Posted on by John Carl Villanueva

What is the Fastest Jet In The World?

If you’re thinking the X-15 still holds the record for the fastest jet in the world, think again. That title is now owned by NASA’s X-43A. The unmanned aircraft hit Mach 9.6 (nearly 10 times the speed of sound) on November 16, 2004 at an altitude of 33,223 meters over the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, if you’re talking about manned flights, the X-15 with its Mach 6.72 speed is still king of the hill.

Both the X-15 and the X-43A are experimental aircrafts, designed to test new technologies and are usually associated with record-breaking feats. The X-15, for example, was specially designed to reach altitudes and speeds never achieved before.

Pilots of these planes were considered astronauts since many X-15 flights exceeded 50-mile altitudes. Many of them practically reached what is known as the Karman line a.k.a. the ‘edge of space’. That’s about 100 km above sea level.

If you’re looking for an aircraft that’s actually been put to use outside gathering experimental data, then the record holder is the SR-71 “Blackbird”. The Blackbird used to cruise at Mach 3.2 and was used primarily for reconnaissance missions.

Anyway, back to the fastest jet in the world – whether manned or unmanned.

As mentioned earlier, the X-43A, like its reputable predecessor, the X-15, is an experimental aircraft. Specifically, the the X-43 was part of the NASA Hyper-X program, a 7-yr program that cost around $230M and was launched to explore other options for space access vehicles.

At the heart of the X-43 is the scramjet or Supersonic Combustion Ramjet. You can think of it as an upgraded version of the ramjet – the kind of engine used by the SR-71. The Supersonic Combustion Ramjet basically takes in oxygen, which is needed for combustion, directly from the atmosphere. In order to create thrust, rockets mix liquid oxygen with liquid fuel.

In the usual jet plane setup, a tank of liquid oxygen has to be carried as additional load. Take that tank away, and you get a smaller, lighter plane. The added benefits are so enormous that engineers who embarked on scramjet research predicted speeds that could go up to 15 times the speed of sound.

Although the current record held by the scramjet-powered X-43A only achieved a fraction of that, Mach 9.6 is still way above what other planes have achieved.

To give you an idea how fast the fastest jet in the world is, compared to others, imagine this: there are more than 30 jets that are faster than the speed of sound and yet almost all of them have top speeds either way below or only near Mach 3. Mach 9.6 is definitely way way faster than that.

We have some articles in Universe Today that are related to this one. Here are two of them:

Related articles brought to you by NASA, here are the links:

Tired eyes? Let your ears help you learn for a change. Here are some episodes from Astronomy Cast that just might suit your taste:

Source: NASA

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Space Wallpapers

Earthrise
Earthrise

Here are some amazing space wallpapers. If you want to make one of these your computer desktop wallpaper, just click on the image. That will take you to a much larger version of the image. You can then right-click on the image and choose, “Set as Desktop Background”. That will make any of these space wallpapers your desktop background.

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This is one of the most famous space photographs every taken. It’s called “Earthrise”, and it was captured by the crew of Apollo 8 as they were orbiting around the Moon. They saw the Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon and captured this amazing photograph.

Earth from space
Earth from space

NASA created this amazing wallpaper as part of its celebration for Sun-Earth day in 2008. You can see the Sun shining just outside of the photograph above.

Supernova 1054 AD
Supernova 1054 AD

Almost 1000 years ago, a star detonated in the sky as a supernova, shining brilliantly for a few days. After it faded away, it was replaced by this amazing nebula.

Star formation in the Eagle Nebula
Star formation in the Eagle Nebula

This amazing space wallpaper shows active star formation in the Eagle Nebula. These newly forming stars are blasting out huge clouds of gas and dust into space.

Saturn wallpaper
Saturn wallpaper

Here’s a beautiful image of Saturn captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during a time that it was positioned over the planet’s pole.

We have got lots of image galleries here in Universe Today. Here are some Earth wallpapers, and here are some Venus wallpapers.

You can also download some cool space wallpapers from NASA’s JPL, and here are some wallpapers from Hubble.

You might also want to try listening to an episode of Astronomy Cast. Here’s an episode just about the Hubble Space Telescope.

Posted on by John Carl Villanueva

Mount Krakatoa

Illustration of the Krakatoa eruption.

[/caption]Mount Krakatoa is a volcanic island found in Indonesia. Its most famous eruption in 1883 is one of the biggest in recorded history. You guessed it right; Krakatoa belongs to the Pacific Ring of Fire, the volatile horseshoe-shaped area bordering the Pacific Ocean.

Better known as Krakatau in Indonesia, its eruption in 1883 produced a series of tsunamis that smashed into 165 coastal villages in Java and Sumatra. 36,000 people perished when those giant waves hit. Most of those who were killed during the 1883 eruption, which lasted for two days (Aug 26 to 27), were actually victims of the tsunamis.

Some of the giant waves from that eruption, which rose up to 40 meters, managed to reach the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula, some 7,000 km away. When the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami (a.k.a. the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami) struck, it reminded the scientific community of the 1883 eruption because of the proximity of their points of origin.

The eruption also had a large impact on the global climate. On the average, temperature dropped by as much as 1.2ºC in the succeeding year. In the years that followed, global climates were very erratic, stabilizing only 4 years after.

Mount Krakatoa’s lava was known to be made of dacite or rhyolite. This explains the magnitude of its eruption. Generally speaking, volcanic eruptions are more explosive if their lava is composed of dacite or rhyolite. They are cooler and stickier than basalt, allowing them to accumulate pressure before being set free.

Although the 1883 eruption destroyed more than 60% of the volcanic island, a submarine eruption in 1927 produced a new island in its stead. This volcano is aptly called Anak Krakatau, which is Indonesian for “Child of Krakatoa”. Anak Krakatau’s radius is estimated to be 2 kilometers and rises up to a maximum height of 300 meters above sea level. Studies have shown in to be growing at a rate of 5 meters per year.

Before 1883, three volcanoes known as Rakata, Danan, and Perbuwatan combined to what then became Krakatoa island.

Mount Krakatoa is an example of a stratovolcano, a tall, conical volcano with multiple strata of solidified lava, tephra, as well as volcanic ash. These type of volcanoes typically have steep sides and usually erupt frequently & violently. Most of the popular eruptions have been made by stratovolcanoes. Other known stratovolcanoes are Mount St. Helens and Mount Pinatubo.

Indonesia is the country that holds the biggest number of active volcanoes, at 130. Iceland, another volcano-dotted country, holds about the same number (of volcanoes) but not all are as active as those in Indonesia.

We have some articles in Universe Today that are related to Mount Krakatoa. Here are two of them:

Mount Krakatoa articles brought to you by USGS. Here are the links:

Tired eyes? Let your ears help you learn for a change. Here are some episodes from Astronomy Cast that just might suit your taste:

Sources:
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Indonesia/description_krakatau_1883_eruption.html
http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/2003/03_05_22.html

Posted on by Fraser Cain

God Particle

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Credit: CERN/LHC

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When the media talks about the “god particle”, they’re really talking about a theoretical particle in physics known as the higgs boson. If reality matches the predictions made by theoretical physics, the higgs boson is the particle that gives objects mass. It explains why objects at rest tend to stay at rest and objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

One of the primary goals of the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is to search for the so called “god particle”. When it finally gets running, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, will run beams of protons around a 27 kilometer circle, slamming them together at close to the speed of light. All the kinetic energy of the protons is instantly frozen out as mass in a shower of particles. Remember Einstein’s famous E=mc2 formula? Well, you can reconfigure the equation to be m = E/c2.

The higgs boson is thought to be a very heavy particle, and so it takes a lot of energy in the collider to create particles this massive. When the LHC starts running, it will collide protons at higher and higher energies, searching for the higgs boson. If it is found, it will confirm a theorized class of particles predicted by the theory of supersymmetry. And even if the higgs boson isn’t found, it will help disprove the theory. Either way, physicists win.

The term “god particle” was coined by physicist Leon Lederman, the 1988 Nobel prize winner in physics and the director of Fermilab. He even wrote a book called the “God Particle”, where he defended the use of the term.

We have written many articles about the Higgs Boson and the Large Hadron Collider here on Universe Today. Here’s an article about how the LHC won’t create a black hole and destroy the Earth. And here’s more on Fermilab’s search for the Higgs Boson.

We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about the higgs boson. Listen to it here, Episode 69: The Large Hadron Collider and the Search for the Higgs Boson.

Posted on by Jean Tate

What is Cherenkov Radiation?

How the CANGAROO Imaging Cherenkov Air Telescope works

Cherenkov radiation is named after the Russian physicist who first worked it out in detail, in 1934, Pavel Alekseyevich Cherenkov (he got a Nobel for his work, in 1958; because he’s Russian, it’s also sometimes called Cerenkov radiation).

Nothing’s faster than c, the speed of light … in a vacuum. In the air or water (or glass), the speed of light is slower than c. So what happens when something like a cosmic ray proton – which is moving way faster than the speed of light in air or water – hits the Earth’s atmosphere? It emits a cone of light, like the sonic boom of a supersonic plane; that light is Cherenkov radiation.

The Cherenkov radiation spectrum is continuous, and its intensity increases with frequency (up to a cutoff); that’s what gives it the eerie blue color you see in pictures of ‘swimming pool’ reactors.

Perhaps the best known astronomical use of Cherenkov radiation is in ICATs such CANGAROO (you guessed it, it’s in Australia!), H.E.S.S. (astronomers love this sort of thing, that’s a ‘tribute’ to Victor Hess, pioneer of cosmic rays studies), and VERITAS (see if you can explain the pun in that!). As a high energy gamma ray, above a few GeV, enters the atmosphere, it creates electron-positron pairs, which initiate an air shower. The shower creates a burst of Cherenkov radiation lasting a few nanoseconds, which the ICAT detects. Because Cherenkov radiation is well-understood, the bursts caused by gamma rays can be distinguished from those caused by protons; and by using several telescopes, the source ‘on the sky’ can be pinned down much better (that’s what one of the Ss in H.E.S.S. stands for, stereoscopic).

The more energetic a cosmic ray particle, the bigger the air shower it creates … so to study really energetic cosmic rays – those with energies above 10^18 ev (which is 100 million times as energetic as what the LHC will produce), which are called UHECRs (see if you can guess) – you need cosmic ray detectors spread over a huge area. That’s just what the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory is; and its workhorse detectors are tanks of water with photomultiplier tubes in the dark (to detect the Cherenkov radiation of air shower particles).

However I think the coolest use of Cherenkov radiation in astronomy is IceCube, which detects the Cherenkov radiation produced by muons in Antarctic ice … traveling upward. These muons are produced by rare interactions of muon neutrinos with hydrogen or oxygen nuclei (in the ice), after they have traveled through the whole Earth, from the Artic (and before that perhaps a few hundred megaparsecs from some distant blazer).

ICAT: imaging Cherenkov Air Telescope
CANGAROO: Collaboration of Australia and Nippon (Japan) for a Gamma Ray Observatory in the Outback
H.E.S.S.: High Energy Stereoscopic System
VERITAS: Very Energetic Imaging Telescope Array System
UHECR: ultra-high-energy cosmic ray

This NASA webpage gives more details of how ICATs work.

Quite a few Universe Today stories are about Cherenkov radiation; for example Astronomers Observe Bizarre Blazar with Battery of Telescopes, and High Energy Gamma Rays Go Slower Than the Speed of Light?.

Examples of Astronomy Casts which include this topic: Cosmic Rays, and Gamma Ray Astronomy.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation
http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js/glossary/cerenkov_radiation.html

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Composite Volcano

Mount Fuji - a composite volcano

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Geologists have identified 3 major types of volcanoes. There’s the shield volcano, formed from low viscosity lava that can flow long distances. There are cinder cone volcanoes, which are made by the eruption of lava, ash and rocks that build up around a volcanic vent. But the last type is the composite volcano, and these are some of the most famous volcanoes (and most dangerous) in the world.

A composite volcano is formed over hundreds of thousands of years through multiple eruptions. The eruptions build up the composite volcano, layer upon layer until it towers thousands of meters tall. Some layers might be formed from lava, while others might be ash, rock and pyroclastic flows. A composite volcano can also build up large quantities of thick magma, which blocks up inside the volcano, and causes it to detonate in a volcanic explosion.

Composite volcanoes are fed by a conduit system which taps into a reservoir of magma deep within the Earth. This magma can erupt out of several vents across the composite volcano’s flanks, or from a large central crater at the summit of the volcano.

Some of the most famous volcanoes in the world are composite volcanoes. And some of the most devastating eruptions in history came from them. For example, Mount St. Helens, Mount Pinatubo, and Krakatoa are just examples of composite volcanoes that have erupted. Famous landmarks like Mount Fuji in Japan, Mount Ranier in Washington State, and Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa are composite volcanoes that just haven’t erupted recently.

When large composite volcanoes explode, they can leave behind a collapsed region called a caldera. These are deep, steep-walled depressions which marked the location of the volcano. And it’s in this region that a new composite volcano will build back up again.

Another name for composite volcanoes are stratovolcanoes.

We have written many articles about composite volcanoes for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the recent eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska, and here’s an article about Mount Etna.

You can learn more about composite volcanoes from the USGS.

And we have recorded an entire episode of Astronomy Cast just about volcanoes. Listen to it here, Episode 141: Volcanoes, Hot and Cold.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Who Discovered Jupiter?

Jupiter from the newly refurbished Hubble. Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Wong (Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.), H. B. Hammel (Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.), and the Jupiter Impact Team

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Jupiter is one of the 5 planets visible with the unaided eye. That means you can go out on a clear night, when Jupiter is up in the sky, and see it with your own eyes. No telescope is necessary. In fact, it’s one of the brightest objects in the sky. When Jupiter is there, it’s hard not to see it. So it’s kind of hard to wonder who discovered Jupiter, since humans would have known about it for tens of thousands of years.

Ancient astronomers didn’t have telescopes, but they knew there was something strange about the planets. They tracked the motion of the planets with incredible accuracy and believed that they were somehow associated with gods in their mythologies. Jupiter is named after the Roman god, thought to be the head of the gods; he’s the same as Zeus in Greek mythology.

Perhaps a better question might be, who discovered Jupiter the planet. In other words, when did astronomers realize that Jupiter was really a planet. That discovery happened when astronomers realized that the Earth was really just a planet as well, orbiting the Sun in the Solar System. The new model for the Solar System was developed by Nicolaus Copernicus in the 16th century. By placing the Sun at the center of the Solar System, Copernicus developed a model that better explained the motions of the planets as they moved through the sky.

This model was confirmed when Galileo pointed his first rudimentary telescope at Jupiter. What he saw was the disk of Jupiter and the 4 largest moons orbiting the planet. Since all the heavenly bodies were thought to orbit the Earth, it was thought to be impossible for objects to orbit one another.

Once astronomers knew that Jupiter was a planet, and they had better telescopes to study it, the exploration of Jupiter could really begin. Better and better images were taken of the planet, and more moons and even rings were discovered orbiting the planet.

And then in the space age, the first spacecraft were sent to explore Jupiter. The first spacecraft to arrive at Jupiter was NASA’s Pioneer 10 in 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 a few months later. These spacecraft returned images of Jupiter’s swirling cloud tops, discovered more about its composition, and revealed features of its moons.

We have written many articles about the discovery of planets in the Solar System. Here’s an article about the discovery of Uranus, and another about the discovery of Neptune.

You can also learn more about Jupiter from NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide to Jupiter.

We have also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about Jupiter. Listen to it here, Episode 56: Jupiter.

Reference:
NASA

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Exosphere

Exosphere

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The Earth’s atmosphere is broken up into several distinct layers. We live down in the troposphere, where the atmosphere is thickest. Above that is the stratosphere, then there’s the mesosphere, thermosphere and finally the exosphere. The top of the exosphere marks the line between the Earth’s atmosphere and interplanetary space.

The exosphere is the outermost layer of the Earth’s atmosphere. It starts at an altitude of about 500 km and goes out to about 10,000 km. Within this region particles of atmosphere can travel for hundreds of kilometers in a ballistic trajectory before bumping into any other particles of the atmosphere. Particles escape out of the exosphere into deep space.

The lower boundary of the exosphere, where it interacts with the thermosphere is called the thermopause. It starts at an altitude of about 250-500 km, but its height depends on the amount of solar activity. Below the thermopause, particles of the atmosphere have atomic collisions, like what you might find in a balloon. But above the thermopause, this switches over to purely ballistic collisions.

The theoretical top boundary of the exosphere is 190,000 km (half way to the Moon). This is the point at which the solar radiation coming from the Sun overcomes the Earth’s gravitational pull on the atmospheric particles. This has been detected to about 100,000 km from the surface of the Earth. Most scientists consider 10,000 km to be the official boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and interplanetary space.

We have written several articles about the Earth’s atmosphere for Universe Today. Here’s an article about an evaporating extrasolar planet, and this article explains how far away space is.

You can learn more about the layers of the atmosphere, including the exosphere from this page at NASA.

We have recorded a whole episode of Astronomy Cast talking about the Earth’s (and it’s atmosphere). Check it out here, Episode 51: Earth.

Posted on by Fraser Cain

Artificial Gravity

An artist's representation of a rotating space station.

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Have you ever noticed that astronauts float around in the space shuttle and in the International Space Station, while space travelers on television and in the movies keep their feet firmly on the ground. That’s because it would be very difficult (and expensive) to have your actors floating around in every scene. So science fiction writers invent some kind of artificial gravity technology, to keep everyone standing on the ground.

Of course, there’s no technology that will actually generate gravity in a spaceship. Gravity only comes from massive object, and there’s no way to cancel the acceleration of gravity. And so if you wanted to have a spacecraft that could generate enough artificial gravity to keep someone’s feet on the ground, the spaceship would need to have the mass of the Earth.

Floating in space is actually very hard on astronauts’ bodies. The lack of gravity softens their bones and causes their muscles to weaken. After any long trip into space, astronauts need several days and even weeks to recover from traveling in microgravity.

But there a couple of ways you could create artificial gravity in a spaceship. The force we feel from gravity is actually our acceleration towards a massive body. We’d keep falling, but the ground is pushing against us, so we stand on the ground. If you can provide an alternative form of acceleration, it would feel like gravity, and provide the same benefits of standing on the surface of a planet.

The first way would be through accelerating your spaceship. Imagine you wanted to fly your spaceship from Earth to Alpha Centauri. You could fire your rockets behind the spacecraft, accelerating at a smooth rate of 9.8 meters/second2. As long as the rocket continued accelerating, it would feel like you were standing on Earth. Once the rocket reached the halfway point of its journey, it would turn around and decelerate at the same rate, and once again, you would feel the force of gravity. Of course, it takes an enormous amount of fuel to accelerate and decelerate like this, so we can consider that pretty much impossible.

A second way to create acceleration is to fake it through with some kind of rotation. Imagine if your spaceship was built like a big donut, and you set it spinning. People standing on the inside hull would feel the force of gravity. That’s because the spinning causes a centrifugal force that wants to throw the astronauts out into space. But the spaceship’s hull is keeping them from flying away. This is another way to create artificial gravity.

There are no spacecraft that use any form of artificial gravity today, but if humans do more space exploration, we will likely see the rotational method used in the future.

We have written several articles about artificial gravity for Universe Today. Here’s an article about how mice might be used to test out artificial gravity, and here’s more information about future technologies that might use artificial gravity.

Here’s a podcast from Scientific American that talks about the effect of artificial gravity.

We have recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast that talks about science fiction technologies. Listen to it here: Episode 104 – Science Fiction at Dragon*Con

Sources:
Wikipedia
NEWTON, Ask A Scientist!
Wise Geek

Posted on by Brian Ventrudo

James Webb Space Telescope Begins To Take Shape

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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is starting to come together. A major component of the telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module structure, recently arrived at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for testing in the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility.

The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, is an important component of the Webb telescope. The ISIM includes the structure, four scientific instruments or cameras, electronics, harnesses, and other components.

The ISIM structure is the chassis, or “backbone” of the ISIM.  It supports and holds the four Webb telescope science instruments : the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). Each of these instruments were created and assembled by different program partners around the world.

When fully assembled, the ISIM will be the size of a small room with the structure acting as a skeleton supporting all of the instruments. Ray Lundquist, ISIM Systems Engineer, at NASA Goddard, commented that “The ISIM structure is truly a one-of-a-kind item. There is no second ISIM being made.”

Now that the structure has arrived at Goddard, it will undergo rigorous qualification testing to ensure it can survive the launch and extreme cold of space, and precisely hold the science instruments in the correct position with respect to the telescope. Once the ISIM structure passes its qualification testing, the process of integrating into it all of the other ISIM Subsystems, including the Science Instruments, will begin.

Each of the four instruments that will be housed in the ISIM is critical to the Webb telescope’s mission.

The MIRI instrument will provide information on the formation and evolution of galaxies, the physical processes of star and planet formation, and the sources of life-supporting elements in other solar systems.

The NIRCam will detect the first galaxies to form in the early universe, map the morphology and colors of galaxies; detect distant supernovae; map dark matter and study stellar populations in nearby galaxies.

NIRSpec’s microshutter cells can be opened or closed to view or block a portion of the sky which allows the instrument to do spectroscopy on many objects simultaneously, measuring the distances to galaxies and determining their chemical content.

The FGS is a broadband guide camera used for both “guide star” acquisition and fine pointing. The FGS also includes the scientific capability of taking images at individual wavelengths of infrared light to study chemical elements in stars and galaxies.

The ISIM itself is very complicated and is broken into three distinct areas

The first area involves the cryogenic instrument module. This is a critical area, because it keeps the instrument cool. Otherwise, the Webb telescope’s heat would interfere with the science instruments’ infrared cameras. So, the module keeps components as cold as -389 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Kelvin). The MIRI instrument is further cooled by a cryocooler refrigerator to -447 degrees Fahrenheit (7 Kelvin).

The second area is the ISIM Electronics Compartment, which provides the mounting surfaces and a thermally-controlled environment for the instrument control electronics.

The third area is the ISIM Command and Data Handling subsystem, which includes ISIM flight Software, and the MIRI cryocooler compressor and control electronics.

NASA Goddard will be assembling and testing the ISIM and its components over the next several years. The integrated ISIM will then be mounted onto the main Webb telescope.

Source: NASA