 Super-Kamiokande: a huge detector looking out for tiny particles Kamioka Observatory/ICRR(Institute for Cosmic Ray Research)/The University of Tokyo A neutrino is a tiny subatomic particle. It's also one of the most abundant particles in the universe. In fact, there are roughly 65 billion neutrinos passing through your body right now. Did you notice them? No? That's because neutrinos barely interact with matter, which makes them really difficult to detect. To detect anything you can't "see" like a neutrino, scientists usually use one of the four fundamental forces to "see" how a particle interacts with matter. These four fundamental forces are: the electromagnetic force, gravity, the weak force and the strong force. Neutrinos have a neutral charge and a very small mass. So, you can't detect them with the electromagnetic force (because they have no charge) or easily detect them with gravity (because they are so light and tiny). And neutrinos do not interact with the strong force (which bonds protons and neutrons together in an atom's nucleus) because they simply do not feel it. Neutrinos are only affected by the weak force, which has a tiny range and is involved in the decay of nuclear particles. The problem is, the chances of a neutrino interacting with the weak force are incredibly small. This post explains the (quite frankly, bonkers) process of detecting neutrinos rather well.  If neutrinos didn't have mass, it would save a lot of physicists a lot of work. The weird world of weighing neutrinosFor decades, scientists thought neutrinos had no mass. Then, in 1998, they discovered neutrinos do have a very small mass. We still don't know how much mass they have. The more interesting question is why neutrinos have mass. According to one of the longstanding models of physics, called the Standard Model of Particle Physics, neutrinos should not have mass. So, the fact that they do have mass has really baffled the scientific community. But there are a couple of other problems with the Standard Model. Also, if we could explain why neutrinos have mass - we could also explain why we live in a universe made of matter, and not antimatter.  Extra readingThis year, we could see some exciting neutrino news as a huge, extraordinary machine called KATRIN (KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino) will try to determine the mass of the neutrino once and for all. This is a lovely article all about the experiment. In fact, there are quite a few neutrino-based experiments going on around the world: here's a list of the lot. This is an excellent series of in-depth articles from Berkeley that give more details about neutrinos and the implications of neutrino mass. And if you want to find out more about the experiments that hinted neutrino mass could explain why we live in a matter universe, check out this article from New Scientist.  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here.
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 Photo by Andre Francois on Unsplash The meteoric rise (and fall) of Bitcoin has peaked the world's interest in the technology behind it - blockchain. But the implications and applications for blockchain technology go way beyond cryptocurrencies... What is Blockchain?For once, the word "blockchain" actually describes this technology quite well. A "block" is simply a record of new transactions. This could be a record of a cryptocurrency purchase or medical records or any chunk of data. Once a transaction is completed, the "block" is encrypted and added to a "chain". The encryption process is known as "hashing" and it's carried out by lots of computers. If they all agree on the answer, each block gets a unique digital signature. This creates a chain of encrypted blocks. Or, a blockchain. Each block is stored chronologically and the chain cannot be altered or tampered with, only added to. And, when a change does happen, the blockchain is updated for everyone in the network at the same time. You can only make a change if you have a private key (aka password) to access the block. A popular analogy is to think of blockchain as a Google doc and traditional data storage as an old-school Microsoft Word doc. The Google doc can be simultaneously viewed and edited by everyone with access to that document. With a Word doc, you have to send the document to one person at a time, ask them to make a change and then send it back before you send it to the next person.  Each Lego figure is a "block" of data in the chain. Imagine each one is glued to the floor and cannot be moved or modified. That's a blockchain. Blockchain is a public ledgerBlockchain is a completely different way to store data, compared to the traditional process of storing your data in a big central database. Using blockchain, data is distributed across a network of computers and not in one place. Here’s another useful explanation from online forum Bitcoin Talk: Imagine there are a bunch of safes lined up in a giant room somewhere. Each safe has a number on it identifying it, and each safe has a slot that allows people to drop money into it. The safes are all made of bulletproof glass, so anybody can see how much is in any given safe, and anybody can put money in any safe. When you open a bitcoin account, you are given an empty safe and the key to that safe. You take note of which number is on your safe, and when somebody wants to send you money, you tell them which safe is yours, and they can go drop money in the slot. Blockchain is basically giving two people a safe way to exchange data, without the need for a third party (such as a bank) to verify the transaction. If you think about traditional transactions, there are three parties involved: the owner (who holds an asset), the market (everyone who is interested and/or able to buy that asset) and the regulator (who makes sure the owner and market follow the rules when a transaction happens). With blockchain, we don't need a regulator as the network of computers validates a transaction. This could have wide-reaching implications for banks - and a wealth of other industries too.  Extra readingWhile blockchain is synonymous with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies at the moment, there are many different ways it could be used. A recent UK government report on blockchain technologies provides a good overview and examples of the use of blockchain, as does this article from The Conversation.  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here.  In the last 10 days, we were treated to a Super Blue Blood Moon AND the first flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket. If Musk's dreams are realised, we may be shuttling humans to and from the Moon in a matter of years. It's so exciting to see space travel peaking the world's interest again. And, for most interstellar journeys, it all starts with the Moon. Where did the Moon come from?Our Moon is quite unusual compared to other moons in the Solar System because it is the largest moon compared to the size of its host planet. Big Moons should orbit big planets. But that's assuming that our Moon formed in the same way many other moons did: when a planet is forming, some of the material is pulled together to form a moon. This is known as accretion. But our Moon's composition is too dissimilar to the Earth for this to have happened. So, we believe the Moon was formed when a Mars-size body called Theia collided with the early Earth. Dramatic stuff.  The size of the Moon (Storm trooper mug) compared to the Earth (Lego head). However, if we wanted to represent the distance between the two bodies to scale, they'd need to be more than 100m apart. What is the Moon made from?Sadly, not cheese. It's predominantly made of rock and the dusty surface is covered with impact craters and dead volcanoes. These craters formed from asteroid collision millions of years ago but, because there's no weather, you can still see them today. One of the goals of the Apollo 16 mission was to "pick up rocks", according to astronaut Charlie Duke. The Apollo 16 mission collected nearly 213 pounds of rock and soil samples and, despite extensive geological training, Charlie admitted they chose to "pick up one of every colour" on the lunar surface. Under the surface, the Moon is likely to have a small core of iron and a thick mantle of rocks rich in iron and magnesium. Here's a final interesting fact about the Moon and its average 238,855 mile distance from the Earth. You could fit every planet in the Solar System between the Moon and Earth.  Image from http://www.slate.com Does the Moon affect the Earth?Yes. The Moon's gravity pulls the Earth and causes the tides in our oceans. The pull of the Moon is also slowing the Earth's rotation down, causing every day to increase by 2.3 milliseconds every century. And the Moon is also getting 1.5 inches further away from the Earth every year. We also believe that the Moon's gravitational effect on the Earth caused it to tilt at just the right angle to produce a relatively stable climate over billions of years. This effect, combined with the planet's tides, allowed life to flourish. So, if there was no Moon, there may be no life on Earth.  Extra reading and watchingIf you want to find out more about exploration of the Moon, this post from National Geographic is a great starting point. And here are some great lunar stats. SpaceX is not the only entity interested in going to the Moon. Five missions are planned in 2018, including: a Chinese mission to land a rover on the far side and the Chandrayaan-2, which has been developed by the Indian Space Research Organisation and will include a moon orbiter and a rover. Two of the other lunar missions will be privately-funded. These are Hakuto, a group of space professionals inspired by Google’s Lunar X Prize, and Part-Time Scientists, a group of volunteer scientists and engineers based in Germany that plan to use SpaceX rockets and deploy two rovers. Finally, NASA’s TESS will also perform a flyby of the Moon. The colonisation of the Moon is another fascinating prospect. And one that we're getting closer to realising. And if you're wondering why we should go to the Moon in the first place, this post from NASA is a rich pool of resources. There's also great fun to be had on the Moon, if this video is anything to go by:  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here.  This hypothetical spacecraft with a "negative energy" induction ring was inspired by recent theories describing how space could be warped with negative energy to produce hyperfast transport to reach distant star systems. In the 1990s, NASA Glenn lead the Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project, NASA’s primary effort to produce near-term, credible, and measurable progress toward the technology breakthroughs needed to revolutionize space travel and enable interstellar voyages. Image courtesy of NASA. Wormholes are theoretical passages through space-time that could create shortcuts across the universe. They're also a staple sci-fi phenomenon and are predicted by the theory of General Relativity. Let's take a step back and we need to understand a few other scientific terms. General Relativity predicts the existence of Black Holes - singularities in space that are infinitely small and infinitely dense with such a strong gravitational pull that nothing (not even light) can escape there pull once you get close enough to one (past a line known as the event horizon). Then, in 1916, Austrian physicist Ludwig Flamm took the concept of black holes and noticed another solution was possible - a white hole. As the name suggests, this is the opposite of a black hole and ejects matter from its event horizon. White holes have a lot of jolly interesting consequences. Some suggest the Big Bang might have been the result of a supermassive white hole. But (and here's where we get to wormholes) Flamm also suggested that black holes and white holes may be connected by some sort of tunnel through space-time. This tunnel provides a shortcut between two areas of space-time. Some 20 years later, American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler coined the phrase "wormhole" to describe that tunnel connecting black and white holes.  Ironman stands at the top of a black hole, which is attached to a white hole via a wormhole. The paper represents the fabric of space-time, which is usually flat. As we can see, the wormhole gives Ironman a shortcut between the two points. If only the wormhole was big enough for him to fit through... Could you travel through a wormhole?Maybe... but there are several rather large (or small) issues to overcome. The first is to do with size: wormholes are predicted to exist on microscopic levels (a thousandth of a million, million, million, million, million centimetres). However, as the universe expands, then so could the size of a wormhole. Second, wormholes aren't very stable and, therefore, don't last very long (unless they're filled with exotic material like negative matter). But that's not deterred some scientists. A recent article by physicist Ethan Siegel detailed how humans could travel through a wormhole.  Extra readingWormholes are a hot topic in science and NASA even dedicated $1.2 million to its "Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project" between 1996 and 2002, which studied various proposals for revolutionary space travel theories that would require major breakthroughs in physics to be realised. This is a more in-depth article about wormholes and this lecture from Stephen Hawking covers the possibilities of time travel using wormholes.  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here.  A rupture in the crust of a highly magnetised neutron star, shown here in an artist's rendering, can trigger high-energy eruptions. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger) When a suitably massive star comes to the end of its life, it collapses in on itself in a massive supernova explosion. If that original star was between 10 and 29 solar masses it collapses to the point where the protons and electrons in its core are squashed together leaving behind a neutron star. Neutron stars are incredibly small and incredibly dense. They cram roughly 1.3 to 2.5 solar masses into a sphere of roughly a few miles in diameter. If we could extract just one sugar-cube sized piece of a neutron star, it would weigh more than one billion tons. That's equivalent to the weight of Mount Everest. If the neutron star weighs more than three solar masses, it will continue to collapse in on itself to form a black hole. Neutron stars also have very large magnetic fields (approximately one trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field) and are the strongest magnets in the universe. They have a surface temperature of one million Kelvin (the Sun's surface temperature is 5,778 Kelvin). Introducing pulsars...
...and magnetarsMagnetars are another type of neutron star. The magnetic field of a neutron star is one trillion times that on Earth, but the magnetic field of a magnetar is another 1,000 times stronger. In all neutron stars, the star's crust is linked to its magnetic field so that any change in one affects the other. So, a small movement in the crust will cause ripples in the magnetic field. For a magnetar, such movement cause a huge burst of electromagnetic radiation. In December 2004, a massive magnetar blast blinded satellites and partially ionised the Earth's atmosphere. The cosmic blast only lasted one-tenth of a second but it released more energy than the Sun has emitted in 100,000 years. * No Ironmen were harmed in the making of this Sunday Science.  Extra reading Jocelyn Bell ca. 1970 When two neutron stars smashed into each other in August, we weren't quite sure what was left over. But it's looking increasingly likely that it could be the biggest neutron star we've ever detected. The unprecedented celestial collision produced a gamma-ray burst and astronomers at LIGO detected the resulting gravitational waves. If you'd like to find out more about why pulsars spin so fast and so regularly, you can read more here. The story of the discovery of pulsars is also one of my favourite astronomy anecdotes as it features a great female scientist, Jocelyn Burnell (nee Bell). I've copied and pasted this fantastic article from the American Society of Physics covering the discovery: "In 1967, when Jocelyn Bell, then a graduate student in astronomy, noticed a strange “bit of scruff” in the data coming from her radio telescope, she and her advisor Anthony Hewish initially thought they might have detected a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization. It turned out not be aliens, but it was still quite exciting: they had discovered the first pulsar. They announced their discovery in February 1968. Bell, who was born in Ireland in 1943, was inspired by her high school physics teacher to study science, and went to Cambridge to pursue her Ph.D. in astronomy. Bell’s project, with advisor Anthony Hewish, involved using a new technique, interplanetary scintillation, to observe quasars. Because quasars scintillate more than other objects, Hewish thought the technique would be a good way to study them, and he designed a radio telescope to do so. Working at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory, near Cambridge, starting in 1965 Bell spent about two years building the new telescope, with the help of several other students. Together they hammered over 1000 posts, strung over 2000 dipole antennas between them, and connected it all up with 120 miles of wire and cable. The finished telescope covered an area of about four and a half acres. They started operating the telescope in July 1967, while construction was still going on. Bell had responsibility for operating the telescope and analyzing the data — nearly 100 feet of paper every day–by hand. She soon learned to recognize scintillating sources and interference. Within a few weeks Bell noticed something odd in the data, what she called a bit of “scruff.” The signal didn’t look quite like a scintillating source or like manmade interference. She soon realized it was a regular signal, consistently coming from the same patch of sky. No known natural sources would produce such a signal. Bell and Hewish began to rule out various sources of human interference, including other radio astronomers, radar reflected off the moon, television signals, orbiting satellites, and even possible effects from a large corrugated metal building near the telescope. None of those could explain the strange signal. The signal, a series of sharp pulses that came every 1.3 seconds, seemed too fast to be coming from anything like a star. Bell and Hewish jokingly called the new source LGM-1, for “Little Green Men.” (It was later renamed.) But soon they managed to rule out extraterrestrial life as the source of the signal, when Bell noticed another similar signal, this time a series of pulses arriving 1.2 seconds apart, coming from an entirely different area of the sky. It seemed quite unlikely that two separate groups of aliens were trying to communicate with them at the same time, from completely different locations. Over Christmas 1967, Bell noticed two more such bits of scruff, bringing the total to four. By the end of January, Bell and Hewish submitted a paper to Nature describing the first pulsar. In February, a few days before the paper was published, Hewish gave a seminar in Cambridge to announce the discovery, though they still had not determined the nature of the source. The announcement caused quite a stir. The press jumped on the story–the possible finding of extraterrestrial life was too hard to resist. They became even more excited when they learned that a woman was involved in the discovery. Bell later recalled the media attention in a speech about the discovery: “I had my photograph taken standing on a bank, sitting on a bank, standing on a bank examining bogus records, sitting on a bank examining bogus records. Meanwhile the journalists were asking relevant questions like was I taller than or not quite as tall as Princess Margaret, and how many boyfriends did I have at a time?” Other astronomers were also energized by the finding, and joined in a race to discover more pulsars and to figure out what these strange sources were. By the end of 1968, dozens of pulsars had been detected. Soon Thomas Gold showed that pulsars are actually rapidly rotating neutron stars. Neutron stars were predicted in 1933, but not detected until the discovery of pulsars. These extremely dense stars, which form from the collapsed remnants of massive stars after a supernova, have strong magnetic fields that are not aligned with the star’s rotation axis. The strong field and rapid rotation produces a beam of radiation that sweeps around as the star spins. On Earth, we see this as a series of pulses as the neutron star rotates, like a beam of light from a lighthouse. After discovering the first pulsars, Jocelyn Bell finished her analysis of radio sources, completed her PhD, got married and changed her name to Burnell. She left radio astronomy for gamma ray astronomy and then x-ray astronomy, though her career was hindered by her husband’s frequent moves and her decision to work part time while raising her son. Anthony Hewish won the Nobel Prize in 1974 for the discovery of the first pulsars. Over 1000 pulsars are now known.** As for little green men, they haven’t been found yet, but projects such as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) are still looking for them." ** Now, more than 2,000 pulsars have been discovered, but this figure was accurate in 2006 when the article was originally published.  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up for our weekly newsletter, click here.  The Crab Nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion at a distance of about 6,000 light-years, observed almost 1,000 years ago, in the year 1054. It contains a neutron star near its centre that spins 30 times per second around its axis. Credit: ESO If a star has enough mass, it will explode in a monumental supernova explosion at the end of its life. When a supernova occurs, it burns brighter than an entire galaxy and radiates more energy than our Sun will in its entire lifetime, all within just over a minute. According to NASA, supernovae are “the largest explosion that takes place in space.” For a supernova to happen, the star must be between eight and 15 solar masses. One supernova also occurs roughly every second in our universe, but you can't see them all. In fact, a supernova occurs in our galaxy once roughly every 50 years. Most of the universe's chemical elements are also made in a supernova thanks to the phenomenal heat and pressure in these explosions. There are two ways a star can go supernova. Type I supernovaeA star can pull matter from a nearby neighbour until it has sufficient mass that a runaway nuclear reaction starts and ends in a supernova explosion. For a Type I supernovae, a White Dwarf usually pulls matter from its companion star in a binary system and builds up enough mass to go supernova. Type 1 supernovae are thought to blaze with equal brightness at their peaks, so they are used by astronomers as "standard candles" to measure cosmic distances. Type II supernovaeA large star runs out of nuclear fuel and collapses under its own gravity. But, instead of ballooning to a Red Giant and contracting to a White Dwarf, it explodes in a supernova. Before it reaches the supernova stage, heavier elements gradually build up in the centre of the star. The star forms layers, like an onion, with the heavier elements sat at the centre and the lighter ones towards the outside. Once the star has built up enough mass (and passes something called the Chandrasekhar limit) the star implodes. The core heats up and becomes even denser before the outer layers are thrown off in a dramatic supernova explosion. A neutron star is left behind. We'll look at neutron stars next week. If the original star is 25 times more massive than our Sun, a black hole is left behind. And if the star is more than 100 times more massive than our Sun, nothing is left behind. The star just explodes and leaves nothing behind.  Extra reading and watching LEFT: Just before a Type II supernovae explosion, the star is layered like an onion with increasingly heavy element. Iron(man) sits at its core. TOP RIGHT: Before a Type Ib supernova, the outer hydrogen layer is missing. BOTTOM RIGHT: Before a Type Ic supernova, the outer hydrogen and helium layers are missing. I've oversimplified here as there are three subsets of the type I supernovae: Ia, Ib and Ic. The Ia category supernovae begin as the binary systems we described earlier where the White Dwarf pulls matter from its companion. Type Ib and Ic supernovae are caused by the implosion of massive stars that have already shed some of their outer layers. Type Ib has lost its hydrogen layer and Type Ic has lost its hydrogen and helium layers. But supernovae don't like to conform. For example, a very bizarre supernova was recently detected that explodes again and again. NASA also managed to catch a supernova explosion with the Kepler Space Telescope last year. This animation was produced from the telescope's data as it recorded the supernova:  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, click here.  Credit: ESA and NASA The other week, I explained how a dying star balloons into a Red Giant when it runs out of fuel. The next stage in this evolution is a White Dwarf. A Red Giant will eventually blow off the material contained in its outer layers. These expelled outer layers may go on to form planets (more on that later). All that's left behind is a small and incredibly dense and hot core. This is a White Dwarf. Sirius B (pictured above) is a White Dwarf. Its mass is 98 percent of our own Sun but it is only 12,000 kilometres in diameter, making it smaller than even the Earth and much denser. Because they are small and incredibly dense, the gravity on the surface of a typical White Dwarf is around 350,000 times stronger than the gravity on Earth. No hydrogen fusion occurs to counteract the force of gravity. So, all the matter gets squashed together until all the electrons are pushed far further together than for normal matter. When all the electrons are squashed together, the matter is now known as a "degenerate" gas. It can't be squashed any further as quantum mechanics dictates there is no more available space for the electrons. Do all stars become white dwarfs?No. Smaller stars, such as Red Dwarfs, don't reach the Red Giant stage and just burn through all their hydrogen. They should then evolve into White Dwarfs - but Red Dwarfs take trillions of years to consume their hydrogen fuel (which is longer than the age of the universe) so none have gone through this transformation yet. Massive stars, which are about eight times the mass of our Sun, will never be white dwarfs. Instead, they explode in a violent supernova and either leave behind a black hole or a neutron star. We'll look into the massive supernova explosions that form neutron stars next week...  The White Dwarf (spaceman to the left) pulls matter from the active star on the right (collection of superheroes). What happens when White Dwarfs die?Many White Dwarfs will fade and eventually become Black Dwarfs when all their energy is radiated away. However, if a White Dwarf is part of a binary system (where two stars orbit around one another) then its gravitational pull is so large that it may start to pull material off its companion star. Adding more mass to the White Dwarf in this way may cause it to become a neutron star or cause a supernova explosion. If it only pulls off a small amount of matter from the companion star, a smaller explosion called a "nova" may occur. This process can be repeated several times caused a small cosmic fireworks display. But, if you have two White Dwarfs in a binary system then they may merge together and, again, cause a supernova explosion.  Extra reading and watchingThe first exoplanet to be discovered is believed to have been orbiting around a White Dwarf waaaaaay back in 1917. While White Dwarf orbiting exoplanets are highly unlikely to support life, they do provide us with a wealth of information on how to analyse potentially life-harbouring exoplanets. White Dwarf is also a rather good magazine from British games manufacturer Games Workshop. And here are five fascinating facts about White Dwarfs and a jolly good video about them:  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, click here.  Rockets are used to transport objects and people into space. That's a really dull sentence to describe potentially the most EXCITING engineering achievement of the human race. But how do they work? Well, there are four basic forces of flight: lift, gravity, thrust and drag. Thrust and lift are positive forces that propel a rocket into space. Gravity and drag are negative forces that slow a rocket down. It's a bit like letting air out of a balloon. The weight of the balloon tries to pull it down to Earth (gravity) and when it's flying around the room, air resistance (drag) pulls the balloon in the opposite direction of its movement. The air whooshing out of the balloon provides the thrust it needs to oppose its weight. The lift is a force at right angles to the thrust, which stabilises and controls the direction of flight. Rockets don't have air. They carry a lot of fuel to get them into space. When this liquid fuel burns, it produces gas. The build up of this exhaust gas escapes the rocket with a lot of force and provides enough thrust for the rocket to blast off. Rockets need a huge amount of energy to overcome gravity and stop them falling back to Earth. In his famous 1962 speech championing travel to the Moon, US President John F. Kennedy compared the power of a rocket to "10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor." To give you a more exact figure, a rocket needs to achieve speeds of 25,000 mph to escape the Earth's gravity.  Ironman uses "repulsors" to make him fly. Similar to a rocket, he has to overcome the forces of gravity and drag to fly. The only difference is that Ironman also flies horizontally, like an aeroplane. Inside a rocketModern rockets are made up of several parts. The main parts are the propulsion system (to get the rocket into space), payload system (where the astronauts sit) and guidance system (to manoeuvre the rocket), but they can contain around three million different parts. They all look different too, but here's a basic picture of a rocket, courtesy of NASA:   Extra reading Here I am with Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke. Click the image to read all about his views on space exploration. This is a more thorough (but not overly complicated) explanation on how rockets work and here's some more information on their structure. If you want to know a little bit more about how Ironman flies, check out this awesome explanation. I've distilled a really interesting topic into a short post. For example, there's been a lot written about the space race between the Russians and Americans, but I'd hardheartedly recommend you read Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win The Space Race. Also, did you know that the first true rocket was used in 1232? The history of the rocket is a fascinating tale that goes beyond the space race - you can read more here and here. Also, check out this in-depth explanation of the final stages before blast off! A rocket launch is a pretty spectacular sight. Speaking last week, Tim Peake said: “I was mesmerised by the noise and the power of the rocket launch when I first saw one.” So, here's a launch in action - make sure you turn up the volume to get an idea of how LOUD one can be!  What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, click here.   SETI is a rather simple acronym that deals with one of humanity's biggest questions: are we alone in the universe? The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is looking for advanced civilisations. It's not interested in tiny microbes or any such simplistic lifeforms. Most SETI searches hunt for radio and optical signals to indicate intelligent life. Radio astronomy is used to hunt for radio signals that an intelligent civilisation could produce. These tend to look for narrow-band signals, which are radio emissions that only cover a tiny part of the radio spectrum. This is because natural objects will emit radio waves across the spectrum, but if you find a signal that just uses a small region of the radio spectrum, it could have an artificial source. Scientists also use optical searches to look for brief flashes of light in the search for intelligent life. Such optical and radio signals could be deliberately beamed out of a planet, or they could be picked up accidentally. Earth has unintentionally broadcast radio and radar signals since World War 2. We also purposefully transmitted a simple message from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico in 1974. This radio message (shown above) carried basic information about the human race and was fired at the globular star cluster M13 in the hope that extraterrestrial intelligence might receive and decipher it.  Our closest star, Alpha Centauri, is 4.3 light-years away. So, if the Joker tried to talk to an advanced civilisation on a (yet-unseen) planet (where Batman is) around that star, it would take more than 8 years for that signal to travel from Earth, to that world, and back again. The SETI InstituteThe SETI Institute is the largest player in the hunt for advanced civilisations in our cosmos. Set up in 1988, it is now a not-for-profit organisation (after its funding was withdrawn after a year) and is made up of scientists, engineers, teachers and other staff. The Institute has more than 100 active projects. And, in a joint project with the University of California, Berkeley it built the Allen Telescope Array - a 42-strong radio telescope array to examine one million stars in the next two decades. Has SETI found anything?Despite hopes being raised just over a year ago, SETI hasn't found any evidence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. We'll just have to wait a little bit longer for ET to phone home.  Extra readingThere's so much information on the SETI Institute's website and the FAQ section is particularly useful. You can also analyse the light from an exoplanet (a planet outside of our own Solar System) to work out what its atmosphere is made up of. If the atmosphere is made up of oxygen, nitrous oxide and methane, then this could indicate life is present. If you'd like to find out more about exoplanets - NASA's Kepler space telescope has found dozens of potentially habitable worlds, including this mysterious "alien megastructure". And here's a list of the seven most likely places in the universe where intelligent life could exist.  Want more Sunday Science? I've just started the Sunday Science Facebook Group. If you've got a question about science, want to see more science on your news feed or just want to keep up to date with the latest on the blog, it would be great to welcome you to the group! What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, click here.  Image courtesy of NASA. The Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation is the oldest light in the universe. Light travels at a finite speed. So, believe it or not, when you turn on a light in a dark room it takes a (very tiny) amount of time for the photons (light particles) produced by the bulb to fill the room. It's just that this happens so quickly, we can't see it. The Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation is an echo of when the first photons could travel freely, shortly after the universe's creation (about 380,000 years, which isn't very long in a universe's lifetime). This radiation marks the moment where the lights went on in the universe. It's just that the universe is a lot bigger than your living room, so this light has taken a lot longer to reach us. Why is it important and what is it?The Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation is the furthest back in time we can explore using light. It's a snapshot in time and can reveal a lot about the initial conditions for the evolution of the universe. For example, it gives us hints as to how and why the stars and galaxies formed and was also provides one of the key pieces of evidence that the universe started with a Big Bang. As the universe expanded, the wavelengths of the Cosmic Microwave Background photons have grown (or have been ‘redshifted’) to 1mm. Their effective temperature has also decreased to just 2.7 Kelvin, or around -270ºC, just above absolute zero. And these photons fill the Universe today. There are roughly 400 in every cubic centimetre of space. The Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation creates a background glow that can be detected by far-infrared and radio telescopes.  The Joker and Batman are doing a spot of cloud gazing. They can only see the surface of the clouds where the light was last scattered from the cloud surface. They can't see beyond it. It a similar manner, the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation is the surface of the last scatter of photons in our universe. It's like a cloud we cannot see past in the visible spectrum. How was it discovered?The Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation was discovered completely by mistake in 1964. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using a large radio antenna in New Jersey when they picked up an odd buzzing sound coming from all parts of the sky. They tried to remove the source of this (assumed) interference, and even removed some pigeons that were nesting in the antennae! "When we first heard that inexplicable 'hum,' we didn’t understand its significance, and we never dreamed it would be connected to the origins of the universe," Penzias said in a statement. "It wasn’t until we exhausted every possible explanation for the sound's origin that we realized we had stumbled upon something big." They were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for the discovery.  Extra readingThe European Space Agency (ESA) is investigating the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation with the Planck spacecraft to study this ancient light in more detail than ever before. NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), which launched in 2001 and stopped gathering data in 2010, and its COBE (COsmic Background Explorer) craft both provided early images of the Cosmic Background Radiation. The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation also provided evidence of primordial gravitational waves - which is the "smoking gun" to support the theory that the universe expanded in a cosmic inflation.  Want more Sunday Science? I've just started the Sunday Science Facebook Group. If you've got a question about science, want to see more science on your news feed or just want to keep up to date with the latest on the blog, it would be great to welcome you to the group! What is Sunday Science?Hello. I’m the freelance writer who gets tech. I have two degrees in Physics and, during my studies, I became increasingly frustrated with the complicated language used to describe some outstanding scientific principles. Language should aid our understanding — in science, it often feels like a barrier.
So, I want to simplify these science sayings and this blog series “Sunday Science” gives a quick, no-nonsense definition of the complex-sounding scientific terms you often hear, but may not completely understand. If there’s a scientific term or topic you’d like me to tackle in my next post, fire an email to gemma@geditorial.com or leave a comment below. If you want to sign up to our weekly newsletter, click here. |
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