--------- #1393 - Does Anti-matter Really Exist?
- Attachments :
- The Big Bang Theory contains some really wild assumptions. To start with the theory maintains that we all started from “nothing”. For this assumption to be true there must have been equal amounts of matter and anti-matter created. Even energy and anti-energy must have started in the beginning. So, if you add up the whole Universe again you get zero, “Nothing”. Now that is a big assumption.
- We have a lot of evidence that the Universe is made of matter. It is everything, nearly everything. In the laboratory and in hospitals we have evidence that anti-matter can be created. We have evidence that when matter and anti-matter come back together they create a burst of Gamma Rays. Radiation. Mass back to energy. But, there is no anti-energy that we are away off being created at the same time.
- Anti-matter was first discovered mathematically. It was needed to balance physicists equation of atomic behavior. We finally created some evidence in the laboratory in 1935 when we discovered the anti-electron. Anti-electrons ( also called positrons) are exactly the same as electrons except the charge is reversed, it is positive rather than negative. Again, the Big Bang assumption is that creation had to have equal amounts of positive and negative charges in order to come from nothing.
- All the particles since discovered appear to have an equal and opposite twin. Protons have anti-protons. Quarks have anti-quarks. Even the element hydrogen as a twin anti-hydrogen that is produced in the laboratory. Except for the opposite charges we can not tell the twins apart. A galaxy made of entirely anti-matter would look to us to be exactly the same as a galaxy made entirely of matter. Unless, somehow you get the two together. If you landed one of our spaceships on the anti-planet in this galaxy you would go pwooooof! A burst of Gamma Rays is the evidence you get that that galaxy was made entirely of anti-matter.
- Weird as it is anti-matter is being used in our daily lives. Anti-electrons, or positrons, are the “P” that is in PET Scans. Positron Emission Tomography, PET, they did not want to call it anti-matter for fear it would scare people. Would you lower your body into an anti-matter machine. I don’t think so.
- The biggest mystery in physics is why do we live in a matter world and what happened to all that anti-matter that surely was created in the beginning? We know that the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is still producing anti-matter. We know because when an electron and an anti-electron come together they produce a unique signal of Gamma Ray energy. The signal is exactly as calculated using E = mc^2.
- An electron and an anti-electron have the same mass. 1.822*10^-24 kilograms is the combined mass of the two of them. c^2 = 9*10^16 meters^2/second^2 . m*c^2 = 1,020,000 electron volts. The two Gamma Ray bursts jetting away from the electron / anti-electron annihilation in the opposite directions is exactly 510,00 electron volts. An that is what we measure when we point our detectors at the center of our Galaxy.
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Other reviews available upon request on anti-matter are:
#1303 Why look for anti-matter in the Antarctic?
#1272 Teaching the science of anti-matter
#1149 on anti - matter, #971, #891, #730, #670, #880
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 31, 2012
--------- #1391 - How Much Are Those Remotes Costing You?
- Attachments : Cell Phone recycle pile.
- How would you like to save 15 cents on every dollar you spend on electricity?
- March 12, 2007, I attended a lecture by Dr. Alan Meier, Lawrence Lab Berkeley. He is an expert on “ standby power”. Stand by power is electricity consumed by all products that remain partially on when their main purpose is turned off. Anything operating with a remote must stay on in standby waiting for someone to push a button. There are 50,000,000 garage door openers in the U.S. consuming 3.5 watts around the clock.
- Any transformer plugged in the wall is using electricity whether you have your phone connected or not. Every toothbrush charger. Every microwave oven with a display. There are many homes paying good money for those two little green lights to flash and do nothing. Every dishwasher. Every computer. Any electronic device that has an LED is consuming electrical power on standby. You probably have 40 to 150 of these all around your home.
- If you add up all the leaking electricity it consumes 6 to 12 one billion-watt power plants are just for standby power. In the world standby power is responsible for 1% of the carbon dioxide emissions. The average California home is consuming 500 kilowatt per year, or about $60 per year. That is more than your refrigerator uses to keep food cold. Standby power by definition does nothing, it just leaks electricity. 15 to 20% of all of California’s electric power is lost this way.
- Un plug those transformers when not in use.
- Turn electronics off, kill the standby, if not needed.
- President Bush has issued an Executive Order to all manufacturers that their designs should have standby consumption of no more than 1 watt. Today most appliances consume 20 to 40 watts around the clock.
- Standby power is an easy problem to fix. Power management is readily available in electronics. Most manufacturers just do try to be power conscious. They are selling price profit conscious not lifetime cost conscious. After all they are not paying the electric bills. Or, are they?
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 31, 2012
--------- #1390 - How Much Are Those Cell Phone Chargers Costing You?
- Attachments : Cell Phone recycle pile.
- The most abundant source of energy in the United States is not what you think it is. It is in the form of conservation and efficiency of the electricity we are already using. A focused effort on innovation and continuous improvement of energy efficiency would grow our energy independence faster that any other resource. Use American ingenuity over foreign oil. Efficiency is the low hanging fruit that we should be taking immediate advantage of.
- There are over 170,000,000 chargers in California. An average of 4 chargers per household in the state.
- The electric chargers we are using today are cheap and inefficient. If they were replaced with more efficient charges we would save Californians $306,000,000 per year in electric bills. That is enough electricity to power 350,000 new homes.
- Today’s electric capacity cost us $350 per kilowatt-hour. To add new electric capacity at today’s prices it would cost us $900 per kilowatt-hour.
- Duh!
- Let’s save more of the $350 / Kwh that we have now before buying more of the expensive stuff. Here is California’s growth in the consumption of electricity
-------------------- 1960 ----------------- 55,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 1980 ----------------- 170,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 1990 ----------------- 220,000,000 million watt hours
-------------------- 2007 ----------------- 260,000,000 million watt hours
- That looks pretty bad. An enormous increase in electricity consumption. But, population has grown. New technologies using electricity are ubiquitous. Actually, California is doing much better than everybody else. California’s annual per capita consumption has increased at 8% per year. The United States in total has increased 54% per year. Californian’s consume 40% less energy per person than the national average.
---- Million watt-hours per capita ------California -------- USA ---------------
-------------------- 1960 --------------------------- 4 ---------------- 4 --------------------
-------------------- 1970 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 7.5 --------------------
-------------------- 1980 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 9 --------------------
-------------------- 1990 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 11 --------------------
-------------------- 2007 --------------------------- 7 ---------------- 13 --------------------
- The battery charges deliver 2,900 billion watts of useable electricity, the rest is waste.
- That is 36% efficiency. We have the technology to produce transformers and charging systems that are 80% efficient by comparison.
- Battery chargers for portable devices started appearing in the market in 1989. Lithium battery chargers arrived in 1991. Today California has 170,000,000 million of them. Converting these to efficient chargers would reduce CO2 emissions by 1.8 million metric tons. That is equal to 138,000 cars per year. Efficient chargers would reduce peak demand by 361 million watts and save us 2,038 million watt-hours per year. ( figured at 14 cents per Kwh ).
- There are over 2 dozen innovative ways these efficiency are gained. Here is a few examples:
- Chargers would turn transformers off automatically as soon as it reaches a full charge. Full-wave rectifiers would be used instead of half-wave rectifiers. “Switch-mode” power supplies would be used instead of “linear” power supplies.
- California is passing new laws and regulations to implement these efficiency standards ( AB32). Every decision we make in our lives has two parts: “ what to do” and “ how to do it”. The 1st is effectiveness” , the 2nd is efficiency. The 1st is doing the right things, the 2nd is doing things right. In my opinion, our politician are doing things all wrong.
- Politicians and Federal Departments should be limited to these how’s: communication, education, facilitation, and marketing. Instead, they want to govern with mandates. Constantly expanding laws and regulations. That is NOT how to do it. Give manufactures the tools, in standards and test procedures. Use competition to get a “ green sticker” certification. Market and educate consumers on the benefits and the wisdom of a green sticker purchase. Show the paybacks that come with smarter purchases. Use the laws to punish manufacturers that misbehave and misuse the system. There should be a price paid for lying. Let the free market implement the “what’s” that are important.
- Instead politicians use the laws they pass to benefit the campaign donors that give them the power to pass laws. Regulations with bias and loopholes create abuse and fraud. Enforcement is discriminatory and unfair for those not cronies to lawmakers who need to get elected. Announcements will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) See Review #1188 - Electric Energy - How to Power our Future.
(2) Review #739 - Standby Power.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Monday, January 30, 2012- The battery charges today consume 8 billion watt-hours per year
--------- #1390 - The Amazing Power of Dirt
- Attachments : Big Redwood Tree
- Dirt could save the Earth! The amazing power of dirt, and, we could also say the amazing power of plants, that make the dirt. Really, if we went back to farming and understood the genetics of plants and the microbes in the soil we could solve the Global Warming problems the natural way. No mandates needed, just education.
- Plants love CO2. Plants breath CO2 and exhale the “O” that we need to breath. They keep the “C“ and put it in the soil. We get the Oxygen and the dirt gets the Carbon. If science would focus on this part of our environment we could be taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and sequestering it underground, nature’s way.
- One of the obvious problems is that most of the plants farming has developed are “annuals”. They are food crops that have to be planted every year. What we need is a “ perennial “ version of corn and wheat. With perennial crops yields on farming in the world’s most desperately poor places could soar. At the same time these plants would soak up the excess carbon in the Earth’s atmosphere and put it back in to the soil.
- Genetic technology could make this happen. We have the technology.
- With perennials crops would not be replanted each year. Their deep roots would prevent soil erosion. The soil would hold minerals and require less fertilizer and less water. Perennials do not require tilling so the land would remain a carbon sink.
- Adopting perennials to agricultural crops is a significant scientific and cultural change effort. The genomes of plants must be analyzed for desirable traits associated between genes. Then we need to analyze the microbes in the soil that break down the carbon left by the plants.
- Perennial root systems sequester an amount of carbon equal to 1% of a cubic meter of topsoil. Replacing only 2% of the world’s annual crops would remove enough carbon to halt any increase in carbon dioxide in the world today. If all plants were converted to perennials it would reduce the world’s atmosphere by 118 parts per million CO2. That would take us back to pre-industrial historical levels. Today we are at 389 parts per million CO2. Before industrialization in the 19th century we were at 275 parts per million.
- Even without the genetics in the picture farmers in Malawe in southeast Africa are planting rows of perennial pigeon peas in between rows of corn. The peas are a much needed source of protein for the farmer while the legumes increase soil waste retention and double soil carbon and nitrogen content without reducing yields on their money crop, corn. The next step would be to plant perennial corn. Why not ?
- It is not just the plants we should also learn how to get the microbes in the soil working for us. The microbes could be doing same thing, removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it underground.
- Soil is not just top soil that is tilled. Rich brown and black dirt can be 2 to 10 feet down. This is decayed organic matter derived from plants that thrives all the way down to the bedrock.
- Soil organic material is about 60% carbon. Soil holds more than 3 times as much carbon as all the amount of carbon found above the ground. Carbon exist in the living roots, in the microbes themselves, in worms. in fungi and in other organisms as well as the generations that have passed before them.
- The secret lies in the soil microbes that decompose this material. Science has categorized over 15 different types of soil around the globe. Each soil type has its own family of living microbes. One gram of soil can contain 1,000,000,000 individual microbial cells. The number of different species can vary from 10,000 to 1,000,000 species in that single gram of dirt.
- These soil types are not just in our traditional farmlands. The permafrost in the Arctic likely contains half of all the soil carbon on the planet. Permafrost melts could be a serious rapid decomposition of carbon rich soil releasing it into the atmosphere. We need to understand the microbes involved in this process. How do they react to temperature changes?
- Some microbes are “ methanogens”. The exude as waste methane gas.
- Some microbes are “ methanotrophs” that actually consume the gas.
- Developing the balance in nature will take an intimate understanding of microbe cultures and communities. Let’s get with it. If we can do DNA on a chip we should be able to tell what species of microbe is in a sample of soil. Besides it is fun to play in the dirt.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
--------- #1389 - The Power of Light
- Attachments : Lightning volcano
- We can not learn all about the Universe using “ light”. There is just too little of it. Even if we expand the meaning of ‘light” beyond visible light to the entire electromagnetic spectrum our vision is limited. 95% of the Universe does not respond to electromagnetic radiation or forces.
- And, there is a wide range of intensities of light. Obviously the farthest stars and galaxies are very dim as light intensity falls off at the inverse square of the distance. Long time exposures are required to collect enough light to gather an image.
- And, there is a wide range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. Light waves are a very small sliver from 700 to 900 nanometers wavelength. Electromagnetic radiation starts ate radio waves and goes through many octaves of wavelengths before reaching Gamma Rays that have the smallest wavelengths and the highest frequencies. We needed to invent special detectors to “see” everything beyond our little sliver of visible light.
- AM radio at 1230 Hertz on your dial has photons of energy of 7.42*10^-31 Joules.
- If you get a suntan with ultraviolet photos at 2.5*10^15 Hertz, or cycles per second, each photon is 17*10^-19 Joules of energy. Ultraviolet rays are 2.3 trillion times more powerful than the radio waves.
- An X-ray photon would be 1.6*10^-15 Joules of energy.
- Here is a quick summary of the wavelengths of “ light”:
-------------------- Gamma Rays -------------------- 0.01 nanometers
-------------------- X-rays ---------------------------- 1 nanometers
-------------------- Ultraviolet --------------------- 100 nanometers
-------------------- Visible ------------------------- 500 nanometers
-------------------- Infrared --------------------- 100,000 nanometers
-------------------- Microwaves -------------------- 1 centimeter
-------------------- Radio -------------------------- 1 meter
- A 100 watt light bulb has a photon energy of 2.05 *10^-19 Joules. Its temperature is 3,000 Kelvin. How many photons are coming off the light bulb?
- There are 480,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons coming off the light bulb every second. The human eye can detect as little as one photon. Unless you are old like me and you need at least 10 photons to detect the light.
- Light has power, amazing power. It is the light radiation coming from the core of a star that prevents the star from being collapsed by gravity.
- The radiation from the Sun that reaches the Earth ahs 1,000 watts of power per square meter. The sunshine hitting you is 45,000 times more powerful that the TV station’s electromagnetic signal that is also hitting you.
- Light gets its power from electricity and magnetism. The 1,000 watts of power coming from the Sun is a 900 volts per meter electric wave traveling perpendicular to a 0.3*10^-5 Tesla magnetic wave. The wave oscillation is side to side , not back and forth like a sound wave or a density wave.
- To convince you that the light power comes from electricity and magnetism we can go back to when this was discovered. It was discovered in Maxwell’s equations for an electric field and a magnetic field. His equations included the permeability of free space and the permittivity of free space. The product of these two parameters was the speed of light squared, 9 * 10^16. When Maxwell saw this he recognized it as the speed of light and concluded that light was an electromagnetic wave.
----------------- Permeability is the ratio of magnetic flux density to the magnetic field strength in free space.
------------------Permeability = 4 * pi* 10^-7 Tesla* meters / amperes
---------------- Tesla is a unit of magnetic induction equal one Weber of magnetic strength per square meter.
--------------- Permittivity is the ratio of electric displacement is a dielectric medium to the electric field strength.
--------------- Permittivity = 8.8 * 10^-12 Coulombs^2 / Newton * meters^2
---------------- Coulomb is a unit for the quantity of electricity equal to the charge transferred in one second across a conductor in which there is a constant current of one ampere.
------------- Newton is a unit of force that produces an acceleration of one meter per second on a mass of one kilogram.
- In Maxwell’s equation ------------- 1 / permeability * permittivity
-------------------------------------------- 1 / (4 * pi * 10^-7) * ( 8.8*10^-12)
-------------------------- 1 / 111 * 10^-19
-------------------------- 9 * 10^16 meters^2 / seconds^2
- That is the square of the velocity of light, ( 3 * 10^8 meters / second)
- It is crazy math and a rash of scientific units but it illustrates that light comes from electricity and magnetism. Maxwell made this discovery simply looking at his equations trying to understand how electricity and magnetism works.
- Who would have thought that placing a phone call for a dime would lead to a cell phone for $100 a month?
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(1) # 1288 “ We are immersed in electromagnetic radiation”
(2) # 1286 “ What makes electromagnetic waves into light?”
(3) # 726 “ Electric and magnetic forces”
(4) # 1043 “ The strangeness of light”
(5) # 621 “ Background radiation”
(6) # 36 “ What do you think is the oldest thing you can see?”
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Saturday, January 28, 2012
--------- #1388 - The Energy of Motion
- Attachments :
- The energy of motion is called Kinetic Energy. The Universe is in constant motion in all directions and everywhere. The Universe must be FULL of energy. Constant motion is a natural state. You can not feel it as long as everything is in the same constant motion with you. You can feel acceleration or deceleration, which is a change in velocity. Velocity has both magnitude and phase, if direction changes velocity changes. Speed is magnitude only. So, you can have constant speed and change directions and that would be a change in velocity that you would feel.
- The Earth is traveling 66,663 miles per hour around the Sun. Our orbiting velocity is dependent on our distance from the Sun. ( The radius of the orbit). Everything that is the same distance as the Earth, 93 million miles, must be traveling the same velocity, 66,663 miles per hour in order to be in this orbit. Now, if the object happens to be traveling in the opposite direction then our closing speed is 133,300 miles per hour.
- The meteor showers like the December Geminid Meteors hit us traveling nearly sideways at 78,000 miles per hour. The August Perseid meteors are hitting us nearly head on at 132,000 miles per hour. Each night after midnight is when our part of the Earth is facing directly forward to the direction we are traveling.
- The fastest Cosmic Rays whip into our atmosphere at 2,237,000 miles per hour, 0.3% the speed of light.
- The galaxies are rushing away from us at 13 miles per second for every million lightyears distant. So, the farther away the galaxy, the more space that is expanding in between us, the faster it is receding. 47,000 miles per hour for every million lightyears. A galaxy that is 1 billion lightyears away is receding at 47,000,000 miles pre hour.
- What about a galaxy that is 13 billion lightyears away. So its velocity receding from us is 611,000,000 miles per hour. The speed of light is 671,000,000 miles per hour. There is no problem with the Theory of Relativity here. Actually the galaxy is not exceeding the speed of light, it is just sitting there. It is not moving away. The space in between us is expanding. It is like raisins in a baking loaf of bread. The dough is expanding and all the raisins are moving away from each other. The space between us and the furthest galaxies is pushing us apart at 611 million miles per hour. It is all relative. We could say we are going backwards that fast. Or , we are both going in opposite directions at half that speed.
- When an object is moving relative to the space-time uses the Theory of Relativity which says that the faster the object goes the more mass it gains. It length collapses and its time slows down. These changes in mass, distance, and time are necessary to prevent an object from ever exceeding the speed of light, 671,000,000 miles per hour. According to Relativity a pitched baseball is heavier the a baseball lying on the ground. Clocks tick slower when they move faster.
- If you don’t think motion has energy try stopping an asteroid as it hit’s the Earth. All of its Kinetic Energy, it mass times the square of its velocity, gets converted to thermal energy that explodes like a bomb. The energy can never be created or destroyed it simply gets converted from one form into another form. ( See Review #859 for more discussion on Kinetic Energy).
- The Universe is in constant motion, but not all of it is fast. The Pacific Tectonic Plate that I am sitting on is moving 0.000,000,007,09 miles per hour. Does not sound like much but over 100 million years it moved Bodega Head over 600 miles from Baja to my neighborhood.
- Bamboo grass grows at 0.000,023,7 miles per hour
- Olympic swimmers 5.71 miles per hour. Marathon runners 11.6 miles per hour. Jackrabbits 35 miles per hour. Race horses 37.6 miles per hour. Cheetah 60 miles per hour. Sail fish in the water 68 miles per hour. The fastest car on the Salt Flats 763 miles per hour.
- I am sitting here moving east at 814 miles per hour. If I were on the equator I would be moving east at 1,038 miles per hour. I am moving 1,194 feet per second due east. The sound barrier is 1,029 miles per hour. I could be breaking the sound barrier but I don’t feel a thing.
- Our whole Solar System is moving sideways toward the Constellation Hercules the Hero at 43,200 miles per hour. At the same time we are moving forwards towards the star Deneb in the Constellation Cygnus the Swan at 486,000 miles per hour.
- The Andromeda Galaxy is approaching us at 288,000 miles per hour. Together we are approaching the Virgo Cluster of Galaxies at 2,370,000 miles per hour and the Coma Cluster of Galaxies at 16,000,000 miles per hour. These galaxies are gravitationally connected. Galaxies further away are receding from us at the 47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears distance. ( See Review #684 for more details ) .
- Other reviews on energy include # 527 The review starts with the energy of the flowing water in the Russian River near flood stage. Proceed to a flashlight and continue to add energy as far as you can go. Where does it take you?
- Review #682 Symmetry is the expression of things being equal from all frames of reference. What does this have to do with the Law of Conservation of Energy?
- Review # 681 What is the most effective source of energy in the United States today? What is your best alternative for energy independence?
- Review #956 There are 13 different forms of energy . What do you learn when you try to mathematically define each form from electrical to nuclear?
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Friday, January 27, 2012
--------- #1386 - I Had No Idea Light Traveled That Fast!
- Attachments :
- Light travels at 657,633,500 miles per hour.
- Light travels at 186,237 miles per second.
- Light travels slower in other medium, or appears to. It really only travels at light speed but in other media it can be absorbed and re-emitted so it appears to be traversing the medium at a slower speed. Light only has 2 speeds. zero or light speed.
- If you see a bolt of lighting and you want to know how far away the lightning struck, you count, 1 second, 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 4 seconds and then the clap of thunder. You waited 4 seconds for the sound to reach you.
- Sound travels at 750 miles per hour.
- Sound travels at 0.208 miles per second.
- Sound travels 1100 feet per second.
- So the lighting strike is 8/10ths of a mile away.
- Meanwhile the lightning has traveled 745,000 miles.
- The Moon is 239,000 miles away so the light would have traveled to the Moon, reflected and traveled back to Earth, re-reflected and traveled back to the Moon while you were waiting to hear the thunder.
- If you were on the Moon you would see the lightning in 2 seconds, but you would wait 13 days for the thunder to arrive.
- Ok, I know, sound can not travel through outer space, so, in fact you would never hear the thunder. The Moon has no atmosphere so there is no sound on the Moon. We intrepret sound as what our ears can hear. Actually, sound is a density wave that our ears are sensitive to and it needs a medium like air to travel through. However, to destroy a myth, outer space is full of sound waves, called density waves.
- The density waves in space are very important to the evolution of our Universe. The sound waves detected in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation allowed astronomers to calculated the age of the Universe, 13.75 billion years old. The harmonics in the sound wave allowed the calculation of the composition of the Universe to be 73% Dark Matter, 23% Dark Energy, 5% Ordinary Matter. All that we know and understand lies in that little 5%. Density waves are responsible for creating the structure of the galaxies throughout the Universe. Sound waves are responsible for the birth of stars.
- Back to that light that left the lighting bolt. It would take 4 hours of the light to reach Neptune. If we had a spacecraft there we would need to send the radio signal 4 hours early before it told the spacecraft what to do. The we would have to wait another 4 hours for the spacecraft to tell us that it did it.
------------- Neptune is 30 Astronomical Units from the Sun.
------------- We are 1 AU.
------------ 1 AU is 93 million miles.
------------ Light travels 11,200,000 mils per minute.
----------- It takes light 242 minutes to get there 29 AU away.
- To communicate to the nearest star we would have to send the message 4.3 years in advance.
- To get to the Andromeda Galaxy we would need to send it 2,500,000 years in advance, and then wait that long for a response.
-------------- Light travels vast but space has enormous distances. By the way Andromeda Galaxy is the farthest thing you can see with the naked eye. Check it out.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Thursday, January 26, 2012
--------- #1385 - Solar Storm Hits the Earth
- Attachments : Solar Flare
- 30 minutes ago the Earth got hit with a powerful solar storm ( 9:30 A.M. Tuesday 1-24-12). The solar flare occurred on the surface of the Sun on Sunday night ( 11 P.M.). I took that long for the cloud of charged particles to reach us.
- The storm has already created beautiful auroras over northern Canada and Scandinavia. Operators are on the alert to see how much the storm effects electronic equipment and power grids. Higher altitudes are especially vulnerable to electronic disturbances. Power blackouts could occur. Satellites could be turned off temporarily. Airlines could loose radio communications and have to be rerouted. Wait and see what happens.
- The storm is a cloud of plasma. Plasma is ions or positively charged atomic nuclei and negatively charged electrons. The subatomic particles have been knocked loose from their neutral atomic structure. The plasma is created in the Corona of the Sun where it reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. The blast that launches these particles off the Sun and hurtles them towards the Earth is Solar Flares. The particles are launched above the escape velocities needed to leave the Sun’s gravity.
- When these charged particles reach the Earth a couple days later they enter our upper atmosphere and cause ionization of the atmospheric gases. Like a neon light show the gases light up in a bright aurora especially near the magnetic poles where they are headed. The plasma cloud distorts the Earth’s magnetosphere. Some of the magnetic disturbances can penetrate the shield and reach the surface of the Earth. The effect of the electric charges and magnetic fields on Earth can range from pipeline corrosion due to electrolysis , to communication outages, to power grid blackouts.
- It all started deep inside the Sun. At the surface jets of plasma called “ spicules” shoot out of the surface through the photosphere and up into the Corona. The jets reach speeds of 30 miles per second, 108,000 miles per hour. As the jets traverse the Corona they heat up to 100,000 Kelvin, to as much as 1,000,000 Kelvin. The lower temperature gas falls back into the surface. The hotter plasma remains in the Corona.
- Magnetic ropes of wrapped magnetic field lines emerge in loops. These ropes can carry strong electric currents that further heat up the Corona. When these loops exit and enter the surface of the Sun they create “ Sunspots” where the temperatures are slightly lower than the surrounding surface temperatures.
- When these magnetic ropes get too entangled, or too powerful, they can snap. This resulting release of energy causes a giant flare, or explosion, that hurtles plasma out of the Corona and into outer space. If the flare happens to be aimed at us the plasma cloud will travel to Earth in about 2 days time. When we are looking down the barrel of a Sunspot Solar Flare we get hit. I have to wait to learn what happens now. So far, my cell phone is still working. But, my chickens are restless.
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(1) Other reviews on Solar Flares, #1156, #850 , #1262
(2) We are 93 million miles away from the Sun. Light gets here in 8 minutes. Plasma arrives in 1 to 3 days. The plasma is billions of tons of material traveling at 2,000,000 miles per hour.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 24, 2012
--------- #1384 - Spiral Sprinkler not a Galaxy
- Attachments : AFGL 3068 Spiral
- There is a spiral in the night sky that is not a spiral galaxy. Called AFGL 3068, it is a binary star system that creates spirals like a lawn sprinkler. 3,000 lightyears away in the Constellation Pegasus the Horse. It is visible in the infrared but nearly invisible in visible light. The infrared spirals are the angular size of Mars in the sky, about 0.11 arc seconds..
- In order to get his faint picture the Hubble Space Telescope had to use a 33 minute time exposure. At the center of the spirals is a binary star system. One star is Red-Giant carbon star. The companion is blue-white star. The two stars are orbiting each other at a separation of 103 Astronomical Units. ( 103 AU is about 2 times the orbit of Pluto, see footnote 1 ). The orbit takes 800 years for one revolution.
- The Red Giant star sheds a high-intensity solar wind of material, about one Solar Mass every 700 years. (10^-3 Solar Mass / year). The material is carbon dust, fine black dust that surrounds the star and blocks the light. This dust photosphere has a temperature of 300 degrees Kelvin. The companion helps pull the escaping dust into a spiral like water from a spinning sprinkler head. The stream of black dust is traveling at 33,000 miles per hour ( 14.7 Km/sec).
- The spirals in the sky make 5 turns spread over 1/3rd of a lightyear. The binary stars orbital emissions are clockwork precision. The orbital period of 800 years creates an easily seen spacing between the spirals..
- The spirals of dark carbon dust are not emitting any glow. The dust is blocking all the star’s light. So, how are we seeing these spirals in visible light? It turns out that it is the star light from our own Milky Way Galaxy that is shining off the spirals.
- Our own Sun will become a “ Carbon Star” some day. It is the evolution of a dying star that is less than 1.4 Solar Mass. After the thermo-nuclear furnace at the core of the star burns all of the hydrogen ( fusion from hydrogen to helium), it begins fusing helium into carbon. The star expands into a Red Giant Star. The expansion is pulsating and blows its outer layers into space creating a super-solar wind. This cloud of material becomes a “Planetary Nebula” enclosed in a cocoon of this material. ( This whole process is much more complicated. I have given the shortened version.)
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(1) The diameter of the spirals is 0.11 arc seconds. At 3,000 lightyears away. The tangent of the angle times the distance tells us the diameter of the spirals.
--------------- 0.11 arc seconds * 4.8^10^-6 radians / arc second = 0.528^10^-6 radians * 3,000 lightyears = 1.584*10^-3 lightyears * 6.324*10^4 AU per lightyear = 100 AU.
--------------- There are 63,400 Astronomical Units in one lightyear.
--------------- one arc second = 0.0000048 radians.
(2) Carbon atoms form long, complex molecules that absorb visible light. That is why the binary stars are nearly invisible.
(3) Infrared is longer wavelengths and its light passes through the carbon dust without scattering. This is similar to a boat not stopping the big waves that pass right on by while the small waves splash on the side of the boat and scatter backwards. In this case the visible light is the smaller wavelengths that scatter and do not get through the carbon dust.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 24, 2012
--------- #1317 - The Cat’s Eye Nebula
- Attachment: Hubble’s composite image
- The Cat’s Eye Nebula is a planetary nebula. Back in 1786 when it was first discovered and recorded it looked like a planet and thus it got the “planetary” name. But, nebula have nothing to do with planets. The name stuck. Planetary nebula are dying stars that are not massive enough to go supernova, which is a thermonuclear explosion. When stars less than 1.4 Solar Mass run out of fusion fuel they die with a few outbursts that blow away their outer atmospheres before they collapse into a remnant White Dwarf star. The White Dwarf is only a cinder with no fusion left. Much of its mass is dispersed into outer space.
- This is the phase that the Cat’s Eye Nebula is in. A planetary nebula lasts about 10,000 years before the dissipation gets too faint to see. The Cat’s Eye, NGC-6543, is one of the most unusual planetary nebula because it has 11 rings or shells created by consecutive outbursts. 10,000 years is not long in astronomical terms so we would not expect to see very many. However, some 5,000 planetary have been catalogued in our own galaxy.
- The Cat’s Eye is located in the Constellation Draco the Dragon 3,300 lightyears away. It can be viewed with a 6-inch backyard telescope. The Nebula is located directly above the North Ecliptic Pole, 90 degrees perpendicular from the plane of the Solar System. The Hubble Space Telescope has made some careful measurements of the nebula. To learn how old it is one measurement was made of the outer most visible shell. The edge of the shell was 16 arc seconds from the star remnant at the center. The expansion was measured at 16 kilometers per second, or 36,000 miles per hour.
- To calculate the radius of the outer shell we use trigonometry. The distance to the nebula is the adjacent side of a right triangle and the radius of the shell is the opposite side. The tangent of the angle is the ratio of the opposite to adjacent sides. For very small angles the tangent is equal to the angle itself in radians.
- There are 2pi radians in the full circumference of every circle. 2pi radians = 360 degrees.
------------------------- Therefore, 1 radian = 57.3 degrees.
------------------------- And, 1 arc degree = 0.175 radians
------------------------- 1 arc minute = 0.00029 radians
------------------------- 1 arc second = 0.000048 radians.
------------------------ Tangent = Radius of the shell / Distance to the Nebula
------------------------ Radius of the shell = Tangent * Distance to the Nebula
------------------------ Radius of the shell = (tangent 16 arc seconds) * (4.8*10^-5 radians / arc second ) * (3300 lightyears )
----------------------- Radius of the shell = 0.25 lightyears.
- So the shell has been traveling 36,000 miles per hour and has traveled 0.25 lightyears distance. How long did it take?
--------------------- Time = Distance / Velocity.
-------------------- Time = 2.5 lightyears / 16 km / sec
-------------------- There are 9.3 * 10^9 kilometers in a lightyear
------------------- There are 3.1 * 10^7 seconds in a year.
-------------------- Time = 0. 25 LY * 9.5*10^12 km/LY / (16 km / sec) * (3.1 *10^7 sec / year)
------------------- Time = 4,800 years.
- The Cat’s Eye Planetary Nebula started expanding 4,800 years ago. This was about the time when the earliest Egyptians devised the 365 day calendar.
- The gases in the outer shells have expanded to 2.4 lightyears. Their total diameter in the sky is 300 milliarcseconds. These 11 shells began expanding 48,000 years ago and are equally spaced at 4,800 year intervals. This whole process must have started 48,000 years ago when “homo sapiens sapiens” subspecies was the only surviving humanoid on the planet. Cro-Magnon man was making stone tools and living in caves.
------------------------ Radius of the shell = (tangent 150 arc seconds) * (4.8*10^-5 radians / arc second ) * (3300 lightyears )
----------------------- Radius of the shell = 2.4 lightyears.
- The center star’s surface temperature is 80,000 C compared to our Sun’s 6,100 C. It is 10,000 times more luminous than our Sun. The star is creating a solar wind that is blowing material off at the rate of 20 trillion tons per second. The velocity of this wind is 1,000 miles per second , or 10 times faster than the material in the expanding bubbles. This immense solar wind slams into the slower bubbles of gas creating the rings we see surrounding the star. The nebula has a density of 5,000 particles per cubic centimeter and a temperature that varies from 7,000 to 15,000 Kelvin. This results in 11 empty bubbles appearing to have been created at 4,800 year intervals
.
- The dying star is ejecting 20 trillion tons of matter every second ( 2*10^16 kilograms / second). The original star had a 5 Solar Mass.
------------- Mass = 2*10^16 kg/sec * 48,000 years * 3.1*10^7 sec/year
------------- Mass = 2.8 *10^28 kilograms
------------------ 3 Solar Mass is 150*10^9 kilograms
---------------- Percentage = 0.28 *10^29 / 150*10^29 kg
-------------- Percentage = 0.18%
- Less than 2/10th of the star’s mass has been ejected into the planetary nebula in 48,000 years.
- The hot temperature gas by itself could not have created the powerful X-rays being emitted. Something else is going on? We still have more to learn from this 48,000 year old debris. An announcement will be made soon , stay tuned.
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(1) When the White Dwarf remnant star that is less than 1.4 Solar Mass, like this one in the center of the Cat’s Eye, is able to accrete mass from an outside source to where it exceeds 1.4 Solar Mass then it explodes as a Type 1a Supernova, a thermonuclear explosion. See Review # 1318 Kepler’s Supernova to learn more about these type of star’s death.
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707-536-3272, Sunday, January 22, 2012
--------- #1382 - Hoag’s Bull’s Eye Galaxy
- Attachments : picture of Hoag’s galaxy
- This is a picture of Hoag’s Bull’s Eye Galaxy. It is 600 million light years away. You will have to admit that it is a strange looking galaxy. This is not supposed to be how galaxies form. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy about the same size, the outer ring is 120,000 lightyears in diameter.
- The Bull’s Eye is a giant yellow ball of stars. It is surrounded by emptiness until you reach the ring of stars. How could such a configuration of stars ever happen?
- Astronomers do the math and their conclusion is that this is actually the results of two galaxies in collision. A smaller galaxy shot through the center of a larger galaxy like a canon ball. The gravitational forces that result create a ring of density waves that in turn create star formations rippling out from the center. ( See review on the Cat’s Eye Nebula to learn how the math was done.)
- The Hoag’s Bull’s Eye Galaxy is what is known as a “ ring galaxy”. And, is not the only one. There are 127 galaxies classified as ring galaxies. Two other examples are the “Cartwheel Galaxy” and AM0644-741
- Ring galaxies are important events for astronomers to study because the star formations are linked to the radius of the ring. The density wave furthest out creates the newest stars where the wave hit’s the interstellar medium. The oldest stars lie towards the center where the density wave first began.
- The calculation for the propagation of the ring is 200 kilometers per second, or 465,400 miles per hour. This would mean the collision between the galaxies occurred around 180,000,000 years ago. There is not very close agreement here with the original astronomer’s estimate of a 2 to 3 billion year old collision based on how far away the second galaxy is today. But, it is in the math:
------------ Time = distance / velocity
------------ Time = 120,000 lightyears / 200 kilometers per second
-------------- One lightyear is 9.3 * 10^12 kilometers
------------- One year is 3.1 * 10^7 seconds
------------ Time = 120,000 lightyears / 200 kilometers per second * 9.3 * 10^12 kilometers / lightyear / 3.1 * 10^7 seconds / year
-------------- Time 180,000 000 years.
- Ring galaxies will be getting more study to learn more about star evolution in the galactic collisions. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) 2 learn more #1317 Cat’s Eye Nebula
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707-536-3272, Sunday, January 22, 2012
--------- #1381 - V381 - Our Mistaken Quasar.
- Attachments : picture
- V381 is the brightest, most distant, fastest star found to date. It was first discovered in 1967 using radio telescopes. It was then called a Quasi-Stellar Radio Object, or QUASAR for short.
- Since then astronomers have identified over 200,000 Quasars, but, all are far distant, billions of lightyears away. With this one exception Quasars appeared to only exist in the early Universe. The Universe is not creating Quasars any more?
- Quasars are intense energies emitted by super massive Blackholes at the core of galaxies. Nothing escapes a Blackhole. However, in falling material from stars and nebulae become captured and hurled to extreme accelerations. The friction of gases colliding creates powerful X-rays and Gamma Rays. This intense radiation escapes out the magnetic and rotational poles of the accretion disk of rotating material. The jets of energy shoot out into space and the intergalactic medium.
- Mature galaxies that exist today have quiet Blackholes that have already devoured all the material in their gravitational vicinity.
- XTE J1550-564 is an exception. It is 17,000 lightyears away in the Constellation Norma the Carpenter’s Square. It became know as V381 Nor. And, it turned out it is not a galaxy but a binary system of one massive star orbiting a Blackhole, both orbiting a common center of gravity. The two stars are separated by only 5,000,000 miles. For comparison the planet Mercury is 25,000,000 miles from the Sun at its closest orbit.
- The star is so close to the Blackhole that it solar wind constantly feeds the accretion disk orbiting the Blackhole. The in falling material creates friction and intense heat which in turn creates X-ray radiation. The Jets from the Accretion disk just happen to pointed directly at us. We are looking down the barrel of a Blackhole.
- V381 acts like a Quasar except the Blackhole is not one of those super massive ones in the core of a young galaxy. This Blackhole is only 10.6 Solar mass. It is not a Quasar but the process is quite the same. In 1998 V381 became 150% brighter and became the most intense X-ray source in the entire sky. Here is what happened:
- The massive star that collapsed into the Blackhole sped up its rotation as it shrank. The spinning created an accretion disk of material. A dynamo was created with a powerful magnetic field. The star became a colossal rotating magnet.
- The magnetic field captured charged particles that became channeled along the magnetic poles. The in falling particles reached half the speed of light. When the particles reached the poles they shot out in opposing beams of energy.
- The powerful jets plowed into the interstellar gas. This slowed down the jets causing them to release their energy at lower wavelengths. This is brightness radiation that the astronomers saw.
- In April , 2000 it was the brightest hard X-ray source in the sky. Today it has faded to 1/10th the X-ray illumination of the Crab Nebula which is now the brightest X-ray source.
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(1) 2 learn more #1259 Distant Quasars and the early Universe.
(2) #944 Quasars
(3) # 4 Quasars, Blackholes with personalities
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707-536-3272, Sunday, January 22, 2012
--------- #1383 - Magnetars - Lethal Neutron Stars
- Attachments : picture
- Astronomers are not the only ones who tend to look for their car keys under the lamp post. We are limited to what we find by how much we see. In recent years astronomers have been getting bigger and bigger street lamps. They are reaching fully across the electromagnetic spectrum and even into gravity waves to find new information.
- On March 5, 1979, astronomers had radiation monitors on spacecraft that were near the planet Venus. These Gamma Ray detectors went off scale. In a 1/5th second later other detectors orbiting the Earth got hit by the same Gamma Ray Burst.
- What could cause a burst of energy so great that it exceeded all the energy the Sun has emitted over the past 1,000 years?
- The cause was an invisible Neutron Star barely 12 miles in diameter located in our neighboring galaxy.
- Neutron Stars are exceedingly dense. They have a ½ mile thick indestructible crust floating on a fluid of subatomic particles. The fluid is a plasma of neutrons, protons, and electrons that are no longer atoms. The core is made of neutrons which is the remnant of a massive star that exploded as a supernova. The Neutron Star is what was left behind. The rest blew into outer space.
- The Neutron Star is spinning hundreds of revolutions per second. Like a dynamo the spinning charged particles at the surface create a powerful magnetic field. Some magnetic fields have been calculated to be 1,000 trillion gauss. The Earth’s magnetic field is 1 gauss.
- The nearest Neutron Star with an intense magnetic field is 13,000 lightyears away. We call these stars , “Magnetars”. This is the only one found that is visible with optical telescopes. However, astronomers estimate that a million of these stars exist in our Milky Way Galaxy alone.
- Another Gamma Ray Burst occurred in December 27, 2004. This one came from a Neutron Star in the Constellation Sagittarius the Archer ( I call it the “Teapot”) . SGR 1806-20 is 50,000 lightyears away on the opposite side of our Galaxy.
- This single burst from 50,000 lightyears away changed the ionosphere of Earth from night into day. In 1/10th of a second the Magnetar emitted more energy than our Sun releases in 100,000 years. All of this energy comes for a gradual loss of the Neutron Star’s magnetic field. The intense magnetic field around the star deforms the stars solid crust. When the crust gives way it causes a “ star quake”. It is like a pressure that builds up and finally lets loose releasing enormous energy.
- The quake is so intense its energy release creates anti-matter, electrons and anti-electron pairs according to E = mc^2. When these particles re combine they release bursts of Gamma Ray radiation, converting mass back into energy according to E = mc^2. This loss of energy slows down the spinning star. Over a period of 10,000 years the spin rate slows down to where the magnetic field is reduced to less than 2 trillion gauss. At this point the star quakes are no longer occurring.
- Astronomers need to learn as much as possible about these Magnetars. They come from a nearly invisible Neutron Star 12 miles in diameter. But, they would be extremely lethal to an astronaut if he or she were caught in a Gamma Ray Burst. Within 2,000 miles the Neutron Star would be too small to see but its magnetic field would turn every atom in your body into a long needle formation. An extremely lethal situation in a fraction of a second. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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(1) To learn more #1223 - where do stars go when they die
(2) #704 Magnetars in the heavens
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707-536-3272, Sunday, January 22, 2012
--------- #1380 - What Happens to an Atom When It Stops Moving?
- Attachments : picture of atoms
- New Technology is cooling atoms down to Absolute Zero temperatures. Temperature is created by vibrating atoms. When atoms stop vibrating there is no more heat. It is as cold as it gets. The new technique uses an optical lattice of criss-crossing laser beams. With the precise sequence of modulation of the laser beams, standing waves, pockets of nulls and peaks, are created that trap individual atoms.
- When atoms approach Absolute Zero temperatures their vibrations slow down and new properties emerge. New properties in magnetism, in superconductivity, and in superfluidity.
- A vacuum chamber of criss-crossing beams contains a very dilute gas of rubidium atoms. (Rb37). Each lattice site is an energy well in which one or more atoms can become trapped. Science has learned that there are particular excitation laser frequencies that can eject an atom from the well. The frequency needed depends on how many atoms are in the well.
- The right modulation is used until there is just one atom per well. The energy for an atom to move into an adjacent well is extremely high. A special optical microscope is used to confirm there is one atom in each lattice site. When there are more than one atom per site an atom is removed. When an atom is removed this reduces the entropy ( the degree of disorder, or randomness), and that, in turn, reduces the temperature.
- Temperatures have been achieved within 10^-9 to 10^-12 degrees Kelvin. This is 0.000000001 degrees above Absolute Zero.
- More research is on the horizon. The optical lattice, in principle, could be used to store and manipulate the quantum state of atoms. This opens the door to Quantum Computers.
- Another avenue is to repeat this lattice capture with Fermions. Electrons are Fermions. Rubidium atoms are Bosons. This would allow further research into superconductors and superfluids.
- Here are some of the strange things that happen when materials are cooled to Absolute Zero temperatures. A piece of metal will levitate above a magnet with no energy being consumed. Liquid helium will flow up the walls of a container defying gravity. Solid material will pass right through each other. Magic? No, Physics.
- Once you cool liquid helium to about 2 Kelvin you can set the liquid rotating, and it will keep spinning forever with no energy being consumed. It becomes a “ superfluid” with zero viscosity.
- This superfluid property is used in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Switzerland. The thousands of magnets that direct the proton beam around the 27 kilometer ring are cooled using superfluid helium. The superfluid keeps the entire ring within 0.1 Kelvin.
- When the magnets are super cooled they become superconductors, the metals loose all resistance to the flow of electricity. Therefore, very little power is required for the electro- magnets to carry huge amounts of current. Then the magnets can generate the intense magnetic fields needed to control the proton beam.
- Superconductivity and superfluidity are properties of the Quantum World. According to Quantum Mechanics a particle can exist in many places at once and can move in more than one direction at a time. This is the property of wave-particle duality. When you sum up the possible outcomes of the atom’s behavior the phase can be “+1” or “- 1”. These two different phases represent two different types of particles, Bosons and Fermions.
- Helium atoms are Bosons and their super cooled formations become a Bose-Einstein Condensation which gives rise to superfluidity. The fluid becomes a giant atom in its lowest possible quantum energy state. The lack of viscosity arises because there is a huge gap in energy between the lowest state and the next higher energy state. Viscosity is the dissipation of energy due to friction. In its lowest stat there is no way to lose energy so there is no viscosity.
- Superconductors display the same property except using electrons which are Fermions. If you swap Fermions you always get a phase change of “-1”. Now, this time you add up the possible states and you get zero. There is zero probability of finding Fermions in the same Quantum State. This property is what makes chemistry possible. An atom’s electrons can not occupy the same positions. They are forced to occupy rings further and further away from the nucleus. This builds the elements in the periodic table and the outer electrons freer from the protons can engage in bonding and chemical reactions.
- Electrons in superconductors also form Bose-Einstein Condensations by binding together in “ Cooper Pairs” and acquiring the characteristics of a Boson. In effect the electrons become a single giant particle that lacks electrical resistance Again, the electron-pair condensation is in the lowest possible energy state. It can not dissipate more energy, so the resistance is zero.
- If helium is reduced to below 1 Kelvin and above 25 atmospheres pressure it becomes a solid. But, these solids can pass through each other, like a ghost walking through a wall. The super-solid helium is another form of Bose-Einstein Condensation.
- In 2011 astronomers discovered that the core of Cassiopeia A , Neutron Star, was a “ superfluid”. This star is 11,000 lightyears from Earth. One teaspoon of the star material would weigh 6,000,000,000 tons. The Neutron Star is not just made of neutrons, some of the material is protons that carry the electric charge of a superconductor. This “cold” is not created by temperature; it is created by pressure. Gravity can produce the Bose-Einstein Condensation and Quantum States as well as our new technology. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Thursday, January 19, 2012
--------- #1379 - Sloan Survey of Galaxies.
- Attachments : picture of galaxies
- This is an amazing picture that you will just have to think about for some time before you begin to comprehend it. The picture is 1,000 billion pixels. Each green dot is a galaxy. It goes back in time to half the age of the Universe, over 6 billion years. Each green dot represents 100’s of billions of stars. Likely 10% of those stars have planets. The most incomprehensible think in the Universe is the fact that here you are trying to comprehend it.
- The 1,000 billion pixel picture would fill 500 high definition televisions. The picture is produced by the Sloan Sky Survey. The data collected goes back 6,000,000,000 lightyears, halfway to the Big Bang.. The expanding Universe creates a redshift of these galaxies from 25% to 75% expansion of their light’s wavelengths. The greater the distance the greater the wavelength because more of the light’s time was spent in expanding space. There are over 1,500,000 galaxies in the picture.
- The purpose of the Sloan Sky Survey was to create a 3 dimensional view of the cosmos. To learn how galaxy clusters form in the fabric of space-time. To learn how the Universe is expanding over time. There are sound waves imbedded in this clustering data that can be used to calculate the amount of ordinary matter, relative to the amount of Dark Matter, relative to the amount of Dark Energy, and relative to the amount of neutrinos in the Universe.
- The clustering data could even help astronomers pin down the mass of the neutrino. Originally astronomers thought neutrinos were massless. Later discoveries have determined that neutrinos have a very small mass. How much is still under investigation. This data has already shown that the maximum possible mass for a neutrino is 0.3 electron volts, equivalent to 5 *10^-34 grams.
- The data shows that there are “luminous galaxies” that are much brighter than the average galaxy. Sloan data has identified 900,000 of these luminous galaxies. Since they shine brighter they can be seen at greater distances. The brightness of these galaxies was measured in 5 different colors. By analyzing the redshifts of each of these color wavelengths astronomers can calculate the distance to each galaxy.
- In doing this calculation an issue astronomers had to overcome was the starlight in our own galaxy that was blocking the view of the more distant galaxies. To get the proper estimates of galaxy clustering the effects of foreground stars had to taken in to account. When the 3 dimensional picture emerges out of this data the imprint of sound waves in the early Universe emerge as a clear pattern. The clustering of galaxies are a result of the sound oscillations compressing and rarifying densities of ordinary matter. It is called baryon acoustic oscillations.
- The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation displays this same pattern when the Universe was only 300,000 years old. That is 13.4 billion years ago. The Sloan data goes back 6 billion years ago. By comparing the two data sets astronomers can calculate the expansion of the Universe over that period of time.
- Most of the galaxies are “red galaxies”, older galaxies because they contain only red stars. All the younger blue and yellow stars have exhausted their nuclear fuel and are gone.
- Plotting the data in an angular power spectrum allows astronomers an tell how matter statistically varies in density across the sky. The density waves are sound waves from the early expansion of the Universe. The waves have a fundamental frequency and harmonic frequencies. From these patterns astronomers can determine that 50,000 years after the Big Bang the density of matter and the density of radiation were exactly equal. After that time matter could dominate and structures could begin to form.
- By about 300,000 years after the Big Bang the hot, liquid-like soup of matter finally cooled enough for neutral atoms to form into hydrogen and helium atoms. When the positive and negative charges were neutralized the photons of radiation were free to escape the soup and begin to travel into the cosmos. Before that time the Universe was opaque, like a white storm cloud that you can see the surface but you can not see inside.
- The density sound pattern of matter density peaks every 450 million lightyears. These peaks are the direct descendants of density fluctuations that started in the early Universe. From this pattern astronomers can conclude that Dark Energy is 73% of all the mass-energy in the Universe. Dark mater is 23% and Ordinary Matter only 4%. The uncertainty of these conclusion is < 2%.
- Everything we come in contact with and believe we understand is ordinary matter. Over 95% of the Universe is something else that we do not understand. It is “ dark”. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Wednesday, January 18, 2012
--------- #1378 - Rare Earths is Not About Astronomy?
- Rare Earth elements are metals that have become essential in manufacturing today’s new technologies. Education is needed to mine, process, reuse and recycle products essential for the prosperity of the United States economy. Wake Up America.
- Attachments : picture of rare earth oxides and periodic table.
- A prior review #1266 is about Rare Earths and what you should know about them. Rare Earth elements are 17 metals in the Periodic Table. Atomic Numbers 57 to 71. And, they are not “rare”. They are all around us in today’s technology. In smart phones, hybrid cars, power tools , wind turbines, wine bottles, and a long list of other products. And, they are not “rare” in the environment either. The dirt in your back yard contains these “rare earths”. What is rare is to find them in concentrations great enough to make mining them economical. There is only one mine in the U.S. and it was closed by California environmentalist in 2002. (Although a lot of research is in process to reopen these mines.)
- Even the rarest, “rare earth metal” , Thulium, is 200 times more abundant than gold. See Review #1266 for a summary on each of these metals.
- Dyprosium, Dy66, is one of the most critically needed materials on the planet today. It is used in every high-tech product and clean energy technology invented in the last 30 years.
- A National Presidential Priority needs to be set for the U.S. to invest in better understanding of how to extract these metals, how to use them more efficiently, how to reuse and recycle them, and how to find substitutes for them. The top priorities are needed for:
--------------------- dyprosium
--------------------- neodymium
--------------------- terbium
--------------------- europium
--------------------- yttrium
- Today China has 100 times more researchers working on this problem than we have in the U.S. While our government is funding Solyndra and Volt electric cars.
- Batteries, photovoltaic’s, and lighting need economical access to cerium, neodymium, and terbium. High performance magnets in wind turbines, disc drives, and hybrid cars need access to dysprosium.
- Other critical elements include lithium, helium, cobalt, rhenium.
- Research investment is needed to find substitutes in the use of these elements in their specific applications. Nanoscience can synthesize and control materials at the level of atoms and molecules and at few tens of nanometers. This science is needed to learn exactly how each of these elements works. In that way efficiencies and substitutes can be invented.
- Another area of research is in using microorganisms in the mining of low concentrations of these metals. See Review #1374 - Microbes Dominate Life on Earth to learn more.
- Research is also needed on how to “lifecycle process” these elements. How to reuse and recycle them efficiently and in environmentally acceptable ways.
- Today all cell phones get thrown away yet each phone contains 40 different parts with rare earth elements. A Toyota Prius contains 30 pounds of rare earth material. Policies should have incentives and education aimed at manufacturers and retailers to always accept returns of their products for reprocessing. Then, the products should be designed for easy removal and recovery of critical parts by consumers.
- The main goal should be to be more efficient and resilient in handling shortages of rare materials. Who knows what new technology may rely on the next material in the future. And, then it could change with new inventions. Having alternatives and effective reuse and recycling programs is essential to our prosperity in the future. ( I actually started such a program at Hewlett-Packard Co. in 1971, the Blue Stripe Exchange Program to recover yttrium)
- Politically I think government polices are best done not with mandates and enforcement laws, but, with education, communication, facilitation, and transparency. Businesses want to do the right thing, if not, their consumers can convince them to do the right thing. It all involves education. It is just that sometimes you need a 2 x 4 to get their attention. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Wednesday, January 18, 2012
--------- #1377 - Cosmic Rays and Gamma Rays
- Cosmic Rays and Gamma Rays are high energy phenomena that are amazing things to study. They represent some of the extremes of the Universe.
- Attachments : picture
- Cosmic Rays are not rays at all. They are actually sub-atomic particles, usually the nuclei or hydrogen or helium atoms. They obtain their high energy by traveling so fast, often near the speed of light.
- Gamma Rays truly are waves. They are high energy light waves. The energy of all “light” , or electromagnetic radiation, is dependent on the frequency of oscillation. The higher the frequency the higher the energy. ( E = h*f).
- Gamma Rays have higher energy than X-rays. Their frequencies are 3*10^22 cycles per second and higher. These frequencies represent energies of 24,900,000 electron volts and higher. Ordinary light is 2 to 3 electron volts. Dental X-rays are 5,000 electron volts.
- Astronomers have had the Fermi Gamma Ray telescope in space for more than 3 years. Its Large Area Telescope scans the entire sky every 3 hours. It measures radiation levels from 20 million to 300 billion electron volts.
- The really high energy Gamma Rays are above 10 billion electron volts ( 10 GeV). Fermi’s telescope has discovered one of these every 4 months on average. Fermi has discovered 496 Gamma Ray Sources over 10 GeV and 1,873 Sources over 1 GeV. (1,000,000,000 electron volts).
----------- Here is how the data breaks down:
------------------ Blazar Galaxy ------------ 1,069 ------------- 57%
------------------ Pulsar ------------------------ 115 ------------- 6%
------------------ Supernovae ------------------- 77 ------------- 4%
------------------ Active Galaxy ---------------- 20 ------------- 1%
------------------ Normal Galaxy -------------- 20 -------------- 1%
------------------ Unknown -------------------- 572 ------------- 31%
- Nearly 60% are Blazars and Active Galaxies. These are super massive Blackholes that are consuming in-falling matter. The rotating matter reaches high energy and jets out the magnetic poles at nearly the speed of light. When these jets collide with particles and intergalactic gases they create high energy Gamma Ray radiation.
- 10% of the Sources lie within the Milky Way Galaxy. These include rotating Neutron Stars called Pulsars, expanding debris from supernovae explosions and binary systems containing massive stars.
- 31% of the Sources found are completely unknown objects that are not detected at other wavelengths. Some of the Sources completely fade away above 1 GeV.
- There have been 130 Gamma Ray Sources discovered that have energies above 100 GeV.
- Cosmic Rays, that is Cosmic Particles, have even greater energies than Gamma Rays. Most Cosmic Rays have energies in the range 0.01 to 10 GeV. However, as amazing as it sounds, a few Cosmic Rays have been detected with energies of 100,000,000,000 GeV. This energy level is 40,000,000 times more powerful that we can create here on Earth with our most powerful particle accelerators. One of these single Cosmic Ray particles the size of a proton would have the same amount of energy as a tennis ball hitting you at 100 miles per hour.
- Cosmic Rays were first discovered in 1912. The Cosmic particle charges that were measured were thought to be some form of invisible light coming from outer space. Therefore, they were called “Cosmic Rays”. The “rays” stuck even though they were later to be discovered to be Cosmic Particles. It was not until 1950 that astronomers figured this out.
--------------- Here is the data on Cosmic Rays:
------------------------- 89% ----------------- protons, hydrogen nuclei, positive charges
------------------------ 10% ----------------- helium nuclei, alpha particles, 2 protons and 2 neutrons nuclei, positive charges
---------------------- 1% ------------------ electrons, negative charges
- All Cosmic Ray particles carry an electric charge and therefore spiral as they travel through a magnetic field. This makes it difficult, or impossible, to determine which direction they were coming from. The ratio of hydrogen nuclei and helium nuclei matches the relative abundance of these elements in the Universe.
- The energy of Cosmic Rays is Kinetic Energy which is mass times velocity and depends on the speed of the particle. The lower energy Cosmic Rays originate in our Sun. The higher energy Cosmic Rays come from outer space.
- The Earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field protects us from Cosmic Rays hitting us from outer space. However, some Cosmic Rays do reach the surface of the Earth. Your body on average receives 26 millirems of Cosmic Ray radiation every year. Your body would receive an additional 5 millirems of radiation for each 1,000 feet you go in elevation above sea level. When you fly in commercial airplanes at 30,000 feet add 1 millirems for every 1,000 miles that you travel. Airline crews have been found to have 23 cases for cancer per 100 instead of the 22 cases per 100 for land lubbers ( a 4.5% increase).
- Astronauts experience 5,000 Cosmic Ray hits every second. To protect astronauts to the level found on Earth they would need to be surrounded by 16 feet of water, or some other equivalent mass.
- It is still a mystery of where the truly ultra-high energy Cosmic Rays come from. A best guess is from super massive Blackholes in the center of galaxies. Somehow these powerful energies are able to slingshot cosmic particles to near light speeds. One wild idea is that Dark Matter particles decay into high-speed proton pairs. One proton gets pulled into the Blackhole and the other gets shot out in an equal and opposite direction to travel through the Cosmos.
- Announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
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707-536-3272, Sunday, January 15, 2012
--------- #1376 - How Can Pulsars Have Planets?
- The first planets discovered in 1993 were not orbiting a Sun-like star but a Neutron Star, a Pulsar. When a massive star goes supernova the explosion is expected to evaporate any existing solar system. How do we explain Pulsar Planets?
- Attachments : Supernova explosion.
- In 1995 astronomers announced the first planet found orbiting another star. The planet was the size of Jupiter and named “51 Pegasi”. However, two other planets were discovered in 1993 but they were not counted because they were orbiting a Pulsar, a Neutron Star, not a Sun-like star. The Pulsar is named PSR B1257+12. The Pulsar lies in the Constellation Virgo the Virgin and is 980 lightyears away.
- This Pulsar is a Neutron Star spinning at 161 revolutions per second. ( 9,660 rpm). The discovery was made using a radio telescope that detected the flashes from the electromagnetic jets streaming away from the Pulsar’s magnetic poles. The Neutron Star itself is only 20 miles in diameter. It’s spin was somewhat irregular. Its period was delayed and then advance on a recurring basis. Something was shifting the Neutron Star back and forth in a predictable sequence.
- When the best mathematicians were tasked as to what scenario would fit the observed data, they came up with two small nearby planet, a 3rd definite planet, and a 4th ultra- small planet orbiting the star.
- Of the 3 larger planets their orbits are 25 days, 67 days, and 98 days.
- Their sizes were 1/50th Earth size ( Moon-size), for one and 4 times Earth-size for the other two.
- A Pulsar is a collapsed core of a massive star that has gone supernova. Astronomers are surprised that a “ solar system” could survive such an explosion. By their calculations all of the Pulsar’s planets should have been obliterated.
- However, there they are, planets in circular orbits, remnants of a solar system belonging to a massive star. Maybe these remnants are the rocky cores of Jupiter-size planets that had their mantles blown away.
- It is hard to make sense of a scenario that these planets formed after the supernova explosion and after the Neutron Star was formed. One far fetched scenario is that a roving Neutron Star came too close to this Neutron Star and got pulled to pieces by the tidal forces. The debris formed a proto-planetary disk that eventually coalesced into the three planets. This is pure speculation, but, how else can you explain it?
- To make the mystery even more interesting another planetary system has sense been discovered in the year 2000 orbiting another Pulsar. PSR B1620-26 is a Pulsar binary system in the Constellation Scorpius, very near the bright star Antares, 12,400 lightyears away. The binaries are a Pulsar 16 miles in diameter and a White Dwarf 6,000 miles in diameter ( Earth-size).
- This system is the oldest planets discovered to date. Estimated to be 8 billion years old. Our Solar System planets are only 4.5 billion years old.
- Pulsars are not good solar parents. They deliver lethal X-rays and Gamma Rays to all their surroundings. This radiation would make mortal life impossible.
- Actually, the Earth was the first planet to be discovered and it just happens to be the right size and the right temperature orbiting the right star. How lucky can you get.
- What happens to a solar system, or even a companion star when a supernova explodes? Recently astronomers found a supernova remnant. A giant bubble of expanding gas and debris with everything inside consumed in the conflagration. The remnant is SNR-0509-67.5 in our neighboring galaxy the Large Megellanic Cloud. The remnant is judged to only 400 years old.
- The data makes astronomers believe that this Type 1a supernova was two White Dwarf stars orbiting each other until they got close enough to collide. Kaboom!!! But, this is different than astronomers thought Type 1a supernovae worked. It was always thought that there was one White Dwarf and a companion star in orbit. The White Dwarf was drawing gas from the companion until it reached exactly 1.4 Solar Mass. At that mass and gravitational force the electrons collapse into the nuclei. The atoms collapse. The star implodes. The implosion bounces off the core in a giant explosion. A Type 1a supernova.
- Since the mass of the explosion is always the same, 1.4 Solar Mass, the brightness of the explosion would always be the same. A peak luminosity of 10^10 Solar Luminosity with a linear decay in brightness over 300 days. This was a “ standard candle” that could be used to calculate distances accurately. In turn, astronomers could calculate the rate of expansion of the Universe.
- This discover of two White Dwarfs colliding, obliterating everything, with a different mass and Luminosity screws up all the calculations. They need to know which scenario applies before they can use the Chandrasekhar Limit of 1.4 Solar Mass in their calculation for Luminosity.
- Here is how the distance measurements are supposed to work once you have a light source of know Luminosity:
----------------------- Apparent Brightness = Luminosity // 4 * pi * r^2
-------------------- r = distance to the light source, the star
-------------------- Luminosity is known to be 3.8 *10^26 watts.
-------------------- Apparent Brightness is measured to be 10^-12 watts / meter^2
--------------------- 10^-12 = 3.8 * 10^26 watts / 4 * pi * r^2
--------------------- r^2 = 0.3 *10^38 meters^2
--------------------- r = 0.55 * 10^19 meters.
--------------------- One lightyear is 9.5*10^16 meters.
------------------- r = 580 lightyears distance to the star
- If the actual Luminosity is different than the distance calculation is different. The calculations for the rate of expansion of the Universe will be different. The astronomers are back to the drawing boards.
- Astronomy is a dynamic science. An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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RSVP, please reply with a number to rate this review: #1- learned something new. #2 - Didn’t read it. #3- very interesting. #4- Send another review #___ from the index. #5- Keep em coming. #6- I forwarded copies to some friends. #7- Don‘t send me these anymore! #8- I am forwarding you some questions? Index is available with email and with requested reviews at http://jdetrick.blogspot.com/ Please send feedback, corrections, or recommended improvements to: jamesdetrick@comcast.net.
or, use: “Jim Detrick” www.facebook.com, or , www.twitter.com.
707-536-3272, Tuesday, January 17, 2012
