Milky Simulator

Team efforts of about 9 months have come to an end in simulating a computer model of the spiral galaxies, which in turn may reflect the answers to our questions about our Milky way galaxy. Milky way was being tried to be simulated for the past many years to reveal the secrets of our galaxy and it's formation. But it was never possible due to the complexity of the way the galaxy's structure. Now it is been made possible by the NASA’s state-of-the-art Pleiades supercomputer and the Cray XT5 "Monte Rosa" at Zurich's Swiss National Supercomputing Center with the help from University of California Santa Cruz, and the Institute For Theoretical Physics, Zurich. This new simulation is proudly called as "Eris".

Javiera Guedes says,"Previous efforts to form a massive disc galaxy like the Milky Way have failed because the simulated galaxies ended up with huge central bulges compared to the size of the disc,” . He also added that the simulation follows the interactions of more than 60 million particles of dark matter and gas. Eris is colored to show gas clouds in red and stars in blue. Even though the Eris looks dimmer when compared to the original Milky way galaxy, it has been simulated to maximum resolution ever done !!

 The picture shows the simulated model on the left side and the original picture of our galaxy on the right side and the difference can be clearly seen though there is no much difference. Source: i09

Most cosmologists favor the cold dark matter theory as a description of how the universe went from a smooth initial state at early times, to the lumpy distribution of galaxies and their clusters we see today. Co-author Piero Madau, of UCSC says, "The simulation shows that the cold dark matter scenario, where dark matter provides the scaffolding for galaxy formation, is able to generate realistic disc-dominated galaxies". The simulations also better reflect the behavior of supernovae where the jet emissions from supernova get blew up into the central parts of the bulge of the galaxy. Thus this simulator lets us know what else is actually to be found about our universe. The calculations used in this simulation are yet to be printed in The Astrophysical Journal.

AUGUST 31, 2011.
Ref: Worldradio & www.i09.com

Pranu :)

HD 85512 Wows the Astronomers

The Geneva astronomical observatory says they discovered a new planet revolving around the HD 85512 which is expected to sustain a potential life and they named it as HD 85512 b. This oservation was made by Harps telescope at the same laboratory. The reports state that it is 36 light years away from our solar system and 3.6 times heavier than the earth. Seems it takes just 54 days to complete one revolution around it's Sun. 

 The article in the magazine magazine "Astronomy & Astrophysics" says, "the planet is at the inside limit of the “habitable zone”". Habitable Zone is the distance from a star where an Earth-like planet can maintain liquid water on its surface and Earth-like life. And as the reports confirms that this planet is well within the limits of Habitable Zone, it is expected to sustain an earth-like life on it. The HD 85512 b is even more closer to it's Sun than our earth to the Sun. But there are negative voices raising around like it happens with every new discovery shouting, "The planet should have a cloud coverage of 50 per cent to maintain the water on the surface in liquid state, which is a very essential characteristic of an Earth-like planet, if at all found one". However the things are, lets wait and see with patience because they have been discovered 100 or more similar planets till date and believe me, not even a single out of those was confirmed to sustain life !!

 AUGUST 29, 2011.

Pranu :)

Lunar Nuclear Power plant

James E.Werner at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS), says that they are going to build a model of nuclear power plant to meet the needs of power on the Extra-terrestrial surfaces for manned or unmanned bases those will be built in the near future. Seems this project is going to be started by NASA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) by 2012. DOE is going to look after fuel development and fabrication. Then the development of a small electrical pump for the liquid metal cooled system will be done by the same DOE. Werner says, "this is not going to be totally a nuclear power plant, rather a Fission power system with a reactor  about 1 ½ feet wide by 2 ½ feet high".

Originally, it was believed that the power could be generated using any of the three things: Photovoltaic panels, Nuclear reactors and Solar dynamic generators. But now the trend has sloped to the Nuclear power, owing to its flexibility to be used even in the night times and harsh environments. In fact these fission power reactors are expected to produce more power during the nights, due to the colder thermal sink. Regarding this, Werner said that this nuclear power reactors they are going to design can even be used in craters and lava tubes, which are expected to be the future bases. Relative to comparable solar power systems, FSP offers significant mass and volume savings. May be the working process and physics that's going to be used is same as that used in the normal terrestrial reactors but Werner added that these reactors are going to have a complete difference in power levels and the manufacturing weight.

Whatever it is, the transportation method is still a question mark to the scientists working on this and I guess its going to be a radio transmission, like for any other. And one more thing thats worrying the experts is if this method of nuclear power generation is going to harm the environment of the Lunar environment in a span of 20 years or so after the start. But what I seriously wanna suggest is we shouldn't be too strict at such kinds of things at the initial stage because we will never know if we are going to find a slution to decay this nuclear waste in the mean while. Thus wasing time on thinking such sort of things is completely ridiculous and lets focus on the main production thingy.

AUGUST 29, 2011.

Ref: Science Codex

Pranu :)

LHC Results against SUSY

Recent Experimental results by LHC Beauty (LHCb) raise doubt that Super symmetry may not be a valid concept. Seems the researches failed to find the super symmetric particles. Things are even announced at the Lepton Photon science meeting in Mumbai.

REASONS: In general, the presence of these super symmetric particles has an immediate effect on B-mesons, decaying them. But the results of this LHCb failed to show this effect. The other parts of the LHCb, (ATLAS and CMS) placed to detect the SUSY particles also failed to detect them.


COMMENTS: Jordan Nash of Imperial College London, has raised the doubt of absence of SUSY particles as an end to the SUSY theory.
But as a counter to this Dr.Lykken said, "Young theorists especially would love to see supersymmetry go down the drain, because it means that the real thing is something they could invent - not something that was invented by the older generation".

But statements by Gordy Kane, a leading particle theorist and advocate of  super symmetry raise a sense of hope among the SUSY admirers. Kane says, "The LHC searches are not yet sensitive to this region, and should not yet have seen a signal, so not seeing a signal does not allow any meaningful conclusions about Standard Model or MSSM Higgs bosons."

The SUSY theory, developed long back, even though not proved it's existence has provided support to many concepts like Dark matter theory, Higg's boson and many other cosmological aspects till date. So disturbance crept over the minds of SUSY supports, all over the world. As a girl interested in every peck of the Astro physics concepts, even I wish they are soon gonna detect the SUSY particles as its a beautiful and most beautiful concept around the universe, as of now. But Lets wait and see whats the reality because our ultimate goal is to find the right answer but not a beautiful answer !!

AUGUST 28, 2011.

Ref: www.truthdive.com
       BBC News 

Antimatter Belt Around the Earth

A report for Nasa's Institute for Advanced Concepts stated that a belt of Antimatter is found around the Earth and announced that there is a probability that the Earth's magnetic field could trap antimatter. The antiprotons were spotted by the Pamela satellite which was launched in 2006. It has been identified that this antimatter can be used as fuel source for our future spacecraft operations.

Seems in the new results, Pamela discovered huge amounts of this antimatter when it passed through a region called the South Atlantic Anomaly, than ever expected by us to come from the whole cosmos.Generally, this antimatter annihilates immediately after getting combined with the atmospheric constituents but in this case, as it is an atmosphere less condition, the loss rate is comparitively lower and the antimatter stays un reacted for some specific period of time around the Van allen belts.

AUGUST 7 ,2011. 

Ref:BBC News, Science and Environment.

Cosmic Diamond

Astronomers at the University of Manchester discover an exotic diamond planet spinning around a pulsar PSR J1719-1438, in our Gallactic backyard. They say that may be the planet is made up of diamonds, which is very possible when Carbon is compressed to high pressures.

According to the study led by Professor Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, the planet is very dense and since the molecules are packed in a very tight manner, they raised a doubt that it may be made up of diamonds. Its also found that it orbits its star every two hours and 10 minutes. Its doubted to be consisting of oxygen, carbon and any other heavy elements but in no case, hydrogen and helium owing to its dense nature.

Someone expresses his doubt as: "It's highly speculative, but if you shine a light on it, I can't see any reason why it wouldn't sparkle like a diamond" . May be I can explain this is because If the diamond isn't cut right then the light will be able to escape through all sides and the little bit of light that actually does make it back out the top will look dim. In this case, its just a planet and how can we expect it to be cut, in order to sparkle? So I wish this is really a DIAMOND  n then my boy friend ;)