All these worlds are yours except Europa Attempt no landing there Use them together use them in peace
Despite that famous cryptic warning in the film 2010: The Year We Make Contact, NASA is planning for a possible attempted landing on Jupiter’s moon Europa. This is a mission that many people have been hoping for, since Europa is believed to have a liquid water ocean beneath the icy surface (as well as lakes within the surface crust itself), making it a prime location in the search for life elsewhere in the solar system. Two landers are being proposed which would launch in 2020 and land about six years later.
As stated by Kevin Hand of JPL, “Europa, I think, is the premier place to go for extant life. Europa really does give us this opportunity to look for living life in the ocean that is there today, and has been there for much of the history of the solar system.”
While the landers wouldn’t be able to access the ocean water which is well below the surface, they could analyze the surface composition with a mass spectrometer, seismometers and cameras. The mass spectrometer could detect organics on the surface if there are any. The landers probably wouldn’t last too long though, because of the intense radiation from Jupiter on the unprotected surface (as Europa has only a very slight, tenuous atmosphere). Accessing any of the water from its ocean or lakes would require drilling deep down, something for a more advanced future mission.
Another mission being considered is a Europa orbiter, which could also launch in 2020. In some ways that might be even better, as it could provide a broader detailed study of the moon over a longer time period. Of course if both missions could be done, that would be fantastic, but budgets will probably only allow for one of them. The lander mission is estimated to probably cost about $800 million to $2 billion, while an orbiter would cost about $4.7 billion.
It might be noted that a return mission to Saturn’s moon Enceladus would also be possible, especially since the water from its subsurface ocean or sea (depending on the various working models of its interior and geology) can be sampled directly from its water vapour geysers, no need to drill down. The Cassini spacecraft has already done that more than once, and has found organics of various complexities, but Cassini’s instruments can’t detect life itself.
Either destination would be exciting, as both are thought to be two of the most likely places in the solar system, besides Earth of course, to be inhabitable or even possibly inhabited. Everywhere on Earth where there is water, there is life. That may or may not be true for Europa or Enceladus, but we’ll never know unless we look.
The huge fireball event as seen from a remote camera in Orangeville, Ontario. Credit: University of Western Ontario
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In newly released footage from the University of Western Ontario, a bright, slow-moving fireball was captured in the skies near Toronto, Canada on December 12, 2011 by remote cameras watching for meteors. Although this meteor looks huge as it burns up in Earth’s atmosphere, astronomers estimate the rock to have been no bigger than a basketball. Footage reveals it entered the atmosphere at a shallow angle of 25 degrees, moving about 14 km per second. It first became visible over Lake Erie then moved toward the north-northeast.
See below for the video.
But in a meteorite-hunter alert, Peter Brown, the Director of Western’s Centre for Planetary & Space Exploration said that data garnered from the remote cameras suggest that surviving fragments of the rock are likely, with a mass that may total as much as a few kilograms, likely in the form of many fragments in one gram to hundreds of a gram size range.
“Finding a meteorite from a fireball captured by video is equivalent to a planetary sample return mission,” said Brown. “We know where the object comes from in our solar system and can study it in the lab. Only about a dozen previous meteorite falls have had their orbits measured by cameras so each new event adds significantly to our understanding of the small bodies in the solar system. In essence, each new recovered meteorite is adding to our understanding of the formation and evolution of our own solar system.”
Brown and his team are interested in hearing from anyone who may have witnessed or recorded this event, or who may have found fragments of the freshly fallen meteorite. See UWO’s website for contact information.
Another camera view of the meteor:
Western Meteor Group’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network sensor suite has seven all-sky video systems designed to automatically detect bright fireballs.
At 6:04 p.m. on December 12, six of the seven cameras of Western’s Southern Ontario Meteor Network recorded this meteor. In a press release, UWO said the fireball’s burned out at an altitude of 31 km just south of the town of Selwyn, Ontario. It is likely to have dropped small meteorites in a region to the east of Selwyn near the eastern end of Upper Stony Lake. See the map of the projected path below.
Although this bright fireball occurred near the peak of the annual Geminid meteor shower, the astronomers say it is unrelated to that shower.
Estimated flight path of the Dec. 12, 2011 meteor seen near Toronto, Canada. Credit University of Wester Ontario.
Craters and secondary craters create a hellish scene in this MESSENGER image of Mercury. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Thirty-five years after NASA’s Mariner 10 interplanetary probe flew by and imaged less than half of tiny Mercury’s surface, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft now orbits our Solar System’s enigmatic and poorly understood innermost planet. After a six-and-a-half-year journey — which included three flybys of Mercury — MESSENGER is now the first spacecraft to take up long-term residence around this hard-to-reach and hellish planet.
Crater-scarred Mercury lies at an average distance of only 58 million kms from the Sun, so searingly close that its angular separation (or elongation) from our own star is never more than 28 degrees. This all makes it extremely difficult to study from Earth.
To get some perspective on the findings and Mercury itself, we turned to the MESSENGER Project Scientist Ralph McNutt at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab.
Dorminey — Is the MESSENGER data already shaking up Mercury paradigms?
McNutt — Yes – the biggest issue has been the volatile content which is likely going to lead to an interesting, but productive debate, about implications for planetary origins in the inner solar system.
“Volatile” elements are those with relatively low melting and boiling points. “Refractory” elements have relatively high boiling and melting points. If Mercury has a large core due to the surface being “boiled off” by a hot solar wind or hotter Sun in the early days of the solar system, or by a giant impact, then it is more difficult – but perhaps not impossible – for the volatile to refractory ratio, as exemplified by the potassium to thorium ratio (K/Th), to be as high on Mercury as at Earth, Mars, and Venus. And yet that is what the data are saying.
Dorminey — What could explain Mercury’s magnetic field being offset north of the planet’s center by 20 percent of its radius? Was this offset due to a giant impactor?
Ralph McNutt. Credit: NASA
McNutt — My guess would be that the offset is not due to a giant impactor. But we still do not have a good explanation.
Dorminey — But does the in situ measurement of this magnetic field also confirm that Mercury still has an active magnetic dynamo?
McNutt — There seems to be no way that [Mercury] can escape having a dynamo, so that already makes for implications about Mercury’s cooling history and the chemical mixture [needed] for the dynamo action. There needs to be mostly iron, but something else must be mixed in to help lower the freezing point, otherwise the dynamo should have frozen out some time back.
“Dynamo” in either a planetary or commercial context refers to the generation of electricity by movement of a conductor with respect to a preexisting magnetic filed. Such a movement produces an electrical current, which, in turn, produces a magnetic field.
In a planet, the conductor is a liquid with motion derived from the rotational energy of the planet. But a full theoretical description of how planetary dynamos work is still lacking and is the subject of ongoing research.
Dorminey — A popular formation theory, which would explain its anomalously large iron core, is that early Mercury was stripped of its outer layers following a giant impact. Do you adhere to this idea?
McNutt — Nominally, a high volatile content – expressed via a high potassium to thorium ratio (K/Th), which we have measured with the MESSENGER gamma-ray spectrometer, would rule against such a massive impact. The thinking has been that the volatile content would not re-accrete and so one would be left with a low global average such as is measured for the Moon. We will see – I do not think the verdict is in yet on this one.
A global mosaic of Mercury from MESSENGER. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Dorminey — What is the significance of and where did it get its surface sulfur and potassium?
McNutt — Sulfur and potassium were both elements in the initial solar nebula. The real question is what led to their placement and relative concentrations on the surface of Mercury.
Dorminey — What’s the significance of the MESSENGER-imaged volcanic vents? Is Mercury still tectonically active?
McNutt — The volcanic vents tells us that volcanism was a significant part of the geologic history of the planet. The planet has cooled a lot since there was a lot of activity and continues to cool. The level of activity is likely low at best – but if we see an active [volcanic] vent, we will definitely let the world know.
Dorminey — We know that Mercury has an exosphere, but could Mercury ever have had anything approaching an Earthlike atmosphere?
McNutt — Any sort of a stable Earth-like atmosphere is not in the cards. Mercury is too small with too small a gravity field to hold on to anything for a long time. If there was sufficiently rapid outgassing , then one could have built up an atmosphere of something that might have Earth-like pressures, but certainly no oxygen, and not for long given the temperature.
Dorminey — What is still the most puzzling to you about Mercury?
McNutt — Right now, the biggest puzzle is how to put together the magnetic field configuration (with the offset), with a dynamo, and the topography and gravity data all in a self-consistent description of the planet. There will be some more papers coming out on these topics in the near future.
Dorminey — If money were no object, what would be the ultimate science exploration strategy for Mercury? Are there any plans in the works for a lander?
McNutt — To really understand the solar system, we need to put together a coherent chronology of formation and early thermal evolution of the planets and other solar system objects. To do that “right” one needs well-characterized samples returned from the surface or drilled from the near-surface, in pristine environments and delivered to labs on Earth. Sample returns are hard – but not as hard as placing such equipment in situ. Following the next level of intense study by BepiColombo (the ESA orbital mission now in development), the next step is a lander. There are no plans for such a mission at present. An interesting question is which is harder: a sample return mission from Mercury or from Venus.
Dorminey — With dayside temperatures of 630 kelvin and nightside temperatures of 95 kelvin, could Mercury have ever been a candidate for liquid water or oceans?
McNutt — No.
Dorminey — Could Mercury have ever had microbial life?
McNutt — Before it was known that Mercury rotated, there was some speculation that there might be a zone of perpetual twilight between the Sun-facing hot side and the Sun-shadowed cold side a “twilight zone” where something [like microbial life] might be possible. In actuality, the region between hot and cold would have been fairly abrupt (depending on the thermal conductivity of the rocks). As Mercury does rotate, no such region exists.
The young rays of Mena crater contrast brightly against the surrounding surface of Mercury. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington
Dorminey — What’s the ultimate significance of planetary science’s study of Mercury? Does it offer a template for what you expect in other solar systems, or does your gut tell you that it’s a total fluke?
McNutt — Knowing more about Mercury, and Venus and Mars tells us about the “terrestrial planets” as a whole and what was common – and special – about ours – and their origins. While the new exoplanet discoveries are extremely interesting, we will not get as close to those planets as we can get to the ones in our own Solar System anytime soon. We have yet to be able to resolve other “Mercurys” in our exoplanet searches, so it is as likely as good a template as any. In learned circles at one time in the not too distant past, the entire solar system was considered to be a total fluke.
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Have you ever seen a large ghostly disc around the Moon on a cool, calm, hazy night? If so, you have likely seen what is called an “Ice Halo” or “22° Halo.” Not only can the Moon display these ghostly rings of light, but the Sun does so in the day time too.
22° halos are visible all over the world and throughout the year; look for them whenever the sky is wispy or hazy with thin cirrus clouds – even in the hottest countries.
So what are they and why do they appear?
Ice halos or 22° radius Halos are in fact an optical illusion caused by 3 to 5 mile high, cold and very tenuous cirrostratus cloud, containing millions of tiny ice crystals.
The tiny ice crystals in the atmosphere create halos by refracting and reflecting light from the Moon. The halo is always the same diameter regardless of its position in the sky, though sometimes only parts of the circle are visible.
The much smaller coloured rings directly around the Moon or Sun are a corona produced by water droplets rather than ice crystals. They often form a rainbow effect or Moonbow.
Some people even believe they herald the onset of wet weather, but this has yet to be proved. Moon Halo Imaged December '03 in Ontario, Canada by Lauri Kangas
Stratolaunch Systems Carrier Aircraft - Air Launch to Orbit Space Launch System. Developed by Scaled Composites, the aircraft manufacturer and assembler founded by Burt Rutan. The carrier will loft and drop the 500,000 multistage SpaceX rocket that will propel payloads to orbit at dramatically reduced costs. It will be the largest aircraft ever flown with a wing span of 385 feet and weighing 1.2 million pounds. Credit: Stratolaunch Systems. Watch complete video below.
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A mega quartet of luminaries led by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and legendary aerospace designer Burt Rutan have joined forces to create a revolutionary new approach to space travel. This new privately funded venture entails the development of a mammoth air-launched space transportation system that aims to dramatically cut the high costs and risks of launching both cargo and human crews to low Earth orbit.
Allen and Rutan are teaming up with Elon Musk, founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, and Michael Griffin, former NASA Administrator, to build the world’s largest aircraft ever flown and use it as a platform to loft a multi-stage SpaceX rocket that will deliver a payload of some 13,500 pounds into earth orbit, about the same class as a Delta II.
Allen and Rutan hope to build upon the spaceflight revolution that they pioneered with the suborbital SpaceShipOne in 2004, which was the first privately funded spaceship to reach the edge of space, and now take the critical next step and actually vault all the way to orbit.
Video Caption: Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering innovative solutions to revolutionize space transportation to orbit.
To accomplish this innovative leap, Allen and Rutan, announced the formation of a new company, funded by Allen, called Stratolaunch Systems at a press briefing today, Dec. 13, held in Seattle, WA. Allen is a billionaire and philanthropist who has funded a host of projects to advance science,
“Our national aspirations for space exploration have been receding,” Allen lamented at the start of the briefing. “This year saw the end of NASA’s space shuttle program. Constellation, which would have taken us back to the moon, has been mothballed as well. For the first time since John Glenn, America cannot fly its own astronauts into space.”
“With government funded spaceflight diminishing, there’s a much expanded opportunity for privately funded efforts.”
Rutan said that Stratolaunch will build a 1.2 million pound carrier aircraft sporting a wingspan of 385 feet – longer than a football field – and which will be powered by six 747 engines on takeoff. The carrier will be a twin fuselage vehicle, like the WhiteKnight developed by Rutan to launch SpaceShipOne.
Air launch of SpaceX rocket to orbit
The 120 foot long SpaceX rocket, weighing up to 490,000 pounds, will be slung in between and dropped at an altitude of about 30,000 feet for the remaining ascent to orbit.
SpaceX will construct a shorter, less powerful version of the firms existing Falcon 9 rocket, which may be either a Falcon 4 or Falcon 5 depending on specifications.
The new launch system will operate from a large airport or spaceport like the Kennedy Space Center, require a 12,000 feet long runway for takeoff and landing and be capable of flying up to 1,300 nautical miles to the payload’s launch point. Crews aboard the huge carrier aircraft will also conduct the countdown and firing of the booster and will monitor payload blasting to orbit.
“I have long dreamed about taking the next big step in private space flight after the success of SpaceShipOne – to offer a flexible, orbital space delivery system,” Allen said. “We are at the dawn of radical change in the space launch industry. Stratolaunch Systems is pioneering an innovative solution that will revolutionize space travel.”
The goal of Stratolaunch is to “bring airport-like operations to the launch of commercial and government payloads and, eventually, human missions,” according to a company statement.
Plans call for a first orbital flight within five years by around 2016. Test flights could begin around 2015.
“We believe this technology has the potential to someday make spaceflight routine by removing many of the constraints associated with ground launched rockets,” said Mike Griffin. “Our system will also provide the flexibility to launch from a large variety of locations.”
Mike Griffin added that the venture is aiming for the small to medium class payload market similar to what has been served by the venerable Delta II rocket, which is now being retired after decades of service.
“At some point this vehicle could loft a crew of say six people,” Griffin stated.
“This is an exciting day,” concluded Allen.
“Stratolaunch will keep America at the forefront of space exploration and give tomorrow’s children something to search for in the night sky and dream about. Work has already started on our project at the Mojave Spaceport.”
SpaceX Dragon cargo spaceship propels commercial and science payloads to orbit following air-launch from gigantic carrier aircraft. Credit: Stratolaunch Systems
Configuration of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit: NPO Lavochkin
Configuration of the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft. Credit: NPO Lavochkin
Editor’s note: Dr. David Warmflash, principal science lead for the US team from the LIFE experiment on board the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, provides an update on the mission for Universe Today.
As last-ditch efforts to recover control of the unpiloted Phobos-Grunt spacecraft continue, officials, engineers, and scientists at the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) have shifted their focus to the issue of reentry. Launched November 9 by a Zenit-2 rocket on a mission to return a sample from Phobos, the larger of Mars’ two small moons, the spacecraft reached low Earth orbit. However, since the engine of the upper stage that was to propel it on a trajectory to Mars failed to ignite, the spacecraft continues to orbit Earth in a low orbit. Despite some limited success in communicating with Phobos-Grunt by way of tracking stations that the European Space Agency (ESA) operates in Perth, Australia, and Masplalomas, Canary Islands, the spacecraft remains stranded in an orbit whose decay will take the craft into the atmosphere sometime in early January. Continue reading “Russian Space Program Prepares for Phobos-Grunt Re-Entry”
The large scale cosmological mass distribution in the simulation volume of the MassiveBlack. The projected gas density over the whole volume ('unwrapped' into 2D) is shown in the large scale (background) image. The two images on top show two zoom-in of increasing factor of 10, of the regions where the most massive black hole - the first quasars - is formed. The black hole is at the center of the image and is being fed by cold gas streams. Image Courtesy of Yu Feng.
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What fed early black holes enabling their very rapid growth? A new discovery made by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University using a combination of supercomputer simulations and GigaPan Time Machine technology shows that a diet of cosmic “fast food” (thin streams of cold gas) flowed uncontrollably into the center of the first black holes, causing them to be “supersized” and grow faster than anything else in the Universe.
When our Universe was young, less than a billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were just beginning to form and grow. According to prior theories, black holes at that time should have been equally small. Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey has shown evidence to the contrary – supermassive black holes were in existence as early as 700 million years after the Big Bang.
“The Sloan Digital Sky Survey found supermassive black holes at less than 1 billion years. They were the same size as today’s most massive black holes, which are 13.6 billion years old,” said Tiziana Di Matteo, associate professor of physics (Carnegie Mellon University). “It was a puzzle. Why do some black holes form so early when it takes the whole age of the Universe for others to reach the same mass?”
Supermassive black holes are the largest black holes in existence – weighing in with masses billions of times that of the Sun. Most “normal” black holes are only about 30 times more massive than the Sun. The currently accepted mechanism for the formation of supermassive black holes is through galactic mergers. One problem with this theory and how it applies to early supermassive black holes is that in early Universe, there weren’t many galaxies, and they were too distant from each other to merge.
Rupert Croft, associate professor of physics (Carnegie Mellon University) remarked, “If you write the equations for how galaxies and black holes form, it doesn’t seem possible that these huge masses could form that early, But we look to the sky and there they are.”
In an effort to understand the processes that formed the early supermassive black holes, Di Matteo, Croft and Khandai created MassiveBlack – the largest cosmological simulation to date. The purpose of MassiveBlack is to accurately simulate the first billion years of our universe. Describing MassiveBlack, Di Matteo remarked, “This simulation is truly gigantic. It’s the largest in terms of the level of physics and the actual volume. We did that because we were interested in looking at rare things in the universe, like the first black holes. Because they are so rare, you need to search over a large volume of space”.
Croft and the team started the simulations using known models of cosmology based on theories and laws of modern day physics. “We didn’t put anything crazy in. There’s no magic physics, no extra stuff. It’s the same physics that forms galaxies in simulations of the later universe,” said Croft. “But magically, these early quasars, just as had been observed, appear. We didn’t know they were going to show up. It was amazing to measure their masses and go ‘Wow! These are the exact right size and show up exactly at the right point in time.’ It’s a success story for the modern theory of cosmology.”
The data from MassiveBlack was added to the GigaPan Time Machine project. By combining the MassiveBlack data with the GigaPan Time Machine project, researchers were able to view the simulation as if it was a movie – easily panning across the simulated universe as it formed. When the team noticed events which appeared interesting, they were also able to zoom in to view the events in greater detail than what they could see in our own universe with ground or space-based telescopes.
When the team zoomed in on the creation of the first supermassive black holes, they saw something unexpected. Normal observations show that when cold gas flows toward a black hole it is heated from collisions with other nearby gas molecules, then cools down before entering the black hole. Known as ‘shock heating’, the process should have stopped early black holes from reaching the masses observed. Instead, the team observed thin streams of cold dense gas flowing along ‘filaments’ seen in large-scale surveys that reveal the structure of our universe. The filaments allowed the gas to flow directly into the center of the black holes at incredible speed, providing them with cold, fast food. The steady, but uncontrolled consumption provided a mechanism for the black holes to grow at a much faster rate than their host galaxies.
The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
On December 13, 1972, Apollo 17 Commander Eugene A. Cernan and Lunar Module Pilot (LMP) Harrison H. “Jack” Schmitt made the final lunar EVA or moonwalk of the final Apollo mission. Theirs was the longest stay on the Moon at just over three days and included over twenty-two hours spent exploring the lunar surface during which they collected over 250 pounds of lunar samples.
To commemorate the thirty-ninth anniversary of this last EVA, NASA posted a picture of Schmitt on the lunar surface as its ‘Image of the Day.’
Apollo 17, the only lunar mission to launch at night. Image Credit: NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org
Apollo 17 launched on a Saturn V rocket on December 7, 1972. Four days later on December 11, Cernan and Schmitt moved into the Lunar Module Challenger and descended to a touchdown in the Taurus-Littrow valley. Command Module Pilot Ron Evans, meanwhile, stayed in orbit aboard the Command Module America.
The Taurus-Littrow valley was chosen as the best landing spot to take advantage of Apollo 17’s capabilities. It was a “J mission,” one designed for extended EVAs that would take the astronauts further from the LM than any previous missions using the Lunar Rover. It was also a geologically interesting area. Here, the astronauts would be able to reach and collect samples from the old lunar highlands as well as relatively young volcanic regions. For this latter goal, Apollo 17’s greatest tool was its LMP, Schmitt.
When NASA began looking for its first group of astronauts in 1959, candidates had to be affiliated with the military, trained engineers, and have logged at least 1,500 hours of flying time in jets. The same basic criteria were applied to the second and third group of astronauts selected in 1962 and 1963 respectively.
Cernan's Apollo 17 lunar suit is currently on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, just one of the 137 million Apollo-era artifacts in the museum's collection. Image Credit: National Air and Space Museum
The fourth group brought a change. In June 1965, six trained scientists joined NASA’s astronaut corps. For this group, PhDs were a necessity and the previous flight hours requirement was dropped. Three of the men selected were physicists, two were physicians, and one, Schmitt, was a trained geologist.
Schmitt had explored the geological possibilities of a a lunar mission as a civilian. Before he joined NASA, he worked with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Astrogeology Center in Flagstaff, Arizona. There he devised training programs designed to teach astronauts enough about geology as well as photographic and telescopic mapping to make their journeys to the Moon as fruitful as possible. He was among the astrogeologists that instructed NASA’s astronauts during their geological field trips.
After joining the astronaut corps, Schmitt spent 53 weeks catching up to his colleagues in flight proficiency. He also spent hundreds of hours learning to fly both the Lunar Module and the Command Module. All the while, he remained an integral part of the astronauts’ lunar geology training, often assisting crews in finding and collecting the right kinds of rocks from a control station in Houston during a lunar mission.
Schmitt’s lunar companion, Gene Cernan, was an Apollo veteran. As the LMP on Apollo 10, he had flown within eight miles of the lunar surface but didn’t have enough fuel — or NASA’s blessing — to actually land. As commander of Apollo 17, he spent more time on the Moon than any other man. As commander, he entered the LM after Schmitt at the end of their final moonwalk. His bootprints remain the most recent human-made mark on the lunar surface.
If you love space and love internet radio, as I do, then this is for you. NASA’s new internet music radio station, Third Rock, was just launched yesterday. With a New Rock/Indie/Alternative music format aimed toward younger, techie listeners, it will feature custom-produced content; a collaboration between NASA and RFC Media in Houston, Texas, it will be operated through a Space Act Agreement, at no cost to the government. As NASA explores space, Third Rock also explores new music, bringing the two together in a fun and unique way.
According to David Weaver, associate administrator for the Office of Communications at NASA Headquarters in Washington, “NASA constantly is looking for new and innovative ways to engage the public and inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. We have led the way in innovative uses of new media and this is another example of how the agency is taking advantage of these important communication tools.”
Pat Fant, RFC Media co-founder and chief operating officer, adds: “Today’s 4G audience craves new music and enjoys finding it. We’ve pulled out the best songs and the deepest tracks from a full spectrum of rock artists across many styles and decades. NASA features and news items are embedded throughout the programming alongside greetings by celebrity artists.”
You can check out and listen to Third Rock here, and it should be available as an iPhone and Android app soon as well. Happy listening!
Scientists gather as the ATLAS and CMS experiments present the status of their searches for the Standard Model Higgs boson. Credit: CERN
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With “freshly squeezed” plots from the latest data garnered by two particle physics experiments, teams of scientists from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research, said Tuesday they had recorded “tantalizing hints” of the elusive subatomic particle known as the Higgs Boson, but cannot conclusively say it exists … yet. However, they predict that 2012 collider runs should bring enough data to make the determination.
“The very fact that we are able to show the results of very sophisticated analysis just one month after the last bit of data we used has been recorded is very reassuring,” Dr. Greg Landsberg, physics coordinator for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the LHC told Universe Today. “It tells you how quick the turnaround time is. This is truly unprecedented in the history of particle physics, with such large and complex experiments producing so much data, and it’s very exciting.”
For now, the main conclusion of over 6,000 scientists on the combined teams from CMS and the ATLAS particle detectors is that they were able to constrain the mass range of the Standard Model Higgs boson — if it exists — to be in the range of 116-130 GeV by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS.
The Standard Model is the theory that explains the interactions of subatomic particles – which describes ordinary matter that the Universe is made of — and on the whole works very well. But it doesn’t explain why some particles have mass and others don’t, and it also doesn’t describe the 96% of the Universe that is invisible.
In 1964, physicist Peter Higgs and colleagues proposed the existence of a mysterious energy field that interacts with some subatomic particles more than others, resulting in varying values for particle mass. That field is known as the Higgs field, and the Higgs Boson is the smallest particle of the Higgs field. But the Higgs Boson hasn’t been discovered yet, and one of the main reasons the LHC was built was to try to find it.
To look for these tiny particles, the LHC smashes high-energy protons together, converting some energy to mass. This produces a spray of particles which are picked up by the detectors. However, the discovery of the Higgs relies on observing the particles these protons decay into rather than the Higgs itself. If they do exist, they are very short lived and can decay in many different ways. The problem is that many other processes can also produce the same results.
How can scientists tell the difference? A short answer is that if they can figure out all the other things that can produce a Higgs-like signal and the typical frequency at which they will occur, then if they see more of these signals than current theories suggest, that gives them a place to look for the Higgs.
The experiments have seen excesses in similar ranges. And as the CERN press release noted, “Taken individually, none of these excesses is any more statistically significant than rolling a die and coming up with two sixes in a row. What is interesting is that there are multiple independent measurements pointing to the region of 124 to 126 GeV.”
“This is very promising,” said Landsberg, who is also a professor at Brown University. “This shows that both experiments understand what is going on with their detectors very, very well. Both calibrations saw excesses at low masses. But unfortunately the nature of our process is statistical and statistics is known to play funny tricks once in a while. So we don’t really know — we don’t have enough evidence to know — if what we saw is a glimpse of the Higgs Boson or these are just statistical fluctuations of the Standand Model process which mimic the same type of signatures as would come if the Higgs Boson is produced.”
Landsberg said the only way to cope with statistics is to get more data, and the scientists need to increase the size of the data samples considerably in order to definitely answer the question on whether the Higgs Boson exists at the mass of 125 GeV or any mass range which hasn’t been excluded yet.
The good news is that loads of data are coming in 2012.
“We hope to quadruple the data sample collected this year,” Landsberg said. “And that should give us enough statistical confidence to essentially solve this puzzle and tell the world whether we saw the first glimpses of the Higgs Boson. As the team showed today, we will keep increasing until we reach a level of statistical significance which is considered to be sufficient for discovery in our field.”
Landsberg said that within this small range, there is not much room for the Higgs to hide. “This is very exciting, and it tells you that we are almost there. We have enough sensitivity and beautiful detectors; we need just a little bit more time and a little more data. I am very hopeful we should be able to say something definitive by sometime next year.”
So the suspense is building and 2012 could be the year of the Higgs.
