Landing a rocket

Summary: In case your Twitter feed was not just lighting up as much as mine was, Space X just made space history. In the upgrade to their Falcon 9 rocket, the booster did more than just separate, it landed itself back on earth, right where it was supposed to.

In a beautiful video, I just watched a great ball of fire slowly descend to the landing pad and then fade out to reveal a booster rocket standing as straight as you please. Absolutely incredible. The whole of mission control was throwing a party. 

The rest of the rocket went on to deploy six more satellites to complete the constellation arrangement. 

I'll update this post with a link to the video of the launch and further details as I get them.

SpaceX launch video (I suggest starting at about 21:00)
The above link will also give more mission details.

Background on the launch

Long exposure of the launch and landing of the rocket

    
The booster rocket safely on the landing pad

Strong Forces Between Antipotons

Summary: Woah, a story about antimatter on an antimatter blog! Finally.

Unlike a lot of other anitmatter and particle physics news, this does not come to us from CERN but rather from in Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven in New York. Here physicists were able to measure the interactions between antiprotons. It seems like it is also the strong force, an attractive force, that holds the antiprotons together just as it also holds the protons together. This is just one more way in which protons and antiprotons are essentially the same, the exception of their opposite charge. Because of the similarity scientists can rule this out as a possible explanation for the matter/antimatter asymmetry in the universe today.

BBC News
Nature

Tractor Beams made of Sound

Summary: It may not be quite the tractor beam that you expect from a scifi show like "Star Trek," but we are getting closer. The way these scientists have developed relies on the pressure of sound waves. Instead of trying to create a concentrated beam that holds a particle, they instead create a vacuum of space, bounded by high intensity waves all around it. Then  by adjusting the boundaries, they are able to move the trapped particle. Currently the capabilities of the design only apply up to pea-sized particles at less than 40cm away.

Despite the apparent 3D nature of the holding pattern, it only requires a loudspeaker on one side of the particle. For the researchers, this means that it could be applied in the medical field for drug delivery. For those of us thinking of the future, this means that tractor beams on spaceships may be possible in a distant future. (Which the scientists did prove would work on a scaled down model.)


BBC News
Nature

Waters of Mars

Summary: As you have no doubt heard, NASA announced yesterday that there is now concrete evidence of flowing water on the surface of Mars. Amazing isn't it? I'll put a link to the press release but first let me highlight a few items. 

1. This was first noticed by am undergraduate student who was studying photos of the surface of Mars. They noticed that there were dark patterns on the surface, resembling river beds, that would appear in June and grow before shrinking again to nothing in September. They would then appear at the same time next year although never in the exact same spot. 

2. Not only was this proof of flowing liquid, but scientists were able to detect hydrated salt crystals. Proof that this liquid is definitely water. 

3. And because it is such a regular pattern, it is safe to assume that it has been occurring for much longer than five years. 

All this gives me greater hope for future exploration of Mars. Maybe this will provide enough public support that the space programs of the world can start collaborations more effectively. 

Of course the Whovian in me is also screaming that we shouldn't trust the water, but that's for another episode to address. 

NASA

Symmetry of Nuclei

Summary: Finally, some news about antimatter! Scientists at the LHC who are working on ALICE, have been able to more precisely measure the nuclei of particles and their antiparticles. Happily they discovered that there is fundamental symmetry with their charge, parity, and time.

The ALICE experiment smashes particles together that create nuclei and antinuclei at the same rate which allow the scientists to study them easier.


Quarks to Quasars
Nature

Another Nail in the Coffin for the Standard Model?

Summary: Data from the LHC's last run is still being analysed and with this comes possible new data to suggest faults in the standard model. Researchers at University of Maryland are studying leptons, subatomic particles that help to make up our universe. While studying the decay rate, they observed that not all particles decayed at the same rate as they should. Something was influencing the process.

What this mysterious force is, we do not know, but it is not predicted to exist in the standard model. This experiment is building on another experiment of their that also seemed to contradict the standard model. So it is not an instrumental error. Whatever it is, I am excited to find out.


RT
University of Maryland

Pluto Press Conference

Summary: It has been hard to miss the news of New Horizons flying past Pluto and getting beautiful images and data to send back to Earth. It has been harder to keep up with the constant flood of data that is pouring out. NASA has thankfully given a press conference and has published the highlights online.

Personally I am most overjoyed that they have nicknamed the dark spot on the top of Charon Mordor but I also love hearing about the giant ice cliffs. I will point you straight toward the mission site though to get all of the highlights.

If you have access to BBC, their program Sky at Night will be doing a big recap of all the news and what it means on the night of the 20th.


BBC News

Pluto through the years Credit: NASA

New particle seen at CERN

Summary: Nearly lost amid all the Pluto excitement, scientists at CERN have possibly discovered a new particle called the pentaquark. This new particle has been theorized to exist since the 60s and many have claimed to discover it before so they are being cautious. However, if this is indeed what is seems to be, then we have a new form of matter.

The pentaquark is a particle composed of four quarks and one antiquark.

Scientists found the particle by studying the way that the particle Lambda b decayed into three other particles. Some of the intermediary stages only made sense if the pentaquark did exist. Although still cautious about declaring this to be the pentaquark, the technology available to researchers at CERN allows them to view the problem in five dimensions rather than just one.

If this is indeed the particle they think it is, it will provide us with new ways of imagining quarks to be arranged and matter to be composed. Matter may be more complex than we thought.


BBC News

Quintuplet Stars

Summary: Our solar system features one star. There are many examples of binary star systems and even two binary stars coupled together. But astronomers have now found an incredibly rare new system. Two couples binary stars with one lonely companion star to make up a total of five stars.

Of the binaries, one is a detached pair and the other is coupled, meaning that the two stars share an outer atmosphere. Although there are no observations to prove it, it is possible that there are planets orbiting these stars. What a spectacular sky show they would have.


BBC News

Rise and Shine, Philae

Summary: Remember when there was a huge celebration because as a human race, we landed a rover on a comet? It was thrilling at the time, but we lost contact with the rover after it bounced into the shade of a cliff. Now the comet has tilted to allow sunlight to reach Philae and the rover has reached out to Earth.

A few very short message was received but it gives scientists hope and affirms that the rover may be able to still carry out its mission. There is not much else known at this point but the comet will be shifting into a position with more sunlight so more can be understood about the condition of the rover.


BBC News

LightSail Test Sucess

Summary: Launched on the 20th of May, the final step of preparation for the LightSail was launched. This was a test sail that would practice unfurling the sail and send back pictures to Earth. I am incredibly excited by this mission and have been ever since I saw the concept art nearly fifteen years ago as a possible design for futuristic spacecraft.

The LightSail is designed to work just like a sailboat; only instead of the wind filling the sail, it is light from the sun. Photons emitted from the sun will push the sail outward and the spacecraft will sail happily along. Even when it has passed beyond the reach of the sun's light, momentum will keep the craft going, even if not as fast.

This would not be a design intended for human travel since it is so slow, but more as a method of sending data gathering probes out into space with no power needed for propulsion beyond adjusting the sail. Furthermore, I believe this sail is not going to be able to tack and sail into the headwind. It will be a one-way mission.


Planetary Society

10 Facts about Antimatter

Summary: Remember when this blog started and I tried to keep it focused solely on antimatter? That turned out to be too specific but I am once again able to get back to the heart of this blog. While not and advancement in antimatter studies, this is a recent article on ten facts you may not have known about antimatter. Contained within the article are helpful links to more topics related to antimatter that can quench your thirst for knowledge. Enjoy.

SymmetryMag

The Case of the Strangled Galaxies

Summary: Galaxies are considered dead when they no longer are producing new stars. It is still unclear what causes this process but what astronomers do now know is the most common time scale of them dying -- approximately four billion years. Astronomers are calling this process strangulation.

Astronomers are able to tell how quickly the galaxy died based on the metal content remaining in the galaxy. The more stars that are being formed in a galaxy, the more metal content is seen. The way it works is simple. If a galaxy dies quickly and quite violently (for instance if the cool gas that fuels the star formation is suddenly ripped away), then the stars immediately stop producing and the metal content remains the same. But if the galaxy if cut off from the supply of cool gas but still continues to produce stars, using up the last of the supply, the metal content in the galaxy grows and grows until it "suffocates".

The difference was seen when comparing the spectra of light emitted by red, passive galaxies and blue, star-forming galaxies. With the data from Sloan they were able to see that the dead galaxies were, on average, four billion years older than the active galaxies. This is consistent with the amount of time the astronomers had calculated it would take to burn of the remaining amount of gas supply whilst strangling to death.

While the astronomers are now confident that death by strangulation is the most common way a galaxy meets it's ultimate end, it is still not clear what causes this. The most likely suspect at this point in time seems to be overcrowding which would lead to a greater probability of disruption to the gas supply, but this would need further investigation.



BBC News
Nature

LHC is Up and Running

Summary: After the scheduled two year shutdown and update of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the LHC is back and ready for even higher energy collisions. It began smashing particles again Easter Sunday at energies of 450 GeV. Amazingly enough, this is a lower energy and will be used for calibrations before the truly record breaking energies of 7,000 GeV starting on June 1st.


BBC News

Update: Test collisions have broken the energy record already at 13 TeV.

BBC News

A Shattering of Old Dark Matter Theories

Summary: Thanks to new data, further theories of the nature of dark matter have been smashed to pieces! Pardon me for being excited about leading theories being wrong but that only means that I may have a part to play in developing the correct theory. So what has changed?

It turns out dark matter really doesn't seem to interact with anything apart from gravity. It doesn't even interact with itself. The study was conducted my using the Hubble and Chandra to look at collisions of different galaxies and watch the dark matter. Well, it looked at the gravitational lensing since dark matter itself is essentially impossible to see.

In the way science should work, Dr. Massey explains that "if you want to figure out what something is made out of, you knock it, or you throw it across the room and see where the bits go." The surprising part was that unlike the stars that slide past each other and the gas clouds that come to a halt in these collisions, the dark matter "seems not to interact with anything at all." Rather like a ghost, it just glides through the other dark matter like it's no big deal. Since it doesn't even interact with itself, many prominent theories for what dark matter is has now fallen apart. Which means exciting new possibilities for the rest of us in the future. 


BBC News
Science Mag

Rosetta's Comet is Slowing Down

Summary: Despite the rover not being turned on again, astronomers are still learning new things about the chosen comet. For instance, it's changing rotation speed. The comet takes approximately 12.4 hours to complete one rotation, only that rate seems to be slowing down by one second per day. It seems like a small change but that is big in astronomical terms. It is actually a faster rate of change than in September. Back then it was slowing down by 33 milliseconds per day. (And right there is a differential equation for those who are so inclined.)

Scientists know the reason for this. The comet 67P is becoming more active which means there are gas jets shooting out of the rock and serving as propulsion, much like a rocket, only in the opposite direction of rotation, thus slowing it down. The jets actually shoot out of the comet at 800 meters per second and extend a few kilometers off the surface.

Astronomers found this out thanks to Rosetta still being in orbit around the rock. In order to keep the satellite in the correct trajectory, the navigators were using a system of landmarks on the surface to keep track of position. Only the landmarks were coming into view at a different time than expected.

BBC News

More Secret Oceans

Summary: Jupiter's moon Ganymede is the latest solar system body now thought to have a secret ocean lying beneath its icy crust. The evidence for this lies in the aurora produced by the moon's magnetosphere. The auroras are also influences by Jupiter, but not as much as scientists thought they should be. The presence of a salty ocean below the surface would counteract some if the effects of Jupiter and leave what we see now.

This new evidence means that we are past the point of ambiguity but not certain yet. We will know more when a probe in 2030 orbits the moon and finishes with a crash landing into the surface. 


BBC News

And Happy Pi Day!

Changing the Speed of Light

Summary: Scientists in Scotland have successfully altered the speed of light. Incredible in my humble opinion. To do this, they used a mask to alter the shape of a photon. This slowed the light down. Then the photon was released back into free space and raced against a photon of unaltered shape. Amazingly, the altered particle remained at the lower speed.

At this initial stage it is nothing more than a curiosity but it could have implications for astronomy. While it would not make a difference in small distances such as between Earth and the moon, if photons mutate shape in nature then our distances to far off stars and galaxies may not be as accurate as previously assumed.

BBC News

Astronomical Updates

Highest Quality image of Ceres:
Ceres, the 950-km wide dwarf planet has a new image that is clearer than ever before. The resolution beats that of Hubble's image of Ceres. The cool thing is the image quality can only improve as Dawn approaches.

BBC News


New Horizons setting it's sights on Pluto:
The New Horizons probe will be zooming by Pluto on July 14th of this year but before it reaches the planet, it must start taking images to calibrate it's instruments and check its trajectory. The first images, with Pluto only as a tiny speck, should be released this week. Researchers are hoping that this mission will reveal many surprises about Pluto including new moons and possible rings.

BBC News


Large Asteroid and it's Moon:
The asteroid 2004 BL 86 was seen with a moon as it passed relatively close to Earth. The asteroid itself is 325m wide and it's moon is 70m wide.

BBC News