How Galaxies Form and Grow.

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- 2047 - How Galaxies Form and Grow.   Running the state of the art project using a mathematical model to form the universe.  It sheds new light on how blackholes shape the cosmos and how galaxies from and grow.   Astronomers have discovered that all galaxy disks rotate about one rotation in a billion years.  This is regardless of their size or mass.
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------------------------  2047 -  - How Galaxies Form and Grow.
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------------------------  2047 -  - How Galaxies Form and Grow.
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-   Running the state of the art project using a mathematical model to form the universe.  It sheds new light on how blackholes shape the cosmos and how galaxies from and grow. 
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-   The mass-energy density of the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy.  The model starts with precise predictions about what we can see that is not dark in stars, diffuse gas, galaxies organized into a cosmic web of sheets, filaments, and voids
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-  Most galaxies host a massive blackhole at their centers.  Blackholes must have a profound influence on the evolution of galaxies and their formation. 
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-   Galaxies in their star-forming phase shine brightly in blue light because of young stars.   When star formation ends the galaxy is dominated by older, redder stars.  The only physical entity capable of extinguishing these star formation is the super massive blackhole at the center.
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-   As the blackhole feeds it creates a shockwave that blows star forming gas and dust out of the galaxy. That in turn limits how many stars can form. The existing stars age and turn red with fewer and fewer blue stars. 
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-   Astronomers have discovered that all galaxy disks rotate about one rotation in a billion years.  This is regardless of their size or mass.   This rotation is measured at the extreme edge of the disk. 
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-   Despite intuition you do not find dense galaxies rotating quickly while lower density galaxies rotating more slowly.   These measurements were made of neutral hydrogen in the outer disk of many galaxies.
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-  Ranging from small dwarf irregular galaxies to massive spiral galaxies differing in size and rotational velocities.  Using this data to calculate the rotational period of the outer rims of the galaxies all were roughly one billion years per rotation. 
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-  This discovery raises more questions.  How does dark matter enter into this picture?   All galaxies appear to rotate like solid units, like a phonograph record.  They do not operate like gravitationally independent stars rotating around a large center of mass.   We expected galaxies to operate like our Solar System.  Not so! 
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-  Our Solar System rotates around the galaxy in 250 million years.  The galaxy’s outer fringes are 50,000 lightyears further out from the center.   How do we reconcile that outer edge taking 1,000 million years to rotate?   That is four times slower?  We have more to learn! 
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-  The actual velocities measured were “circular velocities“.  This is not the same as “radial velocities“.  And, how is this compared to “orbital velocities“?   We have more to learn?   Like when Kepler discovered that the planets orbiting the Sun sweep out equal areas in equal times.   That means that planets closest to the Sun move faster and those further from the Sun move slower.  That is the way our Solar System works.
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-  Newton took that knowledge and did the math to show the “orbital velocity” varied at 1/(radius squared) due to the gravitational  force.  The force of gravity varies directly proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.  “G” is the constant of proportionality that depends on the units used in the calculation. 
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-------------------------------  G  =  6.67 * 10^-11  meters^3 / kilograms * seconds^2
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---------------------------------  F  =  G * m * M  /  r^2
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---------------------------------  Force  =  Newtons  =  kg *m / s^2
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---------------------------------  force  =  mass * acceleration  -  m*a
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-  Ok who is going to come up with the galactic dynamics that model the outer rim of galaxies?   How can orbital periods all be roughly the same for all galaxies big and small and be roughly 1 billion years? 
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-  If it takes one billion years to rotate, then 1/100th of a degree of rotation takes 27,800 years.  How is it possible to measure that?   We have more to learn.   That is why I write these reviews.  I hope you learn something too.
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-  HERE ARE OTHER REVIEWS AVAILABLE ON THE SUBJECT:
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-  1994. -  How. Many galaxies are there?   About 2 trillion galaxies each with a billion stars.  Olber’s Paradox answers the question, “ Why is the night sky dark when there all those stars out there?” 
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-  1887. -   Astronomers have mapped 8,000 galaxies with positions and velocities.  The 3-D picture is one of voids, sheets, filaments, and nodes.  How are these measurements made?  Your path around the galaxy is traveling at 504,000 miles per hour.  What is the observable universe expanding in to?
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-  1832. -   Dwarf galaxies and WIMPS.  Dwarf galaxies are the oldest at 10 billion years old.  If you lived inside Tuscanae 47 you could se 570,000 stars with the naked eye.   Bibliography lists 7 more reviews about galaxies. 
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-  1813. -   Galactic storms , quakes, and waves occur across our galaxy.   Estimates are that dark matter is 85% of all the matter in these galaxies.   Learn how Cepheid stars are used to calculate distances.
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-  1760.  -  The birth of galaxies.  When then light waves travel through space they are stretched out to wider wavelengths because space expanding.    Astronomers always look backwards in time.  We all do, but,  their time is longer.  Why do larger galaxies stop growing?  How do galaxies regulate star formation?
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-  13.  -  How to weigh a galaxy?    Does the math for all 9 planets, including Pluto.   Half the mass of the galaxy is inside the Sun’s orbit and half is outside, including dark matter?
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-  1132. -   Why don’t galaxies follow the laws of gravity?   The period, circumference of orbit, velocity of orbit is calculated for each of the planets.   Also for the period of the galaxy’s rotation.
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-  53.  -   The farthest galaxy in our universe.  How redshift calculates distances.  Why is energy, wavelength, and frequency all related.
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-  892. -   How galaxies grow up.   Using radio telescopes with spectrometers astronomers have discovered over 100 different molecules in outer space.  A lot of what galaxies become depends on their environments. 
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-  1585. -   Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies will collide.  The universe is expanding and galaxies are flying away from each other,  except those close together enough to be gravitationally locked.    In 4 billion years our two galaxies will pass through each other. 
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-  933. -   Galaxy evolution.  Elliptical, spiral, irregular.  Dark matter helped form the galaxies.  Most galaxies have a black hole at their center.  Galaxies grow in size through mergers.  Tidal forces are especially strong around blackholes. 
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-  1121. -   Why do we think there is a blackhole at the center of our galaxy? Astronomers have been tracking stars orbiting Sagittarius A for 10 years.  The diameter of the blackhole is 31 million miles. 
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-  662. -  What galaxies tells us about the universe?   Calculations tell us that the furtherot from the center of galaxies the rotational velocity remains essentially the same.   
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-  1120.  -  What happens when galaxies collide?  Our Local Group has some 40 galaxies.   The total ass is 3,000,000,000,000  Solar Mass.  In 100,000,000,000 years from now all the rest of then observable universe will disappear. 
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Saturday, March 31, 2018   --------------------------------
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Jupiter our largest planet.

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- 2046  -  Jupiter our largest planet.    -  Jupiter is mostly hydrogen in gas and liquid form.   It is 89.8 % by volume.  Jupiter generates a magnetic field that is 15 times stronger than Earth’s.  Jupiter’s largest moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.   -  In 2016 the Juno Mission entered a 53 day orbit around Jupiter. 
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------------------------  2046  -  -  Jupiter our largest planet.   
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-  Jupiter is by far our largest planet. It is 11 times the diameter of Earth and 318 times the mass.  It’s total mass is more than the combined mass of all the other six planets, dwarf planets,  moons, and asteroids in our solar system.
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-  Jupiter is mostly hydrogen in gas and liquid form.   It is 89.8 % by volume.  Another 10.2% is helium.   So it is essentially a bottomless atmosphere that transitions into liquid, then solid as you approach the center.
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-  Voyager spacecraft imaged the close ups of the atmosphere in 1979 starting some 36 million miles away from Jupiter.   Jupiter’s atmosphere is full of strange eddies, waves, and turbulent clouds everywhere.  It is far more complex than astronomers expected.
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-  The Great Red Spot has been there continuously for 150 years. It is large enough for two Earth diameters to fit inside. Its cloud tops are 5 miles high above the surface. The circular winds are traveling 425 miles per hour.
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-  The Great Red Spot color comes from ultraviolet radiation breaking down ammonia and acetylene gases in the upper atmosphere.  What is the energy source that powers the jet streams?   How deep into the interior do these winds exist? 
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-   25 miles deep the pressure 60% that of Earth’s and the temperature is -193 F.   Deeper below the surface at 60 F  there are clouds of water ice crystals.
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-  Minute frequency changes in radio signals are used to map Jupiter’s gravitational field.   The signals are like a train whistle where frequencies change depending on the relative velocity of the reflected signal.  Hundreds of miles deep the hydrogen becomes a hot liquid.  20% of the way to the center the temperatures are as hot as the Suns surface, 10,000 F.  The hydrogen becomes metallic liquid, a conductive soup of protons and electrons.
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-  80% of the way to the center reaches enormous temperatures and pressures. At 40,00 F it reaches the core the size of 20 Earth masses of rock and iron and maybe water, methane, and ammonia all soluble in the liquid hydrogen.
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-  Jupiter generates a magnetic field that is 15 times stronger than Earth’s.  The magnetosphere on the sun side is 40 Jupiter diameters and stretches 3,500 diameters behind the planet.  It nearly reaches Saturn’s orbit.
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-  Jupiter’s largest moons are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.   They were first discovered by Galileo in 1610.  Ganymede is slightly bigger than the planet Mercury. Callisto is an Earth diameter and Io and Europa the Moon’s diameter.
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-  It the 7.15 days it takes Ganymede to orbit, Europa orbits is twice that and Io orbits four times that. The resonance is 1:2:4 forcing them into slightly eccentric orbits.  This eccentric gravity pull change causes the interiors to warm up. 
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-  Io is the closest of these four to the planet and it experiences the biggest swings in gravity pull in its elliptical orbit.    As a result there are at least 150 active volcanoes on Io.  They shoot umbrella shaped plumes as high as 150 miles above the surface.  The plumes contain sodium, potassium, sulfur, and sulfur dioxide. 
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-  The planets fast moving magnetic field rotates with the planet every 10 hours. It inflates the magnetosphere to twice the size it would normally be.  Two billion kilowatts of electrons flow through this magnetic tube.   This is about the same as the total electric power consumption on planet Earth. 
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-  Europa , the next moon out from Jupiter is totally different.  It has a surface of frozen water and no discernible craters.  It’s surface is the smoothest in the whole solar System.   The gravitational flexing is maintaining a liquid ocean beneath the surface.  The ice shell is 10 miles thick and the ocean below is 30 miles deep.  That is 10 times deeper than the deepest part of Earth’s oceans. 
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-  Io is the closest of these four moons to the planet and it experiences the biggest swings in gravity pull in its elliptical orbit.    As a result there are at least 150 active volcanoes on Io.  They shoot umbrella shaped plumes as high as 150 miles above the surface.  The plumes contain sodium, potassium, sulfur, and sulfur dioxide.   
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-  The planets fast moving magnetic field rotates with the planet every 10 hours. It inflates the magnetosphere to twice the size it would normally be.  Two billion kilowatts of electrons flow through this magnetic tube.   This is about the same as the total electric power consumption on Planet Earth. 
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-  Europa , the next large moon out from Jupiter is totally different.  It has a surface of frozen water and no discernible craters.  It’s surface is the smoothest in the whole Solar System.   The gravitational flexing is maintaining a liquid ocean beneath the surface.  The ice shell is 10 miles thick and the ocean below that is 30 miles deep.  Ganymede and Callisto each may have sub surface oceans that are larger than Earth’s. 
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-  In 2016 the Juno Mission entered a 53 day orbit around Jupiter.  It is mapping the gravitational field and the magnetic field as it circles the planet.  This data will map Jupiter’s internal structure.  It will map the movement of electrically charged material. 
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-  Juno flies over the poles 2,600 miles above the clouds. It’s elongated orbit is designed to limit its exposure to the radiation belt.  The electronics is being  protected by a titanium vault but the radiation is still too strong for extended exposure. 
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-  Callisto is almost the size of Mercury.  It has the oldest surface that is nearly saturated with craters.
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-   OTHER RIEVEWS AVAILABLE  UPON REQUEST:

-  797. -   2007. New Horizon visit to Jupiter. 

-  1903. -   2016. Juno mission arrives at Jupiter to send back data for 20 months.  It gets to within 2,600 miles above the surface. 

-  1880. -  Juno’s 53 day orbits will slowly descend to 14 day orbits. 

-  1175. -   Exploring the four largest moons around Jupiter.  Ganymede would be a planet if it were circling the Sun instead of circling Jupiter. 

-  927. -   We think Jupiter is made of the same composition as the Sun’s original accretion disk.  It takes Jupiter 11.86 years to orbit the Sun. 

-  29.  -  Written in 2003 my 29th Review, this review compares the four gaseous planets in diameter, orbits, mass, distance from Sun, weight and velocity. 
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Tuesday, March 27, 2018   --------------------------------
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Higgs Boson, How Does It Work?

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- 2045  -  Higgs Boson, How Does It Work?  To learn this we need to know a little Quantum Mechanics, a little Field Theory , the Uncertainty Principle, and some Particle Physics.  First, Quantum Mechanics.  Things are not smooth and continuous as they appear.  Things are all in “ quanta’, small packets that are too small to see and even measure.  Next, Quantum Mechanics does not stop with light.  All things are quantized.  Now, to Field Theory.  Fields are simply a condition of points in space.  Space is filled with Fields.  -  Particle Physics is our next pursuit.  Mass and Energy are the same thing. Next theory and the math needed to create the Higgs Boson.
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------------------------  2045  -  Higgs Boson, How Does It Work?
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- An announcement in the news was that the Higgs Boson like particle discovered statistically is truly the new Higgs Particle.
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-  The math is the Standard Model of Particle Physics states that the Higgs should have zero spin and positive parity.  After 2 ½ times more data was collected from the proton - anti-proton collisions these properties for the Higgs Particle were confirmed.
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-  The Higgs is supposed to decay into Bottom Quarks and Leptons.  This “ coupling” decay still needs to be confirmed, so, the research is not done yet. The mass of the particle is measured to be 126,000 million electron volts.
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-  These discoveries are huge.  Really, so what?  What is the Higgs Boson really and how does it work?
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-  To learn this we need to know a little Quantum Mechanics, a little Field Theory , the Uncertainty Principle, and some Particle Physics.  I know as little as anyone.  So here it is.  No problem:
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-  First, Quantum Mechanics.  Things are not smooth and continuous as they appear.  Things are all in “ quanta’, small packets that are too small to see and even measure.  It all started with the study of light.  Was light a continuous wave of a tiny particle?  Called the theory of Wave-Particle Duality.  The wave was really a spread of probabilities of the position and the momentum of a quanta of energy which is a particle.
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-   We call the quantum of light the “Photon”.  Photons are little packets of electromagnetic energy.  Each packet is 4.136 * 10^-15 electron volts.  Each packet is a cycle of oscillation.  The total energy of light is the packet of electron volts times the frequency of oscillation.       (E  =  h*f  ).  “ h” is Planck’s Constant of Action.  “f” is frequency is cycles per second.  The higher the frequency of light the higher the energy.  That is why ultraviolet light burns your skin and X-rays can kill you.
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-  Next, Quantum Mechanics does not stop with light.  All things are quantized.  Time is quantized at 10^-43 seconds.  Space comes in a minimum length of 1.613*10^-35 meters.  The speed of light travels that far in the quantized time of 10^-43 seconds.  Angular momentum comes in quanta of 6.625 * 10^-34 joule-seconds.  In Quantum Mechanics everything is “lumpy” .  Space, time , energy, everything comes in a smallest lump.
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-  Next, the lumps never stand still.  They never have a fixed position.  They never have a fixed momentum which is mass times velocity.  This is called the Uncertainty Principle.  This principle says that the position times the momentum of a particle must always be less than Planck’s Constant of Action divided by the wavelength., 4.136*10^-15 electron volts / wavelength.  ( delta “position”  * delta “momentum”   < = Planck Constant).
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-  Translated this means that the more you know about “position” the less you can know about “ velocity” because the product of the two can not exceed the fixed value of Planck’s Constant.  At the same time particles can not have “ no momentum” or a “ fixed position”.  The vacuum of space is filled with this quanta of oscillating energy.  You can not have empty space without a charge being in it.  This condition can be interpreted as a sea of “ virtual particles” jumping in and out of existence.  They do this so fast as to not violate the “Conservation of Energy“.
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-  Now, to Field Theory.  Fields are simply a condition of points in space.  Space is filled with Fields.  The vacuum of space is the state of lowest energy but the fields are still there.  Fields cost energy.  When particles vibrate they displace the field and that costs energy.  Rotation at the lowest energy level does not cost energy.  Rotation at this lowest energy point corresponds to a charge at no cost.  This is how Einstein’s Condensate works and Superconductivity works.  It is symmetry breaking that we are not going in to thank goodness..
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-  Particle Physics is our next pursuit.  Mass and Energy are the same thing.  When we say the mass is in electron volts we really mean electron volts / c^2,  (m  =  E / c^2 ).  Particles come in different energy levels.  Photons and Gluons are at zero mass and the only ones that can travel only at the speed of light,  which is the fastest anything can travel.
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-   Photons and Gluons are energy carriers.  Photons carry the electromagnetic force.  Gluons carry the Strong Nuclear Force.  That is what holds protons together in the nucleus of atoms.  Then we have W and Z Bosons that carry the Weak Nuclear Force but they have enormous mass and they decay.  All together these force carriers are called “Bosons”.  All the matter particles are called “ Fermions”.  There are 3 types of electrons, 3 types of neutrinos and 6 types of Quarks that are Fermions.
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-  Electrons can emit photons.  Neutrinos can not emit photons.  Neutrinos have very little mass. The lowest energy levels are the ordinary matter of electrons, neutrinos and Up and Down Quarks.  The heavier particles decay always seeking the lowest energy levels.  The heavier the particle the faster it decays.  Top Quarks decay the fastest, but, they can produce the Higgs particle as we shall see.  But, all the Fermions have mass:
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-------------------------  Electrons  -------------- 0.511 million electron volts / c^2
------------------------   Muons    -------------- 106  MeV ( c^2 is assumed )
-------------------------- Tau        ---------------- 1,777  MeV
-------------------------  Up Quark  ------------- 2,000
-------------------------  Down Quark  ---------  5,000
------------------------  Bottom Quark  --------  4,200
------------------------  Top Quark  ------------  173,000
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-  Two of the Bosons have mass.  They are responsible for the Weak Nuclear Force decay, commonly referred to as radioactivity.
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-------------------------  W Boson  -------------  80,300
------------------------   Z Boson  --------------   91,188
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-  Add all these particles up and get 16 particles.  Each of  these has an equivalent anti-matter particle that has equivalent mass but opposite charge.  That brings the total to 32 fundamental particles of matter and anti-matter.
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-  What causes these particles to have mass?  Why do the different particles have different mass?  The answer is their degree of interaction with the Higgs Field gives them mass.  The Higgs Field permeates all of space.  Inertia is the degree of interaction each particle has in this sea of “ virtual particles”.  The virtual particles can become real particles if enough energy is added to them.  The Higgs Particle requires 126,000 MeV.
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-  An electron and an anti-electron could create a Higgs Particle if they had enough energy.  But, practically this will not happen because electrons have too little mass and too small cross-section area to have high energy collisions.   The Top Quark collisions offer the best candidates to create the Higgs.
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-  Here is the plan.  Collide protons and anti-protons together in the Large Hadron Collide at speeds near that of light.  The Gluons that collide in pairs create a Top Quark and a anti-Top Quark.  This pair of  Top Quarks decay into a Higgs Particle.
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-  That is the theory and the math needed to create the Higgs Boson.  A real particle is created out of the virtual particle in the Higgs Field.  This is what happened at CERN’s Particle Accelerator.  The statistics from trillions of collisions found a particle with 126,000 MeV mass.  When the energy is high enough the energy becomes matter.  The matter has mass.  The mass in the interaction with the Higgs Field.  What a discovery!
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-  The math in the Standard Model allows for 4 more Higgs Boson particles to exist.  It even suggests there an equivalent set of Super-particles to all the Standard Model particles.  Called Super Symmetry it is a theory supported by String Theory.  Particle discoveries are definitely not finished.  Dark Matter is another form of mass that is undiscovered.  An announcement will be made shortly, stay tuned.
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com -----
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Saturday, March 24, 2018   --------------------------------
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2044 - Oumuamua , the needle shaped asteroid

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- 2044  -   Oumuamua is needle shaped asteroid ,1,300 feet long, 360 feet diameter, on a long hyperbolic orbit. It is traveling at 58,900 miles per hour.   This asteroid came from outside our system.  It is on its way back into deep space.  Active asteroids or main belt comets could have played a part in making Earth habitable. 
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TO LEARN MORE, CLICK ON ADDRESS BELOW:  FEEDBACK ENCOURAGED
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-------------------------  2044  -   Oumuamua , the needle shaped asteroid
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-You probably missed it. But, fortunately it missed us too. It was an asteroid named “Oumuamua”.   The name is Hawaiian meaning “scout”.  The telescope on Maui discovered this asteroid in 2017.  In zoomed past us last October just 15 million miles away from an impact.  The Moon is 240,000 miles away.
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This needle shaped, metal-rich asteroid , 1,300 feet long, 360 feet diameter, on a long hyperbolic orbit. It is traveling at 58,900 miles per hour.   It came to us from another distant two-star system .   It was not part of our solar system and was not gravitationally bound to our Sun. It was not a comet because it had no tail and no cloud like coma around its core even after getting close to the Sun.
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This asteroid came from outside our system.  Computer modeling indicated that its elongated shape was created in a system of two close orbiting stars. There are a lot of binary star systems in our galaxy, estimated to be over 50% of the stars we find.
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This asteroid completed a long voyage through deep space. Already it has left the view of our most powerful telescopes disappearing from sight mid-December, 2017.   Oumuamua is on its way back into deep space.  It is the first known interstellar object to visit the solar system.  It appears to have come from roughly the direction of the star Vega in that constellation. 
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On the pass- by astronomers determined the rotation rate to be one rotation every 7.3 hours.   ( 0.00024 radians per second ).  That is 3.29 times faster than Earth’s 24 hour rotation rate.  ( 24 / 7.3).   When it zipped around the Sun in September it reached a maximum speed of 196,200 miles per hour.  Today the speed is 58,900 miles per hour and it will take 20,000 years for it to completely leave our Solar System.
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Astronomers would like to sample an asteroid or comet that has survived the past 4.5 billion years in pristine condition. They would like to learn the composition of primordial ice.  Several space missions are being planed to do just that.
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 Proteus mission to Comet 133P is to launch in 2021.
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OSIRIS-REx mission is to arrive at asteroid Benny in 2018
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As icy comets travel closer to the Sun they form a tail through sublimation with water leaping from ice to gas instantaneously 
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Despite Hollywood’s portrayal the asteroid belt is mostly empty space.  The average distance between asteroids in the belt is 600,000 miles.  These bodies are 4.6 billion years old.  They might crash into each other once in 100 million to 1 billion years while the belt hosts some 800,000 of these large rocky bodies.
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Astronomers estimate that interstellar objects similar to Oumuamua pass inside the orbit of Earth every year.  And, 10,000 are passing inside the orbit of Neptune on any given day.
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Active asteroids or main belt comets could have played a part in making Earth habitable.  When the Earth formed we were too close to the Sun to retain liquid water.  It is likely that these asteroids brought water to Earth impacts that occurred much later.
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-  OTHER REVIEWS AVAILABLE ABOUT ASTEROIDS:
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1924.    How did asteroids and supernovae affect life on Earth?  We know we have had these visitors from outer space.  The giant crater in the Yucatán Peninsula was a global event that occurred 66,000,000 years ago.   It was responsible for annihilating 75% of the living species on Earth.
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The iron in your blood came from a supernova explosion that was created in a Neutron Star, or a Blackhole.  An average galaxy size of ours experiences a supernova every 100 years.  We are due.
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1923.   When will a big asteroid hit the Earth?  In 2017 over 50 asteroids have passed us closer than the Moon, inside 240,000 miles.
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1871.  In order to predict asteroids trajectories we need to learn about their individual composition.   As they approach the Sun gases burn of in different sequences to alter the trajectory.   Trojan asteroids occupy gravity balance points 60 degrees ahead and behind Earth’s orbit.  Over 6,300 Trojan asteroids have been identified sharing Jupiter’s orbit.  Footnote bibliography about Joseph Louis Lagrange.
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1829.  It is not the 8 planets in our solar system but the dwarf planets, asteroids and comets that have the most impact on the evolution of life on Earth.
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This Review 1829 also lists 11 more Reviews on asteroids

1825. Does the math for the impact of the asteroid on the Yucatán Peninsula equivalent to 1,500,000 atomic bombs all at once.
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1769.   When will the next asteroid hit the Earth? 
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1580.   Asteroids are the bricks that built up our solar system.
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1554. Asteroids and meteorites are fossils with stories. 
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1429.  There is an asteroid heading right towards us.
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1375.  There is an asteroid following us. 
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1309.  Vesta and Ceres asteroids get a visit from us.
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1265.   This asteroid missed us, but, what if? 
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1315.  How do asteroids and planets evolve?
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1193.  Asteroid to hit Mother Earth.
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937.  Spinning asteroid,  teachers lesson plan. Using a professional telescope by remote control.
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Saturday, March 24, 2018   --------------------------------
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Discovering planets

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- 2043  -  Discovering planets around other stars is a big deal.  It opens a whole new realm in astronomy and the evolution of life on Earth   Over 4,000 of these exoplanets have been discovered to date.   Astronomers can not now start with a star disk system and begin to predict what kind of planetary system will evolve.  Evidence is that planetary systems are highly chaotic.   The chaos erases all the evidence of how they formed.
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-----------------------------------  Discovering  Planets
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Discovering planets around other stars is a big deal.  It opens a whole new realm in astronomy and the evolution of life on Earth   Over 4,000 of these exoplanets have been discovered to date.  The first discovery was in 1990 with a planet orbiting a pulsar. This was totally unexpected.   Then several Jupiter size planets were discovered orbiting very close to their star
-
Obviously large planets in close orbits are the easiest to find.  Multiple orbits are needed to be sure you are really studying an orbiting planet and not some other object.   And, large planets block more of their host’s star light.   And, large planets wobble their host stars light wavelength.   This is how planets are discovered !   (See footnote 1)
-
As the technology and techniques improved more and smaller planets were found.   What we expected was that rocky earth-size planets would be closer to their star and gaseous giant planets would be orbiting further out.  Modeled after our solar system. After many discoveries the result is that there is no “typical” solar system. They are all different.
-
Hot Jupiter’s in tight orbits are 1% of those found. Warm Jupiter’s in 5 to 10% of the cases with elongated orbits 0.3 to 3 astronomical units from their star. (An astronomical unit is the Earth - Sun distance , 93 million miles).  50% are super-earth’s  often in multiple-planet systems.  Most are orbiting close to their star not farther out like in our system.  Only about 3% are orbiting at distances similar to our Jupiter and Saturn. 
-
Planet formation systems that we understand cannot explain this diversity and range of solar systems.  There remains a deep mystery in this complexity. How planets gravitationally interact?   How they shift between circular and elongated orbits?  How they migrate into different orbits?
-
Planetary disks range from 1 to 10% of their host stars mass. They vary considerably in gas to dust ratios and chemical composition.  Astronomers still believe that planets build up through smaller collisions to become rocky planets. The giant ice and gas planets evolve further out.  Their large mass collecting more of the gas and dust orbiting around them.
-
Big unknowns arise from perturbations created by stars passing nearby to the system. Or, supernovae explosions disturbing a new born system. Planets migrate into different orbits and can become locked into gravitational resonance with each other.  Also, planetary pinball can occur resetting an entire system. 
-
About half of the planets have highly elongated or inclined orbits. Some even orbit their stars the wrong way.  Neptune’s 3:2 resonance with Pluto is clear evidence that migrations also occurred in our system. Both Neptune and the Kuiper Belt Objects likely formed closer to the Sun. Gravitational interactions with the four giant planets likely drove Neptune into the Kuiper Belt out to the  longer orbits and scattering these KBOs
-
Astronomers can not now start with a star disk system and begin to predict what kind of planetary system will evolve.  Evidence is that planetary systems are highly chaotic. The chaos erases all the evidence of how they formed.
-
What is our recipe for planetary formation?   First off it is somehow order out of chaos.  We have a model for our situation, but, recognize it is the only one we know.  We do not know if this repeats itself throughout the universe.  It starts with a gravitationally shrinking cloud of gas and dust floating in outer space.
-
The gas collapses into clumps of matter. It’s rotation flattens into a disk.  Flecks of dust and molecules smash into each other.  They collect more mass and thus more gravity. This attracts more gas and dust.  The whole cycle snowballs and small planets, big planets, asteroids and comets orbiting a mammoth mass that condenses into a fusion machine that lights up a planetary system.    The four rocky planets orbit closer to their star.   The large gaseous planets orbit farther out protecting the inner planets from asteroids and debris.     This is our home in the universe.
-
Maybe life is rare? Maybe it isn’t?  But, habitable environments that Earth-like life could tolerate is not rare.  The odds are that life conditions are common. 
-
Astronomically speaking there is total diversity in the universe. No two stars are alike. No two planetary systems are alike. No two planets are alike. Somehow out of the chaos some order evolves.  Some life forms survive. The dinosaurs did not survive the changes chaos continued to bring.  But, somehow some mammals did.  You can thank your lucky stars.  God only knows.   If all this order did not survive just right you would not be reading this.
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FOOTNOTE:   (1)  How planet Kepler 186f was discovered:

When the planet passes in front of its star the dip in brightness is measured to be 0.042%
-
The cross sectional area of the star is measured to be  416 million square kilometers.
-
The cross sectional area of the planet must be: 
-
---------------------  Ap  =  416  *  0.00042  =  174,720,000    km^2
-
------------------  Ap  =  pi * r^2
-
------------------    r^2  =  55,615,103
-
------------------  r  =  7,460  kilometers
-
-----------------  r  =    4,645 miles
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-
-OTHER REVIEWS AVAILABLE ON THE TOPIC:
-
2036.  -   Is there life on other planets?   Studying 150,000 stars astronomers
have found over 4,000 exoplanets.
-
2030. -  New data on Cepheid Variable stars in our Milky Way Galaxy find them 10 times further away.   New calculations for an expanding universe are that the expansion rate is 50,000 miles per hour for every lightyears distance.  The Kepler data is that there is a 50% chance star would have at least one planet in orbit.
-
1912.  -   Our nearest star system , Proxima Centura , has at least 2 planets in orbit. One in the habitable zone. 
-
1874   -   Exoplanets have moons and they may even be more habitable?  4,000 planets discovered so far but who knows how many moons?   Jupiter’s has 67 moons and two of them could support life because liquid water is below their surface.
-
This Review’ appendix lists five more reviews about Europa, three reviews about Enceladus, and five reviews about Titan. 
-
1833. -  Exoplanets are starting to review their secrets. 
-
1669.  -  How many planets are there?  How do we do the math to determine the mass of each planet.
-
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Thursday, March 22, 2018   --------------------------------
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Cassini studied Saturn and her moons

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- 2042  -  -   Cassini studied Saturn’s moons and there are many,  62 moon counted.    Saturn generates a magnetic field from deep in its interior.   The heat convection and the rotation create a flowing electric current.  One of the highlights was the spacecraft imaged water jets shooting up from the moon Enceladus.  -   April, 2018 , mornings bring Mars and Saturn close together in the south eastern sky.  Check it out : 
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--------------------------  2042 -   Saturn and her moons
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-  The first of April , 2018,  you can see Saturn and Mars together in the south east sky.  They are just 1.4 degrees separation.  Sagittarius is the constellation in the background.   Mars shines at 0.3 magnitude and Saturn at 0.2 magnitude.   Saturn is 936,000,000 miles from the Sun.
-
-   Cassini left Cape Canaveral 20 years ago. The past 13 years gathering data before entering the Saturn atmosphere.  After 1.5 hours burning up in the atmosphere the mission is successfully ended.
-
-   Cassini collected data using 12 instruments attached to the space craft. The entire spacecraft had to be rotated to point specific instruments to a specific target.    Cassini studied Saturn’s moons and there are many,  62 moon counted.   Saturn has 11 smaller inner moons.  Outer moons include:
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 --------------------------------------------------- kilometer radius -------  mile radius
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--------------------  Mimas  -------------------------. 199 ----------------------   124     
----------------------Enceladus. ----------------------249  ----------------------  155
----------------------Tethys.-------------------------- 530  ----------------------  329
----------------------Dione.--------------------------- 539 ----------------------   335
----------------------Rhea. ----------------------------764  ----------------------  475
----------------------Hyperion. -----------------------140  ----------------------    87
----------------------Titan.-------------------------- 2,575  ----------------------  1600
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-   .   On Titan Cassini found seas of hydrocarbons with a complex surface environment.  The seas were liquid methane at -180 C.
-
-   Passing Enceladus saw a moon with 100 geysers spouting from an underground ocean of liquid water.  The water was heated by the gravitational tidal forces of Saturn.  Enceladus is 10% the size of Titan. The salty ocean discovered below its surface contains enormous amounts of water.  Maybe even microbial life. 
-
-   Iapetus, an inner moon had one hemisphere that was snow-white and the other dark black.   This was a thermal process caused by slowly rotating Iapetus.   The hot side would sublimate ice.  The ice would re-accumulate on the cold white side. 
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-   Prometheus is an inner moon that is 53 miles diameter.   Mimas another inner moon creates the broadest gap in the rings. The rings contain density waves that show up in variations in brightness and thickness. In order to study the rings more closely Cassini’s final mission was to fly between the rings and the upper atmosphere 22 times.  Prior to this Cassini always stayed outside the rings to protect it from damage   
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-   The Great White Spot on the surface created a thunderstorm of lightning strokes. These were detected with high frequency radio emissions.  The lightning was created by convective competition between water rich clouds and lighter weight hydrogen and helium atmosphere.   The heavier wet clouds can not rise until the upper clouds become denser and sink.
-
-   Saturn generates a magnetic field from deep in its interior.   The heat convection and the rotation create a flowing electric current.  This in turn creates a magnetic field.
-
-   Determining the Saturn day was a real challenge. The atmosphere is not solid and different layers rotate at different speeds.  Trying to use the rotating magnetic field was difficult because the rotating axis and the magnetic axis were  tilted less than 0.06 degrees.  With no solid surface beneath, no friction to dissipate atmospheric motions.  Once started they endure.  The hexagon jet stream over the north pole is an example. 
-
-   Another challenge was to measure the planet’s gravity.  The technique was to measure the slight change in radio frequency as the satellite orbited.  The tiny frequency changes would map the distribution of mass within the planet.
-
-  Voyagers were launched in 1977.  They arrived in 1980.  Both were slingshot past the planet.  They were traveling 9 miles per second. ( 32,000 miles per hour).  Passing by Saturn’s rings they were measured to be only 33 and 656 feet thick.
-
-   Cassini launched in 1997 arrived in 2004.   One of the highlights of the mission was in 2010 erupted a colossal storm.  Lasting 270 days it produce a thundering and lightning behemoth that spread entirely around the planet. 
-
-  April, 2018 , mornings bring Mars and Saturn close together in the south eastern sky.  Check it out :
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-
-  HERE ARE SOME OTHER REVIEWS YOU CAN  REQUEST:

-   2025.  -   Huygens lands on Titan, a moon of Saturn that is bigger than the planet Mercury.   Huygens landed safely on the surface and transmitted back to us for 72 minutes.
-
-   2023  -    Saturn and her many moons. Even moons with underground oceans. Saturn is
 91/2 times the size of Earth.  And 91/2 times the distance from the Sun. The plumes of Enceladus are 98% water vapor.   Seven more Reviews are also listed in appendix.
-
-   1992 -     Covers Titan and Saturn mission accomplishments.  With its rings it is 300,000 miles diameter. 
-
-  1764  -  Saturn is 10 times bigger than Earth with a diameter at 74,900 miles  It is like a mini soar system.
-
-   1570. -   Over 300,000 close up pictures were taken from our satellite sending over 450 gigabytes of data.
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 -  1842. -   Another gaseous planet like Saturn has been discovered but it is 200 times bigger.

-  1342 -   Saturn’s hexagon at the North Pole.
-
-  1271 -   There is a thunderstorm on. Saturn.
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-  1252  -   Discoveries when Cassini visits Saturn, written March 2011.
-
-  661  -   Saturn, Cassini, and Huygens written July, 2006.
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  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Thursday, March 29, 2018   --------------------------------
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Discovering the power of plants and dirt.

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-   2041  -  Discovering the power of plants and dirt.  To learn how plants can turn sunlight into chemical energy. The payoff would be to provide the world with an unlimited source of clean power. 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 the same thing, removing carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering it underground.
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TO LEARN MORE, CLICK ON ADDRESS BELOW:  FEEDBACK ENCOURAGED
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-
-  For five years I worked in Palo Alto and drove highway 280 to work.  The highway passed over the SLAC linear accelerator. This laser tube ran for 2 miles from Stanford University under the highway and into the western foothills.  I visited the facility several times in 1969 to 1970.  Today there are a whole new set of experiments going on..
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-  The tube was outfitted with the world’s most powerful X-ray laser that could accelerate electrons up to nearly the speed of light. They would smash the beam into crystals of a protein.
-
-   Why?  To study plant photosynthesis. To learn how plants can turn sunlight into chemical energy. The payoff would be to provide the world with an unlimited source of clean power.
-
-   The experiment uses visible light simulating sunlight on a leaf, the leaf would spur proteins to begin photosynthesis. The powerful x-ray laser would take snapshots of the changes in the proteins in the fractions of a second before they were destroyed.
-
-   The photo process took five steps:  Hundreds of thousands of light responsive protein crystals were sent through an injector.  Pulses of green light simulating sunlight were aimed at the nano crystals. The first steps of photosynthesis occurs in just femtoseconds. The crystals are then hit with an X-ray pulse creating a snapshot of the molecule structure.  This is done repeatedly to produce frames in a movie.
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-  The X-ray pulse lasts just 50 femtoseconds. The experiment produces thousands of 2-D snapshots that can be spliced together in a computer to create a 3-D view of the protein’s structure.  Enough snapshots and the sequence could produce a movie of the whole process.  Each frame in femtoseconds. Femtoseconds are to one second as one second is to 30 million years.
-
-   We are able to see the moving atoms and molecules within living things at these speeds. We can learn how medicines affect diseased cells.  How chemical reactions convert energy in to different forms.  How drugs regulate blood pressure.  How photosynthesis splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.
-
-   The answers can  revolutionize medicine and create an unlimited power source.

Many innovations had to be made for this experiment to work. The nano crystals are too small to see under a microscope. The solution was to convert two pulses of infrared light into one green photon of light. This lit up the crystals like fireflies in the night.
-
-  Firing a stream of nano-crystals across an x- ray beam used a technology developed for inkjet printing.  A stream of helium gas was used to focus the stream of crystals to a stream the size of a fraction of a human hair.
-
-   After all this a single experiment had to handle 100 terabytes of data needed to create the 3-D view. The data had to merge thousands of snapshots. Software had to convert all this into an accurate image of a individual molecule.
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-   Plants can split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas.   Plants use sunlight and some minerals from the soil.  If we could do that we could supply the world with cheap, clean burning hydrogen fuel for cars and power generators.    We could have the dream of an renewable energy economy.
-
-   These fast speed cameras may show us the details needed to learn the processes occurring at the atomic level and to discover the secrets the plants have in photosynthesis.
-
-   The high speed cameras could allow us to design the drugs to treat high blood pressure.  These molecular movies could allow us to learn how the eyes can see.  Bacteria have light sensitive proteins that are precursors to our own vision.  An ultra-slow motion video of extremely rapid events could reveal how a protein in bacteria senses and responds to light.
-
-   Crystallized protein reacts to light in increments of less than a trillionth of a second.  This discovery would be fundamental to all light perception in all living organism, plants and animals.  It is the first event in our own human vision.
-
-   The process is known as protein crystallography soon to be 3-D movies and the pathway to many new discoveries.
-
-  It is not just plants the dirt itself 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 government mandates needed, just education.
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-  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.
-
-  With perennials crops we would not be replanting 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 the 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.
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-  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.
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-  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.  We should learn how photosynthesis releases this oxygen into the atmosphere and create this carbon rich soil in the first place.  Let’s get back to earth.
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.-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Saturday, March 17, 2018   --------------------------------
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PHYSICS - Oceans and Molecules.

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-  2040  -   PHYSICS  -  Oceans and Molecules.  The Sun’s pull on the Earth is 175 times stronger than the Moon’s gravity pull.   Escape velocity going up is exactly the same as the impact velocity hitting the Earth coming back down.  The Earth loses on average 6.6 pounds of hydrogen and helium molecules every second in the upper atmosphere.   These physics questions need careful answers. 
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- TO LEARN MORE, CLICK ON ADDRESS BELOW:  FEEDBACK ENCOURAGED
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-
-  So much of physics is in our daily lives. Sometimes it challenges our intuition. Sometimes we have trouble explaining observations accurately.   We see one thing and physics tells us another. The tides, for example, are explained by the Moon’s gravity pulling on the large mass of the oceans. Or, let’s try to answer the question why the Moon is having that affect and not the Sun that is so much larger mass?
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-  We learn that at the ocean shores the tides are controlled by the phases of the Moon , and not the Sun. Even though the Sun’s pull on the Earth is 175 times stronger than the Moon’s gravity pull.  By that logic the Sun should be controlling the tides.
-
-  First we must realize that gravity alone will not make the water move. It is the “difference in gravity” on different parts of the Earth that moves the water.
-
-  The other difference is the Moon is closer to us and the Sun is very far away. Both follow the same formula:

---------------------------------------   F.   =   m*M  /  r^2
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-  The Force of Gravity is proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them.
-
-  The Moon is 3.4% closer to the near side of the Earth versus the far side. That adds up to a 7% difference in the Moons total influence on both sides of the Earth.
-
-  The Sun is much farther away , 93 million miles versus the Moon 0.24 million miles. That makes the difference of the Sun’s pull on the two sides of the Earth only 0.018%.  So the Sun is having a very small affect on the Earth’s tides. 
-
-  The Earth’s gravity is holding on to the Moon. The gravity “differences” again has caused the Moon to rotate only once in each orbit around the Earth. The same side of the Moon is always pointing towards the Earth.
-
-  Another misunderstood concept has to do with the velocity needed to escape the gravity of the Earth.   We need an upward velocity greater than 7 miles per second ( 25,000 miles per hour). This is a one shot deal.  It does not apply if you are continually applying rocket power.
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-  Escape velocity going up is exactly the same as the impact velocity hitting the Earth coming back down.  A baseball going up at some speed will come back down at the same speed, ignoring the drag due to air resistance.
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-  A baseball dropped out of an airplane will pick up speed on the way down. It will start its fall at 22 miles per hour for each second it is falling. If you catch it on the ground after 2 seconds it will be traveling 44 mph. 
-
-  Dropped from a higher elevation after 3 seconds it will be traveling 66 mph. That would hurt.  ( Again ignoring air resistance ).
-
-  Raindrops experience air resistance and their maximum speed remains at 22 mph unless they experience wind and tornados. Here is how the falling speed can be calculated when you ignore wind resistance.
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-  Falling Speed   =  square root * (elevation * 64.4)  feet per second
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-  To get miles per hour multiply feet per second by 0.68.
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-  Example :  A ball dropped from 1,000 feet elevation:
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------------------- Falling Speed   =  square root * (1000 * 64.4)  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  253  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  172 miles per hour
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-  Example :  A ball dropped from 100 feet elevation:
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------------------- Falling Speed   =  square root * (100* 64.4)  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  80  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  55  miles per hour
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--  Example :  A ball dropped from 10 feet elevation:
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------------------- Falling Speed   =  square root * (10* 64.4)  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  25  feet per second
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-------------------Falling Speed   =  17  miles per hour
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-  So, that is what happens for objects falling to Earth.  What about molecules escaping from the other direction in the top of the atmosphere. Molecules zipping around in the upper atmosphere can exceed  the escape velocity.
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-  In fact, the Earth loses on average 6.6 pounds of hydrogen and helium molecules every second.  That may not sound like much but over the course of a year that is 100,000 tons.
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----------------------- ( 6.6 pounds  /  second ) *  (3,160,000  seconds  /  year)
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---------------------   200,000,000  pounds per year
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-  Now, some of that mass gets replaced by meteorites hitting the Earth.  The estimates in meteorite impacts is 50,000 tons per year.
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-  According to these calculations the Earth is losing weight.   No problem, Mother Earth has plenty of weight left to evaporate.
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-  SEVERAL OTHER REVIEWS AVAILABLE ON PHYSICS:
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-  2015. -  Quantum Mechanics and the theory of Relativity. This research led to the theory that light photons behave sometimes as particles and sometimes as waves.
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- 2021 -  A summary of new discoveries in physics and astronomy.
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-  2009. -  Physics wants a “theory for everything“.   String Theory has six dimensions of space all curled up attempting to merge Relativity with Quantum Mechanics. 
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-  2004. -  “The Trouble with Physics” is a book that examines five big problems in physics that have not yet been solved.
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-  2003. -  “Too Weird to Ponder“. Examines blackholes and atomic particle physics.
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-  2002. -  “Physics the way I learned it“. 8 pages examines all the equations in physics and what they tell us.   
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-  1995. -  “The Natural Constants“.   Lists seven other reviews as well.
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-  1984. -  Delving into extreme physics.
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-  1301. -  Can bird poop break a car windshield.   Four pages of math.   Also lists 9 more reviews.
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Thursday, March 15, 2018   --------------------------------
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The Power of Light.

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- ---------  1389  -  The Power of Light.  -  How powerful is light and how does it come out of  electricity and magnetism?  We can not learn all about the Universe using “ light”.  There is just too little of it.  We needed to invent special detectors to “see” everything beyond our little sliver of visible 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.
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TO LEARN MORE, CLICK ON ADDRESS BELOW:  FEEDBACK ENCOURAGED
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--------------------------------  1389  -  The Power of Light
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-  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
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-  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 has 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.
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-----------------  Permeability is the ratio of magnetic flux density to the magnetic field strength in free space.
-
------------------Permeability  =  4 * pi* 10^-7  Tesla* meters / amperes
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----------------  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.
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---------------  Permittivity  =  8.8 * 10^-12  Coulombs^2 / Newton * meters^2
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----------------  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.
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-------------  Newton is a unit of force that produces an acceleration of one meter per second on a mass of one kilogram.
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-  In Maxwell’s equation  -------------   1  /   permeability * permittivity
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--------------------------------------------   1  /  (4 * pi * 10^-7)  *  ( 8.8*10^-12)
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--------------------------------------------  1  /  111 * 10^-19
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--------------------------------------------  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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-  OTHER REVIEWS AVAILABLE
-
-  (1)  # 1288  “  We are immersed in electromagnetic radiation”
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-  (2)  # 1286  “  What makes electromagnetic waves into light?”
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-  (3)  # 726  “ Electric and magnetic forces”
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-  (4)  # 1043  “ The strangeness of light”
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-  (5)  # 621  “ Background radiation”
-
-  (6)  # 36  “ What do you think is the oldest thing you can see?”
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.-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Wednesday, March 14, 2018   --------------------------------
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Sending a chip to the stars

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- 2039  -  Starchip  -  -  If we can accelerate a starchip to 20% the speed of light we could get to the nearest star in 20 years. It would take pictures and send them their 4.37 year journey to return to Earth.   But, that’s only 25 years, a single scientific career.  Thinking , planning and dreaming will lead to new innovations and explorations.  So what if we don’t make it to the stars!  It would be fun to try.
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-  We have sent men to the Moon.  Maybe soon we will send astronauts to Mars. But, will we every send space cadets to the stars? 
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-   Doubtful, our fastest rockets would take 30,000 years to reach the closest star, Alpha Centauri.  We know there are planets there, Proxima Centauri. Even if we get there and send pictures it will take 4.37 years for the pictures to arrive back to Earth.
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-  Sending a rocket there seems unrealistic at best.  But, maybe we just send the camera on a small robot.  Maybe the camera, radio, navigation instruments could all be put on an integrated circuit, a chip.  And, we don’t use a rocket, but, propel the starchip there on a laser beam? 
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-  If we can accelerate the starchip to 20% the speed of light we could get there in 20 years. It will still take the pictures 4.37 years to return to Earth.   But, that’s 25 years in total, a single scientific career.  Might be worth doing?  Some young college kid might consider it.  The chance to discover another world, or, life on another planet?
-
-  The Starchip would need a light sail in space.  Then powerful laser beams to propel it up to 20% light speed.  The sail propulsion would need a large number of small lasers ganged together so their light could be focused into a single beam. The coherent beam would push a sail carrying the chip.  It would take 1,000 lasers accelerating the sail up to 20% the speed of light in a few minutes. 
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-  The starchip would weigh only a few grams.  It would contain power supplies, a light sensor, four cameras, a radio, a spectrograph, a magnetometer, and diffraction grating. Instead of heavy camera lenses ,  tiny diffraction grating in a  planar Fourier array over a light sensor would break the incoming light into wavelengths that can be reconstructed by a computer back on Earth to any focal length.
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-  We have been to the Moon but Alpha Centauri is 100 million times further away.  The laser’s aim must be very precise. The transmission back would reach us with only a few hundred photons.  To help improve this transmission we could set up a relay system of several starchips  left along the way. 
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-  The chips would need batteries to run cameras, computers, and radio transmitters.  Power is the hardest engineering problem to solve.  Maybe tiny nuclear batteries like those used in medical implants would do the job.
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-  To protect the chip from the elements encountered in space a coating of a few  millimeters of beryllium copper could be used. A thousand chips should be sent because many may not survive the trip.
-
 -  The sail must be propelled by the recoil being hit by a laser beam of light. The sail must reflect nearly all of the light, 99.999%.  Any light that is not reflected will heat the sail and, that would not be good.
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-  The sail would need to be very light, be only a few atoms thick, about the thickness of a soap bubble.  Yet, the sail must able to withstand an acceleration of 60,000 gs.  That is 60,000 the force of gravity, “gs”.
-
- The sail could attach to the chip with cables, but it must be able to avoid spinning, and it must remain centered on the laser beam. It should fold up after it reaches the required speed, so it is less of a target for space dust. 
-
-  When the sail reaches the star it needs to unfold and act an antenna, or telescope mirror.
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-  To propel the sail up to speed in just a few minutes would require 100 gigawatts of power.  A thousand fiber lasers grouped in an array and phased to produce a single coherent beam would do the job. It needs to be able to focus on a four square meter sail 20,000 miles away.  It must hit the sail evenly or it would cause the sail to spin or tumble.
-
-  Most certainly the lasers would need to use adaptive optics That technology cancels out atmospheric turbulence by adjusting a flexible mirror.  Or instead of a flexible mirror maybe each laser fiber could be engineered to make the corrections needed.
-
-  Alpha  Centauri is two binary stars.  Proxima is the star that is closer, and Proxima “b” is the planet that is in the right orbit to be habitable. If Starchip flew by it could take images, measure the magnetic field, maybe sample the atmosphere, all in a few minutes flyby.
-
-  Wow, not as easy as you first thought , right?  Maybe a 15 meter space telescope would make more sense?  Maybe the star chips should be better used  just exploring our own solar system?  That would be cheaper and quicker for sure.
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-  On the other hand just thinking , planning and dreaming will lead to new innovations and explorations.  So what if we don’t make it to the stars!  It would be fun to try.
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-  2029  -  Space, dust in outer space.   Could life have started with dust from outer space.  Complex organic molecules have been found in this dust.  From one perspective Earth itself is just a giant dust ball; in space. 
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-  The Review above lists eleven other reviews written about space.
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----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Tuesday, March 13, 2018   --------------------------------
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EVOLUTION and Supernovae.

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- 2038  -   EVOLUTION and  Supernovae.  -  Review 2037 was about evolution of life extinctions on Earth affected by dark matter.  This Review 2038 looks for other explanations for the periodic extinctions that occurred every 30,000,000 years.  We owe it to Dark Matter, lightning, cosmic rays, supernovae, and God.  Otherwise we would still be in the trees.
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-

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---------------  - 2038  -   EVOLUTION and  Supernovae
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-  Review 2037 was about evolution of life extinctions on Earth affected by dark matter.  This Review 2038 looks for other explanations for the periodic extinctions that occurred every 30,000,000 years. 
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-  Could supernovae be the cause of mass extinctions ? 
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-  About 2.6 million years ago a supernova appeared in our night sky brighter than a full moon.  Nothing happens for a million years after the supernova is first sighted.  Then the rate of lightning increases. This create fires that destroyed trees and created the grass lands.  This challenged early humans to adapt to a whole new environment.
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-  Life threatening events like supernovae, gamma ray bursts,  and solar flares occur every hundred million years.  Do these events cause mass extinctions on Earth?  We know they can destroy the ozone layer and that the ultraviolet radiation can damage life on the surface.
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-  Some evidence of the supernova event 2.6million years ago is found in the isotope
 iron-60.  Stable iron has 26 protons and 30 neutrons.  Iron-60 has four extra neutrons that radioactive decay with a half life of 2.6 million years.  Because our planet is 4,500 million years old no original radioactive iron-60 should be left.
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-  Scientists date a supernovae event happening 2.6 million years ago by finding iron-60 isotopes in soil sediments.  Giant stars have short lives and a group born together may explode as supernovae together. Evidence is strong that supernovae occurred at a distance of 300 lightyears 2.5 million years ago.
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-  90% of cosmic rays are protons.  Most have energies small enough that they are deflected by the Earth’s magnetic field and appear as northern lights over the North Pole. Most are a few hundred million electron volts, however, some outliers can hit us as high as 10^21 electron volts
-
-  Most of this cosmic ray energy is lost on the molecules in the upper atmosphere because they get ionized.  Ionization means the  neutral atoms loose their electrons and the nucleus retains its positive charge.

-  Muons are heavy electrons that can come out of these collisions.  They decay in a few microseconds. However, they are moving fast enough to still hit the ground.  There are about 10,000 hits per square meter at ground level every minute.  They amount to about 17% of the total radiation our bodies receive.
-
- An  influx of muons might explain the acceleration of mutations over the last few million years due to this radiation.
-
-  Radiation can also affect the upper atmosphere creating an increase in lightning. Lightning starts with a leader , a path of increased ionization in which an electric field can accelerate free electrons. A cascade of accelerated electrons knocks out more electrons and the electric current grows into a lightning bolt. 
-
-  Lightning ignites forest fires. The American Great Plans  were kept as grasslands by lightning set wild fires.  The Great Rift Valley in East Africa was converted from forest to grassland in a similar manner.   This conversion may have forced our ancestors out of tress into the grasslands walking upright and hunting for food.
-
-  Adapting to changing environmental conditions caused our brains to develop in order to survive. Development continued until you could read this review.  You owe it to Dark Matter, lightning, cosmic rays, supernovae, and God.  Otherwise we would still be in the trees.
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-  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----  Comments appreciated and Pass it on to whomever is interested. ----
---   Some reviews are at:  --------------     http://jdetrick.blogspot.com ----- 
--  email feedback, corrections, request for copies or Index of all reviews
-  to:   -------    jamesdetrick@comcast.net  ------  “Jim Detrick”  -----------
-  https://plus.google.com/u/0/  -- www.facebook.com  -- www.twitter.com
 -------------------------   Sunday, March 11, 2018   --------------------------------
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