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    Category Astronomy/Space

    NASA helps track the Wildfires

    August 14, 2015, Categories  Environment/Geology, Technology/Electronics, Astronomy/Space

    Brushfire

    Wildfires in the United States burn an average of 7.3 million acres of land each year. The annual cost of fire suppression nationwide has averaged nearly $1 billion since 1984, but in six of the past 10 years the cost has approached $2 billion a year. Large catastrophic wildfires have become commonplace, especially in association with extended drought and extreme weather. The demand for timely, high-quality fire information has increased and peaks each summer when interagency fire operations respond to numerous, simultaneous major fires. Credit: NASA

    Our handle on these wildfires is improving as a result of a new satellite-based tool developed by researchers at the University of Maryland with support from the NASA Applied Sciences Program and NOAA...
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    Supernovae Discovered in ‘wrong place at wrong time’

    August 14, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This illustration offers a plausible scenario for how vagabond stars exploded as supernovae outside the cozy confines of galaxies. Panel 1: A pair of black holes comes together during a galaxy merger, dragging with them up to a million stars each. Panel 2: A double-star system wanders too close to the two black holes. Panel 3: The black holes then gravitationally catapult the stars out of the galaxy. At the same time, the stars are brought closer together. Panel 4: After getting booted out of the galaxy, the binary stars move even closer together as orbital energy is carried away from the duo in the form of gravitational waves. Panel 5: Eventually, the stars get close enough that one of them is ripped apart by tidal forces. Panel 6: As material from the dead star is quickly dumped onto the surviving star, a supernova occurs. Credit: NASA, ESA, and P. Jeffries and A. Feild (STScI)

    This illustration offers a plausible scenario for how vagabond stars exploded as supernovae outside the cozy confines of galaxies. Panel 1: A pair of black holes comes together during a galaxy merger, dragging with them up to a million stars each. Panel 2: A double-star system wanders too close to the two black holes. Panel 3: The black holes then gravitationally catapult the stars out of the galaxy. At the same time, the stars are brought closer together. Panel 4: After getting booted out of the galaxy, the binary stars move even closer together as orbital energy is carried away from the duo in the form of gravitational waves. Panel 5: Eventually, the stars get close enough that one of them is ripped apart by tidal forces...

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    Protons and antiprotons appear to be true mirror images

    August 13, 2015, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    Schematic of the measurement and the reservoir Penning traps.

    Schematic of the measurement and the reservoir Penning traps. Credit http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14861

    In a stringent test of a fundamental property of the standard model of particle physics, known as CPT symmetry, researchers from the RIKEN-led BASE collaboration at CERN have made the most precise measurements so far of the charge-to-mass ratio of protons and their antimatter counterparts, antiprotons. The work was carried out using CERN’s Antiproton Decelerator, a device that provides low-energy antiprotons for antimatter studies.

    Results and data analysis.

    All measured antiproton-to-H− cyclotron frequency ratios as a function of time Credit: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14861

    CPT invariance – which the experiment was meant to test – means that a system remains unchanged if three fundamental properties a...

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    MicroBooNE Experiment Sees 1st Cosmic Muons

    August 13, 2015, Categories  Physics, Astronomy/Space

    This image shows the first cosmic ray event recorded in the MicroBooNE TPC on Aug. 6. Credit: MicroBooNE

    This image shows the first cosmic ray event recorded in the MicroBooNE TPC on Aug. 6. Credit: MicroBooNE

    A school bus-sized detector packed with 170 tons of liquid argon has seen its first particle footprints. On Aug. 6, MicroBooNE, a liquid-argon time projection chamber recorded images of the tracks of cosmic muons, particles that shower down on Earth when cosmic rays collide with nuclei in our atmosphere.

    “This is the first detector of this size and scale we’ve ever launched in the U.S. for use in a neutrino beam, so it’s a very important milestone for the future of neutrino physics,” said Sam Zeller, co-spokesperson for the MicroBooNE collaboration.

    Picking up cosmic muons is just one brief stop during MicroBooNE’s expedition into particle physics...

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