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Category: space

Education Saturday with Space Time.

This episode of space time is brought to you by the information flowing through an impossibly complex network of quantum entanglement, that just happens to mutually agree that you and I exist inside it. Oh, and Schrodinger’s cat is in here too.

In quantum world things are routinely in multiple states at once – what we call a “superposition” of states. But in the classical world of large scales, things are either this or that. The famous thought experiment is Schrodinger’s cat – in which a cat is in an opaque box with a vial of deadly poison that’s released on the radioactive decay of an atom. Quantum mechanics tells us that the atom’sfunction can be in a superposition of states – simultaneously decayed or not decayed. So is the cat’sfunction also in a superposition of both dead and alive.

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As a life support engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, it’s Michael Flynn’s job to keep astronauts alive in space, making sure they have the basic necessities like clean water to survive. But launching clean water into space is cost-prohibitive, so for years, Flynn and his team have been working on new ways to recycle waste water into safe, drinking water. SmartPlanet visits Flynn’s lab and looks at how he’s doing it through a process known as “forward osmosis.”

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com

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Tomorrow, May 20, watch as the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) uncrewed HTV spacecraft lifts off from Japan, on a mission to carry cargo to the International Space Station. It’ll deliver more than four tons of supplies, water, spare parts and experiment hardware for the station crew. Live coverage begins at 1 p.m. EDT with liftoff scheduled for 1:31 p.m. EDT.

⏰ Sign up for a reminder and enjoy a launch with your lunch!

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Gravitational-wave researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a new model that promises to yield fresh insights into the structure and composition of neutron stars.

The model shows that vibrations, or oscillations, inside the stars can be directly measured from the gravitational-wave signal alone. This is because neutron stars will become deformed under the influence of tidal forces, causing them to oscillate at characteristic frequencies, and these encode unique information about the star in the gravitational-wave signal.

This makes asteroseismology — the study of stellar oscillations — with gravitational waves from colliding neutron stars a promising new tool to probe the elusive nature of extremely dense nuclear matter.

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Airglow is the constant, faint glow of Earth’s upper atmosphere created by the interaction between sunlight and particles in this region. The phenomenon is similar to auroras, but where auroras are driven by high-energy particles originating from the solar wind, airglow is energized by ordinary, day-to-day solar radiation.

Studying airglow gives scientists clues about the upper atmosphere’s temperature, density, and composition, and helps us trace how particles move through the region itself. Two NASA missions take advantage of our planet’s natural glow to study the upper atmosphere: ICON focuses on how charged and neutral gases in the upper atmosphere interact, while GOLD observes what’s driving change — the Sun, Earth’s magnetic field or the lower atmosphere — in the region.

By watching and imaging airglow, the two missions enable scientists to tease out how Earth’s weather and space intersect, dictating the region’s complex behavior. https://go.nasa.gov/2RJax4x

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The scientists believe the twist at the center of the image marks the spot where the baby planet could be forming.

A couple years ago, scientists managed to take images of spiral arms of gas surrounding a star that scientists believe were early evidence of planet formation — but the “twist” at the center adds something new to the story.

“The twist is expected from some theoretical models of planet formation, ” Anne Dutrey, another co-author from the LAB, said in the statement. ” It corresponds to the connection of two spirals — one winding inwards of the planet’s orbit, the other expanding outwards — which join at the planet location.”

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Every once in a while I have a contentious discussion with someone about traveling to Mars, and the risks involved. One of the hardest risks to describe is the threat from galactic cosmic rays. Here is a short article about a new facility investigating the effects of galactic cosmic rays.

The very important point here is that we are not discussing electromagnetic radiation. These ions have been shown to sometimes penetrate spacecraft and inflict damage on astronauts brains. Earthlings do not have to worry about these as much because we have a magnetosphere that shields us from ions.

To better understand and mitigate the health risks faced by astronauts from exposure to space radiation, we ideally need to be able to test the effects of Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) here on Earth under laboratory conditions. An article publishing on May 19, 2020 in the open access journal PLOS Biology from Lisa Simonsen and colleagues at the NASA Langley Research Center, USA, describes how NASA has developed a ground-based GCR Simulator at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL), located at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Galactic cosmic rays comprise a mixture of highly energetic protons, , and higher charge and energy ions ranging from lithium to iron, and they are extremely difficult to shield against. These ions interact with spacecraft materials and to create a complex mixed field of primary and secondary particles.

The from these heavy ions and mixtures of ions are poorly understood. Using recently developed fast beam switching and controls systems technology, NSRL demonstrated the ability to rapidly and repeatedly switch between multiple ion-energy beam combinations within a short period of time, while accurately controlling the extremely small daily doses delivered by the heavier ions.

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