiness needed to keep galactic material from devolving into chaos.

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Posted in Astrophysics, Cosmology, Guest Blogger, Quantum Mechanics | 3 Comments »

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