tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24892976540695705502024-03-04T23:27:48.623-08:00Тайна Земли и КосмосаТайна Земли и Космоса. Роман РубцовAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-45020126065821604822015-04-13T18:26:00.001-07:002015-04-13T18:28:12.620-07:00What is a Wormhole?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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What is a Wormhole? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 22px; text-align: left;">A wormhole is a theoretical passage through space-time that could create shortcuts for long journeys across the universe. Wormholes are predicted by the theory of general relativity. But be wary: wormholes bring with them the dangers of sudden collapse, high radiation and dangerous contact with exotic matter.</span></div>
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<strong style="margin-top: 0px !important;">Wormhole theory</strong></div>
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In 1935, physicists <a href="http://www.space.com/15524-albert-einstein.html" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">Albert Einstein</a> and Nathan Rosen used the <a href="http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">theory of general relativity</a> to propose the existence of "bridges" through space-time. These paths, called Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormholes, connect two different points in space-time, theoretically creating a shortcut that could reduce travel time and distance. Wormholes contain two mouths, with a throat connecting the two. The mouths would most likely be spheroidal. The throat might be a straight stretch, but it could also wind around, taking a longer path than a more conventional route might require.</div>
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Einstein's theory of general relativity mathematically predicts the existence of wormholes, but none have been discovered to date. A negative mass wormhole might be spotted by the way its gravity affects light that passes by.</div>
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Certain solutions of general relativity allow for the existence of wormholes where the mouth of each is a <a href="http://www.space.com/15421-black-holes-facts-formation-discovery-sdcmp.html" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">black hole</a>. However, a naturally occurring black hole, formed by the collapse of a dying star, does not by itself create a wormhole. <strong style="margin-top: 0px !important;">Through the wormhole</strong></div>
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Science fiction is filled with tales of traveling through <a href="http://www.livescience.com/33730-science-fiction-fact-wormhole-space-travel.html" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">wormholes</a>. But the reality of such travel is more complicated, and not just because we've yet to spot one.</div>
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The first problem is size. Primordial wormholes are predicted to exist on microscopic levels, about 10<sup style="margin-top: 0px !important;">–33</sup> centimeters. However, as the universe expands, it is possible that some may have been stretched to larger sizes.</div>
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Another problem comes from <a href="http://casa.colorado.edu/~ajsh/schww.html#instability" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">stability</a>. The predicted Einstein-Rosen wormholes would be useless for travel because they collapse quickly. But more recent research found that a wormhole containing "exotic" matter could stay open and unchanging for longer periods of time.</div>
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Exotic matter, which should not be confused with dark matter or antimatter, contains negative energy density and a large negative pressure. Such matter has only been seen in the behavior of certain vacuum states as part of quantum field theory.</div>
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If a wormhole contained sufficient exotic matter, whether naturally occurring or artificially added, it could theoretically be used as a method of sending information or <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/warp/ideachev.html" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">travelers through space</a>.</div>
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Wormholes may not only connect two separate regions within the universe, they could also connect two different universes. Similarly, some scientists have conjectured that if one mouth of a wormhole is moved in a specific manner, it could allow for <a href="http://www.space.com/1115-experts-wormholes-time-machines-unreliable.html" style="color: #3366cc; margin-top: 0px !important; text-decoration: none;">time travel</a>. However, British cosmologist <a href="http://www.space.com/15923-stephen-hawking.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">Stephen Hawking</a> has argued that such use is not possible. [<a href="http://www.space.com/22541-wormholes-time-travel-theory.html" style="color: #3366cc; text-decoration: none;">Weird Science: Wormholes Make the Best Time Machines</a>]</div>
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"A wormhole is not really a means of going back in time, it's a short cut, so that something that was far away is much closer," NASA's Eric Christian wrote.</div>
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Although adding exotic matter to a wormhole might stabilize it to the point that human passengers could travel safely through it, there is still the possibility that the addition of "regular" matter would be sufficient to destabilize the portal.</div>
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Today's technology is insufficient to enlarge or stabilize wormholes, even if they could be found. However, scientists continue to explore the concept as a method of space travel with the hope that technology will eventually be able to utilize them. <a href="http://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html">http://www.space.com/20881-wormholes.html</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-30150634593916269852015-04-13T18:10:00.000-07:002015-04-13T18:10:10.953-07:00Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Violent methane storms on Titan may solve dune direction mystery <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">With its thick, hazy atmosphere and surface rivers, mountains, lakes and dunes, Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is one of the most Earthlike places in the solar system.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
As the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft examines Titan over many years, its discoveries bring new mysteries. One of those involves the seemingly wind-created sand <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/dunes/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">dunes</a> spotted by Cassini near the moon's equator, and the contrary winds just above.</div>
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Here's the problem: Climate simulations indicate that Titan's near-surface winds—like Earth's trade winds—blow toward the west. So why do the surface dunes, reaching a hundred yards high and many miles long, point to the east?</div>
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The direction of the dunes has at times been attributed to the effects of Saturn's gravitational tides or various land features or wind dynamics, but none quite explained their eastward slant.</div>
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Violent methane storms high in Titan's dense atmosphere, where winds do blow toward the east, might be the answer, according to new research by University of Washington astronomer Benjamin Charnay and co-authors in a paper published today in the journal <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Nature Geoscience</i>.</div>
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Using computer models, Charnay, a UW post-doctoral researcher, and co-authors hypothesize that the attitude of Titan's sand dunes results from rare methane storms that produce eastward gusts much stronger than the usual westward surface winds.</div>
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"These fast eastward gusts dominate the sand transport, and thus dunes propagate eastward," Charnay said.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; text-align: left;">The storm winds reach up to 10 meters a second (22 mph), about 10 times faster than Titan's gentler near-surface winds. And though the storms happen only when Titan is in equinox and its days and nights are of equal length—about every 14.75 years—they are of sufficient power to realign Titan's dunes. Titan was last in equinox in August 2009.</span></div>
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It probably helps that, according to Cassini's observations, Titan's atmosphere is in "super-rotation" above about 5 miles, meaning that it rotates a lot faster than the surface itself. Their model, Charnay said, suggests that these methane storms "produce strong downdrafts, flowing eastward when they reach the surface," thus rearranging the dunes.</div>
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Charnay said he tried first, without success, to solve the problem with a global climate model that didn't factor in methane clouds, then realized that it was impossible, hinting that methane could be part of the solution. <span style="line-height: 1.4;">"It was a kind of detective game, as often is the case in planetary sciences, where we have many mysteries and a few clues to solve them," he said.</span></div>
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The dunes in question, which are linear and run parallel to Titan's equator, are probably not composed of silicates like Earth sand, Charnay said, but of hydrocarbon polymers—a kind of soot resulting from the decomposition of methane in the atmosphere.</div>
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Charnay noted a December <a href="http://phys.org/news/2014-12-explanation-titan-dune-puzzle.html" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">study reported</a> in <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Nature</i> showing that it would take winds of at least 3.2 mph to lift and transport sand across Titan's surface—that's 40 percent to 50 percent stronger wind than previous estimates.</div>
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The measurement of such a high wind speed threshold was a pleasant surprise, Charnay said: "That means that only fast winds transport Titan's sand, compatible with our hypothesis of strong storm gusts controlling the orientation and propagation of dunes."</div>
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Titan, discovered in 1655 by Christiaan Huygens, has long intrigued astronomers. Its atmosphere is 98.4 percent nitrogen and most of the rest is methane, and a bit of hydrogen. Its gravity is one-sixth that of Earth's and its air density is four- to five-times higher, meaning that flight will be relatively easy for visiting spacecraft. The European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which rode along on Cassini, successfully landed on Titan in 2005 and sent back the first photo of the moon's stone-strewn surface.</div>
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Charnay said direct observation by Cassini would be the way to confirm his hypothesis. Unfortunately, the Cassini mission will end in 2017 and Titan's next equinox is not until 2023.</div>
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"But there will be other missions," he said. "There are still a lot of mysteries about Titan. We still don't know how a thick nitrogen atmosphere formed, where the methane comes from nor how Titan's sand forms.</div>
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"And it is not completely excluded that life can be there, perhaps in its <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/methane/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">methane</a> seas or lakes. So Titan really is a fascinating and evolving world, which has to be understood as a whole."</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-violent-methane-storms-titan-dune.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-violent-methane-storms-titan-dune.html#jCp</a></h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-87313579855532867762015-04-13T17:51:00.005-07:002015-04-13T17:52:31.977-07:00Dark Energy Survey creates detailed guide to spotting dark matter<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Dark Energy Survey creates detailed guide to spotting dark matter <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have released the first in a series of dark matter maps of the cosmos. These maps, created with one of the world's most powerful digital cameras, are the largest contiguous maps created at this level of detail and will improve our understanding of dark matter's role in the formation of galaxies. Analysis of the clumpiness of the dark matter in the maps will also allow scientists to probe the nature of the mysterious dark energy, believed to be causing the expansion of the universe to speed up.</span></div>
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The new maps were released today at the April meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, Maryland. They were created using data captured by the Dark Energy Camera, a 570-megapixel imaging device that is the primary instrument for the <a href="http://www.darkenergysurvey.org/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Dark Energy Survey</a> (DES).</div>
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Dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up roughly a quarter of the universe, is invisible to even the most sensitive astronomical instruments because it does not emit or block light. But its effects can be seen by studying a phenomenon called gravitational lensing – the distortion that occurs when the gravitational pull of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/dark+matter/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">dark matter</a> bends light around distant galaxies. Understanding the role of dark matter is part of the research program to quantify the role of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/dark+energy/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">dark energy</a>, which is the ultimate goal of the survey.</div>
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This analysis was led by Vinu Vikram of Argonne National Laboratory (then at the University of Pennsylvania) and Chihway Chang of ETH Zurich. Vikram, Chang and their collaborators at Penn, ETH Zurich, the University of Portsmouth, the University of Manchester and other DES institutions worked for more than a year to carefully validate the lensing maps.</div>
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"We measured the barely perceptible distortions in the shapes of about 2 million galaxies to construct these new maps," Vikram said. "They are a testament not only to the sensitivity of the Dark Energy Camera, but also to the rigorous work by our lensing team to understand its sensitivity so well that we can get exacting results from</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; text-align: left;">The camera was constructed and tested at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and is now mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco telescope at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The data were processed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.</span></div>
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The dark matter <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/map/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">map</a> released today makes use of early DES observations and covers only about three percent of the area of sky DES will document over its five-year mission. The survey has just completed its second year. As scientists expand their search, they will be able to better test current cosmological theories by comparing the amounts of dark and visible matter.</div>
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Those theories suggest that, since there is much more dark matter in the universe than <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/visible+matter/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">visible matter</a>, galaxies will form where large concentrations of dark matter (and hence stronger gravity) are present. So far, the DES analysis backs this up: The maps show large filaments of matter along which visible galaxies and galaxy clusters lie and cosmic voids where very few galaxies reside. Follow-up studies of some of the enormous filaments and voids, and the enormous volume of data, collected throughout the survey will reveal more about this interplay of mass and light.</div>
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"Our analysis so far is in line with what the current picture of the universe predicts," Chang said. "Zooming into the maps, we have measured how dark matter envelops galaxies of different types and how together they evolve over cosmic time. We are eager to use the new data coming in to make much stricter tests of theoretical models."</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-dark-energy-survey.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-dark-energy-survey.html#jCp</a><br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-62394611623835987002015-04-13T17:37:00.003-07:002015-04-13T17:41:08.399-07:00Meteorites key to the story of Earth's layers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Метеориты ключ к истории Земли слои <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Новый анализ химического состава метеоритов помогло ученым понять, когда Земля сформировалась его слоев.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
Исследования международной группой ученых, подтвердили Земли первая корка образовалась около 4,5 млрд. лет назад.</div>
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Команда измерил количество редких элементов гафния и лютеция в состав минерала циркона в метеорите, который возник в начале в Солнечной системе.</div>
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"Метеориты, которые содержат цирконы встречаются редко. Мы искали старый метеорит с крупными цирконами, около 50 мкм, что содержится достаточно гафния для <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/precise+analysis/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">точного анализа</a>",- сказал д-р Юрий Амелин, из австралийского Национального университета (Ану) исследовательская школа наук о Земле.</div>
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"Случайно мы нашли один на продажу у дилера. Это было, что мы хотели. Мы считаем, что она возникла от астероида Веста, после большого удара, который отправил обломки скал на курс к Земле."</div>
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Тепла и давления в недрах Земли смешивает <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/chemical+composition/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">химический состав</a> ее слоев в течение миллиардов лет, как плотнее скалы раковины и менее плотные минералы поднимаются к поверхности, процесс называется дифференциацией.</div>
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Определить, как и когда формируются слои опирается на знание состава исходного материала, который образуется в земле, прежде чем дифференциация, сказал д-р Амелин.</div>
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"Метеориты являются остатками первоначального пула материала, которые образовались все планеты", - сказал он.</div>
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"Но они не имели планетарного масштаба сил, изменение их состава на протяжении всего их пять миллиардов лет вращаются вокруг Солнца."</div>
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Команда точно измерить соотношение изотопов гафния-176 и гафния-177 в <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/meteorite/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">метеорит</a>, чтобы дать отправную точку для земной состав.</div>
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Команда имеет возможность сравнить результаты с древнейших скал на Земле, и обнаружили, что химический состав уже был изменен, доказывая, что корочка уже образовалась на поверхности Земли около 4,5 млрд лет назад.</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Подробнее на: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-meteorites-key-story-earth-layers.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-meteorites-key-story-earth-layers.html#jCp</a></h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-55220151383718214612015-04-13T17:22:00.001-07:002015-04-13T17:31:23.237-07:00Altimeter Assists in MESSENGER’s Low-Altitude Navigation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Altimeter Assists in MESSENGER’s Low-Altitude Navigation <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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MESSENGER scientists are using altimeter data to help determine whether orbit corrections need to be made during low-altitude navigation. The altimeter, which measures the range to the spacecraft as it passes over a landscape, was used to map the surface of Mercury, as shown in this animation.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">As NASA’s MESSENGER mission draws to a close, an on-board science instrument that mapped the surface of Mercury is helping the navigation team with the spacecraft’s low-altitude passes.</span></div>
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MESSENGER remains in an eccentric orbit but is passing much closer to the planet than before. Its periapsis altitude – the closest approach to the planet – now ranges from 6 to 39 kilometers (about 3.7 to 24.2 miles) above the planet’s surface.</div>
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The navigation team has laid out a schedule of orbit-correction maneuvers to keep the spacecraft operating as long as possible. To confirm that they have correctly predicted the spacecraft’s orbit during the close passes, they receive daily updates from the team responsible for the Mercury Laser Altimeter, an instrument normally dedicated to scientific measurements.</div>
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“It’s a special case to use this science instrument to help with navigation,” said Dan O’Shaughnessy, MESSENGER’s Mission Systems Engineer, at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “But now that we are getting very close to the planet, it’s new territory.”</div>
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MESSENGER passed over this region of the planet earlier in the mission but with a periapsis altitude of 200 to 500 kilometers (about 124 to 311 miles). The orbit predictions there are well tested. Less information is available about the conditions at the lower altitudes.</div>
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“The navigation team wanted an independent way to assess how good their orbit predictions are, and the altimeter gives them that,” said Erwan Mazarico, a member of the altimeter team, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.</div>
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The altimeter makes precise measurements of the distance from the spacecraft to the surface – information that is used to determine where craters, mountains and other features are located and how deep or tall they are. The team has already produced a map of the planet’s surface, called a digital elevation model.</div>
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The instrument’s new task is to make measurements while the spacecraft is close to the planet. This information is sent to Earth daily, and the altimeter team feeds it into a computer model to track the spacecraft’s position in three dimensions.</div>
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By comparing the predicted orbit to the actual path the spacecraft took, the navigation team can determine whether they need to make any corrections. For example, the spacecraft might drift downward more quickly than expected, or it might come across an anomaly in the gravity field that was not detected from the higher orbit. Passing through one of these anomalies would be like an airplane encountering a downdraft or updraft.</div>
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“The bottom line is that the altimeter data give the navigation team added confidence that their orbit prediction is solid,” said Greg Neumann, a member of the altimeter team at Goddard. “We’re helping them make sure that the plan they put in place is still the right one to follow.”</div>
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The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft and manages this Discovery-class mission for NASA. Goddard designed and built the Mercury Laser Altimeter. Sean Solomon, director of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, is the mission’s Principal Investigator.</div>
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For more information about MESSENGER, visit:<a href="http://www.nasa.gov/messenger">http://www.nasa.gov/messenger</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-44209482852303226622015-04-08T09:15:00.000-07:002015-04-08T09:15:29.544-07:00БОРОВСКИЙ КОМЕТНЫЙ МЕТЕОРИТ<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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БОРОВСКИЙ КОМЕТНЫЙ МЕТЕОРИТ </h1>
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<i> Дмитриев Евгений Валентинович <span style="text-align: justify;">Вечером 14 мая 1934 г. над Московской областью появился яркий болид, его видели в Рязани, Москве, Туле, Кашине, Торжке и других городах. Полет завершился атмосферным взрывом в Боровском районе Калужской области. В Москве были слышны громоподобные удары, а город освещался, словно прожектором, свидетелем полета болида стал художник Н.И. Федоров. Видимое так поразило художника, что он нарисовал картину явления (</span><b style="text-align: justify;">Рис.1</b><span style="text-align: justify;">) и в дальнейшем стал принимать активное участие в метеоритных экспедициях, включая <b>Тунгусское падение</b>. В настоящее время его картина находится в метеоритной экспозиции Минералогического музея им. Ферсмана. </span></i></div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>Рис. 1</b>. Боровский болид 1934 года.</i></div>
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Картина заслуженного художника России Н.И. Федорова. </div>
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Но наибольший вклад в популяризацию <b>Боровского болида</b> внес наш замечательный ученый, основоположник космонавтики <b>К.Э. Циолковский</b>. Сам полет он не наблюдал, но его внук - свидетель полета - красочно описал видимое им событие. “Местность вокруг ярко осветилась. От земных предметов поползли черные тени. Шар размером вполовину меньше Луны двигался в западном направлении наклонно к горизонту. Его ядро голубовато-зеленого цвета пульсировало, то расширяясь, то вновь сжимаясь. За шаром тянулся желтовато-красный прерывистый след, и летели искры. Несколько минут спустя огненное тело будто рассыпалось, и все опять погрузилось в темноту”.</div>
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Рассказ внука чрезвычайно заинтересовал Циолковского, и он решил обратиться к очевидцам полета болида через газету “Известия”, где 21 июня 1934 г. вышла его заметка под названием “Кто видел болид?”.</div>
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Вскоре он стал получать письма, число которых перевалило за 500, с зарисовками, описанием и уточнениями. К настоящему времени часть писем отсканировано и размещено в Интернете. К сожалению, научной обработке письма подвергнуты не были.</div>
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<b>Боровский болид</b> привлек внимание Л.А. Кулика, известного ученого, открывшего миру планетарное событие под названием Тунгусский метеорит. Он считал, что метеориты выпали в Наро-Фоминском районе [1] и организовал их поиски примерно в 30 км от Боровска, однако даже маленьких осколков обнаружено не было.</div>
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Таким образом, выходит, что не заинтересуйся Циолковский Боровским болидом, его история постепенно забылась, тому же способствовало то обстоятельство, что “космическое тело, по-видимому, упавшее в глухих боровских лесах, не найдено до сих пор. Удастся ли его когда-нибудь найти?” - так заканчивается одна статья о Боровском болиде.</div>
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Прошло 78 лет. В начале мая 2012 г. житель города Малоярославца Роман Николаевич Рубцов, находясь в нескольких километрах от города, обратил внимание на странный коричнево-рыжий обгоревший камень, лежащий на полянке, совершенно не вписывающийся в окружающую обстановку глухого леса. Тут он сразу подумал о метеорите, после чего его охватила какая-то внутренняя одержимость поиска. Уходил все дальше и дальше в лес, пока не нашел первый кусок черного оплавленного стекла, вернее наступил на него. Потом нашел кусок железа, ну и так далее. За все время поиска ему удалось собрать 120 кг кусков стекла и 140 кг железа. Взяв несколько образов, он приехал в Комитет по метеоритам ГЕОХИ РАН, где к его находкам интереса не проявили. Несмотря на это, он самостоятельно попытался определить природу своих находок. Вскоре пришел к заключению, что куски стекол могут являться тектитами в трактовке Е.В. Дмитриева, после чего связался с ним через Интернет.</div>
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Осмотр присланных образцов стекол показал их поразительную схожесть по внешним признакам с нижегородскими тектитами (<b>Рис. 2</b>), факт падения которых твердо установлен [2], а исследованиями В.А. Цельмовича подтверждена их внеземная природа [3]. Это обстоятельство дает основание полагать, что процесс образования стекол протекал по единому сценарию, и поэтому рубцовские стекла также можно считать тектитами. </div>
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<img src="http://bourabai.kz/dmitriev/img/borovsk10.jpg" /></div>
<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><i></i></b><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></i><br />
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>Рис. 2</b>. Образцы тектитов-протванитов (<b>а</b>) и нижегородских тектитов (<b>б</b>). </i></div>
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Так как традиционная метеоритика не в состоянии дать объяснение находкам, то дальнейшее изложение материалов в статье будет вестись в рамках альтернативной науки - кометной метеоритики [4]. Согласно ей кометы имеют эруптивную природу происхождения, тектиты являются <b>кометными метеоритами</b>, выпавшими на Землю после атмосферных взрывов кометных обломков, подобных Тунгусскому метеориту [5].<br />
В тоже время оказалось, что тектиты представляют собой кометные фульгуриты, образовавшиеся при ударе мощных молний по кометным ядрам в момент их извержения из крупных небесных тел [6].</div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><i></i></b><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"></i><br />
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>Рис. 3</b>. Обследованный участок поля рассеяния протванитов. </i></div>
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Поле рассеяния выпавших метеоритов расположено в Боровском районе Калужской области (<b>Рис. 3</b>). Размер обследованного участка 3х8 км, ширина полосы интенсивного нахождения вещества 700 м. Расположение находок очаговое. Размеры групповых находок от 0,5 до 7 м., глубина залегания метеоритов от 0 до 60 см. Не исключено, что Рубцов исследовал только часть поля рассеяния протванитов. Аналогичные групповые захоронения тектитов-индошинитов на поле их рассеяния обнаружил Э.П. Изох во Вьетнаме [7].</div>
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В кометной метеоритике принято давать всем выпавшим объектам, найденным на поле рассеяния единое название. По стандартной геологической традиции название дается по месту нахождения, в данном случае наиболее подходит слово <b>протванит (protvanit)</b>, выбрано по названию близлежащей реки Протва. Можно сравнить - тектиты острова Ява называют яванитами. Тектитов было найдено более 1000 шт., от очень мелких осколков до 3 кг. Металлические фрагменты доходят до 80 кг. Средняя плотность тектитов 3,3 г/см<sup>2</sup>, твердость ~7, цвет в тонких срезах оливково-зелёный. Несколько небольших образцов полностью прозрачны. По сравнению с нижегородскими тектитами протваниты менее проплавлены, содержать различные включения, что делает их более интересными научными объектами. Скелетных останков внеземных примитивных морских животных - стримергласов, встречающихся в некоторых кометных метеоритах, в находках и, смытой с них пыли, обнаружено не было, но это не означает, что их там нет – нужны более кропотливые поиски. Часть образцов тектитов-протванитов представлена удивительными фигурками, так что авангардистской фантазии их “ваятеля” мог бы позавидовать даже П. Пикассо. Шлак имеет серый цвет и мелкопористую структуру. Железные метеориты, как правило, представляют собой конгломерат металла и различных пород.</div>
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Химический анализ был сделан для образцов стекол, шлаков и железа (см. <b>таблицу</b>) – трех основных типов выпавших объектов. Стекла, они же тектиты, по составу хорошо вписались в классификацию кометных метеоритов [4], имеют высокое содержание Ca, и поэтому будут обозначаться как протваниты (H)Ca или тектиты-протваниты. Шлаки имеют высокое содержание Al, также хорошо вписались в классификацию, и будут обозначаться как протваниты H(Al). В классификации аналогов железным метеоритам нет, и называться будут как протваниты H(Fe). В некоторых метеоритах наблюдаются разнообразные включения других минералов. Также были найдены несколько образцов неясной природы. </div>
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Результаты рентгенофлуоресцентного анализа % масс, долей</div>
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<table border="" cellpadding="7" cellspacing="1" style="width: 625px;"><tbody>
<tr><td valign="TOP" width="16%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Название образцов</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="4%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>N</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>SiO<sub>2</sub></b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>TiO<sub>2</sub></b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub></b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">FeO</span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">
</span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>общ.</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>MnO</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>MgO</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>CaO</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Na<sub>2</sub>O</b></span></div>
</td><td valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>K<sub>2</sub>O</b></span></div>
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<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="16%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Протванит H(Ca) стекло</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="4%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>3</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>50,74</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,86</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>15,66</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>6,70</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>1,30</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,90</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>21,32</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,50</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,48</b></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="16%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>Протванит H(Al) пемза</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="4%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>1</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>45,63</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>2,16</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>18,24</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>13,06</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,087</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>1,16</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>5,20</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,91</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>1,55</b></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" rowspan="2" valign="TOP" width="16%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Протванит Н(Fe) железо</span></b></div>
<b><span style="font-size: xx-small;">
</span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b></b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="4%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>1</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>5,78</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,09</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,69</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>80,62</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,53</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>-</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,28</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,23</b></span></div>
</td><td bgcolor="#ffffff" valign="TOP" width="9%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>0,04</b></span></div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td bgcolor="#ffffff" colspan="10" valign="TOP" width="84%"><b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span></b><span style="font-size: xx-small;"></span><br />
<div style="font-size: 16px; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><b>+ Ni = 0,009, Cr<sub>2</sub>0<sub>3</sub> = 0,177</b></span></div>
</td></tr>
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N – количество исследованных образцов. </div>
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Сразу возникает вопрос, почему шлаки и железо причислены к кометным метеоритам? Ответ прост, в некоторых образцах, представляющих собой конгломерат, наряду с тектитовым стеклом, имеющим, несомненно, кометное происхождение, наблюдаются шлаки и железо (<b>Рис. 4</b>). Кстати, при Стерлитамакском падении железного метеорита одновременно с ним выпали высококалиевые кометные пемзы, в результате чего был сделан вывод, что железные метеориты также могут происходить из комет [8].</div>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;"><b>Рис. 4</b>. Фото отдельных образцов протванитов: <b>а </b>- сплав железа и стекла, <b>б</b> - сплав железа, шлаков и стекла, <b>в</b> - шлаки<b>, г</b> - сплав железа и стекла, <b>д</b> - сплав железа с породой неясного генезиса, <b>е</b> - сплав железа и шлака. Обозначения на снимках: <b>1</b>- железо H(Fe) , <b>2</b> - шлак H(Al), <b>3</b> стекло - H(Ca). </i></div>
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Есть еще один вопрос, почему в железе оказалось мало никеля? Здесь возможны два варианта объяснения. Первый, железо изначально имело такой состав, второй – железо потеряло никель вследствие его нагрева до высоких температур. Так как родоначальное вещество тектитов, шлаков и железа одномоментно подверглись импульсному высокоэнергетическому воздействию (удар молнии), вызвавшее ее расплавление и даже вскипание, а это могло привести к изменению первоначального состава.</div>
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Разброс находок на большой площади, их групповые захоронения, наличие тектитов и конгломератов с включениями тектитов, позволяют исключить техногенную природу их происхождения. Незначительная глубина залегания метеоритов указывает на малый интервал времени, прошедший с момента их выпадения. Так как другие сведения о космических явлениях, кроме Боровского болида для района находок отсутствуют, то есть серьезное основание полагать, что найденные Рубцовым метеориты выпали 14 мая 1934 г., т.е. в момент взрыва болида. Внушительная масса собранных образцов, а это только часть выпавшего вещества, позволяет говорить о крупном кометном метеороиде, обладавшего малой прочностью, что свойственно кометным обломкам, заканчивающих свой полет в атмосфере сильным взрывом [9]. Таким образом, можно полагать, что Боровский кометный метеороид являлся обломком ядра эруптивной комет с включением гигантского фульгурита.</div>
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Вместо заключения</h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">P ALIGN="JUSTIFY">Первым (1964 г.), кто "поместил" тектиты в кометные ядра, был французский геохимик А. Довилье</span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="[5]" style="color: blue; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify; text-decoration: underline;"></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">. [10]. Он предположил, что они - продукты извержения на гипотетической планете Ольберса. После разрушения планеты фрагменты коры, выпадая на Землю, и формировали поля рассеяния тектитов.</span><br />
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В 1967 г. киевский геохимик Э. В. Соботович дал свою формулировку гипотезе кометной доставки тектитов: “<i>...тектиты - это материал кометы, экранированный льдом и смерзшимися газами и поэтому не содержащий космогенных изотопов. Комета прошла через атмосферу, оставив след в виде тектитового поля</i>” <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="[6]" style="color: blue; text-decoration: underline;"></a>[11].</div>
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Наибольший вклад в развитие кометной гипотезы в 1983 -1997 г.г. внес новосибирский геолог Э.П. Изох. При исследовании полей рассеивания тектитов-индошинитов во Вьетнаме он обнаружил т.н. возрастной парадокс возрастов тектитов – радиологический возраст тектитов значительно старше горизонта их залегания на полях рассеивания, - вследствие чего предположил, что тектиты были доставлены на Землю тектитоносными кометами. Происхождение таких комет он связал с гипотезой извержения по В.К. Всесвятскому [12]. Кроме того, Изох провел обширные исследования тектитов кратера Жаманшин (Казахстан), где также обнаружил возрастной парадокс тектитов, и выдвинул предположение об одномоментном происхождении громадного Австрало-Азиатского тектитового пояса вследствие падения эруптивной кометы [13].</div>
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Автор выбрал иной путь решения проблемы тектитов. Кроме известных типов метеоритов на Землю падают объекты, не вписывающиеся в прокрустово ложе традиционной метеоритики. В основном это стекла, шлаки и пемзы, причем их состав оказался довольно близок к составу земных пород. Несмотря на непререкаемые факты падения, наука метеоритами их не признает, и нарекла псевдометеоритами. На протяжении 30 лет он собирал и изучал подобные объекты, и что интересно, часть из них, как не представляющих научного интереса, была получена от сотрудника Комитета по метеоритам – “зубра отечественной метеоритики” - Р.Л. Хотинка, который полагал, что, если метеориты являются осколками астероидов, то должны существовать и осколки комет. Он также сообщил, что поступления стекол, шлаков и пемз составляют ~ 40% от общего количества присылаемых в Комитет по метеоритам образцов. Ряд образцов и информация о них была получена от руководителя “Космопоиска” В.А. Черноброва. Всего было изучено 15 падений и 5 находок, по результатам работ опубликовано около 50 научных и научно-популярных статей. Основной вывод – исследованные объекты являются кометными метеоритами, причем часть из них оказалась тектитами, а вмещавшие их кометы должны иметь эруптивную природу происхождения [4]. Кроме того, выявились серьезные разногласия в трактовке генезиса тектитов. Если Довилье и Изох полагают, что тектиты имеют магматическое происхождение, то автор, как сказано выше, считает тектиты кометными фульгуритами. Такой вывод полностью хоронит импактную гипотезу происхождения тектитов, предполагающую, что тектиты образовались из расплава земных пород, образовавшегося при импактах астероидов и комет. Так как сторонники этой гипотезы считают ее наиболее достоверной и почти общепринятой, то вряд ли от нее скоро откажутся, в основном из-за близости состава тектитов и земных осадочных пород, и это несмотря на непреодолимые препятствия, связанные с невозможностью разлета компактных роев тектитов на громадные расстояния от места импакта.</div>
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Очень странным выглядит парадоксальная ситуация – уже потрачены сотни млн. долларов на умопомрачительные по своей сложности космические экспедиции, чтобы доставить на Землю всего 1 мг кометного вещества (программы STARDUST и HAYABUSA), в тоже время ученые упорно не замечают кометное вещество, спорадически выпадающее на Землю в больших количествах. В своих статьях автор неоднократно обращался к российским ученым с просьбой провести проверку результатов его исследований, но никакой реакции не последовало. Как не прискорбно, кончится все тем, что Россия уже в который раз потеряет приоритет, в этот раз, в решении жгучих проблем мироздания - происхождения тектитов, комет и появления жизни на Земле [14], а ответственные за замалчивание работ Довилье, Соботовича, Изоха и автора обрекут себя на всеобщее порицание. Однако время исправить такое положение пока еще есть, здесь большая надежда на Боровский кометный метеорит, упавший недалеко от научных центров страны и на авторитет Циолковского, имя которого должно привлечь внимание наших ученых к этому уникальному космическому событию. Хотелось бы надеяться, что настоящая статья положит <i>начало первым в истории науки исследованиям <b>наблюдаемого</b>падения кометного метеорита</i>.</div>
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Благодарности.</h3>
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<i>Рубцову Р.Н.,</i> за обстоятельную информацию по полевым исследованиям поля рассеяния протванитов и предоставление образцов и их фотографий.</div>
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<i><b>Рощиной И.А</b>.</i>, за проведение <span style="font-size: x-small;">рентгенофлуоресцентного анализа образцов протванитов.</span></div>
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Литература</span></h3>
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<ol>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Кулик Л.А. Полет метеорита над Наро-Фоминском районом // Газета “За большевистские темпы”, 10 июля 1934 г., № 125. Наро-Фоминский район Московской области.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Выпадение тектитового дождя в Нижегородской области зимой 1996/1997 г.г. // Околоземная астрономия XXI века. - М.: ГЕОС, 2001. С. 322-330.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Цельмович В.А. Микрочастицы металлов в тектитах нижегородского падения и канскитах как индикаторы космического вещества // Двенадцатая Международная конференция <Физико-химические и петрофизические исследования в науках о Земле>. Москва, 3-5, Борок 6 октября 2011 г. Материалы конференции. Москва, 2011. С.293-296.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Кометные метеориты: падения, находки, классификация, стримергласы // Монография: Система <Планета Земля>. 300 лет со дня рождения М.В. Ломоносова. 1711 - 2011, М.: Книжный дом <ЛИБРОКОМ>, 2010, с. 170-189.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Появление тектитов на Земле // Природа. 1998. N 4. С. 17-25.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Субтектиты и происхождение тектитов // Околоземная астрономия и проблемы изучения малых тел Солнечной системы. Тезисы докл. Гор. Обнинск, 25-29 октября. 1999. С. 38-39.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Изох Э.П., Ле Дык Ан. - Геологическая позиция тектитов и их значение для четвертичной геологии и геоморфологии Вьетнама // Актуальные вопросы метеоритики в Сибири. Новосибирск: Наука, Сиб. отд-ние, 1988. С. 205-238.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Кометные высококалиевые пемзы и их возможная связь с Тунгусским метеоритом // 95 лет Тунгусской проблеме, 1908-2003. Тезисы докладов Юбилейной научной конференции. Под. ред. С.С. Григоряна. Москва, ГАИШ МГУ, 24-25 июня 2003 г. - М.: изд-во МГУ, 2003, с. 33-35.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Бронштэн В.А. Тунгусский метеорит и болиды Прерийной сети // Астрон. Вестник, 1976, т.10, № 2, с. 73-80.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Dauviller A. Sur l"оrigin cosmiqure des tectites // Comt. rend. Acad. sci. Paris, 1964, V. 258, N 19.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Соботович Э.В. Лунное или кометное вещество // Природа. 1967, N 8, с. 90-91.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Изох Э.П., Ле Дых Ан. Тектиты Вьетнама Гипотеза кометной транспортировки // Метеоритика, 1983, вып.42. с.158-169.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Изох Э.П. Импактный кратер Жаманшин и проблема тектитов // Геология и геофизика. АН СССР. Сибирское отд. 1991. N 4. (Отдельный выпуск). С. 3-16.</li>
<li style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px; text-align: left;">Дмитриев Е.В. Стримергласы, кометы и внеземная жизнь // Система <Планета Земля>: Русский путь - Рублёв - Ломоносов - Гагарин. Монография. – М., ЛЕНАНД, 2011, c. 166 - 171.</li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Рубцов Р.Н. Mailto: gorhor@yandex</span> </h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-22465791071552072292015-04-08T07:15:00.002-07:002015-04-08T07:15:33.458-07:00Enrico Fermi and extraterrestrial intelligence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Enrico Fermi and extraterrestrial intelligence <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">Nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi won the 1938 Nobel Prize for a technique he developed to probe the atomic nucleus. He led the team that developed the world’s first nuclear reactor, and played a central role in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. In the debate over extraterrestrial intelligence, he is best known for posing the question ‘Where is everybody?’ during a lunchtime discussion at Los Alamos National Laboratory. His question was seen as the basis for the “Fermi Paradox”. Credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;" /> </div>
<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">It's become a kind of legend, like Newton and the apple or George Washington and the cherry tree. One day in 1950, the great physicist Enrico Fermi sat down to lunch with colleagues at the Fuller Lodge at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and came up with a powerful argument about the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence, the so-called "Fermi paradox". But like many legends, it's only partly true. Robert Gray explained the real history in a recent paper in the journal </span><i style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Astrobiology</i><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
Enrico Fermi was the winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize for physics, led the team that developed the world's first nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago, and was a key contributor to the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb during World War II. The Los Alamos Lab where he worked was founded as the headquarters of that project.</div>
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The line of reasoning often attributed to Fermi, in his lunchtime <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/conversation/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">conversation</a>, runs like this: There may be many habitable Earth-like planets in our Milky Way galaxy. If intelligent life and technological civilization arise on any one of them, that civilization will eventually invent a means of interstellar travel. It will colonize nearby stellar systems. These colonies will send out their own colonizing expeditions, and the process will continue inevitably until every habitable planet in the galaxy has been reached.</div>
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The fact that there aren't already aliens here on Earth was therefore supposed to be strong evidence that they don't exist anywhere in the galaxy. This argument actually isn't Fermi's and was published more than 25 years later by astronomer Michael Hart. It was elaborated in a paper published by the cosmologist Frank Tipler in 1980.</div>
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Fermi's lunch conversation really did happen. Although he died just four years later of cancer, physicist Eric Jones published the recollections of the physicist's luncheon companions more than thirty five years later. Among these companions were Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, and Herbert York, all eminent physicists and veterans of the Manhattan Project. Teller played a central role in the development of the hydrogen bomb. Konopinski studied the structure of the atomic nucleus, and York became director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.</div>
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During the walk to the Fuller Lodge, the physicists discussed a recent spate of UFO sightings, and a cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine depicting aliens and a flying saucer. Although the topic of conversation moved on as the group sat down for lunch, Edward Teller recalls "in the middle of the conversation, Fermi came out with the quite unexpected question 'Where is everybody?'…The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming out of the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life".</div>
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In his account of the famed luncheon, Teller wrote "I do not believe much came from this conversation, except perhaps a statement that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic center".</div>
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York recalled a somewhat more expansive discussion in which Fermi "followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of these calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over".</div>
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According to York, Fermi supposed the reason we hadn't been visited "might be the interstellar flight is impossible, or if it is possible, always judged not worth the effort, or technological civilization doesn't last long enough for it to happen".</div>
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So Fermi, unlike Hart, wasn't skeptical about the existence of extraterrestrials, and didn't view their absence from Earth as paradoxical. There is no Fermi paradox, there is simply Fermi's question "Where is everybody?", to which there are many possible answers. The answer that Fermi preferred seems to be that, either interstellar travel isn't feasible because of the enormous distances involved, or Earth simply had never been reached by alien travelers.</div>
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Interstellar distances are truly vast. If the entire solar system out to the orbit of Neptune were reduced to the size of an American quarter, the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, would still be about the length of a football field away. A practical starship would either need to travel very fast, at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, or be capable of supporting its crew for a very long time. While either is theoretically possible, <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/interstellar+travel/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">interstellar travel</a> seems to present day humanity to be such a grandiose undertaking that it's not clear whether any civilization would be able or willing to muster the enormous resources needed.</div>
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Where did the confusing of Fermi's question with Hart's argument come from? Carl Sagan mentioned Fermi's question in a footnote to a 1963 paper. After the publication of Hart's paper in 1975, Fermi's question and Hart's speculative answer became associated in many writer's minds. Fermi's question seemed to beg Hart's answer, and "Fermi's paradox" was born. According to Robert Gray, the term was coined by D. G. Stephenson, in a paper published two years after Hart's.</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-enrico-fermi-extraterrestrial-intelligence.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-enrico-fermi-extraterrestrial-intelligence.html#jCp</a></h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-36804797685035349352015-04-08T06:59:00.002-07:002015-04-08T06:59:48.548-07:00Researchers determine the origin of Annama meteorite<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Researchers determine the origin of Annama meteorite <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTpJaeLfytAEdhhistha8gYs4655zX2lxjv0C7OwpFFAleV9OJ_tbX4hc6Rw85hzrE1cAMmOE_LoF1IcWU03JGVvopm-dR3MhBKLvksKpatxha40ShcmtAGi-Xwc5e7oa9pfliuExkH_V/s1600/1-csicresearch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjTpJaeLfytAEdhhistha8gYs4655zX2lxjv0C7OwpFFAleV9OJ_tbX4hc6Rw85hzrE1cAMmOE_LoF1IcWU03JGVvopm-dR3MhBKLvksKpatxha40ShcmtAGi-Xwc5e7oa9pfliuExkH_V/s1600/1-csicresearch.jpg" height="362" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">An international team led by the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) has determined the orbit of Annama, a new characterized meteorite from a fireball occurred on April 19th 2014 at the Kola Peninsula (Russia). Researchers highlight the importance of this finding because only the orbit of another 22 meteorites is known so far.</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">The characterization of Annama indicates that this is an ordinary H5 chondrite, a group of meteorites with high strength that constitutes 31% of</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/meteorite/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">meteorite</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">falls. Researchers have also searched for the existence of some asteroid, among all known, that may have been fragmented and resulted in the meteorite. According to the paper published in</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><i style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society</i><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">journal, the orbital evolution of Annama shows some similarity to the 2014 UR116, a potentially dangerous asteroid (i.e. an object that might collide the Earth) of about 400 meters in diameter that was discovered last year.</span></h1>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">The reconstruction of the orbit</b></div>
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CSIC researchers compared the orbit of Annama with the evolution of a dozen orbits of near-Earth asteroids, reconstructing how their orbits evolved in the <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/solar+system/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">solar system</a> over the past 10,000 years. Through this method, they explain, the degree of orbital similarity is determined and, in the most favourable cases, it can be established if both objects have a common origin.</div>
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Members of several research centres from Finland and Russia reconstructed the trajectory of the <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/fireball/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">fireball</a> and calculated the location of the fall using the data from three stations of the Finnish Fireball Network and the filming of a security camera from the Kola Peninsula. One month later, meteor rocks were recovered in this peninsula. Meanwhile, Josep Maria Trigo (CSIC researcher at the Institute of Space Sciences, a CSIC centre associated with the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia-IEEC) and his team determined its orbit and reconstructed the orbital evolution of Annama in the Solar System in order to compare it with a dozen asteroids with which, a priori, showed orbital similarity at the present time. Most of them are similar by chance, so an orbital integration in the past of the objects is required to decipher if the dynamic link is possible.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">The analysis of the orbital evolution of the meteorite has showed, according to researchers, a "disturbing similarity" with the evolution of 2014 UR116 which, given its size and minimum distance of intersection with the </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/orbit/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">orbit</a><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;"> of the Earth, has been classified as a potentially dangerous </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">asteroid</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">. Currently, 1,573 asteroids of this type are known so researchers are investigating to what extent they can pose a danger.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Origin of meteorites</b></div>
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Trigo states: "While it is true that many of these dangerous projectiles come from the main belt of asteroids after being gravitationally scattered towards the Earth by the so-called planetary resonances, in 2007 we proposed other physical mechanisms that enable these rocks to be detached from asteroids or comets as they undergo close approaches to our planet". He also adds: "The tidal effect on an asteroid, which rapidly rotates under the gravitational field of a planet, can fragment these objects or release large rocks from its surface, which could then become such dangerous projectiles at a local scale as the one fell in Cheliábinsk (Russia) on February 15th 2013".</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgRZ2is2GCncIcCGXux0aPfnKzgxkwQD7MpVevJW2sxtJOsjyyZCwZ7L-Rh-T5zhaVrSmUAbn0vENLGQ1kk8EHj_FpD5SU0DCeHNu1zxe-jeOVOElpM7ws1snlBij4Rr-pWuNe92uq9ZJ/s1600/3-csicresearch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWgRZ2is2GCncIcCGXux0aPfnKzgxkwQD7MpVevJW2sxtJOsjyyZCwZ7L-Rh-T5zhaVrSmUAbn0vENLGQ1kk8EHj_FpD5SU0DCeHNu1zxe-jeOVOElpM7ws1snlBij4Rr-pWuNe92uq9ZJ/s1600/3-csicresearch.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Manuel Moreno-Ibáñez, CSIC researcher that participated in the study, explains: "The data we have obtained provided new clues about the origin of the rocks with a few meters in diameter that produce meteorite falls. So far, we only know the orbits of other 22 </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">meteorites</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">, and not always with the sought accuracy". Trigo adds: "In addition, Annama is a fascinating meteorite because it reveals the processes taken place during the formation of the </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">Solar System</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">, as well as more details about the thermal processing suffered by the </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/asteroid/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">asteroid</a><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;"> it comes from".</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-annama-meteorite.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-annama-meteorite.html#jCp</a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-71470070682839198092015-04-08T06:30:00.005-07:002015-04-08T06:31:37.837-07:00Searching for Water in the Solar System and Beyond<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"> Поиск воды в Солнечной системе и за ее пределами <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYThdQgiMySKGvYeRVrdA5LMi-c28dTk2J3_Ok-iSS1d4IJdwCHYWUOi4vezvUiOCHy5CEvdcfpOdu9OzEPtE811npIogImxS0nVgoc19NPyAfhbojrxveCnEymGQokrXIYnuHMczj2jbC/s1600/15-033i1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYThdQgiMySKGvYeRVrdA5LMi-c28dTk2J3_Ok-iSS1d4IJdwCHYWUOi4vezvUiOCHy5CEvdcfpOdu9OzEPtE811npIogImxS0nVgoc19NPyAfhbojrxveCnEymGQokrXIYnuHMczj2jbC/s1600/15-033i1.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">В качестве миссий NASA </span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/the-solar-system-and-beyond-is-awash-in-water/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">исследовать нашу </a><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/the-solar-system-and-beyond-is-awash-in-water/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">Солнечную систему</a><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/the-solar-system-and-beyond-is-awash-in-water/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;"> и искать новые миры</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">они находят воду в неожиданных местах. Вода-это лишь один кусочек нашего поиска обитаемых планет и жизни вне Земли, но ссылок много, казалось бы, несвязанных миров удивительным образом.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Пожалуй, самым удивительным водные миры пяти ледяных спутников Юпитера и Сатурна, которые показывают убедительные доказательства океаны под их поверхностей: Ганимед, Европа и </span>Каллисто<span style="font-weight: normal;"> на Юпитера, и Энцелад и Титан у Сатурна. Ученые с помощью </span>НАСА<span style="font-weight: normal;">'ы космического телескопа "Хаббл" недавно предоставил </span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/press/2015/march/nasa-s-hubble-observations-suggest-underground-ocean-on-jupiters-largest-moon/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border-image-outset: initial; border-image-repeat: initial; border-image-slice: initial; border-image-source: initial; border-image-width: initial; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">мощные доказательства того, что Ганимед имеет соленой воды, под поверхностью океана</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, скорее всего, зажатой между двумя слоями льда.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">В этой концепции художника, луна </span>Ганимед<span style="font-weight: normal;"> орбиты гигантской планеты Юпитер. Космический телескоп "Хаббл" наблюдали полярные сияния на Луне, генерируемых Ганимеда магнитного поля. Солевое океан под луной ледяной корочкой лучше всего объясняет сдвиг в аврорального пояса измеряется </span>Хаббл<span style="font-weight: normal;">. </span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/the-solar-system-and-beyond-is-awash-in-water/" style="font-weight: normal;">Подробнее: в Солнечной системе и за ее пределами купается в воде</a><span style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></div>
</span><em style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: inherit; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Кредит изображения: НАСА/ЕКА</em></h2>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-65475719545450189282015-04-08T06:17:00.003-07:002015-04-08T06:17:50.572-07:00Scientists Take Aim at Four Corners Methane Mystery <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US">Scientists Take Aim at Four Corners Methane Mystery </span></div>
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Researchers from several institutions are in the Four Corners region of the U.S. Southwest with a suite of airborne and ground-based instruments, aiming to uncover reasons for a mysterious methane "hot spot" detected from space.<br />
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<span lang="EN-US">"With all the ground-based and airborne resources that the different groups are bringing to the region, we have the unique chance to unequivocally solve the Four Corners mystery," said Christian Frankenberg, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, who is heading NASA's part of the effort. Other investigators are from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) in Boulder, Colorado; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA); and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Last fall, researchers including Frankenberg reported that a small region around the Four Corners intersection of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah had the highest concentration of methane over background levels of any part of the United States. An instrument on a European Space Agency satellite measuring greenhouse gases showed a persistent atmospheric hot spot in the area between 2003 and 2009. The amount of methane observed by the satellite was much higher than previously estimated.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The satellite observations were not detailed enough to reveal the actual sources of the methane in the Four Corners. Likely candidates include venting from oil and gas activities, which are primarily coalbed methane exploration and extraction in this region; active coal mines; and natural gas seeps.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Researchers from CIRES, NOAA's Earth Systems Research Laboratory and Michigan are conducting a field campaign called TOPDOWN (Twin Otter Projects Defining Oil Well and Natural gas emissions) 2015, bringing airborne and ground-based instruments to investigate possible sources of the methane hot spot. The JPL team will join the effort on April 17-24. The groups are coordinating their measurements, but each partner agency will deploy its own suite of instruments.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The JPL participants will fly two complementary remote sensing instruments on two Twin Otter research aircraft. The Next-Generation Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRISng), which observes spectra of reflected sunlight, flies at a higher altitude and will be used to map methane at fine resolution over the entire region. Using this information and ground measurements from the other research teams, the Hyperspectral Thermal Emission Spectrometer (HyTES) will fly over suspected methane sources, making additional, highly sensitive measurements of methane. Depending on its flight altitude, the NASA aircraft can image methane features with a spatial resolution better than three feet (one meter) square. In other words, it can create a mosaic showing how methane levels vary every few feet, enabling the identification of individual sources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">With the combined resources, the investigators hope to quantify the region's overall methane emissions and pinpoint contributions from different sources. They will track changes over the course of the month-long effort and study how meteorology transports emissions through the region.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">"If we can verify the methane detected by the satellite and identify its sources, decision-makers will have critical information for any actions they are considering," said CIRES scientist Gabrielle Pétron, one of the mission’s investigators. Part of President Obama’s recent Climate Action Plan calls for reductions in methane emissions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Besides the groups mentioned above, the research team also includes scientists from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder; the U.S. Bureau of Land Management; and the state of New Mexico. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">For more information about TOPDOWN 2015, see: <a href="http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/mapping-methane">http://cires.colorado.edu/news/press/mapping-methane</a> <a href="http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/groups/csd7/measurements/2014topdown/">http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/groups/csd7/measurements/2014topdown/</a> </span><o:p></o:p>Why Is
Methane Important?</div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Methane is
a greenhouse gas that traps heat in Earth's atmosphere and warms it. It is the
third most abundant greenhouse gas, behind water vapor and carbon dioxide.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Methane is
much less prevalent in Earth's atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but molecule for
molecule, it packs a much bigger punch. Because of its potency and its
potential to contribute to climate change, scientists are interested in how its
concentrations may be changing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Currently,
more than half of atmospheric methane comes from human-related sources, such as
livestock, landfills and leaks of natural gas into the atmosphere during
mining, storage, transportation and distribution. </span>Natural gas is
primarily composed of methane.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-3037914476048540582015-04-08T05:25:00.001-07:002015-04-08T05:29:09.102-07:00The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Solar System and Beyond is Awash in Water</h1>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">As </span>NASA<span style="font-weight: normal;"> missions explore our solar system and search for new worlds, they are finding water in surprising places. Water is but one piece of our search for habitable planets and life beyond </span>Earth<span style="font-weight: normal;">, yet it links many seemingly unrelated worlds in surprising ways.</span></div>
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"NASA science activities have provided a wave of amazing findings related to water in recent years that inspire us to continue investigating our origins and the fascinating possibilities for other worlds, and life, in the universe," said Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for the agency. "In our lifetime, we may very well finally answer whether we are alone in the solar system and beyond."</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The chemical elements in water, hydrogen and oxygen, are some of the most abundant elements in the universe. </span>Astronomers<span style="font-weight: normal;"> see the signature of water in giant molecular clouds between the stars, in disks of material that represent newborn planetary systems, and in the atmospheres of giant planets orbiting other stars.</span></div>
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There are several worlds thought to possess liquid water beneath their surfaces, and many more that have water in the form of ice or vapor. Water is found in primitive bodies like comets and asteroids, and dwarf planets like Ceres. The atmospheres and interiors of the four giant planets -- Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune -- are thought to contain enormous quantities of the wet stuff, and their moons and rings have substantial water ice.</div>
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Perhaps the most surprising water worlds are the five icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn that show strong evidence of oceans beneath their surfaces: Ganymede, Europa and Callisto at Jupiter, and Enceladus and Titan at Saturn.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Scientists using NASA's </span>Hubble Space Telescope<span style="font-weight: normal;"> recently provided powerful evidence that Ganymede has a saltwater, sub-surface ocean, likely sandwiched between two layers of ice.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Europa and Enceladus are thought to have an ocean of liquid water beneath their surface in contact with mineral-rich rock, and may have the three ingredients needed for life as we know it: liquid water, essential chemical elements for biological processes, and sources of energy that could be used by living things. NASA's </span>Cassini<span style="font-weight: normal;"> mission has revealed Enceladus as an active world of icy geysers. Recent research suggests it may have hydrothermal activity on its ocean floor, an environment potentially suitable for living organisms.</span></div>
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NASA spacecraft have also found signs of water in permanently shadowed craters on Mercury and our moon, which hold a record of icy impacts across the ages like cryogenic keepsakes.</div>
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While our solar system may seem drenched in some places, others seem to have lost large amounts of water.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">On Mars, NASA spacecraft have found clear evidence that the Red Planet had water on its surface for long periods in the distant past. NASA's </span>Curiosity Mars<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Rover discovered an ancient streambed that existed amidst conditions favorable for life as we know it.</span></div>
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More recently, NASA scientists using ground-based telescopes were able to estimate the amount of water Mars has lost over the eons. They concluded the planet once had enough liquid water to form an ocean occupying almost half of Mars' northern hemisphere, in some regions reaching depths greater than a mile (1.6 kilometers). But where did the water go?</div>
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It's clear some of it is in the Martian polar ice caps and below the surface. We also think much of Mars' early atmosphere was stripped away by the wind of charged particles that streams from the sun, causing the planet to dry out. NASA's MAVEN mission is hard at work following this lead from its orbit around Mars.</div>
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The story of how Mars dried out is intimately connected to how the Red Planet's atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. Data from the agency's solar missions -- including STEREO, Solar Dynamics Observatory and the planned Solar Probe Plus -- are vital to helping us better understand what happened.</div>
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Understanding the distribution of water in our solar system tells us a great deal about how the planets, moons, comets and other bodies formed 4.5 billion years ago from the disk of gas and dust that surrounded our sun. The space closer to the sun was hotter and drier than the space farther from the sun, which was cold enough for water to condense. The dividing line, called the "frost line," sat around Jupiter's present-day orbit. Even today, this is the approximate distance from the sun at which the ice on most comets begins to melt and become "active." Their brilliant spray releases water ice, vapor, dust and other chemicals, which are thought to form the bedrock of most worlds of the frigid outer solar system.</div>
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Scientists think it was too hot in the solar system's early days for water to condense into liquid or ice on the inner planets, so it had to be delivered -- possibly by comets and water-bearing asteroids. NASA's Dawn mission is currently studying Ceres, which is the largest body in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Researchers think Ceres might have a water-rich composition similar to some of the bodies that brought water to the three rocky, inner planets, including Earth.</div>
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The amount of water in the giant planet Jupiter holds a critical missing piece to the puzzle of our solar system's formation. Jupiter was likely the first planet to form, and it contains most of the material that wasn't incorporated into the sun. The leading theories about its formation rest on the amount of water the planet soaked up. To help solve this mystery, NASA's Juno mission will measure this important quantity beginning in mid-2016.</div>
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Looking further afield, observing other planetary systems as they form is like getting a glimpse of our own solar system's baby pictures, and water is a big part of that story. For example, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has observed signs of a hail of water-rich comets raining down on a young solar system, much like the bombardment planets in our solar system endured in their youth.</div>
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With the study of exoplanets -- planets that orbit other stars -- we are closer than ever to finding out if other water-rich worlds like ours exist. In fact, our basic concept of what makes planets suitable for life is closely tied to water: Every star has a habitable zone, or a range of distances around it in which temperatures are neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist. NASA's planet-hunting Kepler mission was designed with this in mind. Kepler looks for planets in the habitable zone around many types of stars.</div>
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Recently verifying its thousandth exoplanet, Kepler data confirm that the most common planet sizes are worlds just slightly larger than Earth. Astronomers think many of those worlds could be entirely covered by deep oceans. Kepler's successor, K2, continues to watch for dips in starlight to uncover new worlds.</div>
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The agency's upcoming TESS mission will search nearby, bright stars in the solar neighborhood for Earth- and super-Earth-sized exoplanets. Some of the planets TESS discovers may have water, and NASA's next great space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, will examine the atmospheres of those special worlds in great detail.</div>
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It's easy to forget that the story of Earth's water, from gentle rains to raging rivers, is intimately connected to the larger story of our solar system and beyond. But our water came from somewhere -- every world in our solar system got its water from the same shared source. So it's worth considering that the next glass of water you drink could easily have been part of a comet, or an ocean moon, or a long-vanished sea on the surface of Mars. And note that the night sky may be full of exoplanets formed by similar processes to our home world, where gentle waves wash against the shores of alien seas.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">For more information about NASA's exploration of the </span>solar system<span style="font-weight: normal;"> and beyond, visit: </span><a href="http://www.nasa.gov/" style="font-weight: normal;">http://www.nasa.gov/</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-9832609628953045692015-04-07T13:45:00.000-07:002015-04-07T13:47:41.805-07:00The Glow of the Lagoon Nebula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-weight: 500;">The Glow of the Lagoon Nebula </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: 500; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-weight: 500;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: 500;">Gas and dust condense, beginning the process of creating new stars in this image of Messier 8, also known as the Lagoon </span>Nebula<span style="font-weight: 500;">. Located four to five thousand light-years away, in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), the nebula is a giant interstellar cloud, one hundred light-years across. It boasts many large, hot </span>stars<span style="font-weight: 500;">, whose ultraviolet radiation sculpts the gas and dust into unusual shapes. Two of these giant stars illuminate the brightest part of the nebula, known as the Hourglass Nebula, a spiralling, funnel-like shape near its centre.</span></span><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: left;"> </span><span style="font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: left;">Messier 8 is one of the few star-forming nebulae visible to the unaided eye, and was discovered as long ago as 1747, although the full range of colours wasn’t visible until the advent of more powerful telescopes. The Lagoon Nebula derives its name from the wide lagoon-shaped dark lane located in the middle of the nebula that divides it into two glowing sections.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: 500;">This image combines observations performed through three different filters (B, V, R) with the 1.5-metre Danish telescope at the </span>ESO<span style="font-weight: 500;"> La Silla Observatory in Chile.</span></div>
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<strong style="box-sizing: border-box; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 18.5714092254639px;">Credit:</strong><div class="credit" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; margin-left: 4px; vertical-align: top;">
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ESO/IDA/Danish 1.5 m/ R. Gendler, U.G. Jørgensen, K. Harpsøe</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-25751672370137500152015-04-07T13:00:00.001-07:002015-04-07T13:00:28.443-07:00The Omega Nebula<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The Omega Nebula </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Neue Helvetica W02', 'Neue Helvetica W10', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: start;">Three-colour composite image of the <b>Omega</b> <b>Nebula</b> (Messier 17, or NGC 6618), based on images obtained with the EMMI instrument on the ESO 3.58-metre </span><a href="http://www.eso.org/public/teles-instr/lasilla/ntt.html" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; color: #428bca; font-family: 'Neue Helvetica W02', 'Neue Helvetica W10', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">New Technology Telescope</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Neue Helvetica W02', 'Neue Helvetica W10', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: start;"> at the <b>La Silla Observatory</b>. North is down and East is to the right in the image. It spans an angle equal to about one third the diameter of the Full Moon, corresponding to about 15 light-years at the distance of the Omega Nebula. The three filters used are B (blue), V ("visual", or green) and R (red). </span><strong style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #333333; font-family: 'Neue Helvetica W02', 'Neue Helvetica W10', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.5714092254639px; text-align: left;">Credit:</strong>ESO</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-52173130788998833882015-04-07T12:28:00.001-07:002015-04-07T12:28:21.330-07:00Американские эксперты назвали сроки достижения человеком Марса<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<h1>
Американские эксперты назвали сроки достижения человеком
Марса <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8tdNP-iGlt36b1-vP1QGBFsOm7jStzoQYbxQ8Z05STjnuwwo8Rh42eH-hAVEJFHuvi4jaZuAp3dPhOxD9VW7bgPFGbQbmkjHz0arXwSojY8DKyYeuUBTTveU6lUXWxJ8jXpiqigl2gk3-/s1600/5523c03a-d464-390e-d464-3901f88109cc.photo.0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8tdNP-iGlt36b1-vP1QGBFsOm7jStzoQYbxQ8Z05STjnuwwo8Rh42eH-hAVEJFHuvi4jaZuAp3dPhOxD9VW7bgPFGbQbmkjHz0arXwSojY8DKyYeuUBTTveU6lUXWxJ8jXpiqigl2gk3-/s1600/5523c03a-d464-390e-d464-3901f88109cc.photo.0.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Эксперты Планетарного общества в ходе заседания,
проходившего 2 апреля, назвали предполагаемые сроки освоения человеком
<b>Марса</b>. Про мнению экспертов, достичь орбиты
Марса астронавты смогут к 2033 году, а к 2039 они совершат первую высадку на
поверхность планеты. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Как отмечают специалисты, за 18 лет с 2015 по 2033 годы в
США может смениться как минимум три администрации президента, и экспертам не
хотелось бы, чтобы это привело к изменениям в космической политике США.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Также ученые озабочены целесообразностью орбитальной миссии
на Марсе. По их мнению, из-за продолжительного полета астронавтов к планете и
сильной радиации не имеет смысла затягивать их пребывание на орбите, а гораздо
разумнее приступить к спуску на поверхность Марса, где люди, вероятно, проведут
не один месяц.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Отдельно ученые отметили прогресс в освоении космоса Китаем.
Несмотря на то, что в первой половине 1990-х годов <b>НАСА</b> из-за промышленного шпионажа
заблокировало участие Поднебесной в проекте Международной космической станции
(МКС), страна к 2022 году планирует завершить развертывание национальной
орбитальной станции.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Эксперты сожалеют о планах России выйти из проекта МКС после
2024 года, однако отмечают, что средств, которые США выделяют НАСА для
эксплуатации американского сегмента станции, будет достаточно для ее
функционирования независимо от России.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Большие надежды ученые связывают с участием бизнеса в
освоении космоса. Так, в сентябре 2014 года НАСА официально объявило, что
выбрало компании Boeing и <b>SpaceX</b> для заключения многомиллиардного контракта на
строительство пилотируемых многоразовых космических кораблей и средств их
выведения на орбиту. Согласно договору, на разработку CST-100 агентство выделит
Boeing 4,2 миллиарда долларов, а корабли серии Dragon частной компании SpaseX
уже летают к МКС.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Неправительственное Планетарное общество основано в 1980
году Карлом Саганом, Луисом Фридманом и Брюсом Мюрреем. Оно занимается
поддержкой и популяризацией исследований космоса, создания транспортных средств
и космической политикой. К настоящему времени членами общества являются около
40 тысяч человек. источник:<a href="http://earth-chronicles.ru/news/2015-04-07-78435">http://earth-chronicles.ru/news/2015-04-07-78435</a><o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-32018135817137276252015-04-07T11:44:00.002-07:002015-04-07T11:44:36.349-07:00Потрясающий космический сад на фотографии<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h1 style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma;">
Потрясающий космический сад на фотографии <span style="font-size: 14.6666669845581px; text-align: justify;">Называйте его садом космических масштабов: цветущие на фоне черноты космоса не меньше пяти звездных туманностей и два звездных скопления, захваченные фотографом Терри Хэнкоком.</span></h1>
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Этот панорамный вид региона в созвездии Возничего цветет космической активностью. На фотографии видны <b>туманности</b> Пылающая Звезда (IC405), Головастик (IC410), звездные скопления Паук (IC417) и Муха (NGC 1931), рассеянные скопления М36 и М38, а также излучение туманности Sh2-232 и ее меньших спутников.</div>
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В правом верхнем углу изображения в форме запятой видна туманность <b>Пылающая Звезда</b>. Горящее сердце этой туманности - звезда AE Возничий, которая, вероятно, родилась в другом звездном скоплении, и была изгнана в результате столкновения с двумя другими <b>звездами</b>. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiultfsHkckMINGj3yXpTNY0TJlXqkNFuby4q377nQXBEGAfVizkAoPYo_J2d_jdXc21xoBzq7BKIdRfj9hYQLjAzCCLWtCsRfKJMqqu4Dl5p9YjNFcw2NDE1sC4CWPdzg_n7NM-U55O-uT/s1600/Auriga_panorama_hancock.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiultfsHkckMINGj3yXpTNY0TJlXqkNFuby4q377nQXBEGAfVizkAoPYo_J2d_jdXc21xoBzq7BKIdRfj9hYQLjAzCCLWtCsRfKJMqqu4Dl5p9YjNFcw2NDE1sC4CWPdzg_n7NM-U55O-uT/s1600/Auriga_panorama_hancock.jpg" height="232" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 14.6666669845581px; text-align: justify;">Большое сферическое облако в дальнем левом углу изображения - эмиссионная туманность Sh2-232 в сопровождении своих меньших товарищей Sh2-231 и Sh2-235.</span></div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 14.6666669845581px; text-align: justify;">
Возле нижней средней части изображения небольшой самородок света под названием NGC 1931, также известный как Муха. Вверху и справа NGC 1931 еще одна яркая коллекция звезд, окруженных тонкими нитями газа, известная как Паук. Каждый из этих объектов является молодым открытым звездным скоплением в облаках водорода.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 14.6666669845581px; text-align: justify;">
Хенкок во дворе обсерватории в Фремонте, штат Мичиган, создавал образ в течение двух ночей, с общим временем интеграции 384 минут. источник:<a href="http://www.infuture.ru/article/12956">http://www.infuture.ru/article/12956</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-21960428189693283412015-04-07T11:17:00.003-07:002015-04-07T11:17:44.288-07:00В конце апреля состоится пуск ракеты-носителя "Протон-М" с мексиканским спутником <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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В конце апреля состоится пуск ракеты-носителя
"Протон-М" с мексиканским спутником <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn6IYQm5CMYB8KCBH2bZxo0-azIbhOIsuGjGlLL7xQyIEQk3i5YP8V0ERc9trk9Zilvs-pT-8MiSyVBYKfLm7Ffpl0z5UOCUmix2Kp99BNphWbnoNYA7mtKuziSTABiYPkS_gmOjXORFco/s1600/42330715.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn6IYQm5CMYB8KCBH2bZxo0-azIbhOIsuGjGlLL7xQyIEQk3i5YP8V0ERc9trk9Zilvs-pT-8MiSyVBYKfLm7Ffpl0z5UOCUmix2Kp99BNphWbnoNYA7mtKuziSTABiYPkS_gmOjXORFco/s1600/42330715.jpg" height="426" width="640" /></a></div>
</h1>
<o:p></o:p></div>
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На космодроме
<b>Байконур</b> проходит подготовка к коммерческому пуску ракеты-носителя
"<b>Протон-М</b>" с мексиканским спутником "MexSat-1"на борту.
Об
этом информирует пресс-служба Роскосмоса. <o:p></o:p></div>
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В начале этой недели
специалисты монтажно-испытательного корпуса космодрома запустили процесс
автономных испытаний систем космического аппарата. В тоже время проходили
проверки ракеты-носителя и разгонного блока "Бриз-М".<o:p></o:p></div>
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MexSat-1 (МексСат-1) представляет собой спутник связи,
разработанный американской компанией "Boeing Satellite Systems" по
заказу Министерства транспорта и связи Мексики (Secretaria de Communicaciones y
Transportes (SCT) of México), которое будет выступать оператором космического
аппарата. На борту 5800-килограммового спутника находятся транспондеры
(приемопередающие устройства) Ku-, L-band диапазонов. Планируемый срок службы
"MexSat-1" составляет 15 лет.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Космический аппарат является частью группировки MEXSAT,
состоящей всего из 3 космических аппаратов. В 2010 году правительство Мексики
заключило контракт с компанией Boeing примерно на производство спутниковой
группировки. Стоимость контракта составила примерно 1 млрд. долларов. Система
<b>MEXSAT</b> в полном составе обеспечит надежную связь для нужд национальной
безопасности Мексики, а также улучшит покрытие для гражданских телекоммуникаций
страны.<o:p></o:p></div>
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На данный момент на орбите нашей планеты работает всего 1
космический аппарат - "MexSat-3", запущенный в декабре 2012 года.
Пуск ракеты-носителя "Протон-М" со спутником "MexSat-1" на
борту запланирован на конец апреля 2015 года. Последний спутник группировки
также планируют запустить в этом году с помощью ракеты-носителя
"Atlas-5". источник:<a href="http://kosmos-x.net.ru/news/v_konce_aprelja_sostoitsja_pusk_rakety_nositelja_proton_m_s_meksikanskim_sputnikom/2015-04-07-3747">http://kosmos-x.net.ru/news/v_konce_aprelja_sostoitsja_pusk_rakety_nositelja_proton_m_s_meksikanskim_sputnikom/2015-04-07-3747</a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-69754901057950484562015-04-07T10:47:00.004-07:002015-04-07T10:47:42.309-07:00 Ученые выдвинули обоснование тому, почему за все время поисков не была обнаружена ни одна сфера Дайсона<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Ученые выдвинули
обоснование тому, почему за все время поисков не была обнаружена ни одна сфера
Дайсона</h2>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoOBpdMMCg3sZyCYK-8XbG3xHwHYgIatJ056zuD3VCjmxCCqQDzCk2L0acb6I9lCK43Tp7vF-L3VQG_WhnYlMlGNQwTyxBbzgCKXPNpPqpCMfoYCT0uDWTIfGoduf01mYpLcoIkRjgG8J9/s1600/Dyson_Sphere_Update.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoOBpdMMCg3sZyCYK-8XbG3xHwHYgIatJ056zuD3VCjmxCCqQDzCk2L0acb6I9lCK43Tp7vF-L3VQG_WhnYlMlGNQwTyxBbzgCKXPNpPqpCMfoYCT0uDWTIfGoduf01mYpLcoIkRjgG8J9/s1600/Dyson_Sphere_Update.jpg" height="384" width="640" /></a></div>
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Более пятидесяти
лет назад ученый-физик Фримен Дайсон (Freeman Dyson) предложил весьма необычную
и слегка безумную идею. Некая внеземная цивилизация, находящаяся на высоком
уровне технического развития, могла бы построить огромную сферу, собирающую
энергию звезды, находящейся в ее центре, для обеспечения комфортного проживания
на внутренней поверхности этой сферы. Эта идея так захватила умы некоторых
ученых, что даже было проведено несколько поисков специфических тепловых
подписей такого сооружения в инфракрасном диапазоне, которые, к счастью или к
сожалению, не принесли никаких результатов.<o:p></o:p></div>
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А недавно Ибрагим Семиз (Ibrahim Semiz) и Салим Огур (Salim
Ogur), двое ученых-физиков из Босфорского университета, Турция, по их словам,
нашли объяснение тому факту, что людям до сих пор так и не удалось найти следов
космических мегасооружений, сфер Дайсона. Если сферы Дайсона и были построены
где-то в далеких глубинах космоса, то их размеры должны быть намного меньше,
нежели размеры того, что пытались найти ученые ранее.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Проводя свои исследования, Семиз и Огур сосредоточились на
физике, динамике и других принципах "работы" сфер Дайсона. Они
указали на то, что во время предыдущих поисков ученые искали сферы Дайсона,
окружающие подобные Солнцу звезды. Но такой сценарий предполагает возникновение
множества проблем различного плана, некоторые из которых кажутся абсолютно
непреодолимыми. Для начала, внутренняя поверхность сферы должна быть удалена от
звезды на расстояние минимум в 1 астрономическую единицу (расстояние от Земли
до Солнца). Это, в свою очередь, означает, что такая структура обладает
огромной массой и требует невероятно большого количества материала для своего
строительства. Кроме этого, на поверхности такой сферы будет присутствовать
лишь небольшая сила тяжести и для того, чтобы жить в таких условиях, людям или
подобным людям существам потребовались бы серьезные генетические модификации или
генераторы искусственной гравитации, которые пока не существуют даже в теории.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Наилучшим кандидатом
для строительства вокруг них сфер Дайсона ученые считают звезды-белые карлики.
Пригодная для жизни зона вокруг таких звезд располагается намного ближе к
звезде, это означает, что сама сфера может иметь существенно меньшие размеры.
Произведенные учеными вычисления показали, что сфера вокруг белого карлика,
толщина которой равна одному метру, будет весить порядка 10^23 килограмм, что
немного меньше массы Луны. И на поверхности такой сферы Дайсона, окружающей
белого карлика, будет царить сила тяжести, сопоставимая с земной силой тяжести.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Так как звезды-белые карлики менее ярки, нежели Солнце, то
инфракрасные тепловые подписи от окружающих такие звезды сфер Дайсона будут
очень слабы. И в случае значительного удаления таких сфер от Земли их подписи
пока еще невозможно обнаружить при помощи имеющихся в распоряжении людей
астрономических инструментов.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
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В заключение следует добавить, что согласно расчетам, радиус
сфер Дайсона, построенных вокруг белых карликов, должен составлять порядка 10^6
километров. И это почти тот же порядок величины, что и сфера Дайсона,
фигурировавшая в научно-фантастическом фильме "Star Trek: The Next
Generation". Так что озвученные выше идеи пусть и являются новым словом в
науке, а писателям-фантастам они пришли в голову уже давным-давно. <a href="http://www.dailytechinfo.org/space/6888-uchenye-vydvinuli-obosnovanie-tomu-pochemu-za-vse-vremya-poiskov-ne-byla-obnaruzhena-ni-odna-sfera-daysona.html">http://www.dailytechinfo.org/space/6888-uchenye-vydvinuli-obosnovanie-tomu-pochemu-za-vse-vremya-poiskov-ne-byla-obnaruzhena-ni-odna-sfera-daysona.html</a> <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-50665283615500270872015-04-07T09:55:00.003-07:002015-04-07T09:55:35.758-07:00World's largest asteroid impact site could be in Australia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: 3rem;">World's largest asteroid impact site could be in Australia </span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-size: 3rem; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuCtwVMWwcvnp78Kgw-rK2yZD2rr7TQ1Ee_w5jWWAhvDnNJif2skNLwrXUpKyTD-4d9MYkL9O_fEw2eBNW8iBRj7mLLmlja02NGUh6rLPT_UD_fSWjH6c-OFwDmBhe_K9MfdB1sMw4PBb/s1600/1-worldslarges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOuCtwVMWwcvnp78Kgw-rK2yZD2rr7TQ1Ee_w5jWWAhvDnNJif2skNLwrXUpKyTD-4d9MYkL9O_fEw2eBNW8iBRj7mLLmlja02NGUh6rLPT_UD_fSWjH6c-OFwDmBhe_K9MfdB1sMw4PBb/s1600/1-worldslarges.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Not long ago, asteroid impacts weren't considered as a significant factor in the evolution of Earth. Following the </span><a href="http://www.nature.com/ngeo/focus/heavy-bombardment/index.html" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Late Heavy Bombardment</a><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">, which pummelled the inner solar system around 3.8 billion to 3.9 billion years ago, asteroid impacts were generally regarded as minor events.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><div style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
All this changed in the late 1970s, when Walter and Louis Alvarez discovered the 65-million-year-old <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/208/4448/1095" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary) asteroid impact</a> event. This is now known to be linked to the extinction of the dinosaurs, among many other species.</div>
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Thus interest in extra-terrestrial impact research – a discipline bridging astronomy and geology – soared when the spectre of dinosaurs escaping asteroid impact-ignited flames was transformed from science fiction to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8550504.stm" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">science fact</a>.</div>
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Attention has now been drawn to our own shores with the discovery of new impact structures, including two very large <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/asteroid+impacts/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">asteroid impacts</a> buried more than two kilometres under the surface in northeastern South Australia.</div>
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If the preliminary evidence is anything to go by, these could represent the largest impact sites on the planet. One can only imagine the catastrophic event that might have caused them, and the consequences it had for life on Earth at the time.</div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Heavy rain</b></div>
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To date researchers have identified more than 172 meteorite <a href="http://www.unb.ca/fredericton/science/research/passc/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">craters and asteroid impact structures</a> around the world, showing that our planet has <a href="http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-94-007-6328-9" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">never been spared from bombardment</a> by asteroids. Most of the asteroids responsible for these impacts have originated from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and most of the comets originated from the <a href="https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=KBOs&Display=OverviewLong" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Oort cloud</a> at the fringe of the solar system.</div>
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Here in Australia, we are blessed with a truly ancient landscape, some of which is up to 3.7 billion years old and contains minerals up to 4.4 billion years old. We also have as high degree of geological stability, meaning many of the impact structures have been preserved over the ages.</div>
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To date, a total of 33 impact craters and 27 probable-to-likely impact structures have been found in Australia, ranging from small crater clusters such as <a href="http://www.parksandwildlife.nt.gov.au/parks/find/henbury#.VRCwkvmUdXE" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Henbury, Northern Territory</a>, to large impact structures such as <a href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=42813" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Acraman in South Australia</a> and <a href="http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/795.aspx" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Woodleigh in Western Australia</a>.</div>
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Some of these are well exposed, such as <a href="http://www.nt.gov.au/westmacs/places/tnorala" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Gosses Bluff, Northern Territory</a>, Spider in the Kimberley and Lawn Hill in Queensland. Others are buried by younger sediments, such as <a href="http://www.dmp.wa.gov.au/795.aspx" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Woodleigh, Western Australia</a>, Yallalie in Western Australia and Tookoonooka and Talundilly in southwest Queensland.</div>
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But the largest of them all may have been uncovered under the red expanse of central Australia.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcnWGTm9ds3VA-STMXa8fQH_QoO3vS-gCNfPFWKWnQYM7yWJmDbjlIl8SbcZgO0m5Po18wuLghd7RmYKG-BFra9KLVHj-WfK_umw6QD84crXHzDFMsqIUQB9VJ0f87OSUMcAFuHs40XTAf/s1600/2-worldslarges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcnWGTm9ds3VA-STMXa8fQH_QoO3vS-gCNfPFWKWnQYM7yWJmDbjlIl8SbcZgO0m5Po18wuLghd7RmYKG-BFra9KLVHj-WfK_umw6QD84crXHzDFMsqIUQB9VJ0f87OSUMcAFuHs40XTAf/s1600/2-worldslarges.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Double impact</b></div>
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The first hint at shock metamorphism of the Earth crust in north eastern South Australia was discovered when Tonguc Uysal at the University of Queensland's <a href="http://www.geothermal.uq.edu.au/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence</a> was involved in drilling for geothermal energy in 2009 in the oil and gas rich Cooper Basin, which overlies the Warburton Basin.</div>
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While there, he came across telltale evidence of unusual micro-structures within quartz grains from the local granites. He recognised the quartz structures were similar to those that I and my colleagues found in 1999 in the 120 kilometre large impact structure at Woodleigh in Western Australia.</div>
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I was intrigued by Tonguc's findings, and he subsequently offered me the opportunity to analyse the drill core samples myself.</div>
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Starting in 2010 I spent many months studying drill core samples from the Warburton Basin, using three-dimensional optical microscopy and <a href="http://www.ammrf.org.au/myscope/sem/background/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">scanning electron microscopy</a>. This was followed by detailed <a href="http://www.ammrf.org.au/myscope/tem/background/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">transmission electron microscopy</a> undertaken by <a href="http://rses.anu.edu.au/people/john-fitzgerald" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">John Fitzgerald</a>.</div>
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We found that the quartz <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamella_%28materials%29" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">lamella</a> displayed the characteristic deformation pattern which can only be produced by extreme shock pressures above 10 gigapascals (100 kilobars). To put this in perspective, these levels are much greater than the pressures at the base of the continental crust 30km to 50km beneath the Earth's surface.</div>
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Analysis of the Warburton samples suggested shock pressures of between 10 and 20 gigapascals, which can only be produced by an impact by a large asteroid or a comet.</div>
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While we were performing our analyses, seismic researchers Brian Kennett and Erdinc Saygin and their colleagues at the Australian National University published a paper reporting very large seismic anomalies in north-eastern South Australia. These anomalies coincide with the region where we found shock features in quartz crystals.</div>
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The seismic evidence may be related to deep fracturing of the crust and to an increased geothermal gradient, where the temperature increases more rapidly with depth than in other regions of the Australian continent. This observation was consistent with geophysical modelling of airborne magnetic and gravity data which indicate anomalies under the <a href="http://www.ga.gov.au/ausgeonews/ausgeonews200912/cooper.jsp" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Cooper Basin</a>, studied by Tony Meixner of Geoscience Australia.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSh_pDRM3Md_nrg6p_5d0U03a4ld6DFo5CMUUtbh5ExkTVZH_Nqq-K6_hkIs_gg8Gzz4ugec9pCYq4h-Mna6MW8c4Id_SwFrnzpCsRE1TqTXFMNKmHVQ4uvHow627unL6GYRbFehrtPqnt/s1600/3-worldslarges.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSh_pDRM3Md_nrg6p_5d0U03a4ld6DFo5CMUUtbh5ExkTVZH_Nqq-K6_hkIs_gg8Gzz4ugec9pCYq4h-Mna6MW8c4Id_SwFrnzpCsRE1TqTXFMNKmHVQ4uvHow627unL6GYRbFehrtPqnt/s1600/3-worldslarges.jpg" height="480" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">Piecing the evidence together</b></div>
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Using the geophysical anomalies along with the distribution of shocked quartz grains found in drill holes, we estimate the combined size of the twin structures at approximately 400 km. This would make the <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040195114006477" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Warburton twin structures</a> the largest known to date.</div>
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However, we are yet to pinpoint the age and the consequences of the Warburton twin impacts. What we do know is the impact must be at least 300 million years old or older. This is based on study of the ages of bodies of granite affected by the impact, which are overlain by younger sediments that show no signs of shock.</div>
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Other studies of the cores of zircons in the granite by Tonguc Uysal and Alexander Middleton and their students at the University of Queensland suggest the zircons contain signatures of both a 300 million years old impact and a 420 million years old impact.</div>
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If we can resolve the age question, that will allow us to search for fallout ejected from the original crater and related tsunami events, and potentially figure out whether the impacts are related to an extinction event.</div>
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The geological record contains a number of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">extinction events</a> that were associated with impacts by asteroids, such as the 580 million years old Acraman impact event and the 66 million years old Cretaceous–Paleogene event that killed off the dinosaurs.</div>
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The most significant mass extinction event, though, is the massive <a href="http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/prehistoric-world/permian-extinction/" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Permian-Triassic extinction</a> which killed off 90% of species alive around 250 million years ago. This was a period of intense volcanic activity and also coincides with the <a href="http://www.passc.net/EarthImpactDatabase/araguainha.html" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Araguainha impact</a> located in Brazil.</div>
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The discovery of the Warburton twin impacts constitutes a milestone in the study of the impact history of Earth, including research of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/impact/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">impact</a> events associated with 2.5 billion to 3.5 billion years old formations in the <a href="http://austhrutime.com/pilbara.htm" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">Pilbara Craton</a> in Western Australia. The more we know about these impacts, the better we can understand other phenomena, such as mass extinctions, the formation of certain geological structures over time and related magmatic events.</div>
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It also paints a vivid picture of what might have happened on that fateful day a few hundred million years ago, and the catastrophe it must have wrought.</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-world-largest-asteroid-impact-site.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-world-largest-asteroid-impact-site.html#jCp</a></h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-72585217890911081472015-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:002015-04-07T09:38:12.249-07:00Asteroid Juno seen traveling through space in new ALMA images and animation<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Asteroid Juno seen traveling through space in new ALMA images and animation <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjf54JT59KKW3137FcF-oqhbgatk9oqxurFbWtAaGIVPi8Mvo5Dtx4nGNH2UtvuUvPlREaSxuYb1PiwF5KYNydm4OPO3UIkae6ezYDOdNlG-auSdEWR3Se3fZETeYUuvmadi-r6ZFYGf49/s1600/asteroidjuno.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjf54JT59KKW3137FcF-oqhbgatk9oqxurFbWtAaGIVPi8Mvo5Dtx4nGNH2UtvuUvPlREaSxuYb1PiwF5KYNydm4OPO3UIkae6ezYDOdNlG-auSdEWR3Se3fZETeYUuvmadi-r6ZFYGf49/s1600/asteroidjuno.gif" height="640" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 14px;">A series of images made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) provides an unprecedented view of the surface of Juno, one of the largest members of our solar system's main asteroid belt. Linked together into a brief animation, these high-resolution images show the asteroid rotating through space as it shines in millimeter-wavelength light.</span></h1>
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<span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">"In contrast to optical telescopes, which capture the reflected light from the Sun, the new ALMA</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/images/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">images</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">show the actual millimeter-wavelength light emitted by the</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/asteroid/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">asteroid</a><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">," said Todd Hunter, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Charlottesville, Va. A paper prepared by representatives of the entire international ALMA consortium detailing these observations was accepted for publication in the</span><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><i style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Astrophysical Journal Letters</i><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">.</span></h1>
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According to Hunter: "By using ALMA to image the thermal glow from asteroids like Juno and other bodies in our solar system, astronomers will be able to study their shape, composition, and surface properties."</div>
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The complete ALMA observation, which includes 10 separate images, documents about 60 percent of one rotation of the asteroid. It was conducted over the course of four hours on 19 October 2014 when Juno was approximately 295 million kilometers from Earth. In these images, the asteroid's axis of rotation is tilted away from the Earth, revealing its southern hemisphere most prominently.</div>
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For this observation, ALMA achieved a resolution of 40 milliarcseconds, meaning that each "pixel" in the images is about 60 kilometers across, covering approximately one fourth of the surface of Juno. This resolution is a vast improvement over earlier observations made at similar wavelengths and is enough to clearly resolve the shape of the asteroid and potentially tease out prominent surface features.</div>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;">Juno will make its next close approach to Earth in November 2018. Since the asteroid will be much closer than it was in the most recent observations, ALMA will be able to double its resolution, potentially revealing new details about this intriguing object. At approximately 240 kilometers across, Juno is among the largest members of the solar system's </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/main+asteroid+belt/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">main asteroid belt</a><span style="font-size: 14px;">, but it is still only a few percent the mass of this region's largest inhabitant: the dwarf planet Ceres, which is now playing host to NASA's Dawn spacecraft.</span></h1>
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"This new observation clearly demonstrates that ALMA will be a very powerful tool for studying asteroids," said NRAO astronomer Arielle Moullet. "At its highest resolution, ALMA is powerful enough to resolve the surface of many asteroids." Earlier models of Juno developed by studying its reflected light indicate that it has an oblong, or potato-like, shape with possibly minor indentations on its <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/surface/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">surface</a>. The ALMA images seem to support this model.</div>
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Juno is one of five targets selected for study during the ALMA Long Baseline Campaign to test the telescope's high-resolution capabilities, achieved when the antennas are at their greatest separation: up to 15 kilometers apart. The other targets include the protoplanetary disk HL Tau, the gravitationally lensed galaxy SDP.81, the star Mira, and quasar 3C138.</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-asteroid-juno-space-alma-images.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-asteroid-juno-space-alma-images.html#jCp</a></h1>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-53052675505435949162015-04-07T09:19:00.001-07:002015-04-07T09:20:29.233-07:00ALMA sees Einstein ring in stunning image of lensed galaxy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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ALMA sees Einstein ring in stunning image of lensed galaxy <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">Astronomers have discovered that a distant galaxy—seen from Earth with the aid of a gravitational lens—appears like a cosmic ring, thanks to the highest resolution images ever taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (</span><span style="font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">ALMA</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">).</span></div>
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Forged by the chance alignment of two distant galaxies, this striking ring-like structure is a rare and peculiar manifestation of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/gravitational+lensing/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">gravitational lensing</a> as predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of general relativity.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Gravitational lensing occurs when a massive galaxy or cluster of galaxies bends the light emitted from a more </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/distant+galaxy/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">distant </span>galaxy</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">, forming a highly magnified, though much distorted image. In this particular case, the galaxy known as SDP.81 and an intervening galaxy line up so perfectly that the light from the more distant one forms a nearly complete circle as seen from Earth.</span></div>
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Discovered by the Herschel Space Observatory, SDP.81 is an active star-forming galaxy nearly 12 billion light-years away, seen at a time when the Universe was only 15 percent of its current age. It is being lensed by a massive foreground galaxy that is a comparatively nearby 4 billion light-years away.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">"Gravitational lensing is used in astronomy to study the very distant, very early Universe because it gives even our best telescopes an impressive boost in power," said ALMA Deputy Program Scientist Catherine Vlahakis. "With the astounding level of detail in these new ALMA images, </span>astronomers<span style="font-weight: normal;"> will now be able to reassemble the information contained in the distorted image we see as a ring and produce a reconstruction of the true image of the distant galaxy."</span></div>
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The new SDP.81 images were taken in October 2014 as part of ALMA's Long Baseline Campaign, an essential program to test and verify the telescope's highest resolving power, achieved when the antennas are at their greatest separation: up to 15 kilometers apart.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-70588696347453034552015-04-07T08:29:00.000-07:002015-04-07T08:29:08.941-07:00Sun experiences seasonal changes, new research finds<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Sun experiences seasonal changes, new research finds <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">The </span><span style="font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">Sun</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;"> undergoes a type of seasonal variability with its activity waxing and waning over the course of nearly two years, according to a new study by a team of researchers led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). This behavior affects the peaks and valleys in the approximately 11-year solar cycle, sometimes amplifying and sometimes weakening the </span><span style="font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">solar storms</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;"> that can buffet Earth's atmosphere.</span></div>
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The quasi-annual variations appear to be driven by changes in the bands of strong magnetic fields in each solar hemisphere. These bands also help shape the approximately 11-year solar cycle that is part of a longer cycle that lasts about 22 years.</div>
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"What we're looking at here is a massive driver of solar storms," said Scott McIntosh, lead author of the new study and director of NCAR's High Altitude Observatory. "By better understanding how these activity bands form in the Sun and cause seasonal instabilities, there's the potential to greatly improve forecasts of space weather events."</div>
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The overlapping bands are fueled by the rotation of the Sun's deep interior, according to observations by the research team. As the bands move within the Sun's northern and southern hemispheres, activity rises to a peak over a period of about 11 months and then begins to wane.</div>
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The quasi-annual variations can be likened to regions on Earth that have two seasons, such as a rainy season and a dry season, McIntosh said.</div>
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The study, published this week in <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Nature Communications</i>, can help lead to better predictions of massive geomagnetic storms in Earth's outer atmosphere that sometimes disrupt satellite operations, communications, power grids, and other technologies.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">The research was funded by </span>NASA<span style="font-weight: normal;"> and the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor.</span></div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">A "jet stream" in the Sun</b></div>
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The new study is one of a series of papers by the research team that examines the influence of the magnetic bands on several interrelated cycles of solar magnetism. In a paper last year in <i style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Astrophysical Journal</i>, the authors characterized the approximately 11-year sunspot cycle in terms of two overlapping parallel bands of opposite magnetic polarity that slowly migrate over almost 22 years from high solar latitudes toward the equator, where they meet and terminate.</div>
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McIntosh and his co-authors detected the twisted, ring-shaped bands by drawing on a host of NASA satellites and ground-based observatories that gather information on the structure of the Sun and the nature of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/solar+flares/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">solar flares</a> and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). These observations revealed the bands in the form of fluctuations in the density of magnetic fuel that rose from the solar interior through a transition region known as the tachocline and on to the surface, where they correlated with changes in flares and CMEs. <span style="line-height: 1.4;">In the new paper, the authors conclude that the migrating bands produce seasonal variations in solar activity that are as strong as the more familiar 11-year counterpart. These quasi-annual variations take place separately in both the northern and southern hemispheres.</span></div>
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"Much like Earth's jet stream, whose warps and waves have had severe impact on our regional weather patterns in the past couple of winters, the bands on the Sun have very slow-moving waves that can expand and warp it too," said co-author Robert Leamon, a scientist at Montana State University. "Sometimes this results in magnetic fields leaking from one band to the other. In other cases, the warp drags magnetic fields from deep in the solar interior, near the tachocline, and pushes them toward the surface."</div>
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The surges of magnetic fuel from the Sun's interior catastrophically destabilize the corona, the Sun's outermost atmosphere. They are the driving force behind the most destructive <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/solar+storms/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">solar storms</a>.</div>
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"These surges or 'whomps' as we have dubbed them, are responsible for over 95 percent of the large flares and CMEs—the ones that are really devastating," McIntosh said.</div>
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The quasi-annual variability can also help explain a cold-war era puzzle: why do powerful solar flares and CMEs often peak a year or more after the maximum number of sunspots? This lag is known as the Gnevyshev Gap, after the Soviet scientist who first reported it in the 1940s. The answer appears to be that seasonal changes may cause an upswing in solar disturbances long after the peak in the solar cycle.</div>
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Researchers can turn to advanced computer simulations and more detailed observations to learn more about the profound influence of the bands on solar activity. McIntosh said this could be assisted by a proposed network of satellites observing the Sun, much as the global networks of satellites around Earth have helped advance terrestrial weather models since the 1960s.</div>
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"If you understand what the patterns of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/solar+activity/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">solar activity</a> are telling you, you'll know whether we're in the stormy phase or the quiet phase in each hemisphere," McIntosh said. "If we can combine these pieces of information, forecast skill goes through the roof."</div>
<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-sun-seasonal.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-sun-seasonal.html#jCp</a><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-84098150754076632032015-04-07T08:16:00.002-07:002015-04-07T08:16:24.045-07:00Mars has belts of glaciers consisting of frozen water<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Mars has belts of glaciers consisting of frozen water<br />
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<span style="font-size: 14px; text-align: start;">Mars</span><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;"> has distinct polar ice caps, but Mars also has belts of glaciers at its central latitudes in both the southern and northern hemispheres. A thick layer of dust covers the glaciers, so they appear as surface of the ground, but radar measurements show that underneath the dust there are glaciers composed of frozen water. New studies have now calculated the size of the glaciers and thus the amount of water in the glaciers. It is the equivalent of all of Mars being covered by more than one meter of ice. The results are published in the scientific journal, </span><i style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start;">Geophysical Research Letters</i><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">.</span><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;" /></div>
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Several satellites orbit Mars and on satellite images, researchers have been able to observe the shape of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/glaciers/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">glaciers</a> just below the surface. For a long time scientists did not know if the ice was made of <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/frozen+water/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">frozen water</a> (H2O) or of carbon dioxide (CO2) or whether it was mud.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">Using radar measurements from the </span>NASA<span style="font-weight: normal;"> satellite, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, researchers have been able to determine that is </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/water+ice/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">water ice</a><span style="font-weight: normal;">. But how thick was the ice and do they resemble glaciers on Earth?</span></div>
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A group of researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have now calculated this using radar observations combined with ice flow modelling.</div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Data combined with modelling</b></div>
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"We have looked at <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/radar+measurements/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">radar measurements</a> spanning ten years back in time to see how thick the ice is and how it behaves. A glacier is after all a big chunk of ice and it flows and gets a form that tells us something about how soft it is. We then compared this with how glaciers on Earth behave and from that we have been able to make models for the ice flow," explains Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson, a postdoc at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen.</div>
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Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson explains that earlier studies have identified thousands of glacier-like formations on the planet. The glaciers are located in belts around Mars between the latitudes 300-500 – equivalent to just south of Denmark's location on Earth. The glaiciers are found on both the northern and southern hemispheres.</div>
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From some locations on Mars they have good detailed high-resolution data, while they only have more sparse data from other areas. But by supplementing the sparse data with information about the flow and form of the glaciers from the very well studied areas, they have been able to calculate how thick and voluminous the ice is across the glacier belts.</div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Could cover the entire planet </b></div>
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<b style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOypAzh5N5LI1bwohwyXhPpfmkEL0Cd_9AZWLMZiWeNxW0mg7IEBFEINxmHga9rec-3H100mfpIEgJmLMFRAVkf3A1yWWUqjysvcx5cpYuIdlXuevIGzHVM1Ts09bVU5QgKXu0zJuVZfa/s1600/2-marshasbelts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMOypAzh5N5LI1bwohwyXhPpfmkEL0Cd_9AZWLMZiWeNxW0mg7IEBFEINxmHga9rec-3H100mfpIEgJmLMFRAVkf3A1yWWUqjysvcx5cpYuIdlXuevIGzHVM1Ts09bVU5QgKXu0zJuVZfa/s1600/2-marshasbelts.jpg" height="512" width="640" /></a></b></div>
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"We have calculated that the ice in the glaciers is equivalent to over 150 billion cubic meters of ice – that much ice could cover the entire surface of Mars with 1.1 meters of ice. The ice at the mid-latitudes is therefore an important part of Mars' water reservoir," explains Nanna Bjørnholt Karlsson.</div>
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That the ice has not evaporated out into space could actually mean that the thick layer of dust is protecting the ice. The atmospheric pressure on Mars is so low that water <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/ice/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">ice</a> simply evaporates and becomes water vapour. But the glaciers are well protected under the thick layer of dust.</div>
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<br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;" /><br style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;" /><span style="font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; text-align: start;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-mars-belts-glaciers-frozen.html#jCp" style="color: #313d57; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal; outline: 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-mars-belts-glaciers-frozen.html#jCp</a></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-14731443001932034092015-04-07T07:48:00.001-07:002015-04-07T07:48:27.998-07:00Image: Auroral curtain reflected in a placid Icelandic lake<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Image: Auroral curtain reflected in a placid Icelandic lake</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3j6BebDp-mRFexliwAW072zonOAdb-CwXgrzn2FYsW-2DJnQtREC8T_R7WHZMWWUYK7_snDKJBbPCnekoh6d_k0hVHAgyqRle8D1VN7VEKqS7Nh3Aq3HWuAyJjPsYBMEQRRqcb5jScX-r/s1600/imageauroral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3j6BebDp-mRFexliwAW072zonOAdb-CwXgrzn2FYsW-2DJnQtREC8T_R7WHZMWWUYK7_snDKJBbPCnekoh6d_k0hVHAgyqRle8D1VN7VEKqS7Nh3Aq3HWuAyJjPsYBMEQRRqcb5jScX-r/s1600/imageauroral.jpg" height="323" width="640" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This dramatic panorama shows a colourful, shimmering <b>auroral </b>curtain reflected in a placid <b>Icelandic</b> lake. The image was taken on 18 March 2015 by Carlos Gauna, near Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon in southern Iceland.</span><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /> <span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">The celestial display was generated by a</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;"> </span><a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/coronal+mass+ejection/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">coronal mass ejection</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4;">, or CME – a massive eruption on the Sun – on 15 March. A flotilla of Sun-watching spacecraft, including the SOHO observatory and Proba-2, watched as millions of tonnes of magnetically charged particles were blasted into space, in the direction of <b>Earth</b>.</span><div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 0px 17px;">
Sweeping across the inner Solar System at some 3 million km per hour, the eruption reached Earth, 150 million kilometres away, in only two days. The gaseous cloud collided with Earth's magnetic field at around 04:30 GMT on 17 March.</div>
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At first, the impact sparked a relatively mild <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/geomagnetic+storm/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">geomagnetic storm</a>, but the magnetic disturbance intensified until it became the strongest storm of the current solar cycle. This increase occurred because the effects of the CME were reinforced by the arrival of a fast-moving stream of particles in the solar wind.</div>
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The increase in global geomagnetic activity released energy into the atmosphere, which resulted in the creation of a marvellous, widespread display of the aurora borealis – the Northern Lights.</div>
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When the charged particles from the Sun penetrate Earth's magnetic shield, they are channelled downwards along the <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/magnetic+field+lines/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">magnetic field lines</a> until they strike atoms of gas high in the atmosphere. Like a giant fluorescent neon lamp, the interaction with excited oxygen atoms generates a green or, more rarely, red glow in the night sky, while excited nitrogen atoms yield blue and purple colours.</div>
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Normally, the best place to see these impressive displays is inside the 'auroral oval', which lies at around 65–70º north or south of the equator, encircling the polar caps. As this beautiful image shows, Iceland is a prime site for observing the Northern Lights.</div>
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Auroral displays are not just decorative distractions. They are most frequent when the Sun's activity nears its peak roughly every 11 years. At such times, the inflow of high-energy particles and the buffeting of Earth's <a class="textTag" href="http://phys.org/tags/magnetic+field/" rel="tag" style="color: #313d57; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">magnetic field</a> may sometimes cause power blackouts, disruption of radio communications, damage to satellites and even threaten astronaut safety. For more than a decade, ESA's quartet of Cluster spacecraft has been unveiling the secrets of this complex Sun–Earth connection.</div>
<br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><br style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;" /><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Read more at: </span><a href="http://phys.org/news/2015-04-image-auroral-curtain-placid-icelandic.html#jCp" style="background-color: white; color: #313d57; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none;">http://phys.org/news/2015-04-image-auroral-curtain-placid-icelandic.html#jCp</a> </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-47773192436820777102015-04-07T07:29:00.002-07:002015-04-07T07:29:27.479-07:00International Space Station Flyover of Australia<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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International Space Station Flyover of Australia <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoup_ByJglubq33ABol9zuPoZp7g08z8NAnppWjMbt3HmALe9CQmJXAyhb80OA7zE2aIAhz5aaniqrUty-MeHduy8VQwB8_FJ6W8vRQs7ZmeDqciyxKYth4ug4J7KBFJeK4x_kvL8IRRg7/s1600/11127553_462870130536580_8621926794664070501_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoup_ByJglubq33ABol9zuPoZp7g08z8NAnppWjMbt3HmALe9CQmJXAyhb80OA7zE2aIAhz5aaniqrUty-MeHduy8VQwB8_FJ6W8vRQs7ZmeDqciyxKYth4ug4J7KBFJeK4x_kvL8IRRg7/s1600/11127553_462870130536580_8621926794664070501_o.jpg" height="640" width="426" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">From the International </span><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Space</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"> Station, </span><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">N</span><span style="font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">ASA</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"> astronaut Scott Kelly (</span><a href="https://instagram.com/stationcdrkelly/" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">stationcdrkelly on Instagram</a><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">) took this photograph and</span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"> </span><a href="https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/584973228671664128" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased !important; border: 0px; color: rgb(39, 61, 162) !important; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none !important; vertical-align: baseline;">posted it to social media</a><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"> </span><span style="font-size: 12px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">on April 6, 2015. Kelly wrote, "Australia. You are very beautiful. Thank you for being there to brighten our day. #YearInSpace"</span></span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;">Kelly and Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko began their one-year mission aboard the space station on March 27. Most expeditions to the space station last four to six months. By doubling the length of this mission, researchers hope to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 22.3999996185303px;"><em style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Image Credit: NASA <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/content/international-space-station-flyover-of-australia/">http://www.nasa.gov/content/international-space-station-flyover-of-australia/</a></em></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01533167851103717645noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2489297654069570550.post-40874846385418402752015-04-07T07:10:00.000-07:002015-04-07T07:14:54.006-07:00NASA Selects 2015 Carl Sagan Fellows<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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NASA Selects 2015 Carl Sagan Fellows</h1>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_RrLHPPnoUp3hlFmP1j0gbNODUXBENbvp4HChhBBd7ucpenhO5t9g05DldhO_z3bjGzHIVzK3W70dwssj4oDQe2hr0XI_FhbWLy0Y4xE3a1fao0-UjWEJk86sJ2ThhdExOY78ex8Akk2/s1600/carlsagan_20080903-full_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_RrLHPPnoUp3hlFmP1j0gbNODUXBENbvp4HChhBBd7ucpenhO5t9g05DldhO_z3bjGzHIVzK3W70dwssj4oDQe2hr0XI_FhbWLy0Y4xE3a1fao0-UjWEJk86sJ2ThhdExOY78ex8Akk2/s1600/carlsagan_20080903-full_0.jpg" height="640" width="496" /></a></div>
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NASA<span style="font-weight: normal;"> has selected six scientists as recipients of the 2015 Carl Sagan Exoplanet Postdoctoral Fellowships. The fellowship, named for the late astronomer, was created in 2008 to inspire the next generation of explorers seeking to learn more about planets, and possibly life, around other </span>stars<span style="font-weight: normal;">.</span></div>
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The Sagan Fellowship’s primary goal is to support outstanding recent postdoctoral scientists in conducting independent research related to the science goals of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, namely, to discover and characterize planetary systems and Earth-like planets around nearby stars.</div>
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Significant discoveries and advances have already been made by previous Sagan Fellows. Recent science results from the fellows include the most precise measurement ever of the radius of a planet outside our solar system, and images of exoplanets obtained with an Earth-based telescope using the same type of imaging sensor found in digital cameras.</div>
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“The Sagan Fellowships attract the best and brightest early career researchers in the rapidly developing field of exoplanets. They are pushing the boundaries of finding and characterizing the most Earth-like around the coolest, nearest stars,” said Charles Beichman, executive director of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Their research will make advances in exoplanet theory and instrumentation, and take full advantage of NASA missions.”</div>
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The 2015 Sagan Fellows are:</div>
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-- Courtney Dressing, who will work at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena on “Characterizing Small Planets Orbiting Small Stars.” Dressing will use data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope and its follow-on mission, K2, to distinguish false positive planet candidates and to characterize red dwarfs hosting small planets. She will also measure the mass of small planets to further characterize their compositional properties and investigate the link between stellar hosts and planetary properties.</div>
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-- Daniel Foreman-Mackey, who will work at the University of Washington in Seattle on “Flexible and Robust Inference of the Exoplanet Population.” Foreman-Mackey will use statistical methods to examine the large catalog of exoplanet discoveries, studying their distribution as a function of their physical parameters. He plans to derive a common framework for robust population inference and to apply this method to existing and forthcoming catalogs of exoplanet data.</div>
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-- Jonathan Gagne, who will work at the Carnegie Institute for Science in Washington on “Locating the Young, Isolated Planetary-Mass Objects in the Solar Neighborhood.” Gagne will use ground-based observations to explore the connection between the atmospheres of brown dwarfs and those of giant exoplanets. This will constrain the initial mass function down to a few times the mass of Jupiter, hence testing the recent prediction that the spatial density of isolated Jupiter-mass objects is twice as large as that of stars.</div>
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-- Paul Robertson, who will work at Pennsylvania State University in State College on “Spotting Blue Planets Around Spotted Red Stars: Removing Stellar Activity from Radial Velocities of M Dwarf Stars.” Robertson plans to develop a generalized method for disentangling stellar activity from radial velocity (RV) measurements of M stars in near-infrared wavelengths. He will develop a multi-dimensional modeling package that simultaneously models planet signals and activity-RV correlations, rather than separating analyses of the two. This will lead to robust detections of low-mass planets in the habitable zone.</div>
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-- Ty Robinson, who will work at the University of California in Santa Cruzon “Bridging the Theory Gap: Developing a Novel Cloud Model for Exoplanets.” Robinson is interested in understanding cloud dynamics which are key to characterizing and modeling exoplanets. Clouds strongly influence many exoplanet observations, and Robinson will work toward developing new and efficient cloud models that lead to better interpretation of exoplanet observations.</div>
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-- Leslie Rogers, who will work at the University of California in Berkeley on “Searching for Water in Distant Worlds.” Rogers will use three approaches, atmospheric transmission spectra, exoplanet radio aurora emissions, and the accumulating statistical ensemble of planet mass-radius, to constrain the bulk water content of distant exoplanets. These data will be used to evaluate planet formation theories for the abundance of Neptune-sized exoplanets.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;">NASA has two other astrophysics theme-based fellowship programs: the Einstein Fellowship Program, which supports research into the physics of the cosmos, and the Hubble Fellowship Program, which supports research into cosmic origins. The Sagan Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA </span>Exoplanet<span style="font-weight: normal;"> Science Institute as part of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.</span></div>
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For more information about the recipients, visit: <a href="http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/2015postdocRecipients.shtml">http://nexsci.caltech.edu/sagan/2015postdocRecipients.shtml</a> <a href="http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/nasa-selects-2015-carl-sagan-fellows/">http://www.nasa.gov/jpl/nasa-selects-2015-carl-sagan-fellows/</a></div>
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