Sunday, March 20, 2016

DSCOVR Captures EPIC Views of the March 2016 Eclipse

DSCOVR Captures EPIC Views of the March 2016 Eclipse:



The Moon's shadow is cast across Indonesia in this view from the DSCOVR spacecraft, March 9, 2016. (Courtesy of the DSCOVR EPIC team.)


On March 8, 2016 (March 9 local time) the Moon briefly blocked the light from the Sun in what was the only total solar eclipse of the year. The event was visible across portions of southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Micronesia, and was observed by both skywatchers on the ground in person and those watching live online around the world. While to most the view was of a silhouetted Moon slowly carving away the disk of the Sun before totality revealed a shimmering corona, the view from space looking back at Earth showed the Moon's dark shadow passing over islands, clouds, and sea.The picture above was acquired by NASA's EPIC (Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera) instrument on board the DSCOVR spacecraft, operated by NOAA. It's one of twelve images captured during the course of the eclipse from DSCOVR's position at L1, 1.6 million km (nearly 1 million miles) away.Read more: What Are Lagrange Points?Launched Feb. 11, 2015, DSCOVR observes both Earth and incoming space weather from the Sun, providing up to an hour of early warning of solar storm activity. Its location gives it a view of a constantly-illuminated Earth, since DSCOVR is always positioned between it and the Sun.*Watch an animation of the Moon's shadow traveling northeast across the Pacific here, and for more images of the March 2016 total eclipse (captured from the ground) check out this article by David Dickinson.The next solar eclipse in 2016 will be on September 1, and will be a partial/annular eclipse visible from Africa and the Indian Ocean. The next total solar eclipse will occur on Aug. 21, 2017, during which the path of totality will cross the United States from coast to coast.Source: NASA's Earth ObservatoryNote: The March 2016 eclipse was also captured by Japan's Himawari-8 geostationary weather satellite; watch the sequence from that spacecraft below:*DSCOVR is actually in a "halo orbit" around L1, which affects its viewing angle of Earth—this is why we see the Moon's shadow and not the Moon itself (and when it does see the Moon in front of Earth there isn't a shadow or eclipse.) Read more on Phil Plait's Slate article here.

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:16 PM 0 comments

First Tomatoes, Peas Harvested From Simulated Martian Soil

First Tomatoes, Peas Harvested From Simulated Martian Soil:



Researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands have harvested tomatoes and other vegetables grown in simulated Martian soil. Image: regan76 CC BY 2.0


We're a long ways away from colonizing another planet—depending on who you talk to—but it's not too soon to start understanding how we might do it when the time comes. Growing enough food will be one of the primary concerns for any future settlers of Mars. With that in mind, researchers at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands have created simulated Martian soil and used it to grow food crops.This is actually the second experiment the team has performed with simulated soil, and the results were promising. The team harvested not only tomatoes and peas, but also rye, garden rocket, radish, and watercress. But it's not just the edibles that were promising, it was the overall ability of the simulated soil to produce biomass in general.  According to the researchers, the soil produced biomass equal to that produced by Earth soil, which was used as a control.The team also grew crops in simulated Moon soil, to understand how that soil performed, but it produced much less biomass, and only the humble spinach was able to grow in it. The simulated Martian and Lunar soils were provided by NASA. The Martian soil came from a Hawaiian volcano, and the Lunar soil came from a desert in Arizona.The soil used was not exactly the same as the soil you would scoop up if you were on the Moon or Mars. It was amended with organic matter in the form of manure and fresh cut grass. While this may sound like a 'cheat', it's no different than how gardens are grown on Earth, with gardeners using manure, compost, grass clippings, leaves, and even seaweed to provide organic matter.Of course, none of these soil amendments will be available on the Moon or Mars, and we won't be sending a supply ship full of manure. Colonists will have to make use of all of the inedible parts of their crops—and human feces—to provide the organic material necessary for plant growth. It'll be a closed system, after all.The crops were grown in a controlled environment, where temperature, humidity, and other factors were kept within Earthly parameters. Any crops grown on Mars will be grown in the same controlled environments, at least until genetic modification can create plants able to withstand the increased radiation and other factors.A problem facing colonists trying to grow food on Mars is the heavy metal content of the soil. Mars soil contains mercury, lead, cadmium, and arsenic, which are all toxic to humans. The presence of these elements doesn't bother the plants; they just keep growing. But any crops grown in this soil will have to be tested for toxicity before they can be consumed. This is the next experiment that the team has planned.Researchers at the Wageningen University are currently crowdfunding for this next experiment. If you'd like to contribute, check out their page here. 

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:15 PM 0 comments

The Early Universe Was All About Galactic Hook Ups

The Early Universe Was All About Galactic Hook Ups:



Artist's illustration of the Andromeda galaxy and the Milky Way merging, based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA


In about 4 billion years, scientists estimate that the Andromeda and the Milky Way galaxies are expected to collide, based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope. And when they merge, they will give rise to a super-galaxy that some are already calling Milkomeda or Milkdromeda (I know, awful isn't it?) While this may sound like a cataclysmic event, these sorts of galactic collisions are quite common on a cosmic timescale.As an international group of researchers from Japan and California have found, galactic "hookups" were quite common during the early universe. Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Subaru Telescope at in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, they have discovered that 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, galactic clumps grew to become large galaxies by merging. As part of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) "Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS)", this information could tell us a great about the formation of the early universe.Previous research has shown that some 200 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with pre-galactic clumps. These cold gas clouds were roughly one-hundred times smaller and one-million times less massive than modern galaxies. It is from these clumps of gas that the first stars and galaxies are believed to have formed.After the first small galaxies were formed, they began to merge together, forming the larger galaxies we see today - i.e. which contain hundreds of billions of stars and measure thousands of light years across. For some time, scientists have been trying to see galaxies as they existed in the early universe, at a time when they were still actively forming stars.Unfortunately, given the distances involved (13 billion light years) and the fact that most of the galaxies in the young universe were quite small, getting a sense of their detailed structures has so far been impossible. However, the research team - which included members from Ehime University, Nagoya University and Tohoku University in Japan and the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and the California Institute of Technology in the US - used the Subaru Telescope and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on the Hubble Space Telescope.Whereas the Subaru Telescope helped locate galaxies in the early universe with its wide field of view, the high spatial resolution of Hubble's ACS was used to investigate the details of their shapes and internal structures. Using this two-pronged approach, the team then looked back 12.6 billion years, roughly 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang, and noted something very interesting about the galactic structures they saw.In a paper published by The Astrophysical Journals, the team indicated that out of the 54 galaxies they observed, 8 had double-component structures, which indicated that they were the result of two galaxies merging with each other. In addition, they found that with the remaining 46 galaxies, their elongated shapes - as well as a correlation between their ellipticity and size - might indicate that they too were merging galaxies.After testing this theory, the team found that they were in fact correct. In all cases, the galaxies only appeared as single entities because the distance between their two constituents was so small. This theory was borne out when they looked for a possible correlation between the size of the galaxies and their level of star formation. Again, they were proven correct, as the smaller and more closely-merged galaxies showed a higher rate of activity.All of this indicated that galactic mergers (or "hookups", to use the bawdy term) were a common occurrence in the early universe. As Dr. Nick Z. Scoville - the Francis L. Moseley Professor of Astronomy at Caltech, and an author of the study - told Universe Today via email:

"This work uses very deep imaging from both Hubble and the Subaru telescope to establish a beautiful correlation between the sizes and elongation of galaxies when the universe was only 10% of its present age. The very high resolution Hubble images are used to show that the elongation of the galaxy images seen in the ultra sensitive Subaru imaging is due to overlap multiple galaxies. This research clearly shows the prevalence of galaxy merging in building up the earliest galaxies and promoting more rapid formation of stars."
Prior to this, astronomers were in the habit of thinking that single structures observed in the early Universe by Hubble were in fact single galaxies. In contrast, this research suggests that these small, early galaxies actually consisted of two or even more galaxies. This is sure to have implications for the study of galactic formation and evolution, which predicts that small galaxies evolved through successive mergers to create the larger ones we know today.As for what's next, that will likely have to wait upon the deployment of the next generation of space telescopes. Currently, astronomers have a difficult time seeing clear to objects that are so very distant from Earth. But with the improved instruments that will be put into service in the coming years, scientists hope that they might be able to take the next leap, which will likely involve resolving the internal structure of early galaxies.For example, when the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is deployed, astronomers believe they will have the power and the spatial resolution needed to see even further into the past, and with greater clarity. And we can expect they will have plenty to say about the many galaxies they see, located billions of lights year away and billions of years in the past!Further Reading: National Astronomical Observatory of Japan - Subaru Telescope

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:14 PM 0 comments

China Plans Space Telescope That Will Dock With Their Space Station

China Plans Space Telescope That Will Dock With Their Space Station:



Will China's new space telescope out-perform the Hubble? Image:


China has plans to build a new space telescope which should outperform Hubble. According to the Chinese English Language Daily, the new telescope will be similar to Hubble, but will have a field of view that is 300 times larger. The new telescope, which has not been named yet, will have the ability to dock with China's modular space station, the Tiangong.The China National Space Administration has come up with a solution to a problem that dogged the Hubble Telescope. Whenever the Hubble needed repairs or maintenance, a shuttle mission had to be planned so astronauts could service it. China will avoid this problem with its innovative solution. The Chinese telescope will keep its distance from the Tiangong, but if repairs or maintenance are needed, it can dock with Tiangong.No date has been given for the launch of this new telescope, but its plans must be intertwined with plans for the modular Tiangong space station. Tiangong-1 was launched in 2011 and has served as a crewed laboratory and a technological test-bed. The Tiangong-2, which has room for a crew of 3 and life support for twenty days, is expected to be launched sometime in 2016. The Tiangong-3 will provide life support for 3 people for 40 days and will expand China's capabilities in space. It's not expected to launch until sometime in the 2020's, so the space telescope will likely follow its launch.The telescope, according to the People's Daily Online, will take 10 years to capture images of 40% of space, with a precision equal to Hubble's. China hopes this data will allow it to make breakthroughs in the understanding of the origin, development, and evolution of the universe.This all sounds great, but there's a shortage of facts. When other countries and space agencies announce projects like this, they give dates and timelines, and details about the types of cameras and sensors. They talk about exactly what it is they plan to study and what results they hope to achieve. It's difficult to say what level of detail has gone into the planning for this space telescope. It's also difficult to say how the 'scope will dock with the space station.It may be that China is nervous about spying and doesn't want to reveal any technical detail. Or it may be that China likes announcing things that make it look technologically advanced. (China is in a space race with India, and likes to boast of its prowess.) In any case, they've been talking about a space telescope for many years now. But a little more information would be nice.Come on China. Give us more info. We're not spies. We promise.

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:14 PM 0 comments

Dinosaur Killer Chicxulub Crater To Be Drilled For First Time

Dinosaur Killer Chicxulub Crater To Be Drilled For First Time:



An artist's image of an asteroid Impact. Image Credit: University of California Observatories/Don Davis.


All over the Earth, there is a buried layer of sediment rich in iridium called the Cretaceous Paleogene-Boundary (K-Pg.) This sediment is the global signature of the 10-km-diameter asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs—and about 50% of all other species—66 million years ago. Now, in an effort to understand how life recovered after that event, scientists are going to drill down into the site where the asteroid struck—the Chicxulub Crater off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.The end-Cretaceous extinction was a global catastrophe, and a lot is already known about it. We've learned a lot about the physical effects of the strike on the impact area from oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. According to data from that drilling, released on February 5th in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, the asteroid that struck Earth displaced approximately 200,000 cubic km (48,000 cubic miles) of sediment. That's enough to fill the largest of the Great Lakes—Lake Superior—17 times.The Chicxulub impact caused earthquakes and tsunamis that first loosened debris, then swept it from nearby areas like present-day Florida and Texas into the Gulf basin itself. This layer is hundreds of meters thick, and is hundreds of kilometers wide. It covers not only the Gulf of Mexico, but also the Caribbean and the Yucatan Peninsula.In April, a team of scientists from the University of Texas and the National University of Mexico will spend two months drilling in the area, to gain insight into how life recovered after the impact event. Research Professor Sean Gulick of the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics told CNN in an interview that the team already has a hypothesis for what they will find. "We expect to see a period of no life initially, and then life returning and getting more diverse through time."Scientists have been wanting to drill in the impact region for some time, but couldn't because of commercial drilling activity. Allowing this team to study the region directly will build on what is already known: that this enormous deposit of sediment happened over a very short period of time, possibly only a matter of days. The drilling will also help paint a picture of how life recovered by looking at the types of fossils that appear. Some scientists think that the asteroid impact would have lowered the pH of the oceans, so the fossilized remains of animals that can endure greater acidity would be of particular interest.The Chicxulub impact was a monumental event in the history of the Earth, and it was extremely powerful. It may have been a billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Other than the layer of sediment laid down near the site of the impact itself, its global effects probably included widespread forest fires, global cooling from debris in the atmosphere, and then a period of high temperatures caused by an increase in atmospheric CO2.We already know what will happen if an asteroid this size strikes Earth again—global devastation. But drilling in the area of the impact will tell us a lot about how geological and ecological processes respond to this type of devastation.   

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:13 PM 0 comments

Russian Crowdfunded Satellite May Soon Become Brightest “Star” in the Sky

Russian Crowdfunded Satellite May Soon Become Brightest “Star” in the Sky:



Illustration of the “Beacon” inflating from its canister after reaching orbit. The Mayak Project used the Russian version of Kickstarter called Boomstarter to fund the project. Credit: cosmomayak.ru / Mayak Project


We may soon look up and see a satellite brighter than the space station and even Venus gliding across the night sky if a Russian crowdfunding effort succeeds. An enthusiastic team of students from Moscow University of Mechanical Engineering are using Boomstarter, the Russian equivalent of Kickstarter, to raise the money needed to build and launch a pyramid-shaped satellite made of highly reflective material they're calling Mayak, Russian for "Beacon".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOg6x0fJpa8 Young engineers at Moscow University explain the Mayak ProjectTo date they've collected more than $23,000 or 1.7 million rubles. Judging from the video, the team has built the canister that would hold the satellite (folded up inside) and performed a high-altitude test using a balloon. If funding is secured, Beacon is scheduled to launch on a Soyuz-2 rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in the second quarter of this year.Once in orbit, Beacon will inflate into a pyramid with a surface area of 172 square feet (16 square meters). Made of reflective metallized film 20 times thinner than a human hair, the satellite is expected to become the brightest man-made object in orbit ever. That title is currently held by the International Space Station which can shine as brightly as magnitude -3 or about three times fainter than Venus. The brightest satellites, the Iridiums, can flare to magnitude -8 (as bright as the crescent moon) but only for a few seconds before fading back to invisibility. They form a "constellation" of  some 66 satellites that provide data and voice communications.A concurrently-developed mobile app would allow users to know when Beacon would pass over a particular location. The students hope to achieve more than just track a bright, moving light across the sky. According to their website, the goal of the project is the “popularization of astronautics and space research in Russia, as well as improving the attractiveness of science and technology education among young people.” They want to show that almost anyone can build and send a spacecraft into orbit, not just corporations and governments.Further, the students hope to test aerodynamic braking in the atmosphere and find out more about the density of air at orbital altitudes. Interested donors can give anywhere from 300 rubles (about $5) up 300,000 ($4,000). The more money, the more access you’ll have to the group and news of the satellite’s progress; the top donor will get invited to watch the launch on-site.Once finished with the Mayak Project, the team wants to built another version that uses that atmosphere for braking its speed and returning it — and future satellites — safely back to Earth without the need for retro-rockets.I think all these goals are worthy, and I admire the students' enthusiasm. I only hope that satellite launching doesn't become so cheap and popular that we end up lighting up the night sky even further. What do you think?

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:12 PM 0 comments

Farthest Galaxy Ever Seen Viewed By Hubble Telescope

Farthest Galaxy Ever Seen Viewed By Hubble Telescope:



Galaxy GN-z11 superimposed on an image from the GOODS-North survey. Credit: NASA/ESA/P. Oesch (Yale University)/G. Brammer (STScI)/P. van Dokkum (Yale University)/G. Illingworth (University of California, Santa Cruz)


Since it was first launched in 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has provided people all over the world with breathtaking views of the Universe. Using its high-tech suite of instruments, Hubble has helped resolve some long-standing problems in astronomy, and helped to raise new questions. And always, its operators have been pushing it to the limit, hoping to gaze farther and farther into the great beyond and see what's lurking there.And as NASA announced with a recent press release, using the HST, an international team of astronomers just shattered the cosmic distance record by measuring the farthest galaxy ever seen in the universe. In so doing, they have not only looked deeper into the cosmos than ever before, but deeper into it's past. And what they have seen could tell us much about the early Universe and its formation.Due to the effects of special relativity, astronomers know that when they are viewing objects in deep space, they are seeing them as they were millions or even billions of years ago. Ergo, an objects that is located 13.4 billions of light-years away will appear to us as it was 13.4 billion years ago, when its light first began to make the trip to our little corner of the Universe.This is precisely what the team of astronomers witnessed when they gazed upon GN-z11, a distant galaxy located in the direction of the constellation of Ursa Major. With this one galaxy, the team of astronomers - which includes scientists from Yale University, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the University of California - were able to see what a galaxy in our Universe looked like just 400 million years after the Big Bang.Prior to this, the most distant galaxy ever viewed by astronomers was located 13.2 billion light years away. Using the same spectroscopic techniques, the Hubble team confirmed that GN-z11 was nearly 200 million light years more distant. This was a big surprise, as it took astronomers into a region of the Universe that was thought to be unreachable using the Hubble Space Telescope.In fact, astronomers did not suspect that they would be able to probe this deep into space and time without using Spitzer, or until the deployment the James Webb Space Telescope - which is scheduled to launch in October 2018. As Pascal Oesch of Yale University, the principal investigator of the study, explained:

“We’ve taken a major step back in time, beyond what we’d ever expected to be able to do with Hubble. We see GN-z11 at a time when the universe was only three percent of its current age. Hubble and Spitzer are already reaching into Webb territory."
In addition, the findings also have some implications for previous distance estimates. In the past, astronomers had estimated the distance of GN-z11 by relying on Hubble and Spitzer's color imaging techniques. This time, they relied on Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 to spectroscopically measure the galaxies redshift for the first time. In so doing, they determined that GN-z11 was farther way than they thought, which could mean that some particularly bright galaxies who's distanced have been measured using Hubble could also be farther away.The results also reveal surprising new clues about the nature of the very early universe. For starters, the Hubble images (combined with data from Spitzer) showed that GN-z11 is 25 times smaller than the Milky Way is today, and has just one percent of our galaxy’s mass in stars. At the same time, it is forming stars at a rate that is 20 times greater than that of our own galaxy.As Garth Illingworth - one of the team's investigator's from the University of California, Santa Cruz - explained:

“It’s amazing that a galaxy so massive existed only 200 million to 300 million years after the very first stars started to form. It takes really fast growth, producing stars at a huge rate, to have formed a galaxy that is a billion solar masses so soon. This new record will likely stand until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope."
Last, but not least, they provide a tantalizing clue as to what future missions - like the James Webb Space Telescope - will be finding. Once deployed, astronomers will likely be looking ever farther into space, and farther into the past. With every step, we are closing in on seeing what the very first galaxies that formed in our Universe looked like.https://youtu.be/vgQdQx3V1HYFurther Reading: NASA

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:12 PM 0 comments

Fast Radio Bursts On Repeat – Aliens, Or A Rotating Neutron Star?

Fast Radio Bursts On Repeat – Aliens, Or A Rotating Neutron Star?:



A fast radio burst detected in 2012 by the Arecibo Observatory has scientists searching for its source. Credit and Copyright: Danielle Futselaar


Very recently, a team of scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) achieved an historic first by being able to pinpoint the source of fast radio bursts (FRBs). With the help of observatories around the world, they determined that these radio signals originated in an elliptical galaxy 6 billion light years from Earth. But as it turns out, this feat has been followed by yet another historic first.In all previous cases where FRBs were detected, they appeared to be one-off events, lasting for mere milliseconds. However, after running the data from a recent FRB through a supercomputer, a team of scientists at McGill University in Montreal have determined that in this instance, the signal was repeating in nature. This finding has some serious implications for the astronomical community, and is also considered by some to be proof of extra-terrestrial intelligence. FRBs have puzzled astronomers since they were first detected in 2007. This event, known as the Lorimer Burst, lasted a mere five milliseconds and appeared to be coming from a location near the Large Magellanic Cloud, billions of light years away. Since that time, a total of 16 FRBs have been detected. And in all but this one case, the duration was extremely short and was not followed up by any additional bursts.Because of their short duration and one-off nature, many scientists have reasoned that FRBs must be the result of cataclysmic events - such as a star going supernova or a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. However, after sifting through data obtained by the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, a team of students from McGill University - led by PhD student Paul Scholz - determined that an FRB detected in 2012 did not conform to this pattern.In an article published in Nature, Scholz and his associates describe how this particular signal - FRB 121102 - was followed by several bursts with properties that were consistent with the original signal. Running the data which was gathered in May and June through a supercomputer at the McGill High Performance Computing Center, they determined that FRB 121101 had emitted a total of 10 new bursts after its initial detection.This would seem to indicate that FBRs have more than just one cause, which presents some rather interesting possibilities. As Paul Scholz told Universe Today via email:

"All previous Fast Radio Bursts have only been one-time events, so a lot of explanations for them have involved a cataclysmic event that destroys the source of the bursts, such as a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. Our discovery of repeating bursts from FRB 121102 shows that the source cannot have been destroyed and it must have been due to a phenomenon that can repeat, such as bright pulses from a rotating neutron star."
Another possibility which is making the rounds is that this signal is not natural in origin. Since their discovery, FRBs and other "transient signals" - i.e. seemingly random and temporary signals - from the Universe have been the subject of speculation. As would be expected, there have been some who have suggested that they might be the long sought-after proof that extra-terrestrial civilizations exist.For example, in 1967, after receiving a strange reading from a radio array in a Cambridge field, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell and her team considered the possibility that what they were seeing was an alien message. This would later be shown to be incorrect - it was, in fact, the first discovery of a pulsar. However, the possibility these signals are alien in origin has remained fixed in the public (and scientific) imagination.This has certainly been the case since the discovery of FRBs. In an article published by New Scientists in April of 2015 - titled "Cosmic Radio Plays An Alien Tune" - writer and astrophysicist Sarah Scoles explores the possibility of whether or not the strange regularity of some FRBs that appeared to be coming from within the Milky Way could be seen as evidence of alien intelligence.However, the likelihood that these signals are being sent by extra-terrestrials is quite low. For one, FRBs are not an effective way to send a message. As Dr. Maura McLaughlin of West Virginia University - who was part of the first FRB discovery -  has explained, it takes a lot of energy to make a signal that spreads across lots of frequencies (which is a distinguishing feature of FRBs).And if these bursts came from outside of our galaxy, which certainly seems to be the case, they would have to be incredibly energetic to get this far. As Dr. McLaughlin explained to Universe Today via email:

"The total amount of power required to produce just one FRB pulse is as much as the Sun produces in a month! Although we might expect extraterrestrial civilizations to send short-duration signals, sending a signal over the very wide radio bandwidths over which FRBs are detected would require an improbably immense amount of energy. We expect that extraterrestrial civilizations would transmit over a very narrow range of radio frequencies, much like a radio station on Earth. 
But regardless of whether these signals are natural or extra-terrestrial in origin, they do present some rather exciting possibilities for astronomical research and our knowledge of the Universe. Moving forward, Scholz and his team hope to identify the galaxy where the radio bursts originated, and plans to use test out some recently-developed techniques in the process."Next we would like to localize the source of the bursts to identify the galaxy that they are coming from," he said. "This will let us know about the environment around the source. To do this, we need to use radio interferometry to get a precise enough sky location. But, to do this we need to detect a burst while we are looking at the source with such a radio telescope array. Since the source is not always bursting we will have to wait until we get a detection of a burst while we are looking with radio interferometry. So, if we're patient, eventually we should be able to pinpoint the galaxy that the bursts are coming from."In the end, we may find that rapid burst radio waves are a more common occurrence than we thought. In all likelihood, they are being regularly emitted by rare and powerful stellar objects, ones which we've only begun to notice. As for the other possibility? Well, we're not saying it's aliens, but we're quite sure others will be!

Further Reading: McGill University
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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:10 PM 0 comments

An Ancient Volcanic Cataclysm Spun Mars Off Its Poles

An Ancient Volcanic Cataclysm Spun Mars Off Its Poles:



A colorized image of the surface of Mars taken by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The line of three volcanoes is the Tharsis Montes, with Olympus Mons to the northwest. Valles Marineris is to the east. Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ Arizona State University


"What happened to Mars?" is one of the most compelling questions in space science. It probably wasn't always the dead, dry, cold place it is now. Did its core cool and stop rotating, allowing the full glare of the sun to blast away its atmosphere and water, and kill anything that may have lived there? Was it struck by a large body, which incinerated its atmosphere, and led to its demise? Were there other causes?According to a new research paper from Sylvain Bouley at the University of Paris-South, and his colleagues, it may have been a massive, ancient outpouring of molten rock that threw Mars off kilter and helped change Mars into what it is today.The Tharsis region is an ancient lava complex on Mars that dates back to between 4.1 billion and 3.7 billion years ago. It's located in Mars' Western Hemisphere, right near the equator. It's made up of three huge shield volcanoes—Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons. Collectively, they're known as Tharsis Montes. (Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System, is not a part of the Tharsis complex, though it is near it.)Tharsis is over 5,000 km across and over 10 miles thick, making it the largest volcanic complex in the Solar System. That much mass positioned after Mars was already formed and had an established rotation would have been cataclysmic. Think what would happen to Earth if Australia rose up 10 miles.The new paper, published on March 2nd, 2016, in the journal Nature, says that the position of the Tharsis complex would have initiated a True Polar Wander (TPW.) Basically, what this means is that Tharsis' huge mass would have forced Mars to shift its rotation, so that the location of Tharsis became the new equator.It was thought that the emergence of Tharsis made Martian rivers—which formed later—flow the direction they do. But the study from Bouley and his colleagues shows that Martian rivers and valleys formed first—or maybe concurrently—and that the Tharsis TPW deformed the planet later.The authors of the study calculated where the Martian poles would have been prior to Tharsis, and looked for evidence of polar conditions at those locations. The location of this ancient north pole contains a lot of ice today, and the location of the ancient south polar region also shows evidence of water.What it all adds up to is that the disappearance of water on Mars probably happened at the same time as the TPW. Whether the appearance of the Tharsis lava complex, and the resulting cataclysmic shifting of Mars' rotational orientation, were the cause of Mars losing its climate is not yet known for sure. But this study shows that the ancient volcanic cataclysm did at least help shape Mars into what it is today.

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:09 PM 0 comments

Surfing On Titan Would Be Best In Summer

Surfing On Titan Would Be Best In Summer:



The view from the beach on Titan? Image: NASA


Space is mostly vast and empty. So whenever we notice something like ripples on a lake, on the frozen moon of a gas giant, we take notice.At a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco this week, it was reported that Cassini images of Saturn's moon Titan showed light being reflected from the Ligeia Mare, a frigid sea of hydrocarbons on that moon. Subsequent images showed the same phenomenon on two other seas of Titan, as well. These are thought to be waves, the first waves detected anywhere other than Earth, and suggest that Titan has more geophysical activity than previously thought.Surfers on Earth, known for seeking out remote and secretive locations, shouldn't get too excited. According to mathematical modelling and radar imagery, these waves are only 1.5 cm (0.6 inches) tall, and they're moving only 0.7 metres (2.3 feet) per second. Plus, they're on a sea of liquid hydrocarbons—mostly methane—that is a frigid -180 degrees Celsius (-292 F.)Planetary scientists are taking note, though, because these waves show that Titan has an active environment, rather than just being a moon frozen in time. It's thought that the change in seasons on Titan is responsible for these waves, as Titan begins its 7 year summer. Processes related to the changing seasons on Titan have created winds, which have cause these ripples.There's other evidence of active weather on Titan, including dunes, river channels, and shorelines. But this is the first observation of active weather phenomena, rather than just the results. All together, it shows that Titan is a more active, dynamic environment than previously thought.Titan's hydrocarbon lakes are thought to be up to 200 metres (656 ft.) deep, and are clustered around the north polar region. Just one of its lakes is thought to contain approximately 9,000 cubic km of methane, which is about 40 times more than the Earth's reserves of oil and gas.Titan is the second largest moon in the Solar System, second only to Ganymede, and both moons are larger than the planet Mercury. Titan was discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens.   

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Venus: 50 Years Since Our First Trip, and We’re Going Back

Venus: 50 Years Since Our First Trip, and We’re Going Back:



The planet Venus, as imaged by the Magellan 10 mission. Credit: NASA/JPL


The first spacecraft to reach the surface of another world was the Soviet Venera 3 probe. Venera 3 crash-landed on the surface of Venus on March 1, 1966, 50 years ago. It was the 3rd in the series of Venera probes, but the first two never made it.Venera 3 didn't last long. It survived Venus' blistering heat and crushing atmospheric pressure for only 57 minutes. But because of that 57 minutes, its place in history is cemented.With a temperature of 462 degree C. (863 F.,) and a surface pressure 90 times greater than Earth's, Venus' atmosphere is the most hostile one in the Solar System. But Venus is still a tantalizing target for exploration, and rather than letting the difficult conditions deter them, Venus is a target that NASA thinks it can hit.The Venus Landsail—called Zephyr—could be the first craft to survive the hostile environment on Venus. If approved, it would launch in 2023, and spend 50 days on the surface of Venus. But to do so, it has to meet several challenges.NASA thinks they have the electronics that can withstand the heat, pressure, and corrosive atmosphere of Venus. Their development of sensors that can function inside jet engines proves this, and is the kind of breakthrough that really helps to advance space exploration. They also have solar cells that should function on the surface of Venus.But the thick cloud cover will prevent the Zephyr's solar cells from generating much electricity; certainly not enough for mobility. They needed another solution for traversing the surface of Venus: the land sail.Venus has very slow winds—less than one meter per second—but the high density of the atmosphere means that even a slow wind will allow Zephyr to move effectively around the Venusian surface. But a land sail will only work on a surface without large rocks in the way. Thanks to the images of the surface of Venus sent back to Earth from the Venera probes, we know that a land sail will work, at least in some parts of the Venusian surface.So Venus is back on the menu. With all the missions to other places in the Solar System, Venus is kind of forgotten, right here in our own backyard. But there's actually a pretty rich history of missions to Venus, even though an extended visit to the surface has been out of reach. Since it's been 50 years since Venera 3 reached the surface, now is a good time to look back at the history of the exploration of Venus.The Soviet Union dominated the exploration of Venus. The Venera probes went all the way up to Venera 16, though some were orbiters rather than landers. From one perspective, the whole Venera program was plagued with problems. Many of the craft failed completely, or else had malfunctions that crippled them. But they still returned important information, and achieved many firsts, so the Venera program overall has to be considered a success.The Soviet Union did not like to acknowledge or talk about space missions that failed. They often changed the name of a mission if it failed, so the names and numbers can get a little confusing.Venera 4 was actually the first spacecraft to transmit any data from another world. On October 18th, 1967, it transmitted data from Venus' atmosphere, but none from the surface. There were actually ten Venera missions before it, but most of them didn't make it to Venus, suffering explosions or failing to leave Earth's orbit and crashing back to the surface of Earth. Two of the Venera probes, numbers 1 and 2, suffered a loss of communications, so their fate is unknown. After Venera 4's relative success, there was another failed craft that fell back to Earth. Then on May 16th, 1969, Venera 5 successfully entered Venus' atmosphere, and made it to within 26 kilometers of the surface before being crushed by the pressure. The next day—the Soviets often launched missions in pairs—Venera 6 entered the atmosphere of Venus and successfully transmitted data. It made it deeper into the atmosphere before being crushed within 11 kilometers of the surface.Venera 7 was a successful mission. On December 15th, 1970, it landed on the surface of Venus and survived for 23 minutes. Venera 7 was the very first broadcast from the surface of another planet.In 1972 Venera 8 survived for 50 minutes on the surface, followed by Venera 9 in 1975. Venera 9 survived for 53 minutes and sent back the first black and white images of the surface of Venus. Venera 10 landed 3 days after Venera 9 and survived 65 minutes, and also sent photos back. Grainy and blurry, but still amazing!

Venera_9_-_Venera_10_-_venera9-10
December 1978 saw the arrival of Venera 11 and 12, surviving 95 and 112 minutes respectively. Venera 11's camera failed, but Venera 12 recorded what is thought to be lightning.In March 1982, Venera 13 and 14 arrived. 13 took the first color images of the surface of Venus, and both craft took soil samples. Venera 15 and 16—both orbiters—arrived in 1983 and mapped the northern hemisphere.The Soviet Unions final missions to Venus were Vega 1 and Vega 2, in 1985, which combined landings on Venus and flybys of Halley's comet into each mission. Vega 1's surface experiments failed, while Vega 2 transmitted data from the surface for 56 minutes.The United States has also launched several mission to Venus, though none have been landers. Spacecraft in the Mariner series studied Venus from orbit and during flybys, sometimes getting quite close to the cloud tops.In 1962 and 1967, Mariner 2 and 5 completed flybys of Venus and transmitted data back to Earth. Mariner 5 came as close as 4094 km of the surface. In February 1974, Mariner 10 approached Venus and came to within 5,768 km. It returned color images of Venus, and then used gravitational assist—the first spacecraft to ever do so—to propel itself to Mercury.In December 1978, the Pioneer Venus Orbiter reached Venus and studied the atmosphere, surface, and other aspects of Venus. It lasted until August 1992, when its fuel ran out and it was destroyed when it entered the atmosphere.On August 1990, the Magellan mission reached Venus and used radar to map the surface of the planet. On October 1994, Magellan entered the Venusian atmosphere and was destroyed, but not before successfully mapping over 99% of the planet's surface.Messenger was a NASA mission to Mercury that was launched in August 2004. It did two flybys of Venus, in October 2006 and June 2007.The Venus Express, a European Space Agency mission, orbited Venus and studied the atmosphere and plasma of Venus. Of special interest to Venus Express was the study of what role greenhouse gases played in the formation of the atmosphere.In 2010, the Japanese Space Agency launched Akatsuki, also known as the Venus Climate Orbiter. It's role is to orbit Venus and study the atmospheric dynamics. It will also look for evidence of lightning and volcanic activity.If there's one thing that space exploration keeps teaching us, it's to expect the unexpected. Who knows what we'll find on Venus, if the Land Sail mission is approved, and it survives for its projected 50 days.

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NASA’s New X-Plane Program to Bring Quiet Supersonic Flight

NASA’s New X-Plane Program to Bring Quiet Supersonic Flight:



An illustration of what a quiet supersonic passenger aircraft might look like. Image: Lockheed Martin.


NASA has plans to develop new supersonic passenger aircraft that are not only quieter, but also greener and less expensive to operate. If NASA's 2017 budget is approved, the agency will re-start their X-Plane program, the same program which was responsible for the first supersonic flight almost 70 years ago. And if all goes according to plan, the first test-model could be flying as soon as 2020.The problem with supersonic flight—and the reason it's banned— is the uber-loud boom that it creates. When an aircraft passes the speed of sound, a shockwave is created in the air it passes through. This shockwave can travel up to 40 kilometres (25 miles), and can even break windows. NASA thinks new aircraft designs can prevent this, and it starts with abandoning the 'tube and wings' model that current passenger aircraft design adheres to. It's hoped that new designs will avoid the sonic booms that cause so much disturbance, and instead produce more of a soft thump, or supersonic 'heartbeat.'The image above shows what a hybrid wing-body aircraft might look like. Rather than a tube with wings attached, this design uses a unified body and wings built together. It's powered by turbofan engines, and has vertical fins on the rear to direct sound up and away from the ground. (Just don't ask for a window seat.)Lockheed Martin Aeronautics has been chosen to complete a preliminary design for Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST.) They will have about 17 months to produce a design, which will then lead to a more detailed designing, building, and testing of a new QueSST jet, about half the size of a production aircraft. This aircraft will then have to undergo analytical testing and wind-tunnel validation. After the design and build of QueSST will come the Low Boom Flight Demonstration (LBFD) phase. During the LBFD phase, NASA will seek community input on the aircraft's performance and noise factor.But noise reduction is not the only goal of NASA's new X-Plane program. NASA administrator Charles Bolden acknowledged this when he said, "NASA is working hard to make flight greener, safer and quieter—all while developing aircraft that travel faster, and building an aviation system that operates more efficiently."

NASA has been working in recent years to reduce aircraft fuel consumption by 15%, and engine nitrogen oxide emissions by 75%. These goals are part of their Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project, which began in 2009. Other goals of ERA include reducing aircraft drag by 8% and aircraft weight by 10%. These goals dovetail nicely with their revamped X-Plane initiative.It's hard to bet against NASA. They're one of the most effective organizations on Earth, and when they set goals, they tend to meet them. If their X-Plane program can achieve its goals, it will be a win for aircraft design, for paying customers, and for the environment.For a look at the history of the X-Plane project, look here.

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By Jove: Our 2016 Guide to Jupiter at Opposition

By Jove: Our 2016 Guide to Jupiter at Opposition:



Getting closer... Jupiter, imaged on February 24th. Image credit and copyright: Efrain Morales


Ready to explore the largest planet in our solar system? The month of March heralds the return of Jupiter to evening skies. Early March 2016 sees the planet Jupiter starting off the month less than one degree from the star Sigma Leonis. Opposition occurs on March 8th, at 11:00 Universal Time (UT). Watch out for those double shadow transits, as we're in the midst of a season of favorable events involving the Jovian moons (See last week's post). During opposition, the four large major moons of Jupiter cast their shadows nearly straight back onto the Jovian cloud-tops as seen from our Earthly perspective. At quadrature—the point when Jupiter stakes out a 'quadrant' of the sky 90 degrees east or west of the Sun as seen from the Earth –the moons and the planet Jupiter itself casts their shadows off to one side.The Moon occults Jupiter three times in 2016: July 9th, August 6th and September 2nd. The very best is the final event on September 2nd, which occurs during daylight hours for Mexico and the western US, just 18 degrees east of the Sun in the evening sky. Jupiter also passes just 4' from Venus the month prior on August 27th. Solar opposition for Jupiter in 2016 occurs on September 26th.Every ancient culture noticed five 'wandering stars' that stubbornly refused to maintain their station, and instead moved across the sky. The four major points that describe a planet's apparent motion are: opposition, solar conjunction, and the east and west quadrature points.As the name suggests, opposition is simply the point at which a given outer planet rises 'opposite' to the setting Sun. Jupiter orbits the Sun once every 11.9 years, meaning it has moved roughly one zodiacal constellation eastward per every 399 days between oppositions. Oppositions falling during northern hemisphere winter place a planet high in the sky, a position which the Sun will occupy six months before and hence. Jupiter's opposition in 2016 falls just 11 days prior to the March northward equinox on March 20th, placing Jupiter on the Leo-Virgo border very near the September equinoctial point in the astronomical constellation Virgo. In fact, Jupiter plunges south of the celestial equator on September 21st 2016, not to cross northward again until May 24th, 2022.Visually, Jupiter shines at its brightest this season at magnitude -2.5. Jupiter is the fourth brightest natural object in the skies of the Earth, right behind the Sun, Moon and Venus. Place Jupiter at the Moon's distance from the Earth, and it would span a terrifying 20 degrees across the sky. By coincidence, the innermost large Moon Io orbits Jupiter at nearly the same distance as the Moon does from the Earth. Is Jupiter a friend or foe? There's been a recent suggestion that we've perhaps overstated the giant planet's alleged role as a cosmic goal tender, warding off potentially hazardous comets. Any inbound cometary body crossing Jupiter's orbit stands a 40% chance of having its orbit altered, a good or bad outcome from the view of the Earth.Here, from our current base camp in Rota, Spain, Jupiter sits high over the Atlantic in the early morning hours, a beacon marking a warning of the supposed 'ends of the Earth' to medieval sailors daring to strike out westward.Though Jupiter is sometimes fancied as a 'failed star,' it also fails this definition miserably: Jupiter would need about a dozen times its current mass to rate as even a sub-stellar brown dwarf.In the eyepiece of even a small 60mm refractor, the main two equatorial cloud bands are immediately visible, striping the ochre disk of the bloated world. One major mystery is just why the Southern Equatorial Belt pulls a vanishing act every decade or so, as it last did in 2010, while the other Northern Equatorial Belt seems permanent. And speaking of which, the famous 'Great Red Spot' is now not as 'grand' in recent times, appearing a salmon-to-brick brown colored.First noted by Giovanni Cassini in 1665, the intervening centuries have seen the massive storm shrink. Will this iconic planetary atmospheric feature disappear entirely in our lifetimes? We'll surely miss the Great Red Spot if so, as it made a good 'tick mark' to gauge Jupiter's rotation. Spinning around once every 9.9 hours, the Jovian 'day' is the shortest of any planet in the solar system. In fact, if you follow Jupiter from sunset to sunrise during opposition, you can just about witness one full rotation... in a single night!At opposition, Jupiter appears 45” in size, 1/40th the diameter of a Full Moon. The Moon also pairs with Jupiter on the evening of March 21st/22nd, sitting two degrees from the planet.And get set to explore Jupiter this summer, as NASA's Juno spacecraft enters orbit around the giant planet on July 4th. Launched in August, 2011, Juno will become the seventh spacecraft to visit the planet and only the second (after Galileo) to enter orbit.2016 is an amazing year for all things Jovian!

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Are Supermassive Black Holes Hiding Matter?

Are Supermassive Black Holes Hiding Matter?:



Illustris simulation, showing the distribution of dark matter in 350 million by 300,000 light years. Galaxies are shown as high-density white dots (left) and as normal, baryonic matter (right). Credit: Markus Haider/Illustris


Mapping the Universe with satellites and ground-based observatories have not only provided scientists with a pretty good understanding of its structure, but also of its composition. And for some time now, they have been working with a model that states that the Universe consists of 4.9% "normal" matter (i.e. that which we can see), 26.8% "dark matter" (that which we can't), and 68.3% "dark energy".From what they have observed, scientists have also concluded that the normal matter in the Universe is concentrated in web-like filaments, which make up about 20% of the Universe by volume. But a recent study performed by the Institute of Astro- and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck in Austria has found that a surprising amount of normal matter may live in the voids, and that black holes may have deposited it there.In a paper submitted to the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr. Haider and his team described how they performed measurements of the mass and volume of the Universe's filamentary structures to get a better idea of where the Universe's mass is located. To do this, they used data from the Illustris project - a large computer simulation of the evolution and formation of galaxies.As an ongoing research project run by an international collaboration of scientists (and using supercomputers from around the world), Illustris has created the most detailed simulations of our Universe to date. Beginning with conditions roughly 300,000 years after the Big Bang, these simulations track how gravity and the flow of matter changed the structure of the cosmos up to the present day, roughly 13.8 billion years later.The process begins with the supercomputers simulating a cube of space in the universe, which measures some 350 million light years on each side. Both normal and dark matter are dealt with, particularly the gravitational effect that dark matter has on normal matter. Using this data, Haider and his team noticed something very interesting about the distribution of matter in the cosmos.Essentially, they found that about 50% of the total mass of the Universe is compressed into a volume of 0.2%, consisting of the galaxies we see. A further 44% is located in the enveloping filaments, consisting of gas particles and dust. The remaining 6% is located in the empty spaces that fall between them (aka. the voids), which make up 80% of the Universe.However, a surprising faction of this normal matter (20%) appears to have been transported there, apparently by the supermassive black holes located at the center of galaxies. The method for this delivery appears to be in how black holes convert some of the matter that regularly falls towards them into energy, which is then delivered to the sounding gas, leading to large outflows of matter.These outflows stretch for hundreds of thousands of lights years beyond the host galaxy, filling the void with invisible mass. As Dr. Haider explains, these conclusions supported by this data are rather startling. "This simulation," he said, "one of the most sophisticated ever run, suggests that the black holes at the center of every galaxy are helping to send matter into the loneliest places in the universe. What we want to do now is refine our model, and confirm these initial findings."The findings are also significant because they just may offer an explanation to the so-called "missing baryon problem". In short, this problem describes how there is an apparent discrepancy between our current cosmological models and the amount of normal matter we can see in the Universe. Even when dark matter and dark energy are factored in, half of the remaining 4.9% of the Universe's normal matter still remains unaccounted for.For decades, scientists have been working to find this "missing matter", and several suggestions have been made as to where it might be hiding. For instance, in 2011, a team of students at the Monash School of Physics in Australia confirming that some of it was in the form of low-density, high energy matter that could only be observed in the x-ray wavelength.https://youtu.be/NjSFR40SY58In 2012, using data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a NASA research team reported that our galaxy, and the nearby Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, were surrounded by an enormous halo of hot gas that was invisible at normal wavelengths. These findings indicated that all galaxies may be surrounded by mass that, while not visible to the naked eye, is nevertheless detectable using current methods.And just days ago, researchers from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) described how they had used fast radio bursts (FRBs) to measure the density of cosmic baryons in the intergalactic medium - which yielded results that seem to indicate that our current cosmological models are correct.Factor in all the mass that is apparently being delivered to the void by supermassive black holes, and it could be that we finally have a complete inventory of all the normal matter of the Universe. This is certainly an exciting prospect, as it means that one of the greatest cosmological mysteries of our time could finally be solved.Now if we could just account for the "abnormal" matter in the Universe, and all that dark energy, we'd be in business!Further Reading: Royal Astronomical Society

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:06 PM 0 comments

Missing Matter Found! Fast Radio Bursts Confirm Cosmological Model

Missing Matter Found! Fast Radio Bursts Confirm Cosmological Model:



Researchers at the CSIRO have managed to pinpoint the location of an FRB for the first time, yielding valuable information about our universe. Credit: csiro.au


In July of 2012, researchers at the CERN laboratory made history when they announced the discovery of the Higgs Boson. Though its existence had been hypothesized for over half a century, confirming its existence was a major boon for scientists. In discovering this one particle, the researchers were also able to confirm the Standard Model of particle physics. Much the same is true of our current cosmological model.For decades, scientists been going by the theory that the Universe consists of about 70% dark energy, 25% dark matter and 5% "luminous matter" - i.e. the matter we can see. But even when all the visible matter is added up, there is a discrepancy where much of it is still considered "missing". But thanks to the efforts of a team from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), scientists now know that we have it right.This began on April 18th, 2015, when the CSIRO's Parkes Observatory in Australia detected a fast radio burst (FRB) coming from space. An international alert was immediately issued, and within a few hours, telescopes all around the world were looking for the signal. The CSIRO team began tracking it as well with the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) located at the Paul Wild Observatory (north of Parkes).With the help of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan's (NAOJ) Subaru telescope in Hawaii, they were able to pinpoint where the signal was coming from. As the CSIRO team described in a paper submitted to Nature, they identified the source, which was an elliptical galaxy located 6 billion light years from Earth.This was an historic accomplishment, since pinpointing the source of FRBs have never before been possible. Not only do the signals last mere milliseconds, but they are also subject to dispersion - i.e. a delay caused by how much material they pass through. And while FRBs have been detected in the past, the teams tracking them have only been able to obtain measurements of the dispersion, but never the signal's redshift.Redshift occurs as a result of an object moving away at relativistic speeds (a portion of the speed of light). For decades, scientists have been using it to determine how fast other galaxies are moving away from our own, and hence the rate of expansion of the Universe. Relying on optical data obtained by the Subaru telescope, the CSIRO team was able to obtain both the dispersion and the redshift data from this signal.https://www.skatelescope.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/FRBs.FinalCandidate5-HD.mp4As stated in their paper, this information yielded a "direct measurement of the cosmic density of ionized baryons in the intergalactic medium". Or, as Dr. Simon Johnston - of the CSIRO’s Astronomy and Space Science division and the co-author of the study - explains, the team was not only to locate the source of the signal, but also obtain measurements which confirmed the distribution of matter in the Universe.“Until now, the dispersion measure is all we had," he said. "By also having a distance we can now measure how dense the material is between the point of origin and Earth, and compare that with the current model of the distribution of matter in the Universe. Essentially this lets us weigh the Universe, or at least the normal matter it contains.”Dr. Evan Keane of the SKA Organization, and lead author on the paper, was similarly enthused about the team's discovery. "[W]e have found the missing matter," he said. "It's the first time a fast radio burst has been used to conduct a cosmological measurement."As already noted, FRB signals are quite rare, and only 16 have been detected in the past. Most of these were found by sifting through data months or years after the signal was detected, by which time it would be impossible for any follow-up observations. To address this, Dr. Keane and his team developed a system to detect FRBs and immediately alert other telescopes, so that the source could be pinpointed.It is known as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), an international effort led by the SKA Organization to build the world’s largest radio telescope. Combining extreme sensitivity, resolution and a wide field of view, the SKA is expected to trace many FRBs to their host galaxies. In so doing, it is hoped the array will provide more measurements confirming the distribution of matter in the Universe, as well as more information on dark energy.In the end, these and other discoveries by the SKA could have far-reaching consequences. Knowing the distribution of matter in the universe, and improving our understanding of dark matter (and perhaps even dark energy) could go a long way towards developing a Theory Of Everything (TOE). And knowing how all the fundamental forces of our universe interact will go a long way to finally knowing with certainty how it came to be.These are exciting time indeed. With every step, we are peeling back the layers of our universe!Further Reading: CSIRO, SKA Organization, Nature.

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Posted by Nelio Inacio at 4:05 PM 0 comments
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