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Category: space – Page 455

Meet the ambitious P-ONE proposal.

The P-ONE design currently involves seven 10-string clusters, with each string hosting 20 optical elements. That s a grand total of 1,400 photodetectors floating around an area of the Pacific several miles across, providing much more coverage than IceCube.

Once it’s up and running, you just need to wait. Even neutrinos will strike some ocean water and give off a little flash, and the detectors will trace it.

Of course, it’s harder than it sounds. The strands will be moving constantly, waving back and forth with the ocean itself. And the Pacific Ocean is … less than pure, with salt and plankton and all manner of fish excrement floating around. That will change the behavior of light between the strands, making precise measurement difficult.

Continue reading “Astronomers propose building a neutrino telescope — out of the Pacific Ocean” | >

Webb’s science goals cover a very broad range of themes, and will tackle many open questions in astronomy. They can be divided into four main areas:

Other worlds

Key questions: Where and how do planetary systems form and evolve?

Thanks to the rapidly evolving field of exoplanet studies – planets beyond our Solar System – Webb will be able to contribute to key questions such as: is Earth unique? Do other planetary systems similar to ours exist? Are we alone in the Universe?

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‘Bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain’.

While most people naturally associate archaeology with ancient remains and treasured artifacts, one group of scientists is breaking that mold by kickstarting the first-ever archaeological project aboard the International Space Station (ISS), a press statement reveals.

It is the first time such a project has taken place aboard any space habitat and its aim is to catalog how humans adapt their living behaviors while in space for months at a time. As a point of reference, the longest stay aboard the ISS so far is NASA astronaut Christina Koch’s 328-day stay, which ended last year.

“We’re the first to try to understand how humans relate to the items they live with in space,” explained Associate Professor Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California, one of the study leads. “By bringing archaeological perspectives to an active space domain, we’re the first to show how people adapt their behavior to a completely new environment.”

Full Story:

Continue reading “The First Archaeological Space Experiment Is Happening Aboard the ISS” | >

FSO communication systems are where free space acts as a communication channel between transceivers that are line-of-sight (LOS) for successful transmission of optical signals. The channel can be atmosphere, space, or vacuum, whose characteristics determine the transmission and reception of optical signals for designing reliable and efficient communication systems. Using FSO technology data is transmitted by propagation of light through atmospheric or space communication channels, allowing optical connectivity. FSO communication offers a high data rate to meet the tremendous increasing demand of broadband traffic mostly driven by Internet access and HDTV broadcasting services. Compared to fiber optics technology, FSO offers much more flexibility in designing optical network architectures at very high speeds, at tens and hundreds of Gbit/s rates. However, FSO communication is affected by atmospheric effects, which limits sensitivity and achievable data rates with acceptable BER. Some of these degradations are turbulence, absorption, and scattering, and various mitigation techniques exist for reliable and efficient data transmission [1] and to increase the communication performance. Both point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, multipoint-to-point, and multipoint-to-multipoint FSO communications are possible, depending on the different scenarios of establishing optical links. FSO communication is the most practical alternative to solve the bottleneck broadband connectivity problem. The data rates provided by FSO links continue to increase in both long-and short-range applications. FSO will be one of the most unique and powerful tools to address connectivity bottlenecks that have been created in high-speed networks during the past decade due to the tremendous success and continued acceptance of the Internet. The next generation of Internet connectivity will push the limits of existing infrastructure with high-bandwidth applications such as videoconferencing, streaming multimedia content, and network-enabled portable devices. Clearing these bottlenecks is crucial for the future growth and success of the contemporary Internet society. The bandwidth of optical communications access and edge networks will be needed to satisfy these demands. Communication systems are concerned with the transmission of information from a source to a user. The purpose of a communication system is therefore to transfer information. A very basic block diagram of any communication system (optical or radiofrequency (RF)) is shown in Fig. 4.1.

Fig. 4.1 shows a single point-to-point system, whereas in a multiplexed system there may be multiple input and output message sources and users (also called destinations). Fig. 4.2 shows other possible configurations and links for multipoint connections.

OWC is the next frontier for high-speed broadband connection and offers the following unique features and advantages: high bandwidth/capacity, ease of deployment, compact size, low power, and improved channel security. OWC can transmit and exchange voice and video communication data through the atmosphere/free-space at the rates of tens of Gbit/s and much more.

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Universal law always works perfectly well.

Wherever there is sand and an atmosphere, prevailing winds may whip the grains into undulating shapes, pleasing to the eye with their calming repetition.

Certain sand waves, with wavelengths between 30 centimeters (almost 12 inches) and several meters (around 30 feet), are known as megaripples: they’re between ordinary beach ripples and full dunes in size, and we’ve seen them not just on Earth, but even on other planets such as Mars, well known for its all-encompassing dust storms.

Aside from their size, a key characteristic of these middle-ground ripples is the grain size involved – a surface of coarse grains over an interior of much finer material. Yet this mix of grains is never the same, and nor are the winds that blow across the sand to create the ripples in the first place.

Continue reading “There’s a Hidden Mathematical ‘Law’ in The Sand Megaripples Found All Over Earth” | >

Over the last thirty years, over 4,000 planets around stars other than the Sun, otherwise known as exoplanets, have been discovered by astronomers but only two exomoons. This is because usually planets are larger and therefore more easily identifiable.

The first exomoon candidate, which the same team of astronomers said was roughly the size of Neptune, was found in 2018 but has yet to be confirmed.

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“Our results could give us a new perspective on the evolution of the Earth’s dynamics,” said Motohiko Murakami, a corresponding author of the study explained in a press statement. “They suggest that Earth, like the other rocky planets Mercury and Mars, is cooling and becoming inactive much faster than expected.”

The Earth will cool down at an increasingly fast pace

The scientists discovered that bridgmanite was roughly 1.5 times better at conducting heat than previously estimated. This means that heat must transfer more easily from the core to the mantle than had been previously believed. This faster transfer equals a higher cooling rate, meaning the Earth’s core will cool down faster than once thought. What’s more, as it cools bridgmanite turns into a mineral called post-perovskite, which conducts heat at an even faster rate. So the inner Earth could start to cool at an increasingly accelerated rate once bridgmanite starts forming into post-perovskite, a crystal structure following the formula ABX₃.

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