Report into Sept. 19th Large Hadron Collider Incident Released
The LHC will be out of commission for months (CERN)
September 19th was a sad and frustrating day for accelerator physics.
After a long, long wait, the world was sitting on the edge of their seats, anticipating news about the first proton circulation on September 10th. Then, only a day later, a huge transformer broke down, stuttering LHC operations and forcing yet another delay. And then, only a week after the first successful circulation of particles, the worst possible news surfaces from CERN: A “quench” had occurred, stemming from a short circuit across two electromagnets, causing tonnes of liquid helium to leak into one of the tunnels. A huge amount of energy was dumped in a short period of time, heating the once-supercooled magnets by 100°C…
Now, a month after the quench, an official interim incident report has been released and it’s not good news. The report’s findings can be summed up by one of the engineers first on the scene of the damaged section of tunnel who said, “it wasn’t a pretty sight.” Continue reading “LHC Quench Ripped Magnets from Concrete Floor”
The hotspot: A very, very hot Jupiter has been discovered (ESA/C Carreau)
So how hot is the hottest known planet? Usually the temperature of a planet orbiting another star is of little concern to us. At the end of the day, are we really looking for an interstellar getaway? The chance that we’ll be colonizing any extra-solar planets in the near future is pretty low, but that won’t stop us from peering up the the heavens studying “Hot Jupiters” orbiting stars hundreds of light years away. However, astronomers have just discovered a planet I doubt we’ll ever want to visit. Enter WASP-12b, the hottest, and fastest gas giant ever observed… Continue reading “New Addition to the Exoplanetary Menu: The WASP-12b Sizzler”
The box from Amazon.com cannot contain the awesomeness inside...
Today marks a significant day in the history of my bookshelf.
Having moved to the US from the UK, leaving the bulk of my proto-library collection back in my Bristol hometown, I only transported my most prized science and university textbooks. Alas, I had to leave my treasured collection of Patrick Moore books, my guide to the Universe and several hefty quantum physics texts in storage, bringing the bare minimum across the pond.
Books are important to me, and I have big dreams about having a room filled with them; one of those in-house libraries filled with knowledge and history. But five books hardly constitute a library… heck, they barely fill a rucksack. So action needed to be taken… I needed to turn this proto-bookshelf into a source of reference!
I have a bookshelf. Check.
I have an office. Check.
I have an Amazon.com account. Check.
I have a credit card (it’s strained, but you can’t put a price on knowledge, right?). Check!
So I went shopping and brought Michio Kaku’s Physics of the Impossible (of which I have been promising myself most of the year) and succumbed to Phil Plait’s Death from the Skies! (with a book title like that, you have to obey the calling). Can’t wait to put a crease down the spines of both books, but I am keen to read Dr Plait’s account of how dangerous the Universe can be. Having done battle with the 2012 doomsayers, I need to read a book with a good, scientific rundown of how the world might end – and not fighting against the pseudo-scientific claims about Planet X and those pesky Anunnaki. The world is going to end some time, so look at the facts behind the claims and find out yourself.
The praise from Mythbuster Adam Savage for Death from the Skies pretty much sums it all up, I can’t wait to review the book myself:
“Phil Plait has done it again. He brings his unique and funny voice of reason and sanity to bear on making sense of a deadly universe. If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another “sensational” story on deadly meteors would consult this volume and BANG! Common sense would find it’s way into the news. How strange would THAT world be? On his blog and in his books, Plait is an important source of sanity and critical thinking, with just the right sense of wonder, reminding us that the universe is an amazing enough place without having to make crap up about it.” – Adam Savage, from Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters.
Back on Friday October 3rd, I was invited back onto Paranormal Radio in my new capacity as “Science Content Editor“! (Or an even cooler title “In-house Myth Buster” if Jack has his way!) This is a really great position as I get to add all things spacey to the Paranormal Radio website, and then I get to chat about it later live on the radio with the excellent Captain Jack. A pretty nice position to be in if you ask me… However, on that Friday two weeks ago, I had very little to talk about. After all, I’d just gotten married and I had just said goodbye to my family who headed back to the UK. I’d missed most of the excitement surrounding the Chinese spacewalk, I very nearly missed the historic SpaceX launch… but fortunately Jack had some questions for me about “Dark Flow” and he introduced me to the whole China spacewalk conspiracy and we were away!
If you fancy listening into the cool three-hour show, it is now available by mp3 or you can have a play with the Black Vault Radio Flash player to listen in to my show (which now has a monthly slot) and all the other nightly shows with Captain Jack.
We have some interesting future shows in store for you! Watch this space for announcements on when we air each month…
Infrared observations of the north pole of Saturn as taken by the Cassini mission in 2007 and 2008 (NASA)
The mystery of Saturn’s hexagonal shape embedded in its violent north polar cyclone just became more intriguing.
NASA’s Cassini probe has been orbiting the ringed gas giant for four years and has just returned some of the most detailed images of the planet’s stormy atmosphere to date. The south pole has been mapped and the north polar region has been imaged in near-infrared wavelengths. The north pole is currently facing away from the Sun, so by observing the atmosphere in these wavelengths, Cassini scientists can see Saturn’s cloud formations silhouette against the background glow of the gas giant’s internal heat. This provides the perfect opportunity to see the hexagon in unprecedented detail.
Shenzhou-7 imaged by the BX-1 small monitoring satellite six minutes after it was released from the main ship (Xinhua Photo)
On September 27th (Saturday), two hours after Zhai Zhigang completed China’s first ever space walk, the Shenzhou-7 spaceship launched a mini-monitoring satellite to orbit its mothership. Although it might have been a better idea to launch BX-1 before Zhai started his EVA (thereby stemming some of the accusations that China had faked the whole event), the images BX-1 returned were pretty impressive. According to state-run news sources, the BX-1 has taken over 1,000 images, the first one was taken only six seconds after being released… Continue reading “Chinese Shenzhou-7 Spaceship Imaged by Microsatellite”
This week’s Carnival is being hosted by Wayne Hall at Kentucky Space (KySat), an organization with an aggressive orbital agenda and punchy space flight motto: “fly stuff.” To be honest, this should be the motto for NASA… flying stuff around space is something we should be doing, all the time. Just because we can. If a non-profit organization can do it on a shoestring budget, we should be seeing more commercial ventures like SpaceX popping up all over the world. Here’s to hoping!
In addition to Week 74 of the carnival, Kentucky Space are currently preparing for the sub-orbital launch of one of their payloads from the Mojave Desert tomorrow! So be sure to keep an eye on their site.
2008 TC3 generates a huge fireball according to weather satellite Meteosat 8 (Zdenek Charvat, Czech Hydrometeorological Institute)
There may not be any ground-based imagery of the 1.1-2.1 kT fireball after asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth’s upper atmosphere above Sudan, but we now have the first satellite observation of the impact. 2008 TC3 (a.k.a. “Brian” as I lovingly named it in my previous post) hit at 02:43am (UTC) yesterday morning, three minutes before the predicted re-entry. This is a huge moment for asteroid hunters: 2008 TC3 is the first ever asteroid to be discovered and accurately forecast to hit our planet.
The above image was taken by the weather satellite Meteosat 8, as Jiri Borovicka of the Czech Academy of Sciences explains: “The explosion was visible in all 12 of the satellite’s spectral channels, covering wavelengths from 0.5 to 14 microns,” he said. “The satellite takes pictures every five minutes; the fireball appeared at 0245 UTC and had faded away by 0250 UTC.”
In a follow-up to our October 3rd discussion, Captain Jack and myself will be discussing my recent Astroengine article “Bubbles, Reflections and Space Walks… Did China Really Fake It?” On first seeing the video I was intrigued by what I saw, and the mysterious moving objects in shot needed to be addressed. Although I do not believe the Chinese staged the event, it does pose some interesting questions…
Tracks of seven objects during Chinese space walk. Red tracks are the visual 'start' and 'finish' of the objects, blue tracks are lines drawn back to possible origin. Object number and time in video included. Scene frozen at 26 seconds into video when object 1 is seen (CCTV)
China successfully launched three taikonauts into Earth orbit and, on September 27th, the first Chinese national (41 year old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang) walked in space. The space walk lasted a total of 15 minutes, enough time to retrieve some solid lubricant from the outer hull of the Shenzhou-7 module and to give the brand new “Feitian” space suit a trial run. The launch, orbital insertion, space walk, re-entry and landing were all executed perfectly, securing China as only the third nation to successfully carry out an extra-vehicular activity (EVA).
astroengine.com 