ScienceDaily (Sep.

28, 2007) Building aircraft wings with a special aluminium fibre combination makes them nearly immune to metal fatigue. The application of this technology, partly developed at Delft University of Technology, will lead to substantial savings.

The unusual qualities of this special material (called CentrAl, an abbreviation of Central Reinforced Aluminium) can make a significant contribution to the development of truly energyefficient, 'green' aircraft. Lower fuel consumption and reduction of maintenance costs could lead to worldwide savings as high as $100 billion. Fatigue is a phenomenon that affects materials after long-term exposure to cyclic loading. As a result of varying loads, fractures eventually occur. The new, high-quality CentrAl aluminium constructions are stronger than the carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) constructions that have recently been used in aircraft wings such as the Boeing 787. By using CentrAl wing constructions, the weight can be reduced by another 20 per cent compared to CFRP constructions. Furthermore, using CentrAl results in considerably lower manufacturing and maintenance costs. The CentrAl concept comprises a central layer of fibre metal laminate (FML), sandwiched between one or more thick layers of high-quality aluminium. This creates a robust construction material which is not only exceptionally strong, but also insensitive to fatigue. The CentrAl technique allows for simple repairs to be carried out immediately, as is the case in aluminium constructions, -- but not the case when using CFRP constructions. This patented new concept is one of the results of an intensive collaboration between the company GTM Advanced Structures, founded in The Hague in 2004 and specialising in new aircraft materials and constructions, the American aluminium company Alcoa, and the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. During a conference in Delft (Conference on Damage Tolerance of Aircraft Structures: 25-28 September 2007), GTM and Alcoa have presented the new concept to international experts in the field of metal fatigue and damage sensitivity of aircraft constructions. The US Air Force, Alcoa and GTM will also shed new light on the fact that the new CentrAl materials create possibilities for so-called 'Carefree structures'. These are aircraft constructions that are less sensitive to damage caused, for example, by fatigue, hail storms, other weather phenomena, trucks that collide with the aircraft and corrosion. Carefree aircraft constructions will be characterised by significantly reduced maintenance costs.

Breakthrough In Brakes Mechanical Engineers' Material Enhances Car Brakes

May 1, 2007 A fiber-reinforced ceramic, traditionally used in jets, has now been made into brakes for cars. The fibers strengthen the material and help keep it from crumbling.
City driving is a pain, and just to add more fuel to your fury, your car's cast iron brakes cost you money every time you drive. Cast iron is heavy so it reduces the fuel efficiency of your car. Stan Hemstad, a materials research scientist at Starfire Systems Inc. In Malta, New York, has come up with a solution. He has designed a new brake that weighs a lot less. It's made from fiber-reinforced ceramic and it's nearly indestructible. Hemstad explains his technique, "What happens, instead of cracking, the fibers hold the material together, same thing as adobe bricks. The straw keeps it from crumbling and falling apart." A typical metal brake weighs nearly 20 pounds. This ceramic brake weighs less than five. Hemstad says, "There is a lot of weight savings. That makes the cars accelerate faster, more maneuverable, reduces gas consumption." However, making the brakes is expensive and time consuming, taking over four hours. Hemstad says the goal is to make them less expensive so they can go on higher-end cars and eventually all passenger cars. Ceramic brakes are still being tested, but they're already an option on high-end performance cars starting around $10,000. They could be on all cars for less than $400 within three years. According to Hemstad, the gas benefit savings will pay for the brakes. Ceramic brakes also last longer than metal brakes, so there is no need to replace them as often. The secret behind the ceramic brakes is the special polymer. That polymer is also being used for repairs on space shuttle flights and in circuit boards. Ceramic brakes are now common in the world of motocross racing. One driver even says he's shaved two seconds off his lap time with the lighter material.

The Materials Research contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report. BACKGROUND: Once an expensive high-end component in professional race cars and jetpowered aircraft, ceramic brakes are now being built into high-end cars. As the price continues to come down, they will soon be available in everyday cars, SUVs and trucks. Their lighter weight gives the consumer more miles per gallon, while providing the same performance as conventional metal brakes. They also offer quieter, smoother braking and experience less wear than conventional brakes, lasting four times longer. WHY WE NEED THEM: As a vehicle accelerates, its rotating parts require more energy to accelerate than nonrotating parts, because they gain energy not only from moving forward, but from their increasingly rapid rotation. So brake discs play an important role in determining a vehicle's fuel efficiency. Furthermore, there is a great deal of stop-and-go in driving, and it takes more fuel to accelerate a heavy car than a light one. Reducing weight can help automakers meet new fuel-efficiency standards. Friction between brake discs and pads takes place every time a driver hits the brakes. That friction generates heat, and over time can wear down the brakes. Ceramics offer both lighter weight and a better ability to withstand higher temperatures and the wear and tear from breaking, at an affordable cost. ABOUT CERAMICS: "Ceramic" applies to almost any inorganic, non-metallic material formed by heat, most commonly simple ceramics like the clays used in pottery, bricks and tiles, as well as cement and glass. However, single-ingredient simple ceramics tend to be very brittle and break easily. To make ceramics tough enough for a brake disc, and light enough to give it the reduced-weight advantage, the material is made as a composite, in which strands of carbon fiber -- which are highly resistant to stretching -- are embedded in the material. The fibers are woven into a disc shape before being doused with a liquid made of carbon and silicon. That liquid is then heated to convert it into a very tough ceramic known as silicon carbide. The finished surface resembles stone. CAFE STANDARDS: The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations were enacted by Congress in 1975 to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks under 8500 pounds. As of early 2004, the CAFE average for cars must be greater than 27.5 miles per gallon, while light trucks must average more than 20.7 miles per gallon, increasing to 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010. Pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and large vans are exempt from the CAFE standards.

Superconducting Turbojet
ScienceDaily (June 20, 2007) An all-electric aircraft could soon appear over the horizon according to an article in the Institute of Physics' journal, Superconductor Science and Technology. The new type of aircraft, currently on the drawing board, could be far more efficient than conventional aircraft, produce less greenhouse emissions, and be quieter.

Air travel is on the increase, but it comes at a price in terms of the emissions driving climate change. Aircraft currently account for about 5% of UK emissions with a single long-haul flight the equivalent of a ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. With such worrying figures making the headlines, alternatives to combustion-based propulsion systems could be the key. Superconducting motors could be one such alternative, according to scientists in America. Philippe Masson and Cesar Luongo from Florida State University, who have collaborated with Gerald Brown at NASA and Danielle Soban at Georgia Institute of Technology, explain that because superconductors lose no energy through electrical resistance, they could be very efficient components for a new type of aircraft propulsion. The researchers explain that to build an electric aircraft will require propulsion motors that are high power, lightweight and compact. Current technology cannot meet these demands because an electric motor using conventional magnets can weigh up to five times as much as conventional jet engine and not be as fuel efficient. In contrast, a superconducting motor would be very lightweight and far more efficient electrically, generating three times the torque of a conventional electric motor for the same energy input and weight. In addition, an electric aircraft would be far quieter than a conventional jet as there are no internal combustion processes involved. It is the combustion of fossil fuels to drive a conventional aircraft that makes them so noisy. However, superconducting magnets not only have to be cold, but require a unique energy supply. Masson and his colleagues believe they could solve both problems by using chilly liquid hydrogen to run an electric fuel cell. Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to make the superconducting magnets work but also has four times as much energy weight for weight than aviation fuel. A fuel cell produces no polluting emissions, just warm water as the hydrogen combines with oxygen. This, say the researchers would mean zero carbon emissions from the aircraft as it flies. "The idea is to reduce the emissions from the aircraft and airports," explains team leader Masson, "The energy needed to produce the liquid hydrogen could come from a remote powerplant". Such a powerplant might be solar or wind powered. "We could potentially build a superconducting motor and generator smaller than a gas turbine, which would make possible electric propulsion," says Masson. Electrical propulsion would not only decrease emissions but also reduce to a minimum the needs for maintenance as all hydraulic systems would be eliminated, he adds. The team has designed such systems with high fidelity models and optimization tools. Masson adds that the team is now looking for an industrial partner to build a prototype of the superconducting "turbofan". "The technology is there," he says, "it is a matter of finding a source of funding."

Can Carbon Dioxide Be A Good Thing? Physicist Explains Benefits Of Carbon Dioxide

June 1, 2007 A physicist from Colorado State University and his colleagues from the North American Carbon Program (NACP) have discerned and confirmed the unforeseen advantages of rising carbon dioxide levels. Through the processes of photosynthesis and respiration, scientists have been able to elucidate why plants are growing more rapidly than they are dying. The NACP is employing methods, such as the use of cell phone and aircraft towers to monitor and retrieve carbon data for their continuing study.
Too much carbon dioxide can be a bad thing, but sometimes it can have a positive effect on plants and trees. The more carbon emissions we dump into the air, the faster forests and plants grow. This new revelation is the result of research done by the North American carbon program. Scott Denning, Ph.D., a physicist from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado, explains the North American Carbon Program, "We are measuring CO2 in the atmosphere at dozens of places every hour around the United States and Canada." About 100 cell phone and aircraft towers dotting the North American landscape are providing a network to measure CO2 in the atmosphere. Physicists tracking the data have found an unexpected benefit of rising carbon dioxide levels. Dr. Denning says it's unusual. "Stuff is growing faster than it's dying, which is weird," he says. The answer may have more to do with how plants use CO2. During photosynthesis, plants take in carbon dioxide from the air to make food, but as a plant decays, CO2 is released back it into the air. Plans are underway to use cell phone towers worldwide for measuring CO2, expanding the carbon program globally. The bad part is plants can't clean the air as fast as we are polluting it. BACKGROUND: Carbon, in the form of carbon dioxide, is a greenhouse gas released into the atmosphere as a direct result of human activities all the time. This in turn raises the temperature of the earth, leading to global climate change. The concentration of atmospheric CO2 has already increased by about 30% since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s. Most of this increase comes from using fossil fuel -- coal, oil and natural gas -- for energy, but approximately 25 percent of the carbon came from changes in land use, such as the clearing of forests and the cultivation of soils for food production. Natural sources of atmospheric carbon include gases emitted by volcanoes, and respiration of living things. We breathe in oxygen, and breathe out carbon dioxide. CAPTURING CARBON: It is possible to reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by modern power plants by as much as 80-90% through carbon capture and storage technologies. The downside is that the fuel needs of a plant would increase by 10-40% in order to capture and store the carbon dioxide, thereby increasing operating costs by 30-60%. There are three basic ways to capture carbon. One is the remove it after burning fossil fuels, an approach that is already being used on a small scale by conventional power plants. Or the fossil fuel can be turned into a gas before the burning process and captured from the exhaust stream in a purer

form of CO2 and water vapor. A third emerging option is called chemical looping combustion, in which metal particles interact with the fuel and produce solid metal particles and a mix of CO2 and water vapor than can be captured and transported to a storage site. STORING CARBON: There are many alternatives for storing the captured CO2. The most promising is storing the CO2 deep in rocky formations in the earth, including oil and gas fields, and unminable coal seams, using various trapping mechanisms to ensure the CO2 doesn't escape back to the surface. In fact, injecting CO2 into oil fields can increase oil recovery, thereby offsetting the extra cost of storage. Another option is ocean storage, in which CO2 in injected deep into the ocean, where it dissolves, or deposited onto the ocean floor, where it is denser than water and therefore forms a "lake" of CO2. The downside is that an excess of CO2 in ocean waters increases acidification and can kill marine organisms. A third option is trapping the carbon in stable minerals permanently by reacting the CO2 with metal oxides. But the reaction rate is slow. You need expensive pre-treatment to speed up the process, which would increase energy costs as much as 60-180%. The American Geophysics Union and the American Meteorological Society contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

A Robotic Bug's Life: To Study Mars

ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2002) Insect-like robots may one day swarm over the surface of Mars, helping scientists better study the planet, says Dr. K.M. Isaac, a University of Missouri-Rolla professor of aerospace engineering, who is helping to develop this new breed of robots.

Isaac is working with NASA, The Ohio Aerospace Institute (OAI) and Georgia Institute of Technology to create a robotic flying machine called an Entomopter. The mechanical insect, capable of crawling as well as flying, will be able to study, videotape, photograph, and gather other types of information about planets, specifically Mars, closer than any current technology, Isaac says. Scientists hope to send these robotic bugs to Mars by the end of the decade, he adds. The project name is "Planetary Exploration Using Biomimetics." "Biomimetics" refers to the development of machines that imitate birds or flying insects. Isaac's part of the research is centered on creating the Entomopter's wings. He must find the optimal size and shape for the wings to develop the necessary lift needed to make it fly. For the past six months, he and his graduate student, Pavan Shivaram, have been working on computer simulations and prototypes of the Entomopter's wings. This is where the study of insects really comes into play. The shape and weight, as well as the frequency in which the insect wings move, are quite different compared to conventional aircraft wings. Isaac is reviewing biologists' research about insects and birds in order to closely mimic an actual insect wing that can be scaled up to the Entomopter's size.

"This is very exploratory. One of the reasons that they want to do this (project) is to double up these individual technologies and be ready to use them when things are available," Isaac says. The Entomopter could be as large as 5 feet wide and 2 1/2 feet long. The smallest it could be made depends on how small and light researchers can make the camera and other instruments and still fit them into the body of the robotic bug. Researchers face several challenges in their attempts to ready the Entomopter for space flight. The first one is that Mars' atmosphere is composed mainly of carbon dioxide, which makes it hard for conventional aircraft to function because most conventional aircraft rely on oxygenbreathing motors. Instead, the aircraft will have to rely strictly on chemical or electrical propulsion. The second challenge is that Mars has a very low density of gas, which makes it difficult to create a lot of lift for the Entomopter. The gravity that exists on Mars is one-third that of Earth, so this is another consideration to take into account when constructing the Entomopter.

Dangers On Mars Require Extensive Evaluation Before Human Exploration Could Proceed
ScienceDaily (May 6, 2002) When NASA's Mars Pathfinder landed on the Red Planet in 1997, it released a rover that monitored the landscape, recorded weather conditions, and broadcast pictures of the surface to Earth. Presently, there is no official date or funding for a human mission to Mars, but the knowledge gained from the Pathfinder and other missions would contribute to plans for eventual human exploration of the planet. Before astronauts can take the first steps on Mars, however, much research needs to be done to guide mission planners and hardware designers. A new report from the National Academies' National Research Council outlines the environmental, chemical, and biological hazards that NASA needs to assess before sending a human mission to Mars.

The agency's robotic engineering and design program should be expanded to develop larger rovers specifically for human use in exploration and surface transport, the report says. To ensure a safe landing and to aid rover and human movement on the planet, NASA should develop an accurate high-resolution, three-dimensional map of the terrain that would be explored, and assess the land's makeup to determine its strength and stability. In addition, when a spacecraft lands on Mars, soil and dust might be brought in through the air lock, which occurred during the Apollo missions to the moon. Potential contamination of the astronaut habitat while on the martian surface could pose a health hazard to the crew. For example, dust could contain high concentrations of sulfur and chlorine, compounds that could degrade human lung tissue if inhaled and corrode equipment.

There is also uncertainty as to the quantity of toxic metals, such as hexavalent chromium, in the soil. While small amounts of these metals may not affect the astronauts immediately, they could have long-term effects, such as cancer. Robotic sampling of soil and airborne dust could determine the presence and extent of any harmful organisms or compounds. If certain experiments, such as testing for chromium, cannot be conducted on the Mars surface, a sample must be returned to the Earth for evaluation. Although chances are slim that life exists on the planet, NASA must identify zones of minimal biologic risk to humans through unmanned missions, using organic carbon detection techniques or by analyzing a sample returned to Earth. At the same time, NASA needs to implement a series of safeguards to protect the Earth from potential contamination when the missions return from space. NASA and its international partners plan to send data-gathering robotic missions to Mars every two years until 2011 to study the environment, climate, and geology, and to determine if life ever arose on the planet. This study was requested and funded by NASA. The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter. A committee roster follows. The report Safe on Mars: Precursor Measurements Necessary to Support Human Operations on the Martian Surface is available on the Internet at http://www.nap.edu.

Discovering A New Earth 430 Light Years Away Astronomers Spy Earth-like Planet Forming Around Distant Star
April 1, 2008 Astrophysicists analyzing infrared images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope found indications of a dust cloud surrounding a relatively young star. The star is 10 to 16 million years old, and analysis of the dust cloud suggests that it may coalesce and become a rocky planet like earth. It is located at a distance from the star that it may build an atmosphere, collect liquid water, and perhaps, in millions and millions of years, support life.
It took billions of years and the perfect conditions for our Earth to grow and form. Now, those same conditions can be seen in space, shaping a similar planet. Ivanhoe explains this exciting space discovery. Far, far away, something amazing is brewing in space. Swirling around a giant star similar to our sun, astrophysicists have spotted the very early stages of a planet taking shape.

"What we think we're seeing is the actual formation of a planet -- terrestrial planet -- a rocky planet like the Earth, around the star," Carey Lisse, Ph.D., a senior research scientist at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., told Ivanhoe. The Earth-like planet is about 430 light years away or 2.5x1015 miles from Earth. It's inside a huge dust belt -- bigger than our asteroid belt -- with enough dusty material to build a planet. "The material is forming at just the same distance, or close to the same distance where the Earth formed from the sun," Dr. Lisse says. To find the planet, astronomers used images captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope. It looks for infrared light or heat radiating from the dusty materials. The images also confirm the rocky fragments forming the new planet are similar to materials found in the Earth's crust and core. "So, the body that's going to form -- the planet that's going to form -- isn't going to be this gas giant with incredibly thick atmosphere," explains Dr. Lisse. It's going to be a rocky planet like Mars or Venus or the Earth." There's also an outer ice belt circling the young planet, making it more likely that water could reach the new planet's surface and maybe even life; but don't wait around for signs of life. The planet still needs another 100 million years before it's completely formed. Astronomers say the star the new planet is spinning around is between ten and 16 million years old, which is the perfect age for forming Earth-like planets.

ABOUT THE SPITZER TELESCOPE: The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on 25 August 2003. Spitzer detects the infrared energy radiated by objects in space. Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Spitzer allows us to peer into regions of space that are hidden from optical telescopes. Many areas of space are filled with vast, dense clouds of gas and dust that block our view. Infrared light, however can penetrate these clouds, allowing us to peer into regions of star formation, the centers of galaxies, and into newly forming planetary systems. Infrared also brings us information about the cooler objects in space, such as smaller stars which are too dim to be detected by their visible light, extrasolar planets, and giant molecular clouds. Also, many molecules in space, including organic molecules, have their unique signatures in the infrared. WHAT IS INFRARED LIGHT? Infrared radiation is an invisible form of light that we usually detect as heat, like the sun shining on our face, or the warmth of a campfire. It has all the same properties as visible light: for example, it can be focused and reflected. The only difference is that it has a longer wavelength, which means we can't see it with the naked eye. Light is made of tiny particles called photons, and the wavelength tells us how fast those particles are vibrating. The shorter the wavelength, the faster the particles are moving. Shorter light waves look blue, and longer ones look red.

The wavelength of infrared light is so long that we can't see it at all. Any warm object gives off infrared radiation. By checking in the infrared spectrum, engineers can find heat leaks in buildings, doctors can find hidden tumors in the body, and biologists can locate diseased plants in a forest. Astronomers use infrared imaging to detect warm dust around new stars that are not yet "hot" enough to emit visible light. The American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

Light Continues To Echo Three Years After Stellar Outburst

ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2005) The Hubble Space Telescope's latest image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.

The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a pulse of light three years ago, somewhat similar to setting off a flashbulb in a darkened room. The dust surrounding V838 Mon may have been ejected from the star during a previous explosion, similar to the 2002 event. The echoing of light through space is similar to the echoing of sound through air. As light from the stellar explosion continues to propagate outwards, different parts of the surrounding dust are illuminated, just as a sound echo bounces off of objects near the source, and later, objects further from the source. Eventually, when light from the back side of the nebula begins to arrive, the light echo will give the illusion of contracting, and finally it will disappear. V838 Mon is located about 20 000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Monoceros, placing the star at the outer edge of our Milky Way galaxy. The Hubble telescope has imaged V838 Mon and its light echo several times since the star's outburst. Each time Hubble observes the event, different thin sections of the dust are seen as the pulse of illumination continues to expand away from the star at the speed of light, producing a constantly changing appearance. During the outburst event whose light reached Earth in 2002, the normally faint star suddenly brightened, becoming 600 000 times more luminous than our Sun. The new image of V838 Mon, taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys, was prepared from images obtained through filters that isolate blue, green, and infrared light. These images have been combined to produce a full-colour picture that approximates the true colours of the light echo and the very red star near the centre.

Its such a bad day in my life..becoz ameen many came an d spoiled my life,way, and everything.im fooled ,im thrawedoh god i hope like this will not happen everydayGOD please help me to overcome all obstacles..god help megod help mehelp me help mehelp me.so hereafter they are not allowing to read after 9 o clock so u study before 8.30 all works and hope for the best. ### The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

Adapted from materials provided by European Space Agency.

Unlocking The Mystery Of The Moon Astrophysicists Search Skies For A Moon Like Earth's
May 1, 2008 Astrophysicists used the Spitzer Space Telescope to scan a cluster of about 500 stars for evidence of a collision similar to the one that produced Earth's moon. The telescope searches in the infrared part of the spectrum, which allows researchers to search for the dust clouds created by massive collisions. The surface area of the dust would absorb light from the star and become warm. Researchers hypothesize that a maximum of five to ten percent of all moons form in the way that the Earth's did.

The moon is the brightest light in the night sky. We've sent space missions there, people have written countless songs and poems about it and now, astrophysicists are providing new insight on how the Earth's moon was created and what makes it special. "Well, the moon is certainly the most dramatic thing in the sky, so I'm sure people have had ideas about where it came from the beginning," George Rieke, Ph.D., an astrophysicist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz., told Ivanhoe. Dr. Rieke says our moon is unique -- formed by a massive collision in space. "There was another planet about the size of Mars that was on a disastrous orbit across the Earth's orbit and so the Earth and this other planet ran into each other," he says. It happened 30 to 50 million years after the formation of the sun. "It was a huge collision that threw dust and debris out into space and some of that material somehow reassembled and orbited around the Earth and eventually built up a moon," Dr. Rieke explained. Now, an infrared detector like this one on NASA's Spitzer Telescope is giving University of Arizona astrophysicists a wealth of new information from space. Researchers looked for evidence of dust debris around 430-million-year-old stars. Surprisingly, only one star was surrounded by dust, revealing that no other moon was formed like or since ours. "Nothing like that occurred around any of the other planets in our solar system," Dr. Rieke said. Scientists believe our moon set the stage for life on earth as we know it. But it could have been very different. "It could have been, if the other planet was a little bit bigger that it would have just destroyed the Earth and there wouldn't be any Earth left," Dr. Rieke explained. You may never look at the moon quite the same way again. "We should be a lot more thankful when we go out at night and find our way around through the full moonlight or just admire what it looks like," Dr. Rieke said. Astrophysicists believe that moons like the Earth's form in only five to ten percent of planetary systems in our universe. THE FORMATION OF THE MOON: The Earths moon formed just 30 to 50 million years after the sun was formed, when an object the size of Mars collided with Earth, and released a giant cloud of dust along with the moon. After examining a cluster of about 500 stars with the Spitzer Space Telescope, the researchers found very little evidence of collisions. If there had been such an event, large amounts of dust would have remained in the solar system long after the creation of a moon. The telescope would have indirectly observed pieces of dust that had absorbed light from the star in their solar system and become warmer than the surroundings. ABOUT THE SPITZER TELESCOPE: The Spitzer Space Telescope was launched on August 25, 2003. Spitzer detects the infrared energy radiated by objects in space. Most of this infrared radiation is blocked by the Earth's atmosphere and cannot be observed from the ground. Spitzer allows us to peer into regions of space that are hidden from optical telescopes. Many areas of space are filled with vast, dense clouds of gas and dust that block our view. Infrared light however can penetrate these clouds, allowing us to peer into regions of star formation, the centers of galaxies, and into newly forming planetary systems. Infrared also brings us

information about the cooler objects in space, such as smaller stars which are too dim to be detected by their visible light, extrasolar planets, and giant molecular clouds. The American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report. Astronomy Galaxies Extrasolar Planets Sun Black Holes

Astrophysicists 'Weigh' Galaxy's Most Massive Star Astrophysics Nebulae Galaxies Nature of Water Extrasolar Planets Asteroids, Comets and Meteors

Interstellar Space Molecules That Help Form Basic Life Structures Identified Space Telescopes Black Holes NASA Space Exploration Cosmic Rays Astronomy

 Galaxies Astrophysics Astronomy Dark Matter Stars Satellites

NASA's Swift Catches Farthest Ever Gamma-Ray Burst

Astronomers Discover Most Dark Matter-dominated Galaxy In Universe Space Telescopes Stars Astronomy Extrasolar Planets Space Exploration Black Holes

Galaxies Astrophysics Astronomy NASA Space Telescopes Space Exploration

Future Looks Bright For Interferometry

 NASA Aviation Space Telescopes Space Exploration Space Station Vehicles

Hubble Spies Galaxy Silhouettes

Shake, Rattle And Roll: James Webb Telescope Components Pass Tests Astrophysics Cosmology Dark Matter Astronomy Optics Big Bang

Unique Dark-energy Probe To Measure More Than A Million Galaxies And Quasars Solar System Sun Solar Energy Astronomy Northern Lights Asteroids, Comets and Meteors

 Black Holes Astronomy Astrophysics Galaxies Stars Cosmic Rays

Comet Dust Reveals Unexpected Mixing Of Solar System

Scientists Find Black Hole 'Missing Link'

Are Saturn's Rings Disappearing? Astronomers Explain Reason For Narrowing Rings Of Saturn
July 1, 2008 Astronomers say that Saturn's rings will disappear from view on Earth on September 4, 2009. The gases, ice, and rocky material that make up the rings will remain in place, but be invisible from the vantage point of Earth, as they do about every fifteen years. The rings are so thin that stargazers will be unable to see them through small telescopes.
Saturn star gazers are crazy about this planet! One of just a few encompassed by rings. But could these rings be vanishing or are your eye's playing tricks on you? Spinning in space, 893 million miles from the sun, lies the second biggest planet in our solar system. But how many rings of knowledge do you know about Saturn? First off -- where is it? You can pinpoint Saturn as the sixth planet from the sun. What are Saturn's rings made of? Light? Gases? Water and ice? Rock and debris? "Rocks to boulder size objects, even up to small minivan size objects, all in orbit around Saturn," Phil Nicholson, Ph.D., professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Syracuse, N.Y., told Ivanhoe.

In fact, astronomers say that the debris, gases, water and ice that make up the rings are actually speeding around Saturn 60 times faster than a speeding bullet. So could these rings someday disappear? "Twice in this 30 year period, the rings are on edge and they disappear," Dr. Nicholson said. It's called the ring plane crossing. Once every 14 to 15 years, Saturn makes its way around the sun, turning it rings edge-on to Earth. The rings are so thin they can actually seem to disappear. "As the planet moves around the sun, it presents the south pole of the rings to the sun and then presents the north pole to the sun and half way in between, when the rings are edge on, we just don't see them anymore," Dr. Nicholson said. "Saturn takes a little bit less than 30 years to go once around the Sun on it's orbit. So instead of it being an equinox every six months like there is on the earth, March to September, on Saturn, there is an equinox approximately every 14 to 15 years." That means, Saturn's rings will appear thinner and thinner until on September 4th, 2009 the rings will seem to vanish only to reappear three months later. Giving galaxy gazers something to keep an eye on. ABOUT SATURN: Saturn has been known since prehistoric times. It is the sixth planet from the sun, and the second largest in the solar system, a gas giant ranked behind only Jupiter. Saturn is composed primarily of hydrogen, with smaller amounts of helium and other trace elements. Its interior is made of a small core of rock and ice, surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen and a gaseous outer later. Saturn is best known for its prominent system of rings, which are mostly comprised of ice particles, rocky debris, and dust. Astronomers believe the rings may have been formed from larger moons that were shattered by impacts from comets and meteoroids. The planet also has at least 62 moons; most of them are quite small, but the largest is Titan, which is bigger than the planet mercury and is the only moon in the entire solar system to have a significant atmosphere. A DIFFERENT TYPE OF RING: "Einstein rings" are an optical illusion created when the fabric of spacetime is warped by the presence of massive objects, like stars or entire galaxies. The effect is known as gravitational lensing, and it acts like a giant magnifying glass in space, bending and amplifying the light of more distant objects. Light from a distant galaxy can be deflected by an intervening galaxy to create an arc or multiple separate images. When both galaxies are exactly lined up, the light forms a bulls-eye pattern -- the Einstein ring -- around the foreground galaxy. The American Geophysical Union and the American Astronomical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

NASA's Swift Catches Farthest Ever Gamma-Ray Burst

ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2008) NASA's Swift satellite has found the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected. The blast, designated GRB 080913, arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away.

"This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said the mission's lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe." Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 080913's "lookback time" reveals that the burst occurred less than 825 million years after the universe began. The star that caused this "shot seen across the cosmos" died when the universe was less than oneseventh its present age. "This burst accompanies the death of a star from one of the universe's early generations," says Patricia Schady of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, who is organizing Swift observations of the event. Gamma rays from the far-off explosion triggered Swift's Burst Alert Telescope at 1:47 a.m. EDT on Sept. 13. The spacecraft established the event's location in the constellation Eridanus and quickly turned to examine the spot. Less than two minutes after the alert, Swift's X-Ray Telescope began observing the position. There, it found a fading, previously unknown X-ray source. Astronomers on the ground followed up as well. Using a 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, a group led by Jochen Greiner at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, captured the bursts fading afterglow. The telescope's software listens for alerts from Swift and automatically slewed to the burst position. Then, the team's Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector, or GROND, simultaneously captured the waning light in seven wavelengths. "Our first exposure began just one minute after the X-Ray Telescope started observing," Greiner says. In certain colors, the brightness of a distant object shows a characteristic drop caused by intervening gas clouds. The farther away the object is, the longer the wavelength where this fadeout begins. GROND exploits this effect and gives astronomers a quick estimate of an explosion's shift toward the less energetic red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, or "redshift," which suggests its record-setting distance.

An hour and a half later, as part of Greiner's research, the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile, targeted the afterglow. Analysis of the spectrum with Johan Fynbo of the University of Copenhagen established the blasts redshift at 6.7 -- among the most distant objects known. Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As their cores collapse into a black hole or neutron star, gas jets -- driven by processes not fully understood -- punch through the star and blast into space. There, they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it, which generates bright afterglows. The previous record holder was a burst with a redshift of 6.29, which placed it 70 million lightyears closer than GRB 080913. Swift, launched in November 2004, has had a banner year. In March, the satellite detected the brightest gamma-ray burst, which was visible to the human eye despite occurring billions of light-years away. And in January, the spacecraft's instruments caught the first X-rays from a new supernova days before optical astronomers saw the exploding star. Swift is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State University, University Park, Pa., the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the U.S. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.

Adapted from materials provided by NASA. ScienceDaily (Sep. 20, 2008) NASA's Swift satellite has found the most distant gamma-ray burst ever detected. The blast, designated GRB 080913, arose from an exploding star 12.8 billion light-years away.

"This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen," said the mission's lead scientist Neil Gehrels at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible universe." Because light moves at finite speed, looking farther into the universe means looking back in time. GRB 080913's "lookback time" reveals that the burst occurred less than 825 million years after the universe began. The star that caused this "shot seen across the cosmos" died when the universe was less than oneseventh its present age. "This burst accompanies the death of a star from one of the universe's early generations," says Patricia Schady of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, who is organizing Swift observations of the event.

Gamma rays from the far-off explosion triggered Swift's Burst Alert Telescope at 1:47 a.m. EDT on Sept. 13. The spacecraft established the event's location in the constellation Eridanus and quickly turned to examine the spot. Less than two minutes after the alert, Swift's X-Ray Telescope began observing the position. There, it found a fading, previously unknown X-ray source. Astronomers on the ground followed up as well. Using a 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory in La Silla, Chile, a group led by Jochen Greiner at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, captured the bursts fading afterglow. The telescope's software listens for alerts from Swift and automatically slewed to the burst position. Then, the team's Gamma-Ray Burst Optical/Near-Infrared Detector, or GROND, simultaneously captured the waning light in seven wavelengths. "Our first exposure began just one minute after the X-Ray Telescope started observing," Greiner says. In certain colors, the brightness of a distant object shows a characteristic drop caused by intervening gas clouds. The farther away the object is, the longer the wavelength where this fadeout begins. GROND exploits this effect and gives astronomers a quick estimate of an explosion's shift toward the less energetic red end of the electromagnetic spectrum, or "redshift," which suggests its record-setting distance. An hour and a half later, as part of Greiner's research, the Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile, targeted the afterglow. Analysis of the spectrum with Johan Fynbo of the University of Copenhagen established the blasts redshift at 6.7 -- among the most distant objects known. Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As their cores collapse into a black hole or neutron star, gas jets -- driven by processes not fully understood -- punch through the star and blast into space. There, they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it, which generates bright afterglows. The previous record holder was a burst with a redshift of 6.29, which placed it 70 million lightyears closer than GRB 080913. Swift, launched in November 2004, has had a banner year. In March, the satellite detected the brightest gamma-ray burst, which was visible to the human eye despite occurring billions of light-years away. And in January, the spacecraft's instruments caught the first X-rays from a new supernova days before optical astronomers saw the exploding star. Swift is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State University, University Park, Pa., the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the U.S. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.

Adapted from materials provided by NASA.

Need to cite this story in your essay, paper, or report? Use one of the following formats: APA MLA NASA (2008, September 20). NASA's Swift Catches Farthest Ever Gamma-Ray Burst. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 21, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/09/080919185809.htm
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This image merges the view through Swift's UltraViolet and Optical Telescope, which shows bright stars, and its X-ray Telescope, which captures the burst (orange and yellow). (Credit: NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler)

The Mystery of Black Holes Astrophysicists Discover New Details of How Stars Collapse
December 1, 2005 A satellite called Swift is revealing that black holes have a messier birth than previously thought. Instead of being created in one instant, astrophysicists now believe after a star dies and collapses -- ultimately forming a black hole -- it continues to cause havoc. The baby black hole devours material while at the same time spewing it back out, a process that is revealed in multiple outbursts of gamma rays.

PHILADELPHIA--Black holes have baffled astronomers for decades. The first one was discovered in 1975. Now for the first time scientists are watching them unfold before their very eyes.

As a child, Peter Brown, an astronomy and astrophysics graduate student at Pennsylvania State University in Philadelphia, was fascinated by outer space. "Looking at Halley's comet thru the telescope when I was, when I was younger had a definite impact on me," he says. As an adult, however, comets weren't enough for Brown. He wanted to see bigger, brighter things. Now for the first time he's able to see massive newborn black holes. "What fascinates me is that things that we're observing are so far away," he says. Working with astrophysicists, Brown is part of a satellite project called Swift. Swift snaps photos of baby black holes being born, revealing a messier birth than previously thought. Dave Burrows, an astrophysicist at Pennsylvania State University, says, "So instead of these things sort of being a one instantaneous event, they seem to go on for hundreds of seconds as the black hole kind of gobbles up material." Researchers now believe after a star dies and collapses, forming a black hole, the black hole continues to cause havoc, devouring material while at the same time spewing it back out in a series of multiple outbursts of light. "What we're seeing is a lot of interesting things happening in the first few minutes after the explosion that we could never really see before," Burrows says. Catching new glimpses of black holes helps scientists better understand how the universe formed and puts curious minds at ease. "Black holes are inherently fascinating because they are sort of mind-bending concepts," Burrows says. Concepts that stargazers like Brown to learn more about. The Swift satellite, used to catch black holes in action, is unique because it detects a light burst from a dying star and rotates within minutes to record the explosion. Swift received a "best of what's new" award from Popular Science magazine. BACKGROUND: Astronomers have always thought that large stars die in one big explosion that creates a black hole. New data from NASA's Swift satellite indicates that a star dies through a series of explosions -- three or four of them -- before forming a black hole. WHAT IS SWIFT: Swift was launched in November 2004 to collect and analyze data on gamma ray bursts and other higher-energy happenings in the universe. Using Swift's state-of-theart X-ray and ultraviolet telescopes, astronomers can now see gamma ray bursts within minutes, instead of hours or days, and can thus catch a glimpse of newborn black holes. WHAT THEY FOUND: Whenever a massive star explodes, first there is a blast of gamma rays, followed by intense pulses, or "hiccups," of X-rays. There have been hints of such activity before, but Swift has detected more than a dozen clear cases of multiple explosions. Scientists are now exploring several hypotheses to describe this new phenomenon. ABOUT BLACK HOLES: A black hole forms when a massive star has used up all its fuel and explodes, becoming a supernova or its more powerful cousin, a hypernova. The reason the Sun and other stars emit light is because trillions of nuclear reactions are taking place at the cores.

With core temperatures of millions of degrees, hydrogen atoms can convert into helium atoms, emitting radiation in the process. At some point, however, all the atoms are used up and no more nuclear fusion can take place. Without that outward counter-force to the pull of gravity, a star collapses inward, eventually reaching a point where the attractive gravitational force is so strong, not even light can escape. The American Astronomical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

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Airplane Riveting Improved With New Technology

ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2008) An aircraft is held together by hundreds of thousands of rivets. Fully automatic machines install rivet holes and rivets with precision in numerous materials. A new hybrid technology combines this mechanical joining technique with adhesive bonding.

The lighter an aircraft is, the less fuel it consumes. Given the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions, this is a key aspect of materials research. Aircraft manufacturers are therefore pinning their hopes on particularly lightweight construction materials. These include not only lightweight metals, but also fiber composite plastics, particularly carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs). Whenever two CFRP components have to be joined together, this has so far been accomplished primarily by riveting. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Applied Materials Research IFAM in Bremen are experts in adhesive techniques and plan to enlarge their expertise to include mechanical joining. At the Composites Europe trade fair in Essen from September 23 through 25, 2008, they will be presenting a state-of-the-art C-clamp riveting machine. This device enables the necessary rivet holes, complete with one- or two-part riveted bolts, to be installed accurately and automatically in compliance with aviation standards.

The IFAM researchers now intend to go a step further. Rivet holes are a problem, particularly in CFRP structures, explains Dr. Oliver Klapp of the IFAM. They disturb the flow of forces in the CFRP structures and reduce the load-bearing capacity of the material. The researchers are therefore planning to make use of adhesive bonding processes that are already employed for CFRP materials. But the aviation industry is not yet ready to rely exclusively on bonded components and assemblies, says Klapp. This is why the engineers are exploring the potential of hybrid joining a combination of riveting and a special bonding process. The advantages of hybrid joining are obvious: the CFRP materials are not riddled with so many rivet holes. The particularly high loadbearing capacity of these materials is more effectively brought to bear in the truest sense of the word, because bonding results in a more effective, all-over distribution of forces. The researchers are currently optimizing the parameters of the joining process. Its true that riveting will not be eliminated from aircraft construction in the next several years, says Klapp. But the aviation industry will soon be unable to manage without structural bonding of primary structures such as the airframe, the wings and the tail units.

Adapted from materials provided by Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

The riveting machine was built by Brtje Automation Jaderberg (BAJ) to the specifications of the IFAM. BAJ is a global market leader in the sale of riveting machines and the associated handling techniques. (Credit: Copyright Fraunhofer IFAM)

Accurate Speedometer For Astronomy: Determining Velocities Of Stars And Other Celestial Bodies
ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2008) Events on a cosmic scale are often barely discernable on Earth. This explains why astronomers are currently not able to prove directly that the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate, nor can they search for planets that are roughly the same size as Earth and revolve around a sun-like star.

An international team of researchers working with staff at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics has now tested a measurement method that will allow such measurements to be carried out. The scientists use a frequency comb to determine the colour of the light emitted by a celestial body with great accuracy. In a frequency comb, spectral lines, whose colour can be very accurately determined, are lined up in sequence. The physicists then compare these spectral lines with the spectrum of astronomical sources. Their aim for the future is to use this method to determine velocity changes of astronomical bodies with an accuracy of one centimetre per second. This would make their method a thousand times more precise than the methods currently available, and would enable them to search for Earth-like planets or to test whether the expansion of the universe really is accelerating. Planets outside of our solar system give themselves away only indirectly: As they revolve around their own particular star, the star experiences repulsion, and moves closer to or away from Earth in a periodic motion. Astronomers can measure this using the Doppler Effect: In the same way that the pitch of an ambulance siren seems to be higher when it is approaching than when it is driving away, the light of a moving star also shifts. If it is approaching, its light seems to shift towards blue; if it is moving away, it seems to be redder. Up until now, this method has only enabled the detection of planets the size of Jupiter or Saturn; only these exert a strong enough pull on their sun that the Doppler shift of its light is measurable on Earth. Using the frequency comb, the scientists were able to determine the colour of the starlight much more accurately. "We are hoping that we will then even be able to measure shifts of one centimetre per second," says Thomas Udem, who heads the project at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany. "At present, astronomers can only observe the Doppler effect for stars moving towards or away from Earth at a speed of ten meters per second. As a comparison: Earth gives the Sun a push of ten centimetres per second. This is ridiculously slow compared to the speed of 220 kilometres per second with which the Sun revolves around the centre of our galaxy."

The improved measurement accuracy could also help to determine whether the expansion of the universe is speeding up within a period of ten years or so. This is a conclusion drawn from the measurement of the cosmic microwave background. If the measured microwave spectrum is inserted into the equations of the theory of general relativity (which are assumed to be valid), this acceleration is obtained, if a mysterious dark energy constitutes the greater part of the energy in the universe. However, there is, as yet, no direct proof that the expansion of the universe really is accelerating. With the measurement accuracy that is currently achievable, astronomers would have to wait several thousand years to measure this predicted effect on a suitable object in space. "If we are not able to measure this, we must either reject or expand the theory of general relativity which, in contrast to the theory of special relativity, has not been well tested experimentally as yet," says Thomas Udem. The frequency comb, for whose development Theodor Hnsch, Director at the Institute in Garching, was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize, is expected to enable scientists to achieve this new measurement accuracy. In a frequency comb, physicists split up a laser beam into a series of spectral lines whose frequencies, that is colours, they can measure very accurately. "This depends only on the accuracy of the atomic clock, which is used to count the frequencies," explains Udem. "Even low-cost atomic clocks are sufficient for astronomical applications." The scientists then compare the spectrum of a star or other object they are measuring with the frequency comb. This enables them to calibrate the spectrograph, which analyzes the light of the object according to its different colour components. The instabilities from which even the best spectrographs suffer mean that two spectrographic measurements of one star will produce two slightly different spectra, even when the light from the star has not changed at all. "Since we know precisely where the lines of the frequency comb are, we can compensate for these variations in the measurements and thus drastically increase our measurement accuracy," says Thomas Udem. Up to now, the team of scientists has used this new measurement method to correct instabilities of the spectrograph so that the velocity of an observed object seems only to vary by nine meters per second. This in itself is already a little better than the present standard. "Weve only carried out the test with a solar telescope, which is not designed for this purpose at all," says Udem. Some telescopes, however, achieve results that are already more than ten million times more stable, even without any calibration whatsoever. And the Garching-based researchers also want to use such telescopes in the future. Moreover, the scientists have so far only used a frequency comb with a few hundred teeth. "We can, however, perform measurements using several tens of thousands of teeth," says to Udem. "We are therefore very confident that, with an optimum setup, we can even measure velocity variations of one centimetre per second."

Journal reference:

1. Tilo Steinmetz, Tobias Wilken, Constanza Araujo-Hauck, Ronald Holzwarth, Theodor W. Hnsch, Luca Pasquini, Antonio Manescau, Sandro D'Odorico, Michael T. Murphy, Thomas Kentischer, Wolfgang Schmidt and Thomas Udem. Laser Frequency Combs for Astronomical Observations. Science, September 5, 2008 DOI: 10.1126/science.1161030 Adapted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Spectral analysis of starlight: An optical fibre is used to guide the light collected in telescopes to the spectrograph, where it is split up into its individual colours. These are then compared with the frequency comb - seen here as equally spaced lines - to obtain an accurate determination of the colour. (Credit: ESO)

University Of Texas Researchers Measure Supermassive Black Holes In Distant Galaxies

ScienceDaily (Dec. 26, 2000) AUSTIN, Texas -- Two astronomers at The University of Texas at Austin, working with an international team of collaborators, have shown that they can provide reliable measurements of black hole masses for active galactic nuclei such as quasars even at great distances.

The UT Austin astronomers have demonstrated that two techniques used for measuring nearby black hole masses are just as suitable for measuring the most distant quasars. They said use of

these techniques should enable astronomers to learn more about black hole growth and the way galaxies are formed. The astronomers, Dr. Karl Gebhardt and Dr. John Kormendy, discussed their research at the 20th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics in Austin this week. Gebhardt is an assistant professor and Kormendy holds the Curtis T. Vaughan, Jr. Centennial Chair in Astronomy at UT Austin's department of astronomy. Black holes are celestial bodies that are so compressed their surface gravity is strong enough to keep even light from escaping. Some 38 black holes have been discovered in the universe, 13 of them by Gebhardt and six by Kormendy. Supermassive black holes are one million to one billion times the mass of the sun and are found at the centers of galaxies. Because they are invisible, scientists detect and study black holes by observing the movements and velocities of the stars swirling around them. Quasars are brilliant, extremely distant celestial objects believed to be composed of supermassive black holes that are actively swallowing gas and stars. The UT Austin astronomers said it is important to develop techniques to measure quasar masses because such measurements will increase the knowledge of their complex physical environment. More importantly, because of their great distances, measurements of quasar mass should provide direct information about the evolutionary history of the black holes and their host galaxies. The scientists said that so far, direct measurements of supermassive black holes have been made in at least 38 galaxies, based on large rotation and random velocities of stars and gas near their centers. Such measurements require high spatial resolution such as the views provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. Gebhardt said this type of measurement only works successfully for nearby galaxies. Since quasars are too distant to apply these direct methods, astronomers have relied on physical models of the regions near the black holes to measure their masses. These techniques suffer from large and unknown uncertainties because of the complex nature of quasar physics, he explained. While investigating samples of nearby objects, astronomers recently discovered a relationship between black hole mass and galaxy mass. The relationship allows astronomers to develop better models of quasars. Gebhardt said this promises eventually to provide a large increase in measured black hole masses from the presently small sample of 38 galaxies to thousands of galaxies out to extreme distances. Two techniques for measuring black hole masses in quasars are available, called reverberation mapping and photo-ionization models, both of which involve uncertainties. Reverberation mapping relies on the variability of quasars, and the fact that there are numerous clouds of gas that orbit near each supermassive black hole. As the black hole varies its energy output, the brightness of the radiation from the orbiting clouds varies as well. Because light travels at a finite speed, the brightness variations in the orbiting clouds are seen later than those in the central engine source. The time difference tells astronomers how far the

orbiting gas clouds are from the black hole. The speed of the orbits of the clouds also can be measured. Taken together, the results reveal the mass of the black hole. However, there has been no way to test the results, and some of the properties of the gas clouds are uncertain, Gebhardt said. Photo-ionization models are even more uncertain, depending on an empirical relationship that astronomers are still trying to understand. That is, the amount of radiation that an orbiting cloud emits depends on how far away it is from the black hole. Thus, by simply measuring how "bright" the cloud appears astronomers can deduce its radius from the center. Knowing both the radius and the speed, astronomers then can measure the black hole masses. Until now, astronomers have been reluctant to trust measurements of masses made from either of these techniques. The UT Austin scientists have shown that both techniques provide the same relationship between black hole mass and galaxy mass, as compared to the nearby sample of black hole masses determined from detailed dynamic modeling. The astronomers said they have determined that both reverberation mapping and photoionization models can be applied even to the most distant quasars. As a result, large surveys are under way that should provide evidence for thousands of new black hole masses, making it possible to probe the growth of black holes in the early universe. Gebhardt said the calibration of the quasar measurement techniques should provide the detailed information needed to probe the structure of the central engine driving the quasar, allowing astronomers to explore both galaxy formation and black hole growth in exquisite detail. For more information, see the Web site: http://chandra.as.utexas.edu/~kormendy/stardate.html

Adapted from materials provided by University Of Texas,

No Matter Their Size Black Holes 'Feed' In The Same Way

ScienceDaily (Dec. 28, 2006) Research by UK astronomers, published in Nature (7th December 2006) reveals that the processes at work in black holes of all sizes are the same and that supermassive black holes are simply scaled up versions of small Galactic black holes.

For many years astronomers have been trying to understand the similarities between stellar-mass sized Galactic black hole systems and the supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN).In particular, do they vary fundamentally in the same way, but perhaps with any characteristic timescales being scaled up in proportion to the mass of the black hole. If so, the researchers proposed, we could determine how AGN should behave on cosmological timescales by studying the brighter and much faster galactic systems.

Professor Ian McHardy, from the University of Southampton, heads up the research team whose findings are published today (along with colleagues Drs Elmar Koerding and Christian Knigge and Professor Rob Fender, and Dr Phil Uttley, currently working at the University of Amsterdam). Their observations were made using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer and XMM Newton's X-ray Observatory. Professor McHardy comments, "By studying the way in which the X-ray emission from black hole systems varies, we found that the accretion or 'feeding' process - where the black hole is pulling in material from its surroundings - is the same in black holes of all sizes and that AGN are just scaled-up Galactic black holes. We also found that the way in which the X-ray emission varies is strongly correlated with the width of optical emission lines from black hole systems." He adds, "These observations have important implications for our understanding of the different types of AGN, as classified by the width of their emission lines. Thus narrow line Seyfert galaxies, which are often discussed as being unusual, are no different to other AGN; they just have a smaller ratio of mass to accretion rate." The research shows that the characteristic timescale changes linearly with black hole mass, but inversely with the accretion rate (when measured relative to the maximum possible accretion rate). This result means that the accretion process is the same in black holes of all sizes. By measuring the characteristic timescale and the accretion rate, the team argues this simple relationship can help determine black hole masses where other methods are very difficult, for example in obscured AGN or in the much sought after intermediate mass black holes. Professor McHardy continues: "Accretion of matter into a black hole produces strong X-ray emission from very close to the black hole itself. So, studying the way in which the X-ray emission varies with time, known as the X-ray lightcurves, provides one of the best ways of understanding the behaviour of black holes. It has been known for over two decades that characteristic timescales can be seen in the X-ray lightcurves of Galactic black hole systems. The timescales are short (second) and so can be found in short observations. However to find the equivalent timescales in AGN is much harder as we must observe for months or years."

An accreting black hole and a binary star. (Credit: R. Hynes)

Superconductivity Can Induce Magnetism

ScienceDaily (Sep. 15, 2008) When an electrical current passes through a wire it emanates heat a principle that's found in toasters and incandescent light bulbs. Some materials, at low temperatures, violate this law and carry current without any heat loss. But this seemingly trivial property, superconductivity, is now at the forefront of our understanding of physics.

In the journal Science, Andrea Bianchi, a professor in the Department of Physics at the Universit de Montral, and his colleagues show that, contrary to previous belief, superconductivity can induce magnetism, which has raised a new quantum conundrum. Using the Swiss spallation neutron source (SINQ) of the Paul-Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Villigen, the international research group led by Michel Kenzelmann, a scientist at the Paul Scherrer Institute and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, found a superconductor displaying two fascinating quantum properties. First, the material in the superconducting state shows magnetic order, which is a surprise given how superconductivity and magnetism cannot easily be accommodated in the same material. Second, SINQ's experiments show that the electron pairs that form the superconducting state have a non-zero momentum, contrary to what is observed in all other known superconductors. Such a state has been theoretically predicted years ago, but it had never been microscopically detected. Magnetism and Superconductivity The transport of electric current in a conductor is associated with the displacement of electrons: Collisions between these electrons and the crystal ions cause resistance and release heat. In superconductors below the transition superconducting transition temperature, the electrons are form pairs, which allow them, thanks to quantum mechanics, to synchronize their motion with the ions, and all occupy the same quantum state. Electrons in their normal state can be seen as rush-hour pedestrians in a public plaza, yet electron pairs are like couples waltzing to the rhythm of the music without colliding. The electron has a charge, but like a tiny magnet, it also has a magnetic moment called spin. In a singlet superconductor, the electron pairs are formed by electrons of opposite spin, which cancels the pair's magnetic moment. But when the material is placed in a strong magnetic field, the spins are forced to orient themselves along the field, as the field acts on each spin individually. Usually, this breaks the pairs and destroys superconductivity. The magnetic fields inside a magnetically ordered material tends to act in the same manner and thus that superconductivity and magnetism tend to avoid each other, although they are not always mutually exclusive. According to Michel Kenzelmann, "Superconductivity and magnetism are like two groups of predators fighting over the same territory."

Superconductivity with magnetic consequences In the experiment reported in Science, the scientists cooled a single crystal of CeCoIn5, a metal compound consisting of cerium, cobalt and indium, to a temperature of minus 273.1 degrees, close to absolute zero. To their great surprise, they discovered that magnetism and superconductivity coexist and disappear at the same time when they heat the sample or increase the magnetic field. This discovery is extraordinary, since magnetic order exists exclusively when this sample is in the superconducting state. In this unique case, magnetism and superconductivity do not compete with each other. Instead, superconductivity generates magnetic order. "Our results clearly indicate that superconductivity is a condition required to establish this magnetic order," says Kenzelmann. "Our work finally offers the possibility of understanding how superconducting pairs are formed in materials where this is caused by a magnetic interaction. We also hope that our results will allow the development of new technological applications in the near future." New pairs The research team also made a second discovery, which is detailed in the Science article how electron pairs in the superconducting state in a strong magnetic field have a finite momentum. In all other known superconductors, the pairs form a state with zero momentum. Predicted by theorists a few decades ago, the observation of such a state in this experiment is the first experimental proof for such a new state of matter. These two results allow for the first time to directly address questions about the relationship between magnetism and superconductivity. The answers that will be provided in the years ahead will allow a better understanding of this fascinating aspect of quantum mechanics and could even lead to the discovery of new technologically-important superconducting materials.

Andrea Bianchi, Department of Physics. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Montreal)

New Material For Aircraft Wings Could Save Billions

ScienceDaily (Sep. 28, 2007) Building aircraft wings with a special aluminium fibre combination makes them nearly immune to metal fatigue. The application of this technology, partly developed at Delft University of Technology, will lead to substantial savings.

The unusual qualities of this special material (called CentrAl, an abbreviation of Central Reinforced Aluminium) can make a significant contribution to the development of truly energyefficient, 'green' aircraft. Lower fuel consumption and reduction of maintenance costs could lead to worldwide savings as high as $100 billion. Fatigue is a phenomenon that affects materials after long-term exposure to cyclic loading. As a result of varying loads, fractures eventually occur. The new, high-quality CentrAl aluminium constructions are stronger than the carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) constructions that have recently been used in aircraft wings such as the Boeing 787. By using CentrAl wing

constructions, the weight can be reduced by another 20 per cent compared to CFRP constructions. Furthermore, using CentrAl results in considerably lower manufacturing and maintenance costs. The CentrAl concept comprises a central layer of fibre metal laminate (FML), sandwiched between one or more thick layers of high-quality aluminium. This creates a robust construction material which is not only exceptionally strong, but also insensitive to fatigue. The CentrAl technique allows for simple repairs to be carried out immediately, as is the case in aluminium constructions, -- but not the case when using CFRP constructions. This patented new concept is one of the results of an intensive collaboration between the company GTM Advanced Structures, founded in The Hague in 2004 and specialising in new aircraft materials and constructions, the American aluminium company Alcoa, and the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering of Delft University of Technology. During a conference in Delft (Conference on Damage Tolerance of Aircraft Structures: 25-28 September 2007), GTM and Alcoa have presented the new concept to international experts in the field of metal fatigue and damage sensitivity of aircraft constructions. The US Air Force, Alcoa and GTM will also shed new light on the fact that the new CentrAl materials create possibilities for so-called 'Carefree structures'. These are aircraft constructions that are less sensitive to damage caused, for example, by fatigue, hail storms, other weather phenomena, trucks that collide with the aircraft and corrosion. Carefree aircraft constructions will be characterised by significantly reduced maintenance costs.

Detail of CentrAl sandwich. The unusual qualities of this special material can make a significant contribution to the development of truly energy-efficient, 'green' aircraft. (Credit: TU Delft, GTM) Ads by Google Advertise here

Baby Thinking Radiologists Use Light To Scan The Inner Workings Of The Brain
December 1, 2007 Radiologists have developed a new device to understand brain activity. It is a collection of fiber optic cables attached to a flexible cap placed atop

the head. The cables send near-infrared light through the skull and into the brain, where it is diffused or scattered before it is collected by receiver cables. The device is able to interpret the light to measure blood circulation and the amount of oxygen in that blood, which helps explain brain activity.

When doctors want to find out what's going on inside a baby's brain it usually requires, noisy or dangerous equipment and babies sitting completely still. But, new technology is now giving researchers a fascinating look inside an infants brain in a much easier way. Radiologists are using a new technique to see what parts of a babys brain are working during any given task. Their method is baby-friendly with no exposure to radiation or loud machines. It has a more wearable cap so it can be placed in infants heads while they sit in their parents lap, Joseph Culver, Ph.D., Washington University Medical School said. Culver and his colleagues improved a brain imaging technique called high-density diffuse optical tomography. It measures how much blood and oxygen are in the brain. Its similar to taking a flashlight and putting it on one side of your hand and looking at the light come through your hand so the light has traveled through your hand and the light that you detect on the other side tells you something about whats inside your hand, Dr. Culver said. Fiber optic cables on the cap shine light on the babys brain. The light scatters revealing blood flow related to brain activity in a 3D tomographic image. You can see it in action, when a patient watches a flickering light; a similar rotating pattern shows up in the brains blood flow. Theres an increase in blood flow to that area and that allows us to map that neuron activity, Dr. Culver said. Future uses for the cap include researching brain development in the tiniest of babies or monitoring a babys brain during surgery. BACKGROUND: Researchers have developed a new brain imaging technique for infants called high-density diffuse optical tomography which helps them to study the developing infant brain. This should help treat infant brain injuries by being able to monitor them in their incubators, and help scientists learn important basics about developing brains. The new scanner is quieter, and portable because it is much smaller about the size of a small refrigerator than typical MRI or CT scan machines. The developers are working to make the unit even smaller, about the size of a microwave. THE PROBLEM: Scientists have been able to study brain scans of infants while they are asleep or sedated using functional MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). Ideally researchers would like to

scan their brains while sitting on a parents lap or interacting with their environment. fMRI requires the patient to be inserted into a tightly confined passage through a large, noisy magnet; most infants find it upsetting and difficult to sit still in that environment. In the same way CT scans involve large, loud equipment, and also expose patients to levels of x-rays considered unsafe for infants. HOW IT WORKS: The high-density diffuse optical tomography (DOT) uses harmless light from the near-infrared light spectrum. Unlike X-rays or ultrasound, near-infrared light passes through bone easily, so scientists can use the diffusing light to determine blood flow and oxygenation in the blood vessels of the brain. When these characteristics increase, it indicates that the area of the brain they are scanning is contributing to a mental task. To scan a patient, scientists attach a flexible cap that covers the exterior of the head above the region of interest. Inside the cap are fiber optic cables. Some of those cables shine light on the head and by determining the way the light is scattered, researchers can learn more about brain activity. Light passes out of one fiber optic cable, goes through the tissue, and is received by another cable. Based on its interpretation of the diffusion data, the machine creates a 3D image based on whether the red blood cells have lots of oxygen or less oxygen to determine brain activity. WHAT IS fMRI: Magnetic resonance imaging uses radio waves and a strong magnetic field to take clear and detailed pictures of internal organs and tissues. fMRI uses this technology to identify regions of the brain where blood vessels are expanding, chemical changes are taking place, or extra oxygen is being delivered. These are indications that a particular part of the brain is processing information and giving commands to the body. As a patient performs a particular task, the metabolism will increase in the brain area responsible for that task, changing the signal in the MRI image. So by performing specific tasks that correspond to different functions, scientists can locate the part of the brain that governs that function. The American Association of Physicists in Medicine and The Optical Society of America contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Optical Technique Studies Brain Activity Without Surgery On Skull

ScienceDaily (Aug. 2, 2001) CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A non-invasive diagnostic tool that can study changes occurring at the surface of the brain because of brain activity has been developed by scientists at the University of Illinois. The technique is based upon near-infrared spectroscopy and is simpler to use and less expensive than other methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography.

"Whenever a region of the brain is activated directing movement in a finger, for example that part of the brain uses more oxygen," said Enrico Gratton, a UI professor of physics. "Our technique works by measuring the blood flow and oxygen consumption in the brain." The optical technique is fast and simple to use, Gratton said. First, light emitted by near-infrared laser diodes is carried through optical fibers to a persons head. The light penetrates the skull where it assesses the brains oxygen level and blood volume. The scattered light is then collected by optical fibers, sent to detectors and analyzed by a computer. By examining how much of the light is scattered and how much is absorbed, Gratton and his colleagues in the universitys Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics can map portions of the brain and extract information about brain activity. "By measuring the scattering, we can also determine where the neurons are firing," Gratton said. "This means we can simultaneously detect both blood profusion and neural activity." The technique could be used in many diagnostic, prognostic and clinical applications. "For example, it could be used to find hematomas in children, or to study blood flow in the brain during sleep apnea," Gratton said. "It could also be used to monitor recovering stroke patients on a daily, or even hourly, basis something that would be impractical to do with MRI." To validate the technique, Gratton and Vladislav Toronov, a postdoctoral research associate at the universitys Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, compared hemoglobin oxygen concentrations in the brain obtained simultaneously by near-infrared spectroscopy and by functional MRI the current "gold standard" in brain studies. "Both methods were used to generate functional maps of the brains motor cortex during a periodic sequence of stimulation by finger motion and rest," Gratton said. "We demonstrated spatial congruence between the hemoglobin signal and the MRI signal in the motor cortex related to finger movement." The researchers also demonstrated collocation between hemoglobin oxygen levels and changes in scattering due to brain activities. "By having a volunteer move different fingers, we could see an increase in perfusion in different areas of the brain," Gratton said. "The changes in scattering associated with fast neuron signals came from exactly the same locations." The National Institutes of Health supported the research.

System To Monitor Heat Panels Could Safeguard Future Spacecraft

ScienceDaily (July 15, 2004) WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. Heat-shielding panels on future spacecraft could be constantly monitored from liftoff to landing to ensure safety, according to engineers who are developing a technique using vibration and sound measurements to detect subtle damage in a variety of structures.

"Future space vehicles and hypersonic aircraft may be equipped with a structural health monitoring system that constantly records how vibration and sound waves travel through materials and structures to detect damage as it occurs in real time," said Douglas E. Adams, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University. "Otherwise, large numbers of ground inspectors would need to spend a great deal of time looking for damage between flights. "There is also a possibility that subtle damage just beginning to form, which could later lead to accidents, will not be detected." Moreover, his research shows that such a detection system would be most effective during periods of highest stress while the vehicle is taking off and reentering the atmosphere when it is subject to the greatest pressures and temperatures. During those times, because of the way vibrations travel through the heated metal panels, certain kinds of damage are easier to detect in flight than while the spacecraft is sitting on the ground. The research was funded by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory Structures Division. A technical paper about the new findings was presented July 7 during the Second European Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring in Munich, Germany. The paper was written by Adams; Purdue graduate student R. Jason Hundhausen; Mark Derriso, an engineer leading the work in structural health monitoring at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio; and Paul Kukuchek and Richard Alloway, engineers for Goodrich Corp's Aerostructures Group in Chula Vista, Calif. The health-monitoring system has been tested on a new generation of metal heat-protection panels developed by Goodrich Aerostructures. "The fundamental advance we have made is that we have shown that unless you monitor for damage and loads while the vehicle is in the most severe part of the mission, you will likely miss incipient damage," Adams said. "We are developing mathematical models and data-analysis methods that overcome challenges to identify damage in real time. "It's very important to note that damage is much easier to detect while the metal panels are heated during flight. That's because extremely hot temperatures reduce the stiffness of the metal, changing how the panels vibrate and making the flaws easier to detect with our techniques." The panels have to withstand temperatures ranging from roughly minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit in space to 1,800 degrees during reentry. "And you are talking about that change occurring in a relatively short period of time," Adams said. "On top of those rapid temperature changes, you have extreme acoustic loads noise loud enough to burst your ear drums. These sound levels are much higher than at a rock concert.

"The loud noise causes vibration and sound pressure that continuously pulsate and produce forces on the panel." Unlike the current space shuttle's ceramic tiles, the metallic panels could be easily replaced within minutes. Tiles on the space shuttle must be glued onto the orbiter using "strain-isolation pads" in a process that takes days. Future spacecraft and hypersonic aircraft that travel several times the speed of sound will likely have heat panels that are bolted in place. Replacing the panels would be a snap simply a matter a unbolting the old panel and attaching a new one, Derriso said. The panels are made of a "metallic sandwich" material capable of withstanding high temperatures and pressures. Each panel consists of two outer face sheets bonded to an inner honeycomb core. Adams is helping the U.S. Air Force and NASA develop a structural health monitoring system, which uses sensors to record how vibration and sound waves travel through materials and structures. These waves respond differently when passing through damage caused by cracks and other flaws, producing differing patterns. Researchers at Purdue's Ray W. Herrick Laboratories used the monitoring system to detect impact forces such as those exerted by a heavy tool being dropped on a panel simulating and identifying resulting damage to bolts and the panel itself. "If a micro-meteoroid or other form of debris strikes a panel, we want to identify how hard it hit that panel because designers know how much force the panels can withstand," Adams said. "If a force goes above a certain level, then we know that we ought to replace that panel the next time around." The Air Force is developing technologies for a proposed "space operations vehicle," which will need a new kind of thermal protection system for reentering the atmosphere. "One of the main goals is for this new vehicle to have a fast turnaround time from one mission to the next," Derriso said. "Obviously, a critical advantage of these heat panels is that they are mechanically attached. "Right now the shuttle uses an adhesive to bond the tiles onto the airframe. Even if you detect damage in a particular tile, it's going to take a long time to replace that tile because you have to clean and prep the surface and re-glue these tiles back on all of which takes time." The innovative metallic heat-protecting panels were tested as part of NASA's experimental X-33 spacecraft program, one early concept for a space operations vehicle. The proposed spacecraft never flew but was tested in specialized chambers that recreate the extreme conditions of launch, space flight and reentry. The chambers, located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, are the only ones capable of simultaneously simulating all of the conditions, including extreme pressures, temperatures and noise, Derriso said.

Goodrich Aerostructures created about 1,300 of the special panels for the X-33. The panels performed well and are available for future space vehicle applications, Kukuchek said. One advantage of the panels is that they could be replaced in space. However, because many of the panels have unique shapes, the crew would have to haul hundreds of replacement panels to ensure a match for a specific damaged panel. A more practical approach, Kukuchek said, might be for crew members to repair damaged panels in space and reattach them before reentry. Meanwhile, in two other papers also presented during the conference in Munich, researchers showed how structural health monitoring systems could be used to check for damage in future spacecraft fuel tanks made from a new lightweight alloy and also to record the quality of rivets in commercial and military aircraft. The experimental fuel tanks are manufactured using a new type of welding in which a rotating pin "stirs" the metal from opposing plates until they form into a single piece. The method, called friction-stir welding, creates welds many times stronger than conventional welds, which weaken materials by melting them. Researchers also showed how to use structural health monitoring to identify inferior rivets in aircraft, some of which contain as many as a million rivets. Inferior rivets lead to corrosion, cracks and potentially serious structural failure. The Purdue-developed method uses a rivet gun equipped with sensors that record data on every rivet installed. The data could be used to create "maps" that indicate locations of inferior rivets so that ground crews in the future could concentrate on those areas during routine inspections.

Douglas E. Adams, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, strikes a spacecraft heat-shielding panel with a special hammer equipped with a sensor, while graduate student Harold Kess, foreground, watches data showing how the panel responds to the vibration caused by the impact. (Photo Credit: Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger)

Visit To An Asteroid Planetary Scientists To Find Out Composition, Structure Of Asteroids

June 1, 2007 A NASA mission to two asteroids, one formed of lava and the other potentially containing water, will help find clues about the formation of our solar system.
Violent collisions once shook the universe sending rocky fragments, or asteroids, out to a region called the asteroid belt. Now, planetary scientists want to visit to get an up close look at two large asteroids. Lucy MacFadden, Ph.D., a planetary scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, says, "We're launching a spacecraft to orbit two of the most massive asteroids in the main asteroid belt."

The Dawn mission is the first time a spacecraft will visit Vesta, a small asteroid that's been reshaped by ancient lava flows, and Ceres, the largest known asteroid, that has evidence of water. After the spacecraft launches in June, it reaches Vesta in four years and then Ceres in another three. But you will have a rare chance to see Vesta this month. If you look south, it will be to the right just above Jupiter. Meanwhile, scientists anticipate what they'll find. "To be honest, we really don't know what we will see, but we know we will see unexpected things," Dr. MacFadden says. Studying asteroids also helps scientists learn more about the how the solar system formed, and uncover the many mysteries of planets. Dr. MacFadden says, "We will learn something about the early stages of planet formation that we cannot learn here on Earth." The spacecraft's eight year journey will travel more then 3.2 billion miles, a distant learning experience that is worth the trip. BACKGROUND: NASA is launching a spacecraft to the asteroid Vesta. In a few years, astronomers will be able to see this asteroid not as a small point of light, but as a small body from which the larger planets grew. Vesta could tell astronomers more about the state of the early solar system 4.5 billion years ago. WHAT ARE ASTEROIDS? Asteroids are not the same as comets. Comets are essentially large, dirty snowballs. They are made of ice and frozen gases, mixed with rocky material and dust, and travel in large oval orbits, sometimes leaving our solar system. In contrast, asteroids are metallic, rocky bodies, without atmospheres, that orbit the Sun, just like planets, but are too small to be considered planets themselves. There are tens of thousands of them gathered into the main asteroid belt, a donut-shaped ring located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers conclude they are made from primordial rock. Jupiter's strong gravity prevented these small bodies from forming into a planet when the solar system began 4.6 billion years ago. ABOUT VESTA: Vesta is very different from many other known asteroids -- it's the only one with distinctive light and dark areas. It's much more evenly-colored, like the surface of the Moon. Images show evidence that lava once flowed on its surface, which has a geology resembling Earth or Mars. This means that the asteroid once had a molten interior, which contradicts the previous scientific idea that asteroids are the cold rocky fragments left over from the early days of planet formation. One idea is that Vesta is made up in part of radioactive "shrapnel" from a supernova explosion some four billion years ago, which may have melted the core to cause heavier elements to sink to the center while the lighter rock rose to the surface -common for terrestrial planets. DEEP IMPACT: Asteroids and comets have routinely collided with Earth since our planet was formed four billion years ago, although these are rarely catastrophic, because most aren't large enough. The total mass of all the asteroids combined is less than that of the Moon. But occasionally a very large asteroid -- a quarter mile wide or more -- will strike with devastating effects, such as the extinction of the dinosaurs. When an asteroid, or part of it, crashes into Earth, it is called a meteorite. There are currently two programs in the US to actively search for these

near-earth objects: NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Tracking program and Spacewatch at the University of Arizona. The American Astronomical Society contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

Floating Pile Of Rubble A Pristine Record Of Solar System's History

ScienceDaily (June 2, 2006) A small, near-Earth asteroid named Itokawa is just a pile of floating rubble, probably created from the breakup of an ancient planet, according to a University of Michigan researcher was part of the Japanese space mission Hayabusa. The finding suggests that asteroids created from rubble would be pristine records of early planet formation. Daniel Scheeres, U-M associate professor of aerospace engineering, was part of the team that determined the asteroid's mass, surface environment, and gravitational pull and helped interpret the images that were taken of the asteroid from the spacecraft. Some of the findings will be discussed in a special issue of the journal Science on June 2. The mission is led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. The Hayabusa space probe arrived at asteroid Itokawa last fall and orbited for three months. During that time it descended twice to the surface of the asteroid, which is named for the father of Japanese rocketry, to collect samples. In 2010 the probe will return to Earth and eject a sample canister that will reenter the atmosphere and land in central Australia. Researchers hope this will be the first asteroid sample brought back to Earth. Scheeres said that the confirmation of Itokawa's makeup as rubble rather than a single rock has large implications for theories of how asteroids evolved, and will lead to a better understanding of the early solar system. Asteroids are thought to be the remnants of material that formed the inner planets, which include Earth, and could bear the record of events in the early stages of planet formation. It is a significant finding that Itokawa is a pile of rocks ranging in size from tiny sand grains all the way up to boulders 50 meters wide, because it verifies a number of theories about the makeup and history of asteroids. The existence of very large boulders and pillars suggests that an earlier "parent" asteroid was shattered by a collision and then re-formed into a rubble pile, the researchers conclude in the paper. It's likely that most asteroids have a similar past, Scheeres said. "Analysis of the asteroid samples will give us a snapshot of the early solar system, and provide valuable clues on how the planets were formed."

Also, knowing if an asteroid is a single, big rock or a pile of rubble will have a major influence on how to nudge it off course, Scheeres said, should its orbit be aimed at Earth. An asteroid collision with Earth, while unlikely, could have disastrous consequences. It's widely thought that an asteroid collision caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, so some have discussed ways to demolish or steer an approaching asteroid, should we see one coming. Another striking finding, Scheeres said, is that regions of Itokawa's surface are smooth, "almost like a sea of desert sand" and others are very rugged. This indicates that the surfaces of asteroids are, in some sense, active, with material being moved from one region to another. Gravity holds the mass of rubble together. "These are the first such detailed observations of an asteroid from this close," Scheeres said.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

A global view of the Asteroid Itokawa, with white box showing region where the Hayabusa spacecraft landed to collect samples. (Photo courtesy Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science)

Are Saturn's Rings Disappearing? Astronomers Explain Reason For Narrowing Rings Of Saturn
July 1, 2008 Astronomers say that Saturn's rings will disappear from view on Earth on September 4, 2009. The gases, ice, and rocky material that make up the rings will remain in place, but be invisible from the vantage point of Earth, as they do about every fifteen years. The rings are so thin that stargazers will be unable to see them through small telescopes.

Saturn star gazers are crazy about this planet! One of just a few encompassed by rings. But could these rings be vanishing or are your eye's playing tricks on you? Spinning in space, 893 million miles from the sun, lies the second biggest planet in our solar system. But how many rings of knowledge do you know about Saturn? First off -- where is it? You can pinpoint Saturn as the sixth planet from the sun.

What are Saturn's rings made of? Light? Gases? Water and ice? Rock and debris? "Rocks to boulder size objects, even up to small minivan size objects, all in orbit around Saturn," Phil Nicholson, Ph.D., professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Syracuse, N.Y., told Ivanhoe. In fact, astronomers say that the debris, gases, water and ice that make up the rings are actually speeding around Saturn 60 times faster than a speeding bullet. So could these rings someday disappear? "Twice in this 30 year period, the rings are on edge and they disappear," Dr. Nicholson said. It's called the ring plane crossing. Once every 14 to 15 years, Saturn makes its way around the sun, turning it rings edge-on to Earth. The rings are so thin they can actually seem to disappear. "As the planet moves around the sun, it presents the south pole of the rings to the sun and then presents the north pole to the sun and half way in between, when the rings are edge on, we just don't see them anymore," Dr. Nicholson said. "Saturn takes a little bit less than 30 years to go once around the Sun on it's orbit. So instead of it being an equinox every six months like there is on the earth, March to September, on Saturn, there is an equinox approximately every 14 to 15 years." That means, Saturn's rings will appear thinner and thinner until on September 4th, 2009 the rings will seem to vanish only to reappear three months later. Giving galaxy gazers something to keep an eye on. ABOUT SATURN: Saturn has been known since prehistoric times. It is the sixth planet from the sun, and the second largest in the solar system, a gas giant ranked behind only Jupiter. Saturn is composed primarily of hydrogen, with smaller amounts of helium and other trace elements. Its interior is made of a small core of rock and ice, surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen and a gaseous outer later. Saturn is best known for its prominent system of rings, which are mostly comprised of ice particles, rocky debris, and dust. Astronomers believe the rings may have been formed from larger moons that were shattered by impacts from comets and meteoroids. The planet also has at least 62 moons; most of them are quite small, but the largest is Titan, which is bigger than the planet mercury and is the only moon in the entire solar system to have a significant atmosphere. A DIFFERENT TYPE OF RING: "Einstein rings" are an optical illusion created when the fabric of spacetime is warped by the presence of massive objects, like stars or entire galaxies. The effect is known as gravitational lensing, and it acts like a giant magnifying glass in space, bending and amplifying the light of more distant objects. Light from a distant galaxy can be deflected by an intervening galaxy to create an arc or multiple separate images. When both galaxies are exactly lined up, the light forms a bulls-eye pattern -- the Einstein ring -- around the foreground galaxy.

The American Geophysical Union and the American Astronomical Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

New Control Techniques For Preventing Aircraft Crashes

ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2007) Researchers at TU Delft recently demonstrated how improved control techniques can reduce the risk of aircraft crashes. The demonstration involved reconstructing troubled flights -- such as the El Al flight which crashed in the Bijlmer area of Amsterdam in 1992 -- in a flight simulator and adding the newly developed technology.

The presentation in Delft was the final phase of a research project involving the GARTEUR international research partnership (participants include TU Delft and the National Aerospace Laboratory NLR) into Fault Tolerant Control. This involves techniques for keeping damaged aircraft in the air for longer and enabling continuing flight control. The key to this is to improve control techniques which enable the aircraft to continue to be controlled. The implemented improvements are based on the analysis of flight data from aviation accidents by the NLR. This has led to improved interpretation of the (defective) condition of the aircraft. During the demonstration of these improved techniques to the general public at TU Delft on Nov. 21, a number of realistic accident scenarios were taken as examples, including the Bijlmer crash. These have been reconstructed using TU Delft's Simona flight simulator, but this time also using the newly-developed control techniques. Simulator experiments have shown that the new techniques make it easier for the pilot to land seriously-damaged aircraft safely. Incidentally, the new techniques are only expected to be introduced in practice in the long term. The new improvements can largely be attributed to the greater calculation capacity of computers and further progress in the underlying mathematical theory of the past few years. According to TU Delft, both military and civil aviation parties are displaying great interest in these developments.

Engineering Modifications Enhance Aircraft Safety

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2007) Modifications of an aircraft control system developed by University of Leicester engineers, have been tested by flight test engineers from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and German Air Force test pilots.

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The Leicester modifications have effectively compensated for an inherent design limitation that has led to several disastrous crashes - most notably the JAS-29 during an air show in Stockholm and the YF-22. Man-machine interactions in aircraft can lead to so-called pilot involved/in-the-loop oscillations (PIOs) which can compromise aircraft performance and safety. PIOs have therefore become a major concern for the European and US aerospace industry. The University of Leicester Department of Engineering has been a member of the European GARTEUR (Group for Aeronautical Research and Technology in Europe) Action Group AG15 for the past three years. The group's aim is to develop techniques which allow the prediction and prevention of PIOs. Over the past several years Leicester has developed control design techniques ("anti-windup compensators") which can be added to existing aircraft control systems to lessen susceptibility to PIOs. Extensive mathematical development and computer simulation has matured these techniques but until summer 2006 no in-flight testing was performed. Recently, a team of engineers from Leicester, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and test pilots from the German Armed Forces Flight Test Centre (WTD61) performed in-flight tests of these "PIO prevention" compensators on the DLR ATTAS (Advanced Technologies Testing Aircraft System) experimental aircraft. During this flight test campaign, termed SAIFE (Saturation Alleviation In-Flight Experiment), the ATTAS aircraft was deployed in scenarios which were expected to lead to PIO type events and data and pilot comments were collected both with and without the Leicester compensators engaged. University of Leicester engineer Dr Matthew Turner commented: "Pilot comments showed that with the Leicester compensators engaged, the aircraft was significantly less PIO prone than without. Moreover, the aircraft was deemed to have more predictable handling qualities overall, which was an added bonus. "In fact in every single manoeuvre the aircraft performed as well as or better than normal, when the Leicester compensators were engaged." The results were well-received within the GARTEUR action group and further flight tests are planned - again jointly with DLR and WTD61 - in April 2007.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Leicester.

Detecting Turbulence Mathematician Calms The Skies With Turbulence Detection Algorithm

January 1, 2008 A mathematician developed a system that creates a threedimensional view of turbulence and transmits it to airliner cockpits. The new algorithm analyzes data gathered by Next Generation Doppler Radars and sends a real-time readout of turbulence every five minutes, covering an area up to one hundred miles out in front of a speeding plane.
Airline passengers may soon have smoother flights and fewer delays! Pilots are testing a new turbulence detection system that may really pay off for both the airlines and its passengers. United airlines captain Joe Burns says he is impressed with the turbulence detection that shows pilots where there is turbulent or smooth flying. Having the ability to see where the smooth air is, whereas traditionally flying around a little then hunting around for smoother air to have that projected along the flight we can hopefully avoid the rough air all together, Captain Burns told Ivanhoe. Developed by mathematician, John Williams, the system, called NTDA, uses data from national weather service Doppler radar to create a three-dimensional view of turbulence that is transmitted digitally and visually to the cockpit. This is really the first time pilots had real time showing turbulence information showing potential clouds and storms in front of the aircraft, Williams told Ivanhoe. "It is very gratifying years of research actually paying off with a product that is actually making a difference. The FAA estimates there are more than 1,000 turbulence-related injuries every year. So far, the detection system shows a greater than eighty percent accuracy rate in United's test.

WHAT IS TURBULENCE? Air is a gas and water is a liquid, but scientist lump both into the category of fluids. A material is considered a fluid if the amount of force needed to change its shape is dependent on how quickly it changes. For a solid, the force needed to change its shape is dependent on how much it changes. For example, it takes the same amount of force to break a twig quickly as it does to break it slowly. But moving your hand through a body of water quickly will deform the liquid more than if you moved your hand through it slowly. The same phenomenon happens with air, as anyone who has ever stuck a hand out the window of a fast-moving car can attest. Turbulence is what happens when the flow of air experiences a sudden change in wind speed or direction. This makes it bumpy instead of smooth. We can see turbulent flow in rivers and streams, or even when we stir cream into our morning cup of coffee. And most of us have experienced mild turbulence while flying in an airplane; the plane is flying through a "sea" of air, and sometimes the "waves" are choppy.

Many things can cause turbulence: rising warm air, thunderstorms, even strong winds blowing over the tops of mountains, buildings and other objects in its way. Extreme turbulence is caused by severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, or hurricanes; airplanes usually divert their courses to avoid such areas. Turbulence on flights can be annoying, but passengers are usually safe so long as they keep their seat belts fastened. The bumps and jolts don't really affect the aircraft or its flight path, unless the turbulence is quite severe. Severe turbulence can be avoided by flying around storm cells, or changing to a higher altitude.

Aerospace Engineers To Test Energy-efficient Wing Design

ScienceDaily (Mar. 24, 2006) Aerospace engineers from Texas A&M University's Flight Research Laboratory are in Kansas this week testing a new design for an energy-efficient aircraft wing.

The Aggie team is led by aerospace engineering professor and newly elected member of the National Academy of Engineering Dr. William Saric. The researchers are testing a design for an energy-efficient airfoil, or wing. In flight, air should flow smoothly and uninterrupted over the wing. A choppy, or turbulent, flow of air over a wing increases drag, and the plane has to work harder, using more energy. The researchers use infrared thermography to detect whether airflow over the wing is turbulent, which the researchers want to avoid. Very sensitive infrared cameras provide images of the air as it flows over the wing. Saric said the researchers have made their design work in a low-speed wind tunnel but now need to test their design in more realistic flow conditions. Saric said that colder temperatures make for different air flows and more realistic flight conditions for other aircraft. "The predicted lows in Coffeyville this week are about freezing," Saric said. "That's ideal for us. You lose 3.6 degrees per 1,000 feet of altitude, so the operating temperatures during our flights will be in the high 20s." The Aggie crew left Bryan-College Station last Saturday (March 11). Ph.D. student Celine Kluzek and Flight Research Laboratory mechanic Cecil Rhodes flew the lab's Cessna O-2 to Coffeyville. Two more students followed in Saric's truck and equipment trailer, and test pilots Roy Martin and emeritus professor Dr. Donald Ward met the team there. Once in Kansas, the model was mounted to the plane underneath a wing. Test pilots will fly the Cessna, and infrared cameras on the plane will measure the airflow over the wing.

"It's an extension of our wind-tunnel work -- kind of like a laboratory or wind tunnel in the sky," Saric said. "We're at the limits of what we can do here in the warmer weather of Bryan-College Station. We need to test in colder temperatures to improve the demonstration." Dr. Helen Reed, head of the Department of Aerospace Engineering, said, "Dr. Saric and his team are testing revolutionary new technologies that will enable future aerospace systems. His research involving students, both graduate and undergraduate, in these unique hands-on endeavors stimulates leadership and provides a good complement to their engineering education."

Adapted from materials provided by Texas A&M University.

Texas A&M aerospace engineers are in Kansas this week testing this design for an energyefficient aircraft wing. The test design is mounted under the wing of the researchers' airplane. (Image courtesy of Texas A&M University)

Birds, Bats And Insects Hold Secrets For Aerospace Engineers

ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2008) Natural flyers like birds, bats and insects outperform man-made aircraft in aerobatics and efficiency. University of Michigan engineers are studying these animals as a step toward designing flapping-wing planes with wingspans smaller than a deck of playing cards.

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A Blackbird jet flying nearly 2,000 miles per hour covers 32 body lengths per second. But a common pigeon flying at 50 miles per hour covers 75. The roll rate of the aerobatic A-4 Skyhawk plane is about 720 degrees per second. The roll rate of a barn swallow exceeds 5,000 degrees per second. Select military aircraft can withstand gravitational forces of 8-10 G. Many birds routinely experience positive G-forces greater than 10 G and up to 14 G. Natural flyers obviously have some highly varied mechanical properties that we really have not incorporated in engineering, said Wei Shyy, chair of the Aerospace Engineering department and an author of the new book The Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers. Theyre not only lighter, but also have much more adaptive structures as well as capabilities of integrating aerodynamics with wing and body shapes, which change all the time, Shyy said. Natural flyers have outstanding capabilities to remain airborne through wind gusts, rain, and snow. Shyy photographs birds to help him understand their aerodynamics. Pressure generated during flight cause the flapping wings to deform, he explained. In turn, the deformed wing tells the air that the wing shape is different than it appears in still air. If appropriately handled, this phenomenon can delay stall, enhance stability and increase thrust. Flapping flight is inherently unsteady, but thats why it works so well. Birds, bats and insects fly in a messy environment full of gusts traveling at speeds similar to their own. Yet they can react almost instantaneously and adapt with their flexible wings. Shyy and his colleagues have several grants from the Air Force totaling more than $1 million a year to research small flapping wing aircraft. Such aircraft would fly slower than their fixed wing counterparts, and more importantly, they would be able to hover and possibly perch in order to monitor the environment or a hostile area. Shyys current focus is on the aerodynamics of flexible wings related to micro air vehicles with wingspans between 1 and 3 inches. These days, if you want to design a flapping wing vehicle, you could build one with trial and error, but in a controlled environment with no wind gusts, Shyy said. We are trying to figure out how to design a vehicle that can perform a mission in an uncertain environment. When the wind blows, how do they stay on course? A dragonfly, Shyy says, has remarkable resilience to wind, considering how light it is. The professor chalks that up to its wing structure and flight control. But the details are still questions. Were really just at the beginning of this, Shyy said. Shyy is the Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson Collegiate Professor of Aerospace Engineering. Other authors of the book, Aerodynamics of Low Reynolds Number Flyers are: U-M research scientists Yongsheng Lian, Jian Tang and Dragos Viieru, and Hao Liu, professor of Biomechanical Engineering at Chiba University in Japan.

Other collaborators on this research include professors Luis Bernal, Carlos Cesnik and Peretz Friedmann of the University of Michigan; Hao Liu of Chiba University in Japan; Peter Ifju, Rick Lind and Larry Ukeiley of University of Florida, and Sean Humbert of University of Maryland.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Michigan.

Flapping flight is inherently unsteady, but that's why it works so well. Birds, bats and insects fly in a messy environment full of gusts traveling at speeds similar to their own. Yet they can react almost instantaneously and adapt with their flexible wings. (Credit: iStockphoto/Steve Byland)

Bat Flight Generates Complex Aerodynamic Tracks

ScienceDaily (May 11, 2007) Bats generate a measurably distinct aerodynamic footprint to achieve lift and maneuverability, quite unlike birds and contrary to many of the assumptions that aerodynamicists have used to model animal flight, according to University of Southern California aerospace engineer Geoffrey Spedding.

The researcher, together with a multi-institutional team of scientists found that bat flight is quite different from bird flight, particularly at very small scales. They based their findings on new measurements of aerodynamic performance in the wing beats of a small species of bat. "Bats with a body mass of 10 -- 30 grams -- or about the weight of one or two teaspoons of sugar -- and tip-to-tip wing spans of 25 -- 30 centimeters -- about the length of a human hand -generate very different wakes," he reported in the May 11, 2007 issue of Science. "The tell-tale tracks in the airflow caused by the wing beat have a very different pattern for bats, and this difference can be traced to the peculiar upstroke," he continued. "That, in turn, is likely caused by the collapsible membrane of the bat's wing, which needs to maintain some degree of tension."

Bats constitute about 20 percent of mammalian species, but not much attention has been paid to them because of their nocturnal habits. Most bats eat flying insects, consuming up to their body weight each night. Their agility and tremendous ability to maneuver in flight is accentuated by their ability to locate prey using an advanced echo-location system, which is basically a sonar operated by ultrasound. The authors noted that bat wings are very different from those of birds because of their separate evolutionary paths to flight. "Instead of feathers projecting back from lightweight, fused arm and hand bones, bats have flexible, elastic membranes that stretch between specially extended, slender bones of the hand," Spedding said. "The bones and wing membrane both change shape with every wing beat, flexing in response to the balance between forces applied by the muscles and competing forces due to the air motion around them. " In contrast with bird wings, the bat wing membrane must be kept under tension, otherwise it will flap uselessly, like a flag. As a consequence, Spedding said, there are limits to how much the wing can be folded during flight. Spedding and his colleagues think that the unique aerodynamic wake signatures of bat wings are caused by different mechanical operations in the upstroke of the wingbeat. "Where birds can feather their wings, opening the feathers like a Venetian blind, bats must do something different," Spedding said. "Hence, they have developed a twisting wing path that increases the lift during the upstroke." This is the first time that this positive aerodynamic effect has been observed in wing flapping, he said, and it is consistent with previous speculation that was based on the bat's complicated wing motions alone. Spedding said the findings are just the beginning of an exciting research program to make detailed measurements of bat wings and add to a growing body of data about bat flight. "Bats are agile hunters, capable of plotting and executing complex maneuvers through cluttered environments," he said. "These are the traits we'd like our unmanned air vehicles to have because there are so many complex rural and urban environments in which we could use them." With the promise of human-engineered, micro-scale flight just around the corner, engineers may also be able to emulate bat wings, building simple mechanical wings of flexible, elastic material stretched over support rods, to improve the aeronautical performance of smaller airborne vehicles. "Bats have relied on very flexible wings for 50 million years to propel and lift themselves into the sky," Spedding said. "We still have a lot more to learn about the aerodynamics of bat flight and how their wings allow them to maneuver through incredibly unsteady air flows and turbulent conditions." These findings are presented in an article titled "Bat Flight Generates Complex Aerodynamic Tracks." Coauthors included A. Hedenstrm, L. C. Johansson and M. Wolf of Lund University,

Sweden; R. von Busse of the University of Munich, Germany; and Y. Winter at Bielefeld University in Germany.

Adapted from materials provided by University of Southern California, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

A bat, Glossophaga soricina, in flight in a wind tunnel at Lund University, Sweden. The velocity field induced by the wingbeat is shown superimposed and to scale. The bat wake reconstructions have features that have not been observed in similar-sized birds. Membranous and feathered wings of natural and engineered flyers may have significantly different aerodynamic properties. (Credit: Lund University, Sweden)

Fly Jet Lag Free New Jetliner Technology Emphasizes Human Factors
February 1, 2007 The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner will be the first of a new generation of commercial aircraft provided with a number of new technologies to increase comfort and reduce jet-lag. Human-factors engineers have designed LED lighting that can fade slowly to help passengers set their sleep cycles, and better filtration technology for cleaner air. Recreating conditions closer to those at sea level, cabin pressure will be higher and the air will have higher humidity.
Taking off on a long flight? Then you probably try things to fight jet lag. But preventing the effects of jet lag may soon be a matter of simply the plane you take off in. This new Boeing 787 Dreamliner is designed to make you feel more refreshed when you reach your destination. Plenty of room and a smooth ride are key to a passenger's comfort, but with help from human factors engineers, passengers are surrounded by technologies to help them fight jet lag, like

lighting to mimic sunrise and sunset. A new filtration system means cleaner air. The air will have higher humidity and lower cabin pressure, which helps passengers feel less tired after a long flight. "The architecture is very, very open in this airplane, and that's important in making people feel comfortable and rested when they land," Boeing Engineer Kenneth Price tells DBIS. "Because LED lights can do a very slow fade down into the nighttime environment and a very slow fade back to the daytime environment, passengers can fall asleep much more naturally and wake up much more naturally, which helps set their sleep cycles." ...And help make an effortless transition to their destination. The first test flight for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is set for August 2007. It should be ready for commercial use in mid-2008. Northwest, Continental and other airlines have already ordered the planes. BACKGROUND: Boeing is launching a new plane called the 787 Dreamliner with features specifically designed to help combat the causes of jet lag, based on a battery of experiments on several hundred people. The new Boeing 787 holds up to 250 passengers and uses 20 percent less fuel than other aircraft of similar size. It will be available for commercial flights in mid2008. WHAT CAUSES JET LAG? Many factors contribute to jet lag, including lighting, pressure, humidity, and air quality. But the primary cause is rapid traveling across numerous time zones, which results in the body's internal clock becoming out of sync with the local destination time. It takes about one day for each time zone crossed for the body's circadian rhythms to adapt to the new time zone. Symptoms of jetlag include dehydration and loss of appetite; headaches; fatigue; nausea or upset stomach; insomnia or disrupted sleep patterns; and disorientation or grogginess. ABOUT THE DESIGN: Boeing's innovative new design, which incorporates wider seats and aisles, a wider cabin, larger lavatories, and windows that are 65 percent larger than those in conventional airplanes. Those windows are also outfitted with electro-chromic window shades to passengers can dim them while still being able to see outside. Light-emitting diodes simulate both the brightness and color of the aircraft's ceiling to give a sense of daylight when needed, or simulate a lovely nighttime sky. The new jets will also feature an innovative new air purification method called gaseous filtration to reduce airborne contaminants that Boeing's studies have found cause many of the symptoms associated with low humidity. Keeping the plane at an onboard pressure of 6,000 feet, instead of 8,000 feet, gives passengers 10 percent more oxygen so they are less tired after the flight. THE ANTI-JET-LAG DIET: the Anti-Jet Lag Diet, apparently practiced by athletes, among others, to reduce the effects of crossing time zones over and over and over again. The most notable strategy is alternating days of feast and famine from a few days before, to a few days after, your planned trip across time zones. On feast days, eat three full meals, with breakfast and lunch being particularly high in protein. This helps the body produce the chemicals it would normally produce when it's time to wake up. Feast-day dinners, in contrast, should be rich in

carbohydrates to help the body produce those chemicals it would normally produce around bedtime. Fast days should consist of three small meals low in both carbs and calories: salads, soups, half-slices of bread. The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the video portion of this report.

Reducing Airplane Noise Acoustical Engineers Find Simple Way to Reduce Airplane Noise.
July 1, 2005 A new landing procedure keeps airplanes higher until they are much closer to the airport. The new procedure, called continuous descent approach, promises to save fuel money while cutting noise levels near airports. Researchers involved in a test study found an average noise reduction of 4 to 6 decibels.
WASHINGTON--You don't have to live right next door to an airport to hear the roar of jetliners cruising overhead. Now, engineers have unveiled a new landing plan that may help our friendly skies be a little quieter. Tamara Koch, who lives near an airport, doesn't have to see the planes flying overhead to know they are there. "It's annoying, and it disturbs you with whatever it is that you're doing at the time," Koch says. Koch may not be able to stop the noise overhead, but now, acoustical engineers may have found a way to make that noise a little more bearable. Kevin Shepherd, an acoustical engineer from NASA Langley in Hampton, Va., says, "The idea is to keep the airplanes higher than they conventionally are." During traditional landings, airplanes descend and fly at low altitudes many miles from the runway. This brings the engine roar closer to more people. The new landing procedure, called continuous descent approach, keeps airplanes higher until they're much closer to the airport. This means planes will still be seen, but less of the noise will be heard. Shepherd says, "Instead of descending and then flying level and then descending, they just descend the whole way. This is the reduction of six, eight or even 10 decibels." The noise level of a jet engine could actually be cut in half and that's not all. The new landing plan uses less fuel, which could end up saving jet-setters like Koch some cash. "It would be great to have a little less air traffic, on the other hand living so close to National Airport for us is very convenient if we want to take a trip," Koch says. So whether she is up there or down here, flying is about to get friendlier.

UPS already uses the new continuous descent procedure at some airports and is interested in implementing the procedure every place it operates. WHAT CAUSES AIRPLANE NOISE: Airplane noise arises from the basic principles of flight: lift and weight (the pull of gravity), and thrust and drag. An airplane's wings are designed to create an area of fast-flowing air (and hence low pressure) above the surface. A wing is basically an airfoil, with a leading edge that is angled to "attack" the air in such a way that it increases the speed of the airflow above the wing, decreasing the pressure there. When the lift becomes greater than the object's weight, the object will begin to rise. If the lift is less than the weight of the airplane, the plane will descend, while increasing the lift will cause the plane to climb to a higher altitude. Noise from an aircraft descent comes from two primary sources: the engine, and aerodynamic noise from the drag along the flaps on the edge of the wing. Airplanes typically land in "staircase-like" paths, reducing their altitude in a series of steps towards an airport. Each step requires a noisy engine thrust to level out the aircraft after moving to a lower level. The most noise is generated at the lowest step. ADVANTAGES: Some airports are already using an alternative "continuous descent approach," in which the aircraft maintains a cruise altitude until it is relatively close to an airport, at which point it makes an even, continuous descent to the runway. This can more than halve the noise level. It can also reduce fuel emissions and slightly shorten flight time, since the plane operates at lower power settings, maintains higher altitudes and speeds, and takes more direct paths to the runway.