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Tag archives: NASA
Watch the super blue blood moon eclipse live
Eclipse watching: where the blood moon will be visible (Courtesy: NASA)
By Hamish Johnston
Tomorrow, people around much of the world should be able to see a lunar triple-whammy. There are two full moons this month, which is a relatively rare occurrence called a blue moon. The Moon is also near its closest approach to Earth, which means that it will loom large in the sky as a super moon.
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Name a distant world, fireworks through a diffraction grating, radio telescope helps Puerto Rican relief
Double act: artist’s impression of the (486958) 2014 MU69 flyby. (Courtesy: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Carlos Hernandez)
By Hamish Johnston
Here is an opportunity to put your mark on the solar system. NASA and the team behind the New Horizons spacecraft are asking the public to nickname the mission’s next flyby target. Located in the Kuiper belt and called “(486958) 2014 MU69”, the target is likely to be two objects – each about 20 km across – in a very close orbit. So, a name like “Cheech and Chong” could be a winner. To enter, go to “Help us nickname a distant world”.
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Putting a stamp on gravitational waves, LEGO’s Women of Nasa, physicist competes in bake-off
Cosmic delivery: German stamp commemorates gravitational waves. (Courtesy: German Federal Ministry of Finance)
By Michael Banks and Hamish Johnston
For those wanting to add a physics twist to your season’s greetings, you now can thanks to Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance. It has announced two new stamps that will go on sale in the country on 7 December. A €0.40 stamp will feature the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite and will be the first German stamp to include a metallic coating. Gaia was launched in 2013 to measure the positions and distances of astronomical objects, including stars, planets as well as comets. The ministry also announced a €0.70 stamp that depicts the gravitational waves that emerge from the collision of two black holes. The simulation was made by researchers at the Albert Einstein Institute (AEI) in Potsdam, Germany. “The ministry did not announce whether letters equipped with the new gravitational-wave stamp will be transported at the speed of light,” states an AEI press release.
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Happy birthday Curiosity, overpaid footballers, cheeky Einstein photo sells
By Sarah Tesh, Hamish Johnston and Michael Banks
It’s Mars Curiosity’s 5th birthday tomorrow! The NASA rover touched down on 5 August 2012 and has been exploring the red planet ever since. It has travelled more than 10 miles, studied more than 600 vertical feet of rock and even proved that Mars was once habitable. While a Mars birthday party for Curiosity would be a lonely affair, researchers at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center have programmed the rover to sing “Happy birthday” to itself using its Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. To introduce ground samples into the rover, SAM resonates through a range of frequencies, so the researchers programmed the instrument to run through the frequencies of the celebratory song.
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NASA showcases its latest tech investments
Cutting edge: NASA’s latest X-Plane (Courtesy: Lucina Melesio)
By Lucina Melesio in Washington DC
Yesterday in Washington DC NASA showcased its latest technology investments. The event took place just few steps away from Capitol Hill, where the US Congress will decide on the current administration’s proposed budget cuts for the agency.
“The technologies displayed here today illustrate how sustained investments made by NASA, industry and academia directly benefit our nation’s innovation economy,” reads the event’s brochure. “These technologies help America maintain its global leadership in aerospace and enable NASA’s current and future missions of exploration and discovery,” it continues.
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Cassini’s emotional countdown, Steve the light show, shooting hoops ‘granny style’
By Sarah Tesh
This week has seen the beginning of Cassini’s Grand Finale. The rather dramatically named final mission for the NASA spacecraft involves 22 dives between Saturn and its surrounding rings. Once complete, Cassini will crash into the planet’s atmosphere in what the scientists hope will be a flurry of data gathering. The spacecraft has already sent back stunning images of storms in Saturn’s atmosphere from its first dive on 26 April. After 20 years since its launch, the mission to Saturn’s system has been a masterclass in space exploration, and NASA highlights the best bits in this theatrical video. The short film, reminiscent of Star Trek, could be considered a bit cheesy, but it’s hard not to form an emotional attachment to NASA’s loyal Cassini as you join in the countdown to its final demise.
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Quantum punchlines, the cloud atlas, NASA schooled
Quantum humour: is the joke dead or alive? (Creative Commons/Benoît Leblanc)
By Sarah Tesh
You may not normally associate humour with quantum theory, but it’s not just jokes about Schrödinger’s cat and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that links the two. Liane Gabora of the University of British Columbia in Canada and Kirsty Kitto of Queensland University of Technology in Australia have created a new model for humour based upon the mathematical frameworks of quantum theory. The idea for their “Quantum Theory of Humour” stems from jokes like “Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.” Separately, the statements aren’t amusing but together they make a punchline. This requires you to hold two ideas in your head at once – a concept analogous to quantum superposition.
Hidden Figures behind NASA’s success, LEGO’s famous five women of space, seismic goal in Barcelona
Flight planner: NASA’s Katherine Johnson now has a NASA computational facility named after her. (Courtesy: NASA)
By Hamish Johnston
International Women’s Day was this week and to celebrate, we have published K Renee Horton’s review of the film Hidden Figures and the book by Margot Lee Shetterly that the film is based on. The book and film tell the true stories of African-American female mathematicians who worked at NASA and played a crucial role in America’s race into space during the Cold War. Indeed, they calculated the flight paths that would send Neil Armstrong to the Moon.
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Exoplanet christening, physics on the catwalk, ultrasonic wine
Quick spirit: ultrasonic waves speed up the ageing process. (CC BY-SA 3.0 Bbadgett)
By Sarah Tesh
Last week NASA announced the major find of seven Earth-like exoplanets orbiting a nearby dwarf star. The news that at least three of the seven could possibly support life was reported far and wide. Yet, as with most astronomical finds, the planets do not have the most imaginative names. Simply named after the star they orbit, they are currently called TRAPPIST-1a to TRAPPIST-1h. So NASA took to Twitter with the request #7NamesFor7NewPlanets and the public delivered. Suggestions have included the names of lost astronauts, famous composers and ancient deities. But naturally, there were also some less sensible contributions, including the seven dwarfs, many Harry Potter references, dedications to Pluto and, obviously, Planet McPlanetface 1 to 7.
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Marie Curie battles downloading robots, happy 50th birthday ILL, a dodgy portrayal of astronomers
Robots beware: Marie Curie makes an appearance. (Courtesy: APS)
By Sarah Tesh
Avid readers of the Physical Review series of journals will be used to clicking on a photograph of Albert Einstein before downloading papers. This is a security feature designed to stop robots from the mass downloading of papers. Now, the American Physical Society – which publishes the journals – has added a photograph of Marie Curie to the anti-robot system. The addition of a famous female physicist was the idea of Anna Watts, who is an astrophysicist at the University of Amsterdam. She has since Tweeted “This makes me incredibly happy.”
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