February 10, 2008, 10:08 PM CT

Listening for the cosmic symphony:

Researchers hope that a new supercomputer being built by Syracuse University's Department of Physics may help them identify the sound of a celestial black hole. The supercomputer, dubbed SUGAR (SU Gravitational and Relativity Cluster), will soon receive massive amounts of data from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) that was collected over a two-year period at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation and operated by Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Duncan Brown, assistant professor of physics and member of SU's Gravitational Wave Group, is assembling SUGAR. The department's Gravitational Wave Group is also part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC), a worldwide initiative to detect gravitational waves. Brown worked on the LIGO project at Caltech before coming to SU last August.

Gravitational waves are produced by violent events in the distant universe, such as the collision of black holes or explosions of supernovas. The waves radiate across the universe at the speed of light. While Albert Einstein predicted the existence of these waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity, it has taken decades to develop the technology to detect them. Construction of the LIGO detectors in Hanford, Wash., and Livingston, La., was completed in 2005. Researchers recently concluded a two-year "science run" of the detectors and are now searching the data for these waves. LSC researchers will be analyzing this data while the sensitivity of the detectors is being improved. Detectors have also been built in France, Gera number of, Italy and Japan......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

February 4, 2008, 8:38 PM CT

Birds and bats hold secrets for aerospace engineers

Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75.

The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second.

Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G.

"Natural flyers obviously have some highly varied mechanical properties that we really have not incorporated in engineering," said Wei Shyy, chair of the Aerospace Engineering department and an author of the new book "The Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers".

"They're not only lighter, but also have much more adaptive structures as well as capabilities of integrating aerodynamics with wing and body shapes, which change all the time," Shyy said. "Natural flyers have outstanding capabilities to remain airborne through wind gusts, rain, and snow." Shyy photographs birds to help him understand their aerodynamics......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 24, 2008, 10:43 PM CT

Stardust comet dust resembles asteroid materials

Contrary to expectations for a small icy body, much of the comet dust returned by the Stardust mission formed very close to the young sun and was altered from the solar system's early materials.

When the Stardust mission returned to Earth with samples from the comet Wild 2 in 2006, researchers knew the material would provide new clues about the formation of our solar system, but they didn't know exactly how.

New research by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and collaborators reveals that, in addition to containing material that formed very close to the young sun, the dust from Wild 2 also is missing ingredients that would be expected in comet dust. Surprisingly, the Wild 2 comet sample better resembles a meteorite from the asteroid belt rather than an ancient, unaltered comet.

Comets are expected to contain large amounts of the most primitive material in the solar system, a treasure trove of stardust from other stars and other ancient materials. But in the case of Wild 2, that simply is not the case.

By comparing the Stardust samples to cometary interplanetary dust particles (CP IDPs), the team observed that two silicate materials normally found in cometary IDPs, together with other primitive materials including presolar stardust grains from other stars, have not been found in the abundances that might be expected in a Kuiper Belt comet like Wild 2. The high-speed capture of the Stardust particles may be partly responsible; but extra refractory components that formed in the inner solar nebula within a few astronomical units of the sun, indicate that the Stardust material resembles chondritic meteorites from the asteroid belt......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 14, 2008, 3:16 PM CT

Critical ingredients for the soup of life

Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids in a galaxy some 250 million light years away.

Just add water! said Robert Minchin, an Arecibo astronomer on the project, who explained that methanimine and hydrogen cyanide are two of the basic ingredients of life, because when combined with water they form glycine, the simplest amino acid, a building block of life on Earth.

The astronomy team, led by Arecibo astronomer Christopher Salter, announced this discovery today (Jan. 11) in a poster presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin. The Arecibo Observatory is managed by Cornell University for National Science Foundation.

The Arecibo astronomers focused on the distant galaxy Arp 220, an ultra-luminous starburst galaxy, because it forms new stars at a very high rate. They used the 305-meter, or 1,000-foot diameter, Arecibo radio telescope, the worlds largest and most sensitive, to observe the galaxy at different frequencies. In fact, for the first time in April 2007, they used the 800 megahertz wide-band mode of the main spectrometer to make these detections.

These molecules were found by searching for radio emission at specific frequencies. Each chemical substance has its own unique radio frequency and astronomers can in that way identify the different substances, much like people can be identified with their unique fingerprints......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 14, 2008, 3:12 PM CT

Neutron stars can be more massive

Neutron stars and black holes arent all theyve been believed to be.

In fact, neutron stars can be considerably more massive than previously believed, and it is more difficult to form black holes, as per new research developed by using the Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. Paulo Freire, an astronomer from the observatory, will present his research at the American Astronomical Society national meeting in Austin on Jan. 11.

The Arecibo Observatory is managed by Cornell University for the National Science Foundation.

In the cosmic continuum of dead, remnant stars, the Arecibo astronomers have increased the mass limit for when neutron stars turn into black holes.

The matter at the center of a neutron star is highly incompressible. Our new measurements of the mass of neutron stars will help nuclear physicists understand the properties of super-dense matter, said Freire. It also means that to form a black hole, more mass is needed than previously thought. Thus, in our universe, black holes might be more rare and neutron stars slightly more abundant.

When the cores of massive stars run out of nuclear fuel, their enormous gravitation then causes their collapse then becomes a supernova. The core, typically with a mass 1.4 times larger than that of the sun is compressed into a neutron star. These extreme objects have a radius about 10 to 16 kilometers and a density on the order of a billion tons per cubic centimeter. Freire says that a neutron star is like one single, giant atomic nucleus with about 460,000 times the mass of the Earth......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 10, 2008, 10:56 PM CT

MESSENGER Mission flyby of Mercury

NASA will point a power-packed $8.7 million University of Colorado at Boulder space instrument at some of the last unexplored terrain in the inner solar system when the MESSENGER spacecraft whips within 125 miles of Mercury's surface Jan. 14 at a mind-boggling 141,000 miles per hour.

Launched in August 2004, MESSENGER has already flown by Venus twice and will make the first of three flybys of Mercury next week before finally settling into orbit around Mercury in 2011. The only other time Mercury was visited by a spacecraft was in 1974 and 1975, when NASA's Mariner 10 spacecraft made three flybys and mapped roughly 45 percent of the bizarre planet's hot, rocky surface, as per NASA.

The car-sized MESSENGER spacecraft is carrying seven instruments -- a camera, a magnetometer, an altimeter and four spectrometers. The Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer, or MASCS, built by CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, was miniaturized to weigh less than seven pounds.

The instrument will make measurements of Mercury's surface and tenuous atmosphere, said LASP Senior Research Associate William McClintock, a MESSENGER co-investigator who led the MASCS instrument development team. MASCS breaks up light like a prism, and since each element and compound in the universe has a unique spectral "signature," researchers can determine the distribution and abundance of various minerals and gases on the planet's surface and its atmosphere......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 10, 2008, 10:26 PM CT

Black Hole Light Echo Show

It's well known that black holes can slow time to a crawl and tidally stretch large objects into spaghetti-like strands. But as per new theoretical research from two NASA astrophysicists, the wrenching gravity just outside the outer boundary of a black hole can produce yet another bizarre effect: light echoes.

"The light echoes come about because of the severe warping of spacetime predicted by Einstein," says Keigo Fukumura of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "If the black hole is spinning fast, it can literally drag the surrounding space, and this can produce some wild special effects".

Fukumura and his NASA Goddard colleague Demosthenes Kazanas are presenting their research this Wednesday in a poster session at the American Astronomical Society's 2008 winter meeting in Austin, Texas. They will also discuss their results in a press conference scheduled for 2:00 P.M. CST on Thursday.

A number of black holes are surrounded by disks of searing hot gas that whirl around at nearly the speed of light. Hot spots within these disks sometimes emit random bursts of X-rays, which have been detected by orbiting X-ray observatories. But as per Fukumura and Kazanas, things get more interesting when they take into account Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how extremely massive objects like black holes can actually warp and drag the surrounding space-time......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 8, 2008, 9:28 PM CT

NASA and Gemini Probe Mysterious Distant Explosion

Using the powerful one-two combo of NASA's Swift satellite and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have detected a mysterious type of cosmic explosion farther back in time than ever before. The explosion, known as a short gamma-ray burst (GRB), took place 7.4 billion years ago, more than halfway back to the Big Bang.

"This discovery dramatically moves back the time at which we know short GRBs were exploding. The short burst is almost twice as far as the prior confirmed record holder," says John Graham of the Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Md. Graham is presenting his group's discovery on Tuesday in a poster at the American Astronomical Society's 2008 winter meeting in Austin, Texas.

GRBs are among the most powerful explosions in the universe, releasing enormous amounts of energy in the form of X-rays and gamma rays. Most bursts fall in one of two categories: long bursts and short bursts, depending on whether they last longer or shorter than three seconds. Astronomers believe that long GRBs are triggered by the collapse and explosion of massive stars. In contrast, a variety of mechanisms have been proposed for short bursts. The most popular model says that most short GRBs occur when two.

The record-setting short burst is known as GRB 070714B, since it was the second GRB detected on July 14, 2007. Swift discovered the GRB in the constellation Taurus. The burst's high energy and 3-second duration firmly place it in the short GRB category. Rapid follow-up observations with the 2-meter Liverpool Telescope and the 4-meter William Herschel Telescope found an optical afterglow in the same location as the burst, which allowed astronomers to identify the GRB's host galaxy......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 8, 2008, 9:01 PM CT

"Blue blobs" in space are orphaned clusters of stars

Hubble has revealed that mysterious "blue blobs" in a structure called Arp's Loop between M81 and M82 are blue clusters of stars less than 200 million years old with a number of stars as young as, and even younger than, 10 million years.

Finding blue blobs in space sounds like an encounter with an alien out of a science fiction movie. But the powerful NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has resolved strange objects nicknamed "blobs" and found them to be brilliant blue clusters of stars born in the swirls and eddies of a galactic pile-up 200 million years ago.

The findings are reported by Duilia de Mello of the Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and her colleagues at the 211th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas, USA.

Such "blue blobs"- each weighing tens of thousands of solar masses -have never been seen in detail before in such sparse locations, say researchers. They are more massive than most open clusters found inside galaxies, but a fraction of the mass of globular star clusters that orbit a galaxy.

Because the orphan stars don't belong to any particular galaxy, the heavier elements produced in their fusion furnaces may easily be expelled back into intergalactic space. This may offer clues as to how the early universe was "polluted" with heavier elements early in its history, say researchers......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source

January 7, 2008, 10:58 PM CT

Sunspot is harbinger of new solar cycle

A new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, bringing with it increased risks for power grids, critical military, civilian and airline communications, GPS signals and even cell phones and ATM transactions, showed signs it was on its way late Thursday when the cycles first sunspot appeared in the suns Northern Hemisphere, NOAA researchers said.

This sunspot is like the first robin of spring, said solar physicist Douglas Biesecker of NOAAs Space Weather Prediction Center. In this case, its an early omen of solar storms that will gradually increase over the next few years.

A sunspot is an area of highly organized magnetic activity on the surface of the sun. The new 11-year cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, is expected to build gradually, with the number of sunspots and solar storms reaching a maximum by 2011 or 2012, though devastating storms can occur at any time.

During a solar storm, highly charged material ejected from the sun may head toward Earth, where it can bring down power grids, disrupt critical communications, and threaten astronauts with harmful radiation. Storms can also knock out commercial communications satellites and swamp Global Positioning System signals. Routine activities such as talking on a cell phone or getting money from an ATM machine could suddenly halt over a large part of the globe......... Posted by: Sean      Read more         Source