Space and astronomy news
Time is an illusion caused by the passage of history (Douglas Adams 1952-2001). The way that we deal with time is central to a major current schism in physics. Under classic Newtonian physics and also quantum mechanics – time is absolute, a universal metronome allowing you determine whether events occur simultaneously or in sequence. Under Einstein’s …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Is Time Real?”
Trying to determine the behaviour of the atmosphere of a hot Jupiter – a gas giant so close to its star that it is either tidally locked or caught in a slow orbital resonance – is tricky, given that we have no precedents here in our solar system. But it is possible to explore in detail what …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Exoplanet Weather Report”
We all know that astronomy is just plain awesome – and pretty much everything that’s interesting in the world links back to astronomy and space science in one way or another. Here I’m thinking gravity, wireless internet and of course ear thermometers. But wouldn’t it be great if we could ascribe the whole origin of …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Life In Cosmic Rays”
The upper crust of a neutron star is thought to be composed of crystallized iron, may have centimeter high mountains and experiences occasional ‘star quakes’ which may precede what is technically known as a glitch. These glitches and the subsequent post-glitch recovery period may offer some insight into the nature and behavior of the superfluid …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Stellar Quakes and Glitches”
The spectacular gravity of neutron stars offers great opportunities for thought experiments. For example, if you dropped an object from a height of 1 meter above a neutron star’s surface, it would hit the surface within a millionth of a second having been accelerated to over 7 million kilometers an hour. But these days you …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Making Sense Of The Neutron Zoo”
We keep finding all these exoplanets. Our detection methods still only pick out the bigger ones, but we’re getting better at this all the time. One day in the not-too-distant future it is conceivable that we will find one with a surface gravity in the 1G range – orbiting its star in, what we anthropomorphically …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Bringing The Planetology Home”
Well, here’s a bit of a first for AWAT, because this is a story about a telescope. But it’s not your average telescope, being composed of a huge chunk of Antarctic ice with a very large cosmic ray muon filter attached to the back of it, which is called the Earth. Commenced in 2005, the …
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When considering how the solar system formed, there are a number of problems with the idea of planets just blobbing together out of a rotating accretion disk. The Nice model (and OK, it’s pronounced ‘niece’ – as in the French city) offers a better solution. In the traditional Kant/Laplace solar nebula model you have a …
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Sometimes it’s good to take a break from mind-stretching cosmology models, quantum entanglements or events at 10-23 seconds after the big bang and get back to some astronomy basics. For example, the vexing issue of the potato radius. At the recent 2010 Australian Space Science Conference, it was proposed by Lineweaver and Norman that all …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – One Potato, Two Potato”
The lack of any flyby anomaly effect when the Rosetta spacecraft passed Earth in November 2009 is what, an anomaly? No. Anomalies arise when there is a mismatch between a predicted and an observed value. When it happens our first thought shouldn’t be that OMG there’s something wrong with physics! We should probably start by …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – Is An Anomalous Anomaly A Normality?”