Grey Whale Migration

Posted on March 15, 2020 by clairesspacejam
Grey whale breaches in a California bay

Over this spring break, I came across an intriguing article in National Geographic that illustrated the closeness of space to life on Earth. The authors review a recently published study in the field of marine biology that suggests new insights into the way grey whales migrate. Grey whales have one of the furthest migrations of any animal on Earth, traveling 10,000 miles annually through the Pacific Ocean. Of course, on a journey like this, navigation is paramount.

Still very little is known about grey whale migration mechanisms, however, these researchers have discovered a correlation between solar storms and whale stranding. This means that whales may navigate by orienting around the magnetic field around the Earth. The occurrence of solar storms bombards Earth’s atmosphere with high energy particles and temporarily disrupts the electromagnetic field.

Although the sun is so far away, it still impacts the daily lives of creatures on our planet. Solar flares have allowed us to learn more about grey whale migration and has allowed me to further comprehend the effective closeness of space.

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Parker Solar Probe: Understanding Coronal Dynamics

Posted on March 15, 2020 by Dan Pitagora

Launched on August 12th, 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will make the closest approach to the Sun in history. Over a time period of roughly seven years, PSP will use Venus for gravitational assist to make successively closer approaches to the Sun at distances as small as 4 million miles from the sun’s surface. PSP needs to get this close to breach the corona, or the Sun’s atmosphere. There are a handful of puzzling aspects about the corona, including how energy moves about the corona and how solar wind is accelerated.

PSP Testing in the Clean Room

One important discovery made this past December was the switchback, a reversal in the direction of the Sun’s magnetic field. During a switchback, a magnetic field radiating away from the Sun is bent back around and points back towards it. The origins of these switchbacks is still unknown, but they offer an explanation for how solar wind can be accelerated and why there are relatively large waves of solar wind at times.

Image Concept of a Switchback

Another area of research that PSP is gathering data for is the path that solar wind takes throughout its “lifetime”. The Sun is rotating, and so is the solar wind around it. However, when the solar wind reaches Earth, it appears to be moving radially away from the Sun. Finding the point where the solar wind is freed from its centripetal motion will provide insight on how the Sun spends its energy throughout its life, and such developments could allow heliophysicists to study other distant stars and their life cycles.

The future is very bright for heliophysics; PSP is continually surprising scientists with its discoveries, and if the data keeps coming in like it is now, PSP will have been significantly more productive than was anticipated.

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Planetary Distances to the Sun

Posted on March 15, 2020 by seths1

Okay, hear me out – Mercury is the closest planet to every other planet in the Solar System, on average. When I read this it kind of blew my mind but after reading this article it makes a lot of sense. This is true because Mercury is on a very tight orbit around the sun. The other planets, because of their much larger orbits, spend a lot of time very far away from each other. Therefore, Mercury is the closest planet to all the other planets! The article hyperlinked above has a model that shows this quite clearly. The man runs a model over 10,000 years and calculates the distances each day and averages them out to find that Mercury is the closest planet to Earth around 45% of the time, Venus is 35% and Mars is the closest 20% of the time.

Source: Extreme Tech

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Spacenectar!

Posted on March 15, 2020 by oliviabastasch
The SpaceX Falcon 9 launch on March 6, 2020.

Last Friday, my friends and I had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch a rocket launch during Bassnectar’s set at the Okeechobee Music Festival. Just over 100 miles from the Kennedy Space Center, we had a stunning view of the entire launch. A rocket launch by itself is an amazing site, but combining it with hard EDM drops and beats made the experience even more exciting and unforgettable.

Falcon 9 took off in order to deliver supplies to the International Space Station. The rocket’s Dragon capsule contained tons of supplies and experiments. This much weight requires a lot of power to fly up into space, which is why Falcon 9 has multiple stages. The first stage has 9 engines that generates over 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. After separation, the second stage engine kicks in and brings the Dragon capsule into the desired orbit. This single engine delivers 934 kN of thrust to move the capsule in the vacuum of space. Thrust from the engine is what allows rockets to move forward in a vacuum.

Overall, it was so cool that I got to watch this launch in such a fun setting with my amazing friends. It’s an experience that I will cherish forever.

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Juno and Jupiter

Posted on March 15, 2020 by jackfumagalli
Jupiter
An image of Jupiter’s southern equatorial region taken by Juno via NASA

For my post this week, I decided to learn more about the Jovian planets, specifically Jupiter. Through my research, I discovered that Jupiter had a spacecraft sent by NASA to observe Jupiter named Juno. 

Juno was launched in 2011 and reached Jupiter by 2016. It is a rotating, solar-powered spacecraft. Because of the images and measurements Juno has been able to take, scientists have been able to learn a lot about Jupiter and its atmosphere. In December 2019, scientists were able to observe a new cyclone forming new Jupiter’s south pole. NASA estimated that this new cyclone was about the size of the state of Texas. Also, as recently as March 3rd, Juno was able to observe two storms merging on Jupiter’s surface which created a spectacular image. 

It will be interesting to see what new discoveries Juno has in store for NASA as our understanding of Jupiter and the Jovian planets continues to grow.

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The Telescope of the “Future”

Posted on March 15, 2020 by 2xchampions
James Webb Space Telescope

Living up to its futuristic shape, James Webb Space Telescope is indeed a telescope of “future”: NASA has delayed its launch so many times that this telescope seems to only exist in the future. Jokes aside, the JWST carries with itself enormous scientific potential: it is supposed to be 100 times stronger than the Hubble Space Telescope and can examine every phase of cosmic evolution. Blake Bullock—a director at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, the contractor on the project—believes that this telescope will allow scientists to see the baby days of the universe. However, people will not see such potential materialize until March 2021, at the earliest. On the one hand, there are varieties of new technologies that this telescope employ. Some of the technologies even had to be invented to fit the needs of this telescope. JWST’s breath-taking mirror is made of smaller hexagonal beryllium mirrors that are coated with gold and can be adjusted individually to focus the light perfectly. And no one has ever used sun shields like those on the JWST before. Therefore, all these components pose incredible challenges for delivering this telescope on time. On the other hand, there seems to be too many human mistakes. Screws were left untightened; wrong solvent were used; wrong voltage was used, and etc.. All these mistakes caused unnecessary delays that render this project to be much more expensive than expected. 9 billion dollars has been used on JWST, which was budgeted at 1 billion dollars. Northrop Grumman has been criticized for these mistakes, and the government thought about eliminating this project. Luckily for JWST, an independent board reviewed it and recommended not to do so. Still, this fiasco exposed some structural flaws within NASA’s relationship with its contractors, and there may be a bigger problem that relates how scientists envision projects in the first place. Nevertheless, once it is  launched, James Webb Space Telescope will be extremely valuable, and all the taxpayer dollars may just be worth it. At this point, we can only hope it launches next year.

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Blog 4: Cosmology

Posted on March 14, 2020 by katelynmofield
bigbang
Photo Courtesy of Princeton University

Cosmology is the study of the origins and evolution of the Universe. Cosmos is actually just another word for universe. My favorite theory is the theory of the Multiverse (thank you Spiderman!) This theory states that we are just one bubble in an infinite series of bubbles, and that the differences between the Universes are called “parallel universes”. Together, the universes comprise of everything that exists, and that is infinite as we grow, change and evolve. It is hard to wrap my head around sometimes, but I really became interested in it thanks to the Spiderman movie!

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Blog 3: Nuclear Fission

Posted on March 14, 2020 by katelynmofield
Image result for nuclear fission
Photo Courtesy of AtomicArchive

Nuclear Fission is a reaction (or radio decay process) in which the nuclear of an atom splits into two, smaller and lighter nuclei. This process produces gamma photons, and releases extremely large amounts of energy, which we then use to make our own usable energy. The release of the heat energy can be used to spin turbines and produce electricity. Uranium is the most common “fuel” for nuclear fission. Uranium is not a renewable energy source, but is found commonly worldwide. There are two types of reactors: Thermal-Neutron and Fast-Neutron Reactors. Thermal-Neutron Reactors are the most commonly used types today, while Fast-Neutron Reactors are currently seen as the next step in progression for Nuclear Energy.

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Breaking “c” and the Warping of Space-time

Posted on March 14, 2020 by Phillip Yoon
Observing Light in Slow Motion

The speed of light, often denoted by the constant “c,” is faster than anything that we know. Although there have been attempts to get certain particles to travel faster than the speed of light, like when scientists at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland tried to get a hold of neutrinos, no one has successfully broken this barrier yet (Metro). Why would humans want something to travel faster than the speed of light in the context of astronomy? Much has to do with space exploration. Being able to travel faster than the speed of light means that spacecrafts can travel more distance in a shorter period of time, allowing us to explore more space with less time.

Is there an alternative way to solve this problem? Well, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get a physical object to travel faster than light. The famous equation developed by Einstein, E=mc^2, says that mass is basically energy. In order for mass to accelerate and reach higher speeds, we need energy. And for mass to reach the speed of light would require an infinite amount of energy, which is essentially impossible.

So, what now? An interesting alternative involves the warping of space-time. It remains theoretical as of now, but may become reality in the future. Einstein’s theory of general relativity says that the presence of energy warps space-time. If space-time can be warped in such a way that “folds back on itself,” spacecrafts may be able to enter one part of the universe and exit the other, essentially taking a “cosmic shortcut” (Metro). This phenomenon has never been observed in real life and still remains in the science-fiction realm. But if technology ever becomes advanced enough to allow for such things to exist or if we happen to find a natural way to warp space-time in such a way, it would have huge implications on space exploration and lead to many new discoveries.

Source Used: Metro

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The Geology of Mars

Posted on March 12, 2020 by emily
NASA

There are four different processes that shape planetary surfaces; volcanism, tectonics, erosion, and impact catering. Impact catering is the creation of a bowl-shaped impact crater by asteroids or comets striking a planet’s surface. Volcanism is the eruption of molten rock, or lava from an interior onto its surface. Tectonics is the disruption of a planet’s surface by internal stresses. Erosion is the wearing down or building up of geological features by wind, ice, and other phenomena of planetary weather.

The surface of Mars shows evidence of all four geological processes. It has the tallest volcano and the biggest canyon in the solar system, evidence of a period of great volcanic and tectonic activity. There is also an abundance of craters when looking at the differences between the southern and northern highlands, and evidence of erosion by wind and flowing water. It is likely that the volcanoes on Mars’s surface will erupt again.

Images of dry river channels and eroded craters, along with chemical analysis of Martian rocks, show that water once flowed on Mars. There was once a time where Mars had a climate, warmer temperatures and greater air pressure, that was conducive to water flow and rainfall. However overtime, the water on Mars got saltier and more acidic, changing the climate and thus affecting the ability of liquid water to flow. Any period of rainfall on Mars seems to have ended at least 3 billion years ago. However, Mars still has water ice underground and in its polar caps which could possibly hold liquid water.

Learning about the geology of celestial bodies is so important for our understanding of space. From investigation of all four processes affecting a planet’s surface, one is able to determine the surface conditions and history of planets.

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