A Surprising Surge At Vavilov Ice Cap

This Is Everything That’s Wrong With Our Definition Of ‘Planet’

“There are many people who would love to see Pluto regain its planetary status, and there’s a part of me that grew up with planetary Pluto that’s extraordinarily sympathetic to that perspective. But including Pluto as a planet necessarily results in a Solar System with far more than nine planets. Pluto is only the 8th largest non-planet in our Solar System, and is clearly a larger-than-average but otherwise typical member of the Kuiper belt. It will never be the 9th planet again.

But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We may be headed towards a world where astronomers and planetary scientists work with very different definitions of what attains planethood, but we all study the same objects in the same Universe. Whatever we call objects — however we choose to classify them — makes them no less interesting or worthy of study. The cosmos simply exists as it is. It’s up to the very human endeavor of science to make sense of it all.”

Next month will mark 13 years since the International Astronomical Union (IAU) officially defined the term planet and ‘Plutoed’ our Solar System’s (up-until-that-point) 9th planet. With an additional 13 years of knowledge, understanding, data, and discoveries, though, did they get the decision right?

Certainly, there were aspects that needed to be revised, but the IAU’s definition comes along with some major gaps and mistakes. We can do better! Come learn how.

(Source)

Here’s Why Black Holes Are Crullers, Not Donuts

“Just a few years ago, we didn’t even know whether it was a certainty that black holes had an event horizon, as we’d never observed one directly. In 2017, a series of observations were finally taken that could settle the issue. After a wait of two years, the first direct image of a black hole was released, and it showed us that the event horizon was, in fact, real as predicted, and that its properties agreed with Einstein’s predictions.

Now, another two years later, the polarization data has been added into the fold, and we can now reconstruct the magnetic properties of the plasma surrounding the black hole, along with how those features are imprinted onto the emitted photons. We still only have the one black hole that’s been directly imaged, but we can see how the light, the polarization, and the magnetic properties of the plasma surrounding the event horizon all change over time.”

You’ve seen the photo, but have you learned the science? Black holes are crullers, not donuts, and magnetized plasma is the reason why.

How Big is Our Galaxy, the Milky Way?

When we talk about the enormity of the cosmos, it’s easy to toss out big numbers – but far harder to wrap our minds around just how large, how far and how numerous celestial bodies like exoplanets – planets beyond our solar system – really are.

So. How big is our Milky Way Galaxy?

We use light-time to measure the vast distances of space.

It’s the distance that light travels in a specific period of time. Also: LIGHT IS FAST, nothing travels faster than light.

How far can light travel in one second? 186,000 miles. It might look even faster in metric: 300,000 kilometers in one second. See? FAST.

How far can light travel in one minute? 11,160,000 miles. We’re moving now! Light could go around the Earth a bit more than 448 times in one minute.

Speaking of Earth, how long does it take light from the Sun to reach our planet? 8.3 minutes. (It takes 43.2 minutes for sunlight to reach Jupiter, about 484 million miles away.) Light is fast, but the distances are VAST.

In an hour, light can travel 671 million miles. We’re still light-years from the nearest exoplanet, by the way. Proxima Centauri b is 4.2 light-years away. So… how far is a light-year? 5.8 TRILLION MILES.

A trip at light speed to the very edge of our solar system – the farthest reaches of the Oort Cloud, a collection of dormant comets way, WAY out there – would take about 1.87 years.

Our galaxy contains 100 to 400 billion stars and is about 100,000 light-years across!

One of the most distant exoplanets known to us in the Milky Way is Kepler-443b. Traveling at light speed, it would take 3,000 years to get there. Or 28 billion years, going 60 mph. So, you know, far.

SPACE IS BIG.

Read more here: go.nasa.gov/2FTyhgH

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Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein! Genius Scientist Turns 140 Years Old Today.

The year 1905 came to be known as Einstein’s Miracle Year. He was 26 years old, and in that year he published four papers that reshaped physics. 

Photoelectric effect

The first explained what’s called the photoelectric effect – one of the bases for modern-day electronics – with practical applications including television. His paper on the photoelectric effect helped pave the way for quantum mechanics by establishing that light is both a particle and a wave. For this work, Einstein was later awarded a Nobel Prize in physics.

Brownian motion 

Another 1905 paper related to Brownian motion. In it, Einstein stated that the seemingly random motion of particles in a fluid (Brownian motion) was a predictable, measurable part of the movement of atoms and molecules. This helped establish the Kinetic Molecular Theory of Heat, which says that, if you heat something, its molecules begin to vibrate. At this same time, Einstein provided definitive confirmation that atoms and molecules actually exist.

Special relativity

Also in 1905, Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity. Before it, space, time and mass all seemed to be absolutes – the same for everyone. Einstein showed that different people perceive mass, space and time differently, but that these effects don’t show up until you start moving nearly at the speed of light. Then you find, for example, that time on a swiftly moving spaceship slows down, while the mass of the ship increases. According to Einstein, a spaceship traveling at the speed of light would have infinite mass, and a body of infinite mass also has infinite resistance to motion. And that’s why nothing can accelerate to a speed faster than light speed. Because of Einstein’s special relativity, light is now seen as an absolute in a universe of shifting values for space, time and matter.

Mass-energy equivalence

The fourth 1905 paper stated that mass and energy are equivalent. You perhaps know something of this work in Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2. That equation means that energy (E) is equal to mass (m) multiplied by the speed of light © squared. Sound simple? It is, in a way. It means that matter and energy are the same thing. It’s also very profound, in part because the speed of light is a huge number. As shown by the equation, a small amount of mass can be converted into a large amount of energy … as in atomic bombs. It’s this same conversion of mass to energy, by the way, that causes stars to shine.

But Einstein didn’t stop there. As early as 1911, he’d predicted that light passing near a large mass, such as a star, would be bent. That idea led to his General Theory of Relativity in 1916.

This paper established the modern theory of gravitation and gave us the notion of curved space. Einstein showed, for example, that small masses such as planets form dimples in space-time that hardly affect the path of starlight. But big masses such as stars produce measurably curved space.

The fact that the curved space around our sun was measurable let other scientists prove Einstein’s theory. In 1919, two expeditions organized by Arthur Eddington photographed stars near the sun made visible during a solar eclipse. The displacement of these stars with respect to their true positions on the celestial sphere showed that the sun’s gravity does cause space to curve so that starlight traveling near the sun is bent from its original path. This observation confirmed Einstein’s theory, and made Einstein a household name. 

Source (read more) posts about Einstein

How Quantum Physics Allows Us To See Back Through Space And Time

"If it weren’t for this rare transition, from higher energy spherical orbitals to lower energy spherical orbitals, our Universe would look incredibly different in detail. We would have different numbers and magnitudes of acoustic peaks in the cosmic microwave background, and hence a different set of seed fluctuations for our Universe to build its large-scale structure out of. The ionization history of our Universe would be different; it would take longer for the first stars to form; and the light from the leftover glow of the Big Bang would only take us back to 790,000 years after the Big Bang, rather than the 380,000 years we get today.

In a very real sense, there are a myriad of ways that our view into the distant Universe — to the farthest reaches of deep space where we detect the earliest signals arising after the Big Bang — that would be fundamentally less powerful if not for this one quantum mechanical transition. If we want to understand how the Universe came to be the way it is today, even on cosmic scales, it’s remarkable how subtly dependent the outcomes are on the subatomic rules of quantum physics. Without it, the sights we see looking back across space and time would be far less rich and spectacular."

What gives the Universe the properties we see today? Is it gravity, working on the largest of cosmic scales? It plays a role, but perhaps ironically, the subatomic physics that governs electron transitions within atoms is maybe even more important.

This is how quantum physics allows us to see as far out in space and as far back in time as we can. Without it, our Universe would be a very different place.

This Is How Mastering Dark Matter Could Take Us To The Stars

“Because dark matter is everywhere, we wouldn’t even need to carry it with us as we traversed the Universe. As far as we understand it — and admittedly, we need to understand it a lot farther — dark matter could truly deliver our dream of the ultimate fuel. It’s abundant all throughout our galaxy and beyond; it should have a non-zero annihilation cross-section with itself; and when it does annihilate, it should produce energy with 100% efficiency.

Perhaps, then, most of us have been thinking about experiments seeking to directly detect dark matter all wrong. Yes, we want to know what makes up the Universe, and what the physical properties of its various abundant components truly are. But there’s a science-fiction dream that could come true if nature is kind to us: unlimited, free energy just waiting there for us to harness, no matter where in the galaxy we go.

Mastering dark matter is the endeavor that just might make it so.”

When we talk about our dreams of traveling to the stars, it normally involves a mythical, futuristic form of travel that goes beyond the known laws of physics. Why’s that? Because even if you increase the efficiency of your rocket fuel far beyond the limitations of any chemical-based reaction we know of, you’d still be limited in how far you could go by the mass of your spacecraft and the fuel you were able to take with you on board. You’d still have to accelerate (and decelerate) all the fuel you brought with you, until you ran out. If only there were a 100%-efficient fuel source that was ubiquitous all throughout the galaxy and beyond. 

There is: dark matter. Here’s why it’s so important to study, understand, and eventually, fulfill the dream of harnessing it!

Observations of Earth, Soyuz, moon and Space Shuttle Endeavor made from the International Space Station.

source: images.nasa.gov