When will the next asteroid hit?

-  1769  -  When is the next asteroid going to hit Earth?  How many are near Earth objects intersecting our orbit around the Sun?  How big are they?  What can we do about an imminent impact?
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-----------------  1769  -  When is the next asteroid going to hit Earth?
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-   The last really big asteroid impact occurred in the Yucatan Peninsula about 65 million years ago.  This asteroid was estimated to be 6 miles in diameter.
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-  In 1908 a much smaller 56-foot-wide asteroid created an air-blast over Russia’s Tunguska River in Siberia.  The blast leveled 60 million trees over an 1,330 square mile area.
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-  Smaller asteroids enter Earth’s atmosphere all the time.  Over one hundred 300-foot-wide asteroids are expected to strike over the next million years.  During that same period two 3,000-foot-wide asteroids will hit.  A rock this size delivers an explosion equivalent to 20,000 megatons of TNT.
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-  The smaller asteroids only 300-feet-wide deliver a 20 megaton explosion.
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-  The Asteroid Belt is believed to contain more than 750,000 asteroids that are larger than 0.6 miles ( 3,000 feet) diameter.  The Belt is between Mars and Jupiter.  Near-Earth-Objects, (NEO‘s) asteroids, orbit the inner solar system and some times cross paths with Mars and Earth.
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-  Ceres one of the largest asteroids in the Belt is 583 miles in diameter.  Ceres is now classified as a Dwarf Planet, like Pluto.
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-  Some 150 asteroids have their own orbiting “ moons”.  The two moons orbiting Mars, Phobos and Deimos, are believed to be captured asteroids.
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-  The mass of all the known asteroids is less that the mass of the Moon. ( The Moon is 5% the mass of the Earth.)  Most  asteroids orbit in the “ Belt” between Mars and Jupiter.  More than 200 of these have been measured to be over 60 miles diameter.
-
-  Well, how many of those > 3,000-foot-wide asteroids in “ Near Earth Orbit” are out there?
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-  As amazing as it may seem nearly 500 of the NEO asteroids have been discovered.  Of course finding them is just the first step.  Astronomers need to track them over time to discover their orbits and their potential for “ close encounters”.
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-  How do we protect ourselves from one of these impacts actually heading our way?
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-  The 6-mile wide asteroid created a 120 mile wide crater in the Yucatan.  The global environmental impact wiped  out the dinosaurs and 80% of the animal species on Earth.
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-  If another potential impact is imminent are we prepared to do something?
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-  Would we send a rocket loaded with a nuclear bomb designed to blast the trajectory out of harms way?  Could we do something the dinosaurs could not do?
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-  Pound for pound nuclear explosions contain a million times the energy density of chemical explosions.  The idea is to explode the bomb  “near” the asteroid.  The blast would be close enough to vaporize the surface of the asteroid.  The expanding hot gases rising from the surface would provide the thrust needed to propel the asteroid off course.
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-  In preparation for just such an event scientists have used X-ray radiation on meteoritic samples to learn how to best vaporize the surfaces.  The plan changes between a stony asteroid and a nickel-iron asteroid so a recognizance mission is needed to determine an asteroid’s composition.
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-  The calculations are that the most effective detonation occurs from a distance of 2 asteroid diameters away.  The plan would be to use several small explosions rather than one big one.  This would reduce the chances of fragmenting the asteroid and give us a chance to make adjustments with each detonation.
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-  If an asteroid is coming with Earth as its target rather than just praying , it would be better to pray that the rocket works.  Meanwhile let’s pray that we don’t have to face this situation.  Stay tuned, astronomers are always looking for incoming asteroids.  If it happens to be a long-period comet coming at us from the  direction of the Sun we have little chance of ever seeing it before impact.
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When could planets become stars?

-  1768  -  When can planets become stars?  We have sub-planets called Dwarf Planets and we have sub-stars called Brown Dwarf stars.  Where is the dividing line?
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-----------------  1768  -  When can planets become stars?
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-  The planet Neptune was discovered in 1846.  It is at the edge of our Solar System.  Ever since then astronomers have been trying to discover more planets in the outer Solar System.  Each planet’s orbit only makes sense when you account for all the mass that is perturbing it.
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-  In 1930 Percival Lowell claimed he had discovered “ Planet X”.  It became “ Pluto”, after the Roman god of the underworld.  Further study concluded that Pluto was too small to perturb Neptune’s orbit.  The perturbations were later concluded to be incorrect estimates of masses involved.  Some discoveries happen by accident.
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-  In 1978 the large moon orbiting Pluto was discovered.  It became “Charon”.  Pluto is 1,485 miles in diameter.  Charon is 700 miles in diameter.
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-  In the 1990’s astronomers discovered more large “ planetary” bodies in the Kuiper Belt of asteroids.  Now over 1,200 larger asteroids have been catalogued.
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-  In 2000 the Astronomical Society dubbed Pluto as a “ sub-planet”.  Other ‘ sub-planet” discoveries include Quaoar, Orcus, Sedna, and Eris.  Eris is likely larger than Pluto.
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-  In 2006 Pluto got re-categorized as a “ Dwarf Planet”.  Leaving 8  real planets in our Solar System.
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-  Pluto is now thought to have 5 moons:  Charon, Nix, Hydra, P4 and  P5, yet to be named.  With all of these orbiting bodies the entire system is near chaotic.  The moon’s resonances are 3 to 1, 4 to 1, 5 to 1, and 6 to 1 but not exactly, off just 36 degrees for perfect resonances according to calculations.
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-  In 1998 a candidate for a Brown Dwarf star was first discovered.  We have sub-planets called Dwarf Planets,  and now sub-stars called Brown Dwarfs.
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-  In 1995 three more of these Brown Dwarfs were discovered.  It is very difficult to distinguish a Brown Dwarf sub-star from a very low mass real star.  The best test is to discover Lithium in the star’s spectrum.. Young small stars fuse Lithium for their first 100 million years after fusion starts.  Brown Dwarfs can not produce fusion.
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-  Today, astronomers estimate our Galaxy contains 100 billion Brown Dwarfs.  So, could the planet Jupiter be classified as a “ Brown Dwarf” or a “ failed star”.  In 1610 Galileo discovered moons orbiting Jupiter liking it to a mini-solar system.
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-  Jupiter is 88,846 miles in diameter at its equator.  It has a mass 2.5 times greater than all the other planets combined.  1,321 Earths could fit inside Jupiter.
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-  Jupiter has no solid surface.  Its small rocky core is enclosed in a shell of metallic hydrogen, surrounded by a shell of liquid hydrogen, surrounded by a shell of gaseous hydrogen.  The atmosphere of Jupiter is 90% hydrogen and 10% helium, pretty much the same as our Sun.
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-  Overall this size and composition makes Jupiter very similar to Brown Dwarf stars, or sub-stars.  If Jupiter had a little more mass it would have started fusion and our Solar System would have two suns, a double-star system.  This is not likely to happen because Jupiter would need to increase its mass by 75 times to become a star.
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-  To become a Brown Dwarf Jupiter would need to increase its mass by only 13 times.
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-  All things considered Jupiter remains a gas-planet and not a “ failed star”.  So we have 8 planets and an untold number of Dwarf Planets to discover beyond Neptune.  Stay tuned there is still more to learn.
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Exploring the planet Mercury?

-  1767  -  Planet Mercury  -  the 10 year mission, 6 years to get there, 4 years collecting data, what did we learn about this planet closest to the Sun?
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-----------------  1767  -  Planet Mercury
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-  Mercury is the closest planet to the Sun relatively near Earth at 50 million miles.  Mercury averaging 34 million miles from the Sun.  The Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun.
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-  It took a spacecraft, named “ Messenger” 6 years to reach Mercury and it has been orbiting that planet for 4 years, starting March 18, 2011.
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-  The data collected has given astronomers compelling evidence that Mercury harbors an abundance of frozen water.  How can that be on a planet that experiences temperatures in excess of + 570 degrees Fahrenheit?
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-  The answer lies in the fact that there are polar regions that contain craters continuously in the shadows and shielded from the Sun’ s rays.  The amount of water in these craters is large, an area the size of the state of Washington and ice that is 2 miles thick.
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-  There are dark layers covering the ice that likely contain organic compounds.
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-  Most likely this water was delivered to Mercury by comets and asteroids in the early formation of the Solar System.  Early, but late enough for water to remain.
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-  Orbiting space around Mercury involved a technological challenge.  The instruments in the spacecraft needed shadows as well in order to survive the intense Sun radiation.  The spacecraft carried a highly reflective ceramic cloth that was unfurled as a sunshade.  The sunlit side of the shade was + 570 F, the shadow side only +68F.
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-  With its instruments well shaded here is some of the data results Messenger collected:
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-  Mercury the closest planet to the Sun is the smallest terrestrial planet, the densest, has the oldest surface, and the largest daily variation in temperature.
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----------------------------  The density of Earth is 5,514          kg/m^2
----------------------------  The density of Mercury is 4,243     kg/m^3
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----------------------------  The diameter of Earth is 7,927 miles
----------------------------  The diameter of Mercury is 3,000 miles.
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-  We can say that Mercury is the densest planet only after correcting for the added density caused by compression of the weight above its diameter compared to Earth’s.  The diameter of Earth is 2 ½ times greater and that added weigh increase its average density by mere compression.  The Earth being 18 times more massive.
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-  Mercury’s density implies that it has a solid metal rich core that is at least 60% of the planets total mass.  ( See review 1479 for the math in this calculation)
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-  A surprise discovery was that Mercury has a magnetic field similar to the Earth’s magnetic field only 10% as strong.  Mars and Venus have not magnetic fields.  This anomaly poses some unanswered questions as to the evolution of magnetic cores in terrestrial planets.
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-  Mercury has virtually no atmosphere.  Its surface is as dark as an asphalt parking lot.
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-  Mercury spins 3 times with 2 rotations around the Sun.  A year is 88 days.  A “ day” is 58.6 days.  Because Mercury’s orbit is so elongated the Sun’s radiation varies by 200% during the 88 day year.  The total range of temperature variation is over 1,100 F, from
-325F to +860F.
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- Mercury’s orbit varies from 25.5 million miles to 43 million miles.
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-  Our Moon is 2,159 miles diameter.  Mercury is only slightly larger at 3,000 miles diameter.  There are two other moons in the Solar System that are larger than the planet Mercury, Ganymede and Titan.
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-  Because Mercury is much smaller it actually cooed down 2 ½ times faster that Earth cooled in its formation  ( See Review #1479)  All volcanic activity ceased after 1 billion years.  Earth is 4.5 billion years old and still has volcanic activity.
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-  Review #1479 also calculates the size of the core and the size of the crust of Mercury.  Core radius is 1,217 miles, crust thickness is 289 miles.
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-  See Review #1478 for the calculation of Mercury mass being 3.3*10^23 kilograms.  Just 5.5% the mass of the Earth.
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-  The calculations for Mercury’s average temperature is Review #`1369 resulted in +325 degrees Fahrenheit.
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- Reviews #1343 and #1165 tells about the surface composition of Mercury and what it means for its possible evolution.
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-  Review #815 tells about the spacecraft and its launch August 3, 2004.
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-  Review #44 compares Mercury’s specification to that of Venus , Earth, and Mars.
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-  The last maneuver of the Messenger Spacecraft occurred Friday, April 24, 2015.  All of its helium gas propellant is gone.  Mercury’s gravity will bring Messenger down to crash into the surface at 8,750 miles per hour.
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-  Stay tuned, for a mission results visiting the “Dwarf” Planet Pluto.
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-  Request other reviews if interested:  1706,1479, 1478, 1369, 1165, 815, 44
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Quasars take us back in time?

-  1765  -  Quasars take us back in time?  The Universe was more dense and chaotic.  Astronomers use this to discover an accelerating, expanding universe.
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-----------------  1765  -  Quasars take us back in time?
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-  Quasars are so luminous astronomers are seeing them at great distances, back in time to the earliest formation of galaxies after the Big Bang.  Quasars, are “quasi-stellar objects“, first discovered in 1962.  They appear as star-like points with energies that are the most powerful in the Universe.
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-  The most recent studies of Quasars have confirmed them to be the cores of young galaxies.  In 2015 a Quasar was discovered to be 12.8 billion light years distant.  This would make its existence just 900 million years after the Big Bang.  The Quasar has a massive central Blackhole of 12 billion Solar Mass and a luminosity of 420 trillion Solar luminosity.
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-  Over 200,000 Quasars have been discovered with ages ranging back to 700 million years after the Universe began.
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-  The latest discovery is 7 times brighter than the most distant Quasar known to date.  It is 3,000 times more massive than the Blackhole at the center of our Galaxy, the Milky Way.
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-  Our Milky Way Blackhole is dormant, as is most of the blackholes at the centers of all nearby galaxies.  Those galaxies most distant were forming in regions of space most densely populated.  There were many galactic collisions and interstellar material for Blackholes to consume.  It is the in-falling material that reached enormous frictional temperatures orbiting the Blackholes that is responsible for their luminosity.
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-  The Universe has been expanding for 13,700 million years.  Of course, it is only in the last 100 years we have realized we live in an expanding Universe.  And, it is only the last 15 years we have realized that the expansion is accelerating.
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-  And, these accelerating expansion discoveries maybe should be called theories not discoveries because to explain an accelerating Universe astronomers have added 70% of the mass-energy to the Universe and called it Dark Energy.
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-  Dark Energy is some anti-gravity force.  Or, it is some property of empty space, or its something else that is mystifying astronomers.
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-  Is this expanding Universe the same everywhere?  Or, are we in some special part of the Universe that is experiencing it?  The other assumption is that we do not happen to evolve in some special place in the Universe.  If we are not special then everywhere must be experiencing the same thing.
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-  Are all points and directions in space seeing the same thing we are?
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-  We see distant galaxies as receding away because their light spectrum is Redshifted.  We explain this stretching of light waves as expanding space through which the waves are traveling.
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-  The second way astronomers explain an accelerating Universe is to also measure the Brightness of supernovae explosion in distant galaxies.  Because the calculations for Brightness put the galaxies further away, then light must have taken longer to reach us.  The Universe must be expanding faster today than in the past.
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-  All matter in the Universe should provide a gravitational attraction to slow the expansion rate of the Universe.  There must be some repulsive force in the Universe doing the opposite of gravity.  We are so mystified as to what it is we can only name it, “Dark Energy”.
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-  If we assume that space does not necessarily expand evenly and everywhere at the same rate, a whole new picture of a possible Universe emerges.
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-  An uneven expansion could mean that matter is not distributed evenly throughout the Universe.  The density of matter could vary from region to region in space.  Possible our special place in the Universe is a Cosmic Void where the density is less and the expanding bubble of space is accelerating.
-
-  If we happened to be near the center of this Void we would see the expansion rate to be the fastest.  If we were near the edge of the Void we would see the expansion rate to be slowing down.  Different regions of space would be expanding at different rates.
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-  This scenario for calculating the Universe’s expansion would mean Redshifts are misleading in determining  distances since we assume a rate of constant expansion.  Maybe Dark Energy is not needed to explain the difference between Redshift and Brightness calculations for galactic distances.
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-  To make his scenario work the Void we are occupying must be enormous in size.  To make the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation to appear uniform in all directions we would need to be near the center of the Void.
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-  Astronomers already have galaxies occupying filaments in space with voids between these structures.  These smaller voids still measure hundreds of million of lightyears in size.
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-  However, on the very larges scales, billions of light years in size matter and galaxies seem to  be distributed evenly and uniformly.
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-  Cosmological theories have the structure of galaxies, filaments and voids evolving form microscopic quantum variations originating in the Big Bang plasma.  From this theory the expanding Universe could only produce Voids of a certain size.  Giant voids large enough to mimic Dark Energy would disprove this theory.
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-  The jury is still out.  The debate continues.  Is there really such a thing as Dar Energy?  Is Dark Energy the guilty party causing the Universe expansion to accelerate?  Or, are calculations using Redshifts and Brightness giving us incorrect answers?  Or, are our equations for the force of gravity being proportional to mass and inversely proportional to distance squared needing alterations?  Is the Gravitational Constant in these equations not really “constant” throughout the Universe?
-
-  Stay tuned, we obviously have more to learn.  
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What goes on inside an atom?

-  1766  -  What goes on inside an atom?  Protons contain Quark and Gluon particles that have a powerful force holding the nucleus together.  Somehow the force stops at the proton boundary.
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-----------------  1766  -  What goes on inside an atom?
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-   Protons that occupy the nucleus of an atom are all positively charged particles.  Some like electric charges are bound up in a very small space.  “ Like charges” repel each other.  Right!  But, there are other particles in the nucleus called “ Gluons” that are stronger than the Electromagnetic Forces and that are holding the protons tightly together, against their will.
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-  We know that protons and neutrons themselves are made up of smaller particles called “ Quarks”  Each has 3 Quarks with a -1/3 or + 2/3 electromagnetic charge.  By adding 3 Quarks together you can sum to +1 or to zero, a proton or a neutron charge.
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-  Gluons are what is holding the Quarks together inside the protons and neutrons.  Together all particles made up of Quarks and Anti-Quarks are called “ Hadrons”.   I will use the more familiar term “ protons” for this review to represent this family of Hadron particles.
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-  How Gluons interact with Quarks to give protons their properties and observed behaviors has not been fully understood by physics.
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-  The mass of the individual Quarks and Gluons has been determined, however, when the mass is summed up to create a proton the sum falls short of the total mass of the proton.  We are mysteriously missing some mass?
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-  How do Gluons create their binding energy to hold Quarks together?  How does this binding energy also hold Protons together?
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-  Quarks spin inside the nucleus to result in the total quantity spin of the proton.  The spins measured always fall short of the total quantity spin for the proton?
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-  To get down to the real fundamentals in Physics, how do particles have mass in the first place?
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-  We believe that protons and electrons have mass due to their interaction with the Higgs Field.  This Field pervades all space.  It is like “ syrup” that particles move through.  The mass or inertia of every particle is the degree of interaction  of the particle with this “syrup-like” field.
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-  However the Higgs Field does not explain the mass of Quarks either.  A proton’s mass is 98% greater than the sum of the mass of the 3 Quarks.  Gluons are massless, like Photons.  But, somehow Gluons are creating this additional mass  inside the proton?
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-Einstein’s equation , E = mc^2, tell us that energy and mass are two forms of the same thing.  The proportional difference is  E/m  =  c^2, the speed of light squared, or 90,000,000,000,000,000  meters^2 / seconds^2.  So, the challenge reduces to calculating the net energy of the Gluons to calculate the total mass of the proton.
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-  The mass of the proton is 1.167252*10^-27 kilograms.
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-  Energy can be the energy of motion.  Gluons do not exist as “ free particles”.  It is difficult to measure their motion as an element of this total energy.
-
-  The energy must lie in the “ binding force”.  It has a name, the Strong Nuclear Force”.  The Strong Force binds the Quarks inside the protons and it binds the protons inside the nucleus.
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-  The Gluon is believed to be a “ force carrier” particle for the Strong Force.  Just as the “Photon” is the force carrier for the Electromagnetic Force.
-
-  The strange property of the Strong Force is that the distance range of the force is inversely proportional to the mass of the forcer carrier.  The Electromagnetic Force has an infinite range while the Strong Force is limited to the range inside the nucleus of the atom.  Photons with infinite range are massless. Gluons with the opposite property should be very massive, yet, they too appear to be massless.
-
-  The Gluon also appears to have greater pulling force the farther away it gets.  This force between Quarks separated by the size of a proton is calculated to be 16 metric tons.  The proton has a diameter of 0.000,000,000,000,841,84 centimeters  (  0.84184&10^-15 meters).  Past that diameter the force snaps to zero.
-
-  The mystery remains has to how just  past that diameter the force appears to stop.
-
-  The mathematics developed to characterize the Strong Force is called “ Quantum Chromodynamics ( QCD).  The “ Chromo” part of the name refers to “ colors”.  Physicists us colors to describe how Quarks pass Gluons back and forth, how Gluons exchange Gluons, how Quark-Anti-Quarks turn into a single Gluon, etc.  How these colored forces cancel out at the proton boundary remains a mystery.
-
-  Somehow a force field exists that limit’s the amount of Gluons that can build up inside a force field that holds protons together.  Some 8th grader today is going to solve this problem in the future.
-
-  Protons also spin and that represents rotational energy.  Experiments have calculated Quark’s spin to represent 30% of the proton’s energy.  Gluon’s spin represents 20%.  50% of the missing spin energy is still a mystery?
-
-  Physicists believe, and have some evidence, that Quark-Gluon plasma existed in the early Universe, at a temperature of 4 trillion degrees Celsius.
-
-  To figure out what really goes on inside a proton Physicists need a “femtoscope”,  a “ microscope” that has a resolution of 1,000th the radius of a proton.  Hard to believe but physicists are designing an Electron-ion Collider, smashing electrons and lead nuclei (ions) together at near light speeds, to do just that.
-
-  Stay tuned, there is still more to learn, how do Gluons glue?
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Infrared - the light we can not see?

-  1763  -  Infrared -  The Light we cannot see?  More than half of the light we receive from the Sun our eyes cannot detect.  Infrared is the “light” astronomers see coming from the most distant galaxies.
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-----------------  1763  -  Infrared -  The Light we cannot see?
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-   Life on Earth is powered by the Sun.  We are bathed in its radiant energy on a daily bases.  Each square meter exposed to sunlight is receiving 1,360 watts of energy.
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-  Only 40% of this energy is in the form of visible light.  60% of the Sun’s energy is invisible infrared light that our skin can perceive as heat but our eyes can not record because the wavelengths are too long for the cells in our retinas.  Infrared wavelengths are at about ½ the thickness of human hair.
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-  Infrared part of the spectrum was discovered when the image of a prism was studied by William Herschel.  He put a thermometer on each color to see what color was the hottest, red, green, blue?  To his surprise the hottest spot was a dark spat outside the spectrum next to the red.
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-  The infrared rays do not stimulate nerves in the retina in the eyes but they are of optimum size ( wavelength) to jostle whole atoms and molecules in the skin.  Infrared is not heat but in this way it can produce heat.
-
-  Amazingly, it works both ways jostling atoms can emit infrared light.  You can feel the result on you skin from an infrared heat lamp.
-
-  The wavelength of infrared light vibrates the molecules in glass.  Glass windows become a barrier not transparent to infrared but smaller wavelengths of visible light easily pass right through.  This effect works in both directions trapping heat inside a “greenhouse”.
-
-  Air molecules are the right size to scatter blue light .  Thus the sky is blue.  But, if you wear yellow-tinted glasses that block the blue light, but , pass the red light distant mountains can appear sharp and clear.  The haze caused by the blue light scattering is significantly reduced.  This is how “ amber” blue-blocking sunglasses work.
-
-  The Earth, along with the rest of the Solar System, is 27,200 lightyears orbiting from the center of the Milky Way.  Interstellar dust blocks visible light from giving astronomers a clear view of the center of our Galaxy.  Infrared telescopes can “see” through the light pollution giving astronomers a way to map out the center of our Galaxy.
-
-  Another window for astronomers opens up in the infrared because the Universe is expanding.  Space is being added.  The light from distant galaxies passing through expanding space gets “ Redshifted”, the wavelengths wide into the infrared range.  Therefore infrared telescopes can see deeper back in time through more expanding space.
-
-  Astronomers can now “ see” more distant galaxies with there new infrared detectors.  The wider wavelengths offer another advantage.  Modern telescopes can use “ adaptive optics” to remove the image distortions created by the Earth’s atmosphere.  This computer generated compensation created by flexible mirrors works with the wider wavelengths, not so as well with shorter wavelengths.  Technology improvements may soon improve this so visible light images can be made clearer as well.
-
-  The wavelength of blue light is 400 nanometers.
-
-  The wavelength of red light is 700 nanometers.
-
-  Greater than 700 nanometers out to 10,000 nanometers is the spectrum wavelengths of infrared.  Beyond that is microwave wavelengths.
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Sunday, April 19, 2015  -----
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Rings of Saturn

-  1764  -  Beyond the Rings of Saturn?  The rings and moons of Saturn can remind us of our Solar System.  Energies from gravitational forces and angular momentum create both in much the same way.
-

-----------------  1764  -  Beyond the Rings of Saturn?
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-  The Earth is 7,926 miles in diameter.  Saturn is nearly 10 times bigger at 74,900 miles diameter.  Saturn rings make it 300,000 miles in diameter.  It is like a mini-solar system with a disk and 47 moons.
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-  The rings are composed of countless thousands of dirty water ice crystals ranging form microns to meters in size.  One proposal for the ring’s formation was that icy moons broke up 100 million years ago as a result of a violent collision.  A giant comet or asteroid slammed into the moon, breaking it into pieces.  Saturn’s enormous gravity smoothed out the pieces into a flattened disk orbiting around the planet.  This theory remains needing more confirming evidence.
-
-  Saturn formed a disk of rings and moons.  Our Sun formed a solar system of disk of planets, asteroids, and comets.  The age of these objects has been radioactive dated to be 4.6 billion years old.
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-  The oldest indigenous rocks found on Earth are dated to be 3.9 billion  years old.  It is the dating of meteorites that gets us back to 4.6 billion years.  Astronomers believe that the Solar System started as a molecular cloud 100 AU in diameter, 100 times the distance between the Sun and the Earth, or 93million miles times 100.
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-  The molecular cloud’s gravity collapse may have been started by a shockwave coming from a nearby supernova explosion.  Once the collapse started a chain reaction of ever increasing  gravitational pull would accelerate the collapse.  The collapse would occur unbalanced and the settled material would begin to rotate.  Frictional forces near the center would increase temperatures.  The gravitational potential energy would be transformed into heat as the density near the core increased.
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-  Angular momentum would cause the rotating disk to rotate more rapidly as it collapsed in size.  Like a spinning ice skater pulling her arms in.  The disk would have pockets of dust and gas that would collide and stick together.  Proto-planets would begin to form in the spinning disk.
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-  After about 50 million years of collapsing material with enough mass would accumulate at the core to create the pressure and temperature to commence nuclear fusion of Hydrogen into Helium.  The rotating disk continued to create planets in a haphazard set of collisions between planets, minor planets, moons and asteroids.
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-   The Sun’s nuclear furnace created a radiation of Solar Wind that was powerful enough to blow away the minor dust and debris in the disk.  Gas in the disk cooled and condensed.  Collisions continued to form planetisimals and more and more stuck together to form planets and moons.
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-  The more distant debris formed the ice comets.
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-  Gas giant planets accumulated clouds around their dense cores.  Extensive sets of moons formed around the giant planets.  Jupiter has 63 moons.  Uranus has 27 moons, Saturn has its rings and 47 moons.
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-  The gravity interactions of the giant gas planets flung many of the planetisimals into the distant Oort Cloud of comets.  And, flung numerous debris into the inner Solar System to create heavy bombardment of the rocky planets and moons.  In fact, one giant collision with early Earth created our Moon.
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-  Saturn’s’ ring and 47 moons can remind me of  a miniature solar system.  In fact , if Jupiter was just 75 times bigger it would begin nuclear fusion and our Solar System would include two stars.  Possible half of the stars in the sky are binary systems of two stars orbiting each other.  We would be watching two sunsets at different times and on different horizons.  An image from the “ Star Wars” movie comes to mind.
-
-  Stay tuned, our spacecraft are now reaching Pluto and beyond.  There are likely more discoveries waiting in the outskirts of our Solar System.
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Wednesday, April 15, 2015  -----
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Delving into Extreme Physics?

-  1762  -  Delving into Extreme Physics.  This will challenge your imagination trying to decide, “what is reality”?  What is real versus what is perceived?  What really happens in the micro-world and the macro-world?
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------------------

-
-----------------  1762  -  Delving into Extreme Physics.
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-   Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity are two all encompassing theories that help explain much of our real world.  However,  they do not encompass each other.  One works in the micro-world the other in the macro-world.  So, we must be missing something that encompasses both?
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-  Quantum Mechanics provides the math that accurately, without error, describes the sub-atomic world.  Special Relativity gives us the math to describe the Universe at large with extreme mass and extreme speeds.  The Big Bang and Blackholes are extreme events that require both sets of equations.  But, they both cease to work in each other’s realm.  There must be an over arching theory that works at both extremes?
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-  Just as Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity that gave us equations for all gravitational force.  And, as Albert Einstein’s theory of the curvature of space and time encompasses the force of gravity but carries it further to the constant speed of light and the relative nature of space and time.  Then, a new theory may be needed to encompass what we have today and carry us to the nest step.
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-  Our world should be described by the sum of its individual constituents, down to the smallest particles.  However, Quantum Mechanics requires that particles be waves having no definite position.  Individual particles have no exact locations.  The micro-world is fraught with these uncertainties.
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-  Quantum Mechanics requires that some particles can have their properties “entangled” with other particles regardless of their location or the degree of separation.  Somehow particles can be connected beyond “ locality”.  Beyond any ability to communicate with each other.
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-  “Non-locality” as it is described requires a communication between particles that can occur instantaneously, regardless of separation, and therefore, faster that the speed of light.  The Theory of Relativity says this can not happen.  Relativity does not allow absolute simultaneity.
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-  Can we understand the real world only by direct experience?
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-  Quantum Mechanics has evolved attributes that go beyond our experience, even contradicting it.  Attributes such as Superposition, Entanglement,  Randomness, Decoherence, are resources used to better understand reality using Quantum Mechanics Theory.
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-  Superposition is a quantum theory that claims an object is in all possible states and is only limited to a single state at the instant you measure or observe it.
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-  Quantum Entanglement is a physical occurrence where particles can share a property instantaneously while separated great distances.  Entangled electrons, one spin up, the other spin down , separated far enough the speed of light can not communicate between them.  Switching one electron to spin down will instantly switch the other to spin up, faster than the speed of light.
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-  Uncertainty Principle introduces a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of complementary properties can be measured.  The more accurately we measure “position” of a particle the less accurately we can learn about its “momentum“.
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-  Decoherence gives the appearance of  a Quantum Wave Function collapsing from many possibilities to a single possibility when it is observed.
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-  Randomness is where something can not be predicted with probabilities.  However, statistically many “random” events at the microscopic level, such as atomic decay, can be calculated precisely at the macro level, such as the half-life of radioactive atoms.
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- Physicists, like anyone else, an succumb to a bad philosophy, or doctrine, that actively hinders the acquisition of new knowledge.  When a scientific paradigm shifts a radical change of perspective suddenly occurs.  Wholly new ideas become relevant.  Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are two such ideas.
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-  The evidence of objectivity is that experiments are observable and reproducible.  We see a new “reality“.  Relativity introduced a new “time and a new “ space”.  Quantum Mechanics introduced “ Entanglement” and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle”.  “Complementary” theory introduced the idea that all the information in a Blackhole is all on the surface of the Blackhole, like a hologram.
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-  How do we know that the reality we perceive is “ true”?  There is no way to remove the observer from his perception of the world.  The measuring devices in the human being are crude instruments.  There is so much of the world that we can not perceive directly.  We need math, technology, measurement instruments, experiments , that go beyond human perception.
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-  To take these even further there are attributes in the Quantum World that do not “exist” until we observe them.  The future is indefinite and exist only as a spectrum of possibilities.
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-  Our brains create the impression of a 3-dimensional space form the retina’s 2-dimensional data.
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-  Whenever our brain can develop a model of the world that successfully fits our observations we attribute that quality to be “ reality”.  New observation can reveal subtle and significant ways in which reality diverges from theory.  These become new vistas for exploration, more observations, more data.  Stay tuned, there is much more to learn at the Extremes.
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Friday, April 10, 2015  -----
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The birth of galaxies?

-  1760  -  The Birth of Galaxies?  When and how did the first galaxies form?  How does the galaxies regulate star formation and what cause large galaxies to stop forming stars?
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-

-
-----------------  1760  -  The Birth of Galaxies?
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-   The Hubble Space Telescope can look at the same spot in the sky for one million seconds.  The area of the image is only 1 arc-minutes on a side.  This would be like looking through a soda straw at the same spot in the dark sky for 12 days running.
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-  The image recorded is a time exposure that captures 10,000 faint galaxies.  The most distant of these galaxies look more ragged, probably the result of frequent collisions with other galaxies.  In the early Universe everything was closer together.

-  Looking into distance is looking backwards in time because the light reaching us today left the image millions, even billions of years ago.  The telescopes today can see galaxies 12 billion lightyears away.  So these images are when those galaxies were only 1 billion years old.  They are totally different today although we have no way to see that until the light reaches us a billion years from now.  What we are looking at is a much younger universe.
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-  When the light waves travel through space they get stretched out to wider wavelengths because space is expanding.  The longer the wavelength of light the further distance it has traveled.  Longer wavelengths are called the “ Redshift” because the spectrum moves toward the red end of the light spectrum.  The  larger the Redshift the earlier history we are viewing.
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-  Astronomers would like to look backwards in time to see the formation of the very first galaxies.  The furthest back in time is viewed using “gravitational lensing“.  This is where a cluster of galaxies , with their immense gravity, bend light passing by like light focused in a giant magnifying glass.  Some galaxies viewed this way have Redshifts between 8 and 10, corresponding to only 500 million years after the Big Bang, looking back 13.2 billion years in time.  At that time the Universe was only 4% of its current age.
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-  Galaxies come in all shapes and sizes.  Elliptical galaxies ( those oblong, or spherical shaped ) have mainly ancient red stars.  Spiral galaxies ( disk shaped) have an abundance of young, short-lived, blue stars.  Elliptical galaxies must have transformed gas into stars at an earlier stage.  Spiral galaxies must have formed stars continuously at a more moderate pace.  In the early Universe galaxies were closer together and galaxy collisions must have occurred frequently.
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-  The discovery of Dark Matter requires that most of a galaxy’s mass lies outside its visible form and inside a Dark Matter halo.  It is believed that Dark Matter is mainly responsible for gravitationally drawing the gas together to fuel star formation and eventually galaxies.
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-  Surveys of galaxies over various time periods have concluded that the greatest star forming period occurred at Redshifts of 2 to 3, about 5 billion years after the Big Bang, (ABB).  A Redshift of 1 is 7 billion ABB.  A Redshift to 7 is 1 billion ABB.  Star formation has been on the decline for the last 8 billion years.
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-  Galaxies appear to form new stars until the reach some critical mass threshold.  Then, star formation ends and the mature galaxy becomes a red elliptical galaxy.  Lower mass galaxies make stars at a much slower rate and never reach this threshold.
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-  Why do the larger galaxies stop growing ?
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-  The larger the galaxy the larger the blackhole at the galaxy center.  Active Blackholes have X-ray emissions and energetic jets that may expel gas out of the galaxy shutting star formation down.
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-  Astronomers believe that galaxies first formed when the Universe was only 5% of its current age (  700,000 ABB ).  Some 300,000 years ABB hydrogen gas first formed.  Dark Matter clouds collapsed this gas to form the first stars.  These first stars contained only hydrogen and helium.  These early stars were believed to be massive and short lived.  They would have been formed at Redshifts between 20 and 50.  Small galaxies would be formed between Redshifts 10 to 20.  Small galaxies would be only 1,000 lightyears across.  (The Milky Way Galaxy is 120,000 lightyears across.)  All this light from these distant galaxies would be Redshifted into the infrared wavelengths when it reaches us.
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-  We are closing in on it , but , when and how the first galaxies formed remains unclear.
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- How exactly do galaxies regulate star formation?
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-  What exactly causes a galaxy to reach a threshold and stop star formation ?  Does ever big galaxy have a massive blackhole at the center?
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-  Quasars are the result of active blackholes in distant galaxies.  Astronomers have cataloged over 13,000 Quasars.  The energy released by a single Quasar is several thousand times  greater than the entire energy output of the Milky Way Galaxy.  Understanding the part that blackholes play in galaxy formation and star formation in general is a challenge remaining.  Stay tuned, these is more to learn.
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---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email comments, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Saturday, April 4, 2015  -----
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Why is the Universe expanding?

-  1759  -  Why is the Universe expanding?  What we know about the beginning and what we have learned to explain the receding galaxies at an ever accelerating rate.
------

-----------------  1759  -  Why is the Universe expanding?
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-   The Hubble Constant is a calculation for the rate at which the Universe is expanding.  Astronomers could see that the further a galaxy was away from us the faster it was receding.  However, the ratio of the two was a Constant.  If the galaxy was 1 million lightyears away it was going 47,000 miles per hour.  If it were 10 million lightyears away it was going 470,000 miles per hour.  And so on:
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-  To get the distance to the galaxy astronomers used Cepheid Variable stars that have an intrinsic brightness.  The dimmer the star the farther away it was.  Brightness falls off as the square of the distance.
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-  To get the receding velocity astronomers used the Redshift of the light spectrum.  The faster the receding velocity the more the wavelength of the light was stretched, the longer the wavelength the redder the color of the light being received.
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-  Hubble’s Constant is the ratio of the galaxy recession speed by its distance.  The early calculations ranged from 50 kilometers per second per mega parsec to 80 km/sec/mpc.  A mega parsec is 3.26 million lightyears distance.  Today the calculation is :
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------------------  72.4  km/sec/mpc,  or
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------------------  47,000 miles per hour per million lightyears.
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------------------  Velocity  =  ( Hubble Constant ) * distance
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-----------------  Distance   =   velocity  *  time
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-----------------  Time  =  1  /  ( Hubble Constant )
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------------------  Age of the Universe  =  1  /  ( 47,000 m ph / million LY )
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------------------  Age of the Universe  =  13.7 billion years.
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-----------------  Age of the oldest rocks on Earth  =  3.8 billion years  ( 28%)
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----------------  Age of the oldest meteorites  =  4.6  billion years  ( 34% )
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---------------- Age of the Milky Way disk  =  10 billion years ( 73% )
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---------------  Age of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation  =  13.7 billion years
accurate to within 1% error.
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-  So, if the Universe has been expanding for 13.7 billion years how big is it today?
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-  A high value for the Hubble Constant ( 80 ) meant a younger age and a smaller size ( 10 billion LY).  A low value for the Hubble Constant ( 50 ) meant the Universe was older and larger ( 16 billion LY )
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-   With the most powerful telescopes astronomers can see galaxies that are 12 billion lightyears away.  ( One lightyear  is 6 trillion miles distance ).
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-  Astronomers looking 12 billion lightyears over our eastern horizon and 12 billion lightyears over the other western horizon are viewing galaxies that are similar yet 24 billion lightyears apart.
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-  How could both locations in the sky be the same when light has not had time to reach between them?  In order to be the same the two regions in the sky must have been close together sometime in the past.
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-  This dilemma was solved with the theory of Cosmic Inflation.  Shortly after the Big Bang the Universe expanded faster than the speed of light.  The Universe near instantaneously went from sub-atomic size  to the size of a softball.  ( From 10^-27 centimeters to 10 centimeters ).
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-  This theory would mean that the Real Universe is much bigger than the Observable Universe, 10^50 times bigger than the Observable Universe which has a radius of 13.7 billion lightyears.
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-  When the expansion started matter, energy, space and time were all together in an infinitely dense and hot plasma.  As expansion occurred things got less dense and cooler.
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-  For the first 10^-43 seconds matter, energy and the 4 forces were all the same.
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-  When the expansion reached 10^-35 seconds Cosmic Inflation occurred and the Universe expanded by a factor or 10^50 in only 10^-33 seconds.  After 10^-2 seconds the expansion slowed down to near its current rate of expansion.  ( according to the Grand Unification Theory.)
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-  With expansion and cooling matter formed, Neutrinos, electrons, quarks and photons.  Then, protons and neutrons.  Particles and antiparticles annihilated each other producing Gamma Rays.  Somehow, rather than equal annihilation matter came out in excess.  We can’t explain how this happened but lucky for us it did.
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-  One second after the Big Bang atoms formed into hydrogen, helium, and lithium elements.  With matter came gravity and over the next 10,000 years the irregularities of matter density expanded into the structures of a web of galaxies.
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-  380,000 years after the Big Bang the opaque Universe of charged particles became dominated by neutral atoms and the Universe became transparent for light to escape.  Matter and radiation separated.
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-  We see that radiation today as Cosmic Microwave Background radiation.  It started out as Gamma Rays but over the 13.7 billion years of expansion the Gamma Ray wavelengths have been stretched to microwave wavelengths.
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-  Dark Matter was first proposed to exist in 1930 to explain why spinning galaxies do not fly apart.  Extra mass was needed to hold the rotating galaxies together.  Later this proposal was reinforced with data that stars orbiting far from the center were not orbiting slower.  Unlike our Solar System where planets far from the Sun ( Saturn ) have slower orbital velocity that those closer to the Sun ( Mercury ).  Therefore keeping their angular momentum a constant conservation of energy.
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---------------------   Mercury,  57.9 million kilometers orbit has orbital speed of 105,136 miles per hour.
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-------------------  Saturn,   1,427 million kilometers orbit has orbital speed of 22,369 miles per hour.
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-  In order to explain why orbiting stars near the center of the galaxies have the same orbital velocity as those far away form the center there must be a massive spherical halo of mass ( Dark Matter ) surrounding the visible galaxy disk.  The same analysis repeats with orbiting galaxies in clusters of galaxies.  ( See Review on Dark Matter to learn possible forms of matter interacting with gravity and not with electromagnetic radiation (light )).
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-  Astronomers have studied 72 galactic clusters.  When galaxies collide stars and gas interact differently than Dark Matter during the collision.  The gas slows down due to friction and electromagnetic interactions, but the Dark matter flies through the collision  with no interactions.  Dark Matter appears to not even interact with itself.
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-  Each galaxy collision takes 100’s of millions of years, therefore, many collisions have to be studied to get an idea how collisions evolve over time.  Each observation is but one frame in a movie.
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-  Conclusions are that the Dark Matter does not experience the frictional forces during these collisions.  Indirect evidence with Dark Matter’s interaction with gravity is our only evidence we have so far.
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-  An even bigger mystery surrounds explaining why the Universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.  It is called the result of Dark Energy, but, that is just a name without an explanation.
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-  If you are interested in studying astronomy it is nice to know that 95% of the Universe is left for your exploration.  Everything else in this review was what we learned about the other 5%.
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Thursday, April 2, 2015  -----
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Time is a mystery, but, we can't live without it?

-  1758  -  Time is a mystery.  But, we can’t live without it.  We see time as a constant march into the future, but, astronomers and physicists must see it as a variable, it depends on gravity and motion.
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-----------------  1758  -  Time is a mystery.
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-   But, we can’t live without it.  We live in our ordinary lives thinking the tick-tock of time to be a constant., a relentless march forward into the future.
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-  The tick-tock of time is not a constant.  It changes from your head to your toes.  Light travels 1 foot a nanosecond and that is what is constant.  Our brains are too slow to comprehend nanoseconds.  The changes in time are so slight we won’t notice them.
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-  The tick-tock of time is faster in lower gravity, at the tops of mountains, or in orbit.  A satellite 250  miles above the surface of the Earth has it clocks running faster because gravity is weaker, the curvature of space-time caused by the mass of the Earth is less at that altitude.
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-  But, the satellite is orbiting at 17,000 miles per hour.  Time’s tick-tock is slower when it is in motion.  The faster time travels the slower it gets.  When it reaches 299,792,458 meters per second time slows to a stop.  (   670,616,629 mile per hour, or , 186,282 miles per second.).
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-  In order for the Global Positioning System to work for us on the surface of the Earth we need to adjust our clocks faster for the elevation and slower for the relative velocity of transmitter-receivers in orbit.  Without these corrections an offset of only a millionth of a second would cause an error of 1/5 of a mile on the surface.  A satellites circular orbit is a 2 dimensional circle in space, but, it is a 3 dimensional spiral in space-time.
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-  When Einstein’s thought experiment put the speed of light as a constant, not to be exceeded, he had to do something with speed that equals space divided by time, meters per second.  In order to bring this ratio to a stop he had to make distance and time the variables.  Space had to shrink to nothing and time had to stop.
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-  Simultaneity had to be “ relative”.  Two events that occur at the same moment observed from one reference frame will occur at a different moment viewed from another reference frame.  For example, an instant for an event on Mars will be viewed as occurring 20 minutes later on Earth.  We will always see the result after the event.
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-  The same dilemma with time will occur with relative motion.  An event that might be in the undecided future may have already occurred in the other observer’s past.
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-  Time offers us a huge dilemma in describing future events turning into present events and then into past events.  If time is flowing , if it is moving, how do we decide relative to what is it moving?
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-  Time is better understood as simply what clocks measure.  It is one dimension of space-time.  We assume time to be continuous , but, in the smallest increments it might actually exist as discrete “ chronons”, like the frames in a movie.
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-  The events in our lives undeniably form a unidirectional sequence.  Physics has its 2nd law of thermodynamics that requires disorder, or Entropy, to always increase in one direction with time.  A shattered egg has more Entropy than when it was an intact egg.  The process is irreversible.
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-  Physics has other laws that dictate the asymmetry of time.  Closely related to Entropy involves the Information content of a system.  Memory adds information and raises the Entropy.  So, our brains see time as unidirectional.
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-  Still a 3rd law adds to the mystery of time.  The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle requires that properties of a system remain undecided from one moment to the nest.  Quantum indeterminism requires any quantum state to have an infinite alternative futures.  All outcomes are the result of their relative probabilities.  Only when the event is observed is one outcome obtained.  Time does not tell us how nature transitions from many potential realities into a single actuality.  The act of the observer appears to prompt nature to decide what actually happens.
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-  Time is a mystery implying we take advantage of living in the present because the past, present, and future will be things of the past.
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-  Other reviews about time available upon request:  1735, 1736, and 12 others listed in the footnotes of these two reviews.
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 -----   707-536-3272    ----------------------   Wednesday, April 1, 2015  -----
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