Space, Planets and eclipses

[ghost2509]

‘Space bubbles’ between Earth, sun possibly could reverse destructive climate change, MIT researchers say


By Douglas Perry | The Oregonian/OregonLive
Jun. 13, 2022

It’s too late to stop catastrophic climate change, many people fear. Frequent extreme heat waves, droughts and floods: these are already happening, and most climate experts say they’re likely to get worse.

But what if science and technology could provide a solution?

A group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology believes the “worst-case scenario” of a warming planet possibly could be avoided through human ingenuity – namely, the building of frozen “space bubbles” that would prevent some of the sun’s rays from reaching Earth.

“While addressing climate change necessarily requires lowering CO2 emission on the Earth, other approaches such as geo-engineering could supplement such efforts if current mitigation and adaptation measures turned out to be inadequate for reversing the ongoing climate change trends,” the team wrote in May. “In particular, solar geo-engineering – a set of technologies aiming to reflect a fraction of sunlight coming to the Earth – has been theoretically proved to be a valuable solution for supplementing current efforts for CO2 emission reductions.”

The solar geo-engineering idea this team is advancing involves a “raft” of thin, inflatable shields, collectively about the size of Brazil, made of silicon-like materials. They would be constructed in outer space close to the Lagrangian Point – the point where the gravitational forces of the sun and Earth cancel each other out.

The team, which hopes to do more and larger-scale research, says they have successfully tested inflating a bubble shield in outer-space conditions. They argue on a website devoted to their work that “if we deflect 1.8% of incident solar radiation before it hits our planet, we could fully reverse today’s global warming.”

Climate geo-engineering is a contentious subject in the scientific community, for the various proposals could have disastrous unintended consequences. (Preventing some sunlight from reaching Earth, for example, could kill large swaths of crops.) But support for pursuing regulated international geo-engineering projects appears to be increasing.

Pascal Lamy, president of the Paris Peace Forum and the former World Trade Organization director general, recently said a “global effort on geo-engineering could work.”

One key benefit of the “space bubbles” approach, its proponents say, is that it would be reversible. The bubbles could be deflated and moved out of the Lagrangian Point.

Said MIT Senseable City Lab director and project leader Carlo Ratti:

“We believe that advancing feasibility studies of a solar shield to the next level could help us make more informed decisions in the years to come should geo-engineering approaches become urgent.”

[alexora]

"Exotic" quarks discovered at the Large Hadron Collider:

Pentaquarks: scientists find new
"exotic" configurations of quarks

Scientists have found new ways in which quarks, the tiniest particles known to humankind, group together.

The new structures exist for just a hundred thousandth of a billionth of a billionth of a second but may explain how our Universe is formed.

Atoms contain smaller particles called neutrons and protons, which are made up of three quarks each.

"Exotic" matter discovered in recent years is made up of four and five quarks - tetraquarks and pentaquarks.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland have discovered one new pentaquark and two tetraquarks. This takes the total number discovered there to 21. Each is unique, but researchers are excited about the qualities of the three new finds.

The new pentaquark decays into particles that none of the others produce, while the two tetraquarks have the same mass, suggesting they may be the first known pair of exotic structures.

Perhaps even more importantly, though, the latest finds mean that there are now enough of these particles to begin grouping them together, like the chemical elements in the periodic table. That is an essential first step towards creating a theory and set of rules governing exotic mass.

In light of the new discoveries, physicists are discussing this very issue at a special seminar on Tuesday at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which houses the Large Hadron Collider.

Working out miniscule differences between the tiniest things we know about may seem arcane, but the interaction of quarks creates the so-called "strong force" that holds the insides of atoms - and by extension our entire Universe - together.

"The strong force is extremely difficult to calculate, and we don't have firm predictions of how the exotic pentaquarks and tetraquarks are built," says Prof Chris Parkes of Manchester University. "But we hope that by finding out about them we can develop theories that enable us to understand them better."



What are quarks?

A Greek philosopher, Democritus, put forward the idea in the fifth century BC that the world was made up of indivisible particles which he called atoms.

By the end of the 19th and early 20th century, experimental results showed that atoms were made up of smaller particles: electrons, neutrons and protons.

And in the 1960s, it became clear that neutrons and protons themselves were made from smaller particles still, called quarks; and that the interaction of quarks was tied to one of the fundamental forces of nature called the strong force.

The force not only holds the insides of atoms together, but is important in the interactions of other sub-atomic particles that make the Universe tick.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Large Hadron Collider has undergone a major upgrade and the researchers involved believe that they will discover many more such exotic particles, some of which may have six quarks bound together.

Some of these may have a less fleeting existence - perhaps a hundred billionth of a second. That is brief by human standards, but because these particles travel at close to the speed of light, they would leave trails a few millimetres long, which would be a treasured footprint for physicist sleuths to follow.

[ghost2509]

Asteroid's Surface Like a "Plastic Ball Pit"

futurism.com
Maggie Harrison
July 8, 2022

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft's original mission was to fly to the asteroid Bennu, where it was mean to briefly land on the body's presumably rocky surface, collect a small sample, and head back home.

But while most of the mission miraculously went as planned — there was one major surprise along the way.

When OSIRIS-REx tried to touch down on Bennu back in 2020, it astonishingly sank into the asteroid's quicksand-like surface — likened to a children's "plastic ball pit" in a new NASA update — triggering a dazzling explosion of celestial matter.

Now, the mission's researchers finally think they know why, as detailed in a pair of new papers published this week.

"We expected the surface to be pretty rigid, kind of like if you touch down on a gravel pile: a little bit of dust flying away and a few particles jumping up," Dante Lauretta, lead author of one of the studies and principal investigator of the OSIRIS-RE mission, told Space.com. "But as we were bringing back the images after the event, we were stunned."

"There clearly was no resistance whatsoever," she added. "The surface was soft and flowed away like a fluid."

The outcome was so surprising, in fact, that the researchers sent the craft back to Bennu six months later. The imagery gathered on the second mission showed that OSIRIS-REx had left a 65-foot-wide impact crater, dubbed "Nightingale," in its wake.

According to a NASA statement, the researchers believe that the secret to Bennu's unexpected fluff is in its mass. The particles that form the planet's surface are both loosely packed and lightly bound, meaning that while it looks solid, there's actually a lot of empty space.

As a result, NASA says that stepping onto the planet would apparently feel like "stepping into a pit of plastic balls." Yes, like the ones at your local Chuck E. Cheese.

The research is exciting, although frankly, it's a bit nerve-wracking as well. Since Bennu is held together by so little force, an impact with Earth would likely cause the asteroid to shatter within our Pale Blue Dot's atmosphere, according to the researchers — a very different kind of hazard compared to a collision with a hard celestial body.

[xlr8tx]

NASA to reveal first images from the James Webb Space Telescope

http://axios.com/2022/07/11/first-nasa-james-webb-space-telescope-photos-biden

[ghost2509]

Japan unveils artificial-gravity Moon base plans

yahoo.com
Anthony Cuthbertson
July 11, 2022

Researchers in Japan have unveiled plans for “artificial gravity living facilities” on the Moon.

The moon base concept, which was developed through a collaboration with Kyoto University and the contractor Kajima Corp, also included a lunar transportation system that could shuttle people between the Earth, Moon and Mars.

The core idea is to use centrifugal force through rotational motions in order to recreate the Earth’s gravity, which is six times greater than the Moon’s.

“There is no plan like this in other countries’ space development plans,” Yosuke Yamashiki, director of the SIC Human Spaceology Center of Kyoto University, said during a news conference unveiling the plans, the Asahi Shimbun reported.

“Our plan represents important technologies crucial to ensuring human beings will be able to move to space in the future.”

The Lunar Glass facility also aims to mimic Earth’s biodiversity through forests and waterfronts. A simplified version could be completed by 2050, while a full-scale version would likely take another 70 years.

Several other countries are also planning permanent bases on the Moon, including the US, Russia and China.

Nasa’s Artemis program aims to return humans to the Moon no earlier than 2025, before construction of a lunar outpust begins in 2026 or 2027.

A similar timeframe is also in place for the International Lunar Research Station, a joint venture between China and Russia. Both countries signed a cooperative memorandum in March 2021, with the stated aim of building a “multidisciplinary research an multipurpose work” that would rival Nasa’s facility.

Nasa has previously warned about the health risks of prolonged exposure to weightlessness and low gravity, meaning any technology to counter these effects could prove useful.

“As the idea of living in space becomes more realistic, the problem with the low gravity, which I intuitively became aware of when I was a child, is an issue we must overcome,” said Takuya Ono, a senior researcher at the Japanese contractor Kajima.

“We are committed to achieving the plan so it will be useful for human beings.”

[xlr8tx]

x
NASA’s JWST Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet

http://nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

*click on the image for full resolution

[maxhitman]

Originally Posted by xlr8tx

x
NASA’s JWST Delivers Deepest Infrared Image of Universe Yet

http://nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-delivers-deepest-infrared-image-of-universe-yet

*click on the image for full resolution

Thank you for posting this.
I am always fascinated by our Universe and its amazing mysteries.

To better explain this amazing photograph in a way to a child that
does not understand. I will give you my explanation as I told my 12
year old little cousin...

Look at the photo again and look closely at it ...



The stars that are "sparkly" and big in the photo, are SUNS, which
are closer to our planet and our own galaxy called "the milkyway".
Everything else all around in the photo, down to the tiniest little pixels
far away are other GALAXIES , containing Billions of stars and
their own planet systems.

To understand the photo and our huge universe even better,
you must take into account that this photo is just a tiny little photograph
in the sky.
Imagine that you are standing inside a round globe.
This globe has a 360degree view all around. To the left and right, up and down, and all around.
YOU are inside a big ball. You are inside an imaginary globe.
- Now grab a small piece of paper measuring only 1 inch by 1 inch.
-- Hold the little paper with your fingers and stick out your arm into the sky
and place it anywhere you want.

Imagine this little paper being a "photo" you will take of the universe
and then imagine it - being the above posted photograph !
THAT photo is ONLY a tiny little view of our universe !
Imagine what is ALL AROUND if you are inside a globe.

This little photo contains around a million galaxies (perhaps even more)
so it is just a tiny little view of what our universe looks like.

If you start counting how many galaxies and planets we have in
our Universe, you will need a million years to write ... 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000... continue and keep writing zeros for the
next million years.

THAT is how many galaxies and stars and planets there exists !
It is just mind-blowing to anyone to think about.

So this new photo is indeed extraordinary and it will make you
think that we (as human beings on this tiny planet) are just a tiny
little grain of sand ... which exist on ALL the beaches on our planet.

[xlr8tx]

Another spectacular image from the JWST.


*click on the image for full resolution

This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right.

[alexora]

Originally Posted by xlr8tx

Another spectacular image from the JWST.


*click on the image for full resolution

This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right.

Brian May, guitarist with Queen and also respected PHD astrophysicist, together with 10cc founder Graham Gouldman, wrote and recorded this song to celebrate JWST.

Brian May and Graham Gouldman launch tribute song to James Webb Space Telescope

Queen guitarist Brian May and 10cc founder Graham Gouldman have released a new track to celebrate the first images from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The telescope, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas Day last year and became operational this week.

The release of May and Gouldman’s song Floating In Heaven coincided with the highly-anticipated release of the first pictures brought to earth by the telescope.

You Tube

You Tube

May, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, said: “There is nothing more exciting in a world of exploration than going to a place about which you know nothing.

“The sky’s the limit for what we could find out.”

The music video features May strumming his guitar in ‘space’ while Gouldman is seen floating and singing the mellow tune.

The first pictures from the telescope showcase a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.

On New Year’s Day in 2019, May unveiled his new single titled New Horizons at Nasa’s Headquarters in Maryland in the US as a “tribute” to the spacecraft of the same name.

Another space-related song titled ’39 appeared in Queen’s 1975 A Night At The Opera, telling the story of a group of space explorers who return home to find during their one year of travel a century has passed on earth.

Source:

http://standard.co.uk/news/uk/brian-may-queen-french-guiana-maryland-b1011899.html

[alexora]

Looks like Russia has CTFO with their space program.

US and Russia agree to fly each other’s
astronauts to the ISS as tensions thaw

Nasa and Roscosmos made the announcement of integrated flights shortly after the Russian space program leader was replaced

The US and Russia have struck a deal to fly each other’s astronauts to the International Space Station, an apparent break in tensions between the nations over the war in Ukraine that includes the removal of the Russian space program’s bellicose leader.

Nasa and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos made the announcement of integrated flights Friday, shortly after Moscow said President Vladimir Putin had replaced Dmitry Rogozin with the less confrontational Yuri Borisov, the country’s deputy prime minister and a former minister of defense.

The agreement will see US astronaut Frank Rubio joining cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin on a launch aboard a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan in September; and Anna Kikina, the only active female cosmonaut, flying with two Americans and a Japanese astronaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon flight from Florida’s Kennedy space center the same month.

Statements from the respective space agencies confirming the accord made no mention of Rogozin’s dismissal. Yet his antagonistic attitude towards the west, which became more amplified following Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine, was widely seen as an obstacle to an amicable continuation of a decades-long partnership in space between the countries.

Among his most aggressive recent comments were a threat to deorbit the space station and crash it into the US or Europe, and an accusation that Elon Musk, the billionaire head of SpaceX, was sending up satellites that provided military communications to “fascist forces” in Ukraine.

According to a tweet the SpaceX chief posted in May, Rogozin asserted that Musk “will be held accountable like an adult, no matter how much you’ll play the fool”. Musk in response tweeted: “If I die in mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowing ya.”

Rogozin also became embroiled in a social media spat earlier this year with Scott Kelly, a former Nasa astronaut and three-time space station commander.

Kelly responded to the Russian’s assertion that his country could work alone in space with a tweet stating Russia’s space program “won’t be worth a damn” without international partners.

Rogozin, whose comments followed the termination of the sale of Russian engines to the US in retaliation for Ukraine sanctions, then traded insults with Kelly, calling him “a moron” while Kelly called him “a child.”

Kelly fired another dig at Rogozin on Friday following his dismissal. “Hey Dimon,” Kelly tweeted, using a diminutive form of his first name to which the Russian has previously objected. “I hear Tasty and That’s It may be hiring,” a reference to the rebranding of McDonald’s in Russia after the fast food giant pulled out because of the Ukraine war.

Nasa, meanwhile, saw Rogozin’s hostility as a distraction, and it worked resolutely with other senior Roscosmos officials towards rebuilding the partnership that previously saw cosmonauts flying US rockets to the space station until the space shuttle fleet was retired in 2011.

Bill Nelson, the Nasa administrator and former space shuttle astronaut, said in March: “Despite all of that, up in space, we can have a cooperation with our Russian friends, our colleagues.

“The professional relationship between astronauts and cosmonauts, it hasn’t missed a beat. This is the cooperation we have going on in the civilian space program.”

In its statement today, Roscosmos said that integrated flights were intended to enhance “the exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes”.

It said: “The agreement is in the interests of Russia and the United States and will promote the development of cooperation within the framework of the ISS program.”

Nasa’s statement said: “Flying integrated crews ensures there are appropriately trained crew members on board the station for essential maintenance and spacewalks.”

The US agency in February announced a “transition plan” for the end of the space station, which began operations in 1998. It will cease operations in 2030 and be de-orbited towards a safe crash landing in the Pacific the following year.

Rogozin’s immediate future, however, remains uncertain. Moscow’s former envoy to Nato reportedly retains the confidence of Putin, according to sources, and there is speculation he could be headed for Ukraine.

Meduza, a Latvian-based online media outlet covering Russian affairs, reported this week that he is being lined up for a job overseeing territory Russia has gained during the war.

The Kremlin on Friday refused to discuss the speculation but said that Rogozin would get “a new post,” according to Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency, reported by Reuters.

Source:

http://theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/15/us-russia-astronauts-international-space-station