The Betterment of Measurement

After precise measurements of a rare class of binary stars, astronomers have improved the measurement of the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy. With this information, they were also able to refine the Hubble Constant which helps in measuring the expansion of the Universe. They believe it is a push in the right direction to understanding dark energy, the cause of the accelerated expansion of the Universe. 

The new calculated distance is 163,000 light-years, which is about one and a half times the distance of the length of our Milky Way. Don't plan on visiting this galaxy any time soon, remember that a light year is the distance light travels in one year, (300000000 meters/sec)x(365 days)x(24 hours/day)x(60 minutes/hour)x(60 seconds/minute) = 9.4608x10^15 meters = 1 light-year. That's a lot of meters, now imagine 163,000 of those and even if you were traveling at the speed of light, it would still take 163,000 years to get there which is on the time scale of the earliest human remains ever found. There are a couple dwarf galaxies closer to home though; the Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy and the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy, 42 and 50 thousands light years away from the Galactic Center, respectively.

Astronomers can measure the distances to nearby objects then use this information to compare to further objects that are similar. Similar to knowing how bright a light bulb is, moving it away from you and measuring the brightness again. It will dim based on how far away it is and we can measure that in objects in the sky. 

Accurately measuring the distance to the Large Magellanic Cloud has always been difficult, yet important because stars in this galaxy are used to compare to other stars in regions further out in space. Astronomers were able to closely observe a pair of stars orbiting each other that also eclipsed each other to our point of view like the Sun and the Moon, except thousands of light years away. By measuring the changes in the brightness of the two stars as they eclipsed each other, along with other information on the orbits, masses, and colors of the stars, they achieved a very accurate distance for the pair of stars. 

They say their results are accurate to 2% of the actual distance and hope to cut that in half in the next few years. 

Beautiful Image above from http://cdn.c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000Uxdp0In8UQY/s/860/860/LMC-Large-Magellanic-Cloud-135mm-5DII.jpg

Article http://www.universetoday.com/100548/rare-eclipsing-binary-stars-provide-refined-measurements-in-the-universe/#more-100548

Asteroid/Meteor non-Physical Effect

February 15, 2013 was an exciting day for astronomers and people around the world. The closest flyby of an asteroid (that doesn't hit us) we might ever see and an unexpected drop in of a meteor in Russia. A lot has already been said on both of these events but what was most interesting to me, besides the actual footage of the meteor over Russia, were people's reactions and the idea that maybe these events will raise some scientific awareness. One reaction I heard, which was quite comical yet understandable, was that some Russians thought the meteor was an attack by us Americans. Imagining this happening over one of our cities and experiencing that blast wave would surely cause massive confusion and damage, I don't even know what my mind would think at that instant. Knowing Americans, we would surely find someone to complain to or try to sue the solar system (or think it was the Russians). But this is why we have scientists, to eliminate the confusion and move on to bigger and better things like drinking coffee in space (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk7LcugO3zg). There were also questions on the relation of the asteroid to the meteor, which there none found, but the important question here is what will we do about these events? Will we forget about them like the fads that perturb our culture/society like droplets of water in a pool? Or will this create waves and move people into a mindset that gives more importance to the problems of the future that we can begin to solve today? Probably not, but before I jump out of the pool, lets talk about the asteroid problem.
Tracking asteroids that intersect Earth's orbit is something we already do but we are limited on the size of those objects by our telescopes. We are working on dropping that limit as much as possible but meanwhile, what happens if we detect a large asteroid headed our way? Scientists have already come up with many ideas that theoretically could work but we still need to be able to test them to make sure. Of course this will cost money, but it could cost us a lot more than money if we don't. In the video below, Neil DeGrasse Tyson talks a little about the politics of deflecting asteroids.

 The problem is greater than a specific meteor hit, although that has the capacity to be our biggest. The main problem is that most of the world lives for today and not tomorrow or the day after. I think generally, as humans, we are slowly moving in that direction but hopefully it will be soon enough to avoid a giant disaster when Nature happens.

Hearing and Seeing

Ever since I started learning about waves in physics, for sound first then light, I have wondered about their similarities and differences and how they affect our senses. I have always loved music, especially playing with it. At times I would think, "since sound is a wave and light is a wave, could there be a visual representation of a simple song incorporating simple notes and their harmonics?" Of course, there is much more to music than simple notes and harmonics, but this is mainly what I'm interested in discussing. We can transmit a sound signal through a laser and have it returned to sound, but that's not really what I mean. I'm talking more about how music or even simple notes can affect us based on how we perceive it. What "Music" is to people.
 One problem is the range of our hearing is very different from the range of our seeing. Humans have a range of about 20 to 20,000 Hz for sound and a musical note, say middle "C" on a piano would correspond to a frequency of 261.63 Hz, it's octave (the next "C" over) has a frequency of 523.26 Hz. All other notes fall in between these frequencies and their corresponding octaves are 2x greater for higher pitch sounds and 1/2x smaller for lower pitch sounds. So then the next octave for "C" would be 1046.52 Hz and so on. As we can see, we get a good amount of octaves for each musical note in this range of 20 to 20,000 Hz, but can we do this with light?

The picture above shows the electromagnetic spectrum and that tiny portion titled "The Visible Spectrum" is all that we can sense with our eyes. It is shown in wavelength but this corresponds to about 405-790 THz. These frequencies are much higher than those of sound, which I'm pretty sure has more to do with their specific properties that differentiate them (like their speed and traveling mediums). So can we think about light like sound in terms of frequencies and octaves? If we take a color like red, which has a frequency range of about 405-480 THz, and try to find its octave or next harmonic, we would double this frequency. This gives us a range of 810-960 THz which is out of our "Visible Spectrum". We would not be able to see the next octave for the color red and neither would we for any higher frequency colors since red is the lowest of all the colors we can see. You could say we are a bit deprived in the abilities of our eyes, but we owe that to our sun which peaks at these frequencies and we simply evolved to make the best use of the light coming down to us.
So what does this mean? Well, I guess it means we can't see light the way we hear music, at least not with our own eyes. Luckily for us, we are very smart and have created technologies to detect the other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. This is very useful in space since there is light of different frequencies going around for us to detect. With the help of Chandra for x-rays, Hubble for ultraviolet and visible, Spitzer for some infrared and Herschel for infrared and microwaves (along with other technologies) we can look into space and detect a much larger portion of the electromagnetic spectrum than with our eyes. These telescopes can take what they detect in higher and lower frequency ranges and turn it into something we can actually see. This means we can, in a way, see light the way we hear music. I think this is something really amazing. Humans have always found a way to expand on their abilities, this is just one example of that. Now I wonder if it would be of any interest to science or people in general try to make devices that expand our hearing range (dog whistle?).

Beautiful "Music" to my eyes

Musical notes and their frequencies

Electromagnetic spectrum image

Range of human hearing

Orion Nebula-googled

What you can do for your science, your science can do for you.

I'm very glad I came across this video. It says a lot of what we already know but it also brings to mind the importance and power of the greater population's interest in science. In our day and age this population can contribute its immense manpower to help make new discoveries. What will we think of next?

http://www.planethunters.org/

https://www.zooniverse.org/

Theory of Everything...so far

I know this isn't strictly an astronomy video but it is amazing to look back at all we have accomplished. There is some relevant astronomy stuff in here too. The video is a bit dated (since we have found the Higgs boson) but still very interesting to watch and reminds me of when and why I got into physics.

Warp Drive

One step closer to interstellar travel. I must say, I have been waiting for the day where this would be possible. My original goal in studying physics was to help find a way to get people off of Earth and on to another planet, giving the human race more time to learn and create. This idea came from the problems we have with our planet (I was mainly concerned by overpopulation and global warming) and I wanted to do something to help the human race, but I wanted it to be something that would last. So why not just find a way to a new Earth? We could split the population or depending on how bad our Earth has become, maybe we could look for a more suitable planet for our entire human family. Of course, traveling through space has always been a difficult task. Getting people around our solar system is still unreasonable and we would need to look to other star systems to find a new home, which would be light years away. Fitting everyone in the ship for this trip would be a different problem. 

Well, it seems researchers are on their way to solving our space travel troubles. After crawling through mathematical loopholes, scientists have devised a way to test the possibility of creating a warp drive that will allow a ship to travel at a speed faster than that of light. As you may or may not know, we cannot travel at the speed of light or faster. There is a simple reason for this, to not jump over anyone's head (including my own), particles of light (photons) have no mass and because of that they are able to move through space at this incredible speed. If you take a person, which has mass, and attempt to move them, the faster you want them to move, the harder you have to push. It takes a lot of energy to move something at a speed close to that of light and because the object moving has mass it will take an infinite amount of energy to get it to reach the speed of light. This is why the bubble warp drive is necessary. Instead of pushing on the object and getting it to move at incredible speeds, which is impractical, scientists want to try to compress and expand space around the object, effectively moving the object through a warped space and not actually doing anything to the object (if there are people in the object, they will not feel as though they are moving). 

This is similar to sound waves in the air. When you clap your hands, the action of bringing your hands together quickly causes the air between your hands to be compressed. The compressed air is at a higher pressure than the air around it and high pressure air always wants to get to a lower pressure. This pressurized air pushes out and creates more high pressure air in the direction it is traveling and lower pressure air behind it. This action/reaction continues causing a wave of pressure to propagate outward from your hands. You hear it when it reaches your ear, but the particles in the air are not traveling from your hands to your ear, the energy you put into the clap is. It is traveling at the speed of sound and similarly, I'm assuming, the ship using the warp drive will take advantage of this mechanic. I do have a question though.What if this just creates a wave in space and it doesn't move the ship at all? But this question comes from the fact that I am trying to simplify the idea by comparing it to something somewhat different. I am doing this in order to simplify the idea and because physics, like history, tends to repeat itself, so the mechanics of compressed and expanded space may be similar to other mediums.

Let's hope their research comes through for the good of space exploration, human relocation and maybe even extra stellar vacation.

Thanks to Alexi Parker for the link.

http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive?utm_source=deadspin.com&utm_medium=recirculation&utm_campaign=recirculation

Astronomer Job Description

So first I'll describe, roughly, my initial ideas about what a modern astronomer's job would include. The main thing that comes to mind would be actually looking at stars or other objects in the night sky with powerful telescopes. I'm sure a lot of astronomers do this, but I doubt they spend most or even a large fraction of their time looking into the night sky (maybe they do on their free time). Surely, they must spend most of their time analyzing data and thinking about models that apply to the data, but what else would they do? Well, someone has to teach us this stuff so an astronomer might teach or do research at a school. What else is there to do for a person interested in discovering the underlying framework of the universe?
According to this website I found, using something called "The Internet", astronomers are useful to society in a few other ways. Some astronomers work in observatories, planetariums, and museums and bring their knowledge to the general public. Personally, I think this is extremely important to the progress of mankind; exposing the public to new and exciting ideas will keep them interested and wanting to support scientists, in general, in their work. Astronomers have improved weather forecasting, the way we measure time and its accuracy, and navigation on land, air, and sea. These contributions are incredibly helpful, not only to scientists, but everyone. With a smartphone, we don't have to worry about getting lost or being unsure of what to wear for the day's weather (some of us are still unsure but that might be a personal problem not easily fixed by astronomers). Knowing more of our environment enables us to make more efficient decisions and set our minds to worry about greater things than "is this tiger gonna eat me?" or "how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie pop?" and spend that brain power on societies' bigger problems.
 Back to research and new discoveries. Astronomers are in charge of deciding what to study and how to study it, astronomy related. This includes developing new techniques to make better use of the equipment already being used and coming up with new technologies or methods leading to more accurate data. More accurate data leads to better theories and better theories lead to a more fundamental understanding of the universe, which intern leads to different ways of progressing as people. A beautiful circle of progress, starting from an interest in the unknown, going through the process of discovery, and ending at something learned and possibly used for the benefit of someone or something. Then it starts all over again.

http://careers.stateuniversity.com/pages/386/Astronomer.html