Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Discovery at the Large Hadron Collider?

Image of a 7 TeV proton-proton collision in CMS producing more than 100 charged particles. Credit: CERN

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Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider reported today they apparently have discovered a previously unobserved phenomenon in proton-proton collisions. One of the detectors shows that the colliding particles appear to be intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions. The correlations were observed between particles produced in 7 TeV collisions. “The new feature has appeared in our analysis around the middle of July,” physicist Guido Tonelli told fellow CERN scientists at a seminar to present the findings from the collider’s CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) detector.

The scientists said the effect is subtle and they have performed several detailed crosschecks and studies to ensure that it is real. It bears some similarity to effects seen in the collisions of nuclei at the RHIC facility located at the US Brookhaven National Laboratory, which have been interpreted as being possibly due to the creation of hot dense matter formed in the collisions.

CMS studies the collisions by measuring angular correlations between the particles as they fly away from the point of impact.

The scientists stressed that there are several potential explanations to be considered and the they presented their news to the physics community at CERN today in hopes of “fostering a broader discussion on the subject.”

“Now we need more data to analyze fully what’s going on, and to take our first steps into the vast landscape of new physics we hope the LHC will open up,” said Tonelli.

Proton running at the Large Hadron Collider is scheduled to continue until the end of October, during which time CMS will accumulate much more data to analyze. After that, and for the remainder of 2010, the LHC will collide lead nuclei.

Source: CERN

Posted on by Ryan Anderson

Herschel Finds Water Around a Carbon Star

Herschel image of the carbon star CW Leonis. The arc visible to the left of the star is a bow showck, where the stellar wind encounters the interstellar medium. ESA/PACS/SPIRE/MESS Consortia

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There’s something strange going on around the red giant star CW Leonis (a.k.a. IRC+10216). Deep within the star’s carbon-rich veil, astronomers have detected water vapor where no water should be.

CW Leonis is similar in mass to the sun, but much older and much larger. It is the nearest red giant to the sun, and in its death throes it has hidden itself in a sooty, expanding cloud of carbon-rich dust. This shroud makes CW Leonis almost invisible to the naked eye, but at some infrared wavelengths it is the brightest object in the sky.

Water was originally discovered around CW Leonis in 2001 when the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) found the signature of water in the chilly outer reaches of the star’s dusty envelope at a temperature of only 61 K. This water was assumed to be evidence for vaporizing comets and other icy objects around the expanding star. New observations with the SPIRE and PACS spectrometers on the Herschel Space Observatory reveal that there’s something much more surprising going on.

“Thanks to Herschel’s superb sensitivity and spectral resolution, we were able to identify more than 60 lines of water, corresponding to a whole series of energetic levels of the molecule,” explains Leen Decin from the University of Leuven and leader of the study. The newly-detected spectral lines indicate that the water vapor is not all in the cold outer envelope of the star. Some of it is much closer to the star, where temperatures reach 1000 K.

No icy fragments could exist that close to the star, so Decin and colleagues had to come up with a new explanation for the presence of the hot water vapor. Hydrogen is abundant in the envelope of gas and dust surrounding carbon stars like  CW Leonis, but the other building block of water, oxygen, is typically bound up in molecules like carbon monoxide (CO) and silicon monoxide (SiO). Ultraviolet light can split these molecules, releasing their stored oxygen, but red giant stars don’t make much UV light so it has to come from somewhere else.

An illustration of the chemical reactions caused by interstellar UV light interacting with molecules surrounding CW Leonis. ESA. Adapted from L. Decin et al. (2010)

The dusty envelopes around carbon stars are known to be clumpy, and that turns out to be the key to explaining the mysterious water vapor. The patchy structure of the shroud around CW Leonis lets UV light from interstellar space into the depths of the star’s envelope. “Well within the envelope, UV photons trigger a set of reactions that can produce the observed distribution of water, as well as other, very interesting molecules, such as ammonia (NH3),” says Decin. “This is the only mechanism that explains the full range of the water’s temperature.”

In the coming months, astronomers will test this hypothesis by using Herschel to search for evidence of water near other carbon stars.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Ars Electronica Festival – Don’t Miss September 6!

Ars Electronica made its debut on September 18, 1979. This festival of art, technology and society spotlighted the emerging Digital Revolution. In his preface to what was going on then, Mayor Franz Hillinger wrote (with specific reference to music): “Ars Electronica is giving rise to a new tonal coloration in which state-of-the-art technology is dovetailing with the intellectual spirit of the age to open up undreamt-of expressive possibilities. […] I am absolutely convinced that this new melodic parlance will ultimately be widely understood. After all, with the help of electronic music, it can even be made visible, be implemented in color, contour, line and rhythm that can be followed onscreen.” He would be proven correct.

Within a few years, Ars Electronica developed into one of the world’s foremost media art festivals. And its growing success was paralleled by the expansion of its annual lineup of events. The 1979 festival proudly presented 20 artists and scientists; in 2008, no fewer than 484 speakers and artists from 25 countries were in attendance. Don’t miss this year’s Live Stream on September 6 at 14:00 UT!

For more than three decades now, this world-renowned event has provided an annual setting for artistic and scientific encounters with social and cultural phenomena that are the upshot of technological change. Symposia, exhibitions, performances and interventions carry these inquiries beyond the confines of conventional conference spaces and cultural venues and take them out into the public sphere and throughout the cityscape. In this process of pervading public spaces and staging festival activities in interesting and appropriate physical settings, Ars Electronica has consistently displayed extraordinary imaginativeness. From the harbor to the mines, from factories to outlying monasteries, unusual locations have repeatedly served as sites of performances and interventions, and have, in turn, been reinterpreted by them.

But the attractiveness of Ars Electronica isn’t attributable solely to participation by renowned scientists and artists from all over the world. Or to remarkable venues. Above all, it’s the international audience that makes the biggest contribution to the festival spirit: the colorful mix of old friends and new faces who conjure up extraordinary circumstances – a “fruitful state of emergency” – every September in Linz.

Be sure to tune in on Monday, September 6th when the Ars Electronica Festival will be featuring Repair dealing with the issues of light pollution!

Orignal Source: ARS Electronica
Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could the World Run on Solar and Wind Power?

More than 3,300 solar panels have been erected on a vacant five acres at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Credit: NASA/Jim Grossman

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Today, the total oil and natural gas production provides about 60 percent of global energy consumption. This percentage is expected to peak about 10 to 30 years from now, and then be followed by a rapid decline, due to declining oil reserves and, hopefully, sources of renewable energy that technologies that will become more economically viable. But will there be the technology breakthroughs needed to make clean and exhaustible energy cost effective?

Nobel prize winner Walter Kohn, Ph.D., from the University of California Santa Barbara said that the continuous research and development of alternate energy could soon lead to a new era in human history in which two renewable sources — solar and wind — will become Earth’s dominant contributor of energy.

“These trends have created two unprecedented global challenges”, Kohn said, speaking at the American Chemical Society’s national meeting. “One is the threatened global shortage of acceptable energy. The other is the unacceptable, imminent danger of global warming and its consequences.”

The nations of the world need a concerted commitment to a changeover from the current era, dominated by oil plus natural gas, to a future era dominated by solar, wind, and alternative energy sources, Kohn said, and he sees that beginning to happen.

The global photovoltaic energy production increased by a factor of about 90 and wind energy by a factor of about 10 over the last decade. Kohn expects vigorous growth of these two energies to continue during the next decade and beyond, thereby leading to a new era, what he calls the SOL/WIND era, in human history, in which solar and wind energy have become the earth’s dominant alternative energies.

Kohn noted that this challenge require a variety of responses. “The most obvious is continuing scientific and technical progress providing abundant and affordable alternative energies, safe, clean and carbon-free,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges might be leveling off global population, as well as energy consumption levels.

Source: American Chemical Society

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Record-Setting Freefall Attempt Will be Webcast

Baumgartner during a test flight. Credit: Red Bull Stratos

Want to know what it is like to bail out in near space and freefall 37 km (23 miles) to Earth? You’re about to find out. While no date has been announced yet for Felix Baumgartner’s attempt at breaking the speed of sound during freefall, when it does occur, everyone will be able to watch. The Red Bull Stratos mission team announced today there will be a live television broadcast and online stream of the activities. In-flight cameras will be mounted on the capsule that brings him to 36,500 meters (120,000 feet) altitude via stratospheric balloon, as well as on Baumgartner’s space suit. If successful, this will be the first time in history a freefalling human body will reach supersonic speeds.


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There will also be microphones inside the capsule and inside Baumgartner’s helmet. Those on the capsule will record sound only as long as there is air to carry the soundwaves. When Baumgartner depressurizes the capsule (just before he jumps), those ambient microphones in the capsule will stop picking up sound, but his helmet mic should keep working.

The final launch date, location and live stream details will be announced in the coming weeks on www.redbullstratos.com, on Twitter (@RedBullStratos), and on Facebook.

The current record-holder, USAF Col. (Ret.) Joe Kittinger jumped from 102,800 feet 50 years ago this month. He did not break the speed of sound, although he probably came close. There have been several attempts to surpass Kittinger’s record, but none have succeeded, and people have given their lives for the quest. There are some movies and images from Kittinger’s jump, and his team used spring-wound motion picture cameras warmed by hot-water bottles to document his freefall. Red Bull Stratos will use high-definition video cameras and ultra-high-definition 4K digital cinematography cameras. The challenge will be keeping them cool in an environment where the air is too thin to wick away their heat.

The footage is being taken by FlightLine Films, who will be making a documentary about the jump, so it’s not clear how much will be live on the webcast, although the press release by Red Bull Stratos says the camers will “provide viewers of the worldwide broadcast with perspectives of the capsule, the skyscape and Baumgartner himself.”

And of course there is the main reason to record everything that happens in the jump: for the benefit of scientific research.

We’ll provide an update on the date of the Baumgartner’s jump when it is announced.

Read our preview article on Baumgartner’s record-breaking attempt.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Attention Teachers and Students: Fly An Experiment on Final Shuttle Mission

An astronaut works on an experiment outside the ISS. Credit: NASA

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We just received an exciting note from Dr. Jeff Goldstein, the Director for the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education. There is a unique and historic opportunity for students in grades 5-12 to fly an experiment on the final scheduled space shuttle mission, STS-134, through the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program (SSEP).

There is room for 45 different experiments to be flown for 10 days aboard Shuttle Endeavour, each designed by middle school and high school classes across the U.S., and with astronauts operating the experiments. Launch is tentatively scheduled for November 2010, but a launch slip to mid-January is expected, enabling this extra student spaceflight experiments opportunity.

But it’s time-critical! All the details of the experiments have to be submitted by the first part of August, 2010, and each team does have to secure their own funding.

So check out the SSEP website for details, and spread the word to all the teachers, students and school administrators you know!

This program does hinge on whether the flight will be delayed until January. The issue is the big new spectrometer that is going to the International Space Station, which will use a different type of magnet than originally planned. The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was supposed to fly in July, then was switched to the final scheduled shuttle flight and tentatively delayed to November to allow for the change in magnets. But now it appears it might slip to January, 2011.

But the delay is also providing this potential new opportunity. So, teachers, students — take advantage! And good luck!

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Man-Made Aurora Will Help to Better Predict Space Weather

Northern Lights
The Aurora Borealis seen in Alaska.

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New experiments that create a man-made aurora are helping researchers better understand how nitrogen in our atmosphere reacts when it is bombarded by the solar wind. Scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory fired electrons of differing energies through a cloud of nitrogen gas to measure the ultraviolet light emitted by this collision, and the findings show our previous understanding of the processes that create the aurorae – which can also adversely affect orbiting satellites– may have been in error.

For more than 25 years, our understanding of terrestrial space weather has been partly based on incorrect assumptions about how nitrogen — the most abundant gas in our atmosphere –reacts when it collides with electrons produced by energetic ultraviolet sunlight and solar wind.

The new research has found that well-trusted measurements published in a 1985 journal paper by researchers Ajello and Shemansky contain a significant experimental error, putting decades of space weather findings dependent on this work on unstable ground.

New technology has allowed the researchers to better create and control the collisions and avoid the analytical pitfalls that plagued the 1985 findings.

The new results from the team at JPL suggest that the intensity of a broad band of ultraviolet light emitted from the collision changes significantly less with bombarding electron energies than previously thought.

The researchers studied ultraviolet light within the so called ‘Lyman-Birge-Hopfield’ (LBH) band to better understand the physical and chemical processes occurring in our upper atmosphere and in near-Earth space.

“Our measurement of LBH energy-dependence differs significantly from widely accepted results published 25 years ago,” said Dr. Charles Patrick Malone from JPL. “Aeronomers can now turn the experiment around and apply it to atmospheric studies and determine what kind of collisions produce the observed light.”

In addition to helping researchers to better understand space weather, which can help protecting the ever-growing population of satellites in Earth orbit, the new findings will also help further our understanding of phenomena like Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights) and similarly the Aurora Australis (Southern Lights), which are caused by collisional processes involving solar wind particles exciting terrestrial oxygen and nitrogen particles at the North and South Pole.

The researchers are hopeful that their findings will also assist the Cassini project understand happenings on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, as LBH emissions have been detected by the orbiting robotic spacecraft.

The research was published in IOP Publishing’s Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Astronaut Demonstrates Gravity on Different Planetary Bodies

One of our favorite astronauts, Chris Hadfield from Canada, was recently part of the NEEMO-14 crew — NASA’s Extreme Environment Mission Operations — who spent two weeks in an underwater habitat simulating a long-duration space mission. The crew put together this great video showing what it would be like to walk and jump on the Moon, Mars and an asteroid. The “Aquanauts” and support divers are weighted down to simulate the different gravity. There’s also a jet pack demonstration, which the crew decided is needed for any future mission to an asteroid!