Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries
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Note: Sometimes mre detail . doesnt guarantee better quality information .After a point it ecomes hazy. like the filed of fractal where how much deeper you go.youwill find the same repeating pattern.
A few decades later the Danish astronomer Ole Rømer diminished the speculation by observing the orbit of Io, the innermost moon of Jupiter. Ever since January 1610,
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Note: Calculated first speed of light within 30 precision ..130k miles..by observing Io
Heat is the total energy of all the motions of all the molecules in your substance of choice. It so happens that, within the mixture, the range of energies is large: some molecules move quickly, others move slowly. Temperature simply measures their average energy. For example, a cup of freshly brewed coffee may have a higher temperature than a heated swimming pool, but all the water in the pool holds vastly more heat than does the lone cup of coffee. If you rudely pour your 200-degree coffee into the 100-degree pool, the pool won’t suddenly become 150 degrees. And whereas two people in a bed are a source of twice as much heat as one person in a bed, the average temperatures of their two bodies—98.6 and 98.6—do not normally add up to an undercover oven whose temperature is 197.2 degrees.
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Note: Difference between heat and temperature
What did Newton observe about his state of knowledge? I do not know what I appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on a seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. (Brewster 1860, p. 331)
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While natural selection drives Darwinian evolution, the growth of human culture is largely Lamarckian, where new generations of humans inherit the acquired discoveries of generations past, allowing cosmic insight to accumulate without limit.
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What are the lessons to be learned from this journey of the mind? That humans are emotionally fragile, perennially gullible, hopelessly ignorant masters of an insignificantly small speck in the cosmos.
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THE INFORMATION TRAP
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To Aristotle and nearly all the ancients, Earth lay at the center of all this activity. Nicolaus Copernicus disagreed. In his 1543 magnum opus, De Revolutionibus, he placed the Sun in the middle of the cosmos.
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THE COURSE OF a scientific discipline gets shaped in different ways, depending on whether theories lead data or data lead theories. A theory tells you what to look for, and you either find it or you don’t. If you find it, you move on to the next open question. If you have no theory but you wield tools of measurement, you’ll start collecting as much data as you can and hope that patterns emerge. But until you arrive at an overview, you’re mostly poking around in the dark.
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Galileo first looked up with a telescope in 1609,
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The word “geometry,” in fact, comes from the Greek for “earth measurement.”
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For me, though, I am content just knowing the story. When I sunbathe, I do it with full respect for the journey made by all photons that hit my body, no matter where on my anatomy they strike.
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(the Greek word planete means “wanderer”)
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Humanity had its first telescopic encounter with the celestial wanderers during the winter of 1609–10. After merely hearing of the 1608 Dutch invention, Galileo Galilei manufactured an excellent telescope of his own design,
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Galileo reported his persuasive findings in early 1610, in a short but seminal work he titled Sidereus Nuncius (“the Starry Messenger”).
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English astronomer Sir William Herschel, who discovered a seventh in 1781.
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the asteroids, so named in 1802 by the English astronomer Sir John Herschel, son of Sir William, the discoverer of Uranus.
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ONLY CERES—the largest of the asteroids, at about 580 miles in diameter—is spherical. The others are much smaller, craggy fragments shaped like doggy bones or Idaho potatoes. Curiously, Ceres alone accounts for about a quarter of the total asteroidal mass. And if you add up the masses of all the asteroids big enough to see, plus all the smaller asteroids whose existence can be extrapolated from the data, you don’t get anywhere near a planet’s worth of mass. You get about 5 percent the mass of Earth’s moon.
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The first manned spacecraft ever to leave Earth’s orbit was Apollo 8.
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Centrifugal forces arise as the simple consequence of an object’s tendency to travel in a straight line after being set in motion, and so are not true forces at all. But you can calculate with them as though they are. When you do, as did the brilliant eighteenth-century French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), you discover spots in the rotating Earth-Moon system where the gravity of Earth, the gravity of the Moon, and the centrifugal forces of the rotating system balance. These special locations are known as the points of Lagrange. And there are five of them. The first point of Lagrange (affectionately called L1) falls between Earth and the Moon, slightly closer to Earth than the point of pure gravitational balance. Any object placed there can orbit the Earth-Moon center of gravity with the same monthly period as the Moon and will appear to be locked in place along the Earth-Moon line. Although all forces cancel there, this first Lagrangian point is a precarious equilibrium. If the object drifts sideways in any direction, the combined effect of the three forces will return it to its former position. But if the object drifts directly toward or away from Earth, ever so slightly, it will irreversibly fall either toward Earth or the Moon, like a barely balanced marble atop a steep hill, a hair’s-width away from rolling down one side or the other. The second and third Lagrangian points (L2 and L3) also lie on the Earth-Moon line, but this time L2 lies far beyond the far side of the Moon, while L3 lies far beyond Earth in the opposite direction. Once again, the three forces—Earth’s gravity, the Moon’s gravity, and the centrifugal force of the rotating system—cancel in concert. And once again, an object placed in either spot can orbit the Earth-Moon center of gravity with the same monthly period as the Moon. The gravitational hilltops represented by L2 and L3 are much broader than the one represented at L1. So if you find yourself drifting down to Earth or
the Moon, only a tiny investment in fuel will bring you right back to where you were. While L1, L2, and L3 are respectable space places, the award for best Lagrangian points must go to L4 and L5. One of them lives far off to the left of the Earth-Moon centerline while the other is far off to the right, each representing a vertex of an equilateral triangle, with Earth and Moon serving as the other vertices. At L4 and L5, as with their first three siblings, all forces balance. But unlike the other Lagrangian points, which enjoy only unstable equilibrium, the equilibria at L4 and L5 are stable; no matter which direction you lean, no matter which direction you drift, the forces prevent you from leaning farther, as though you were in a valley surrounded by hills. For each of the Lagrangian points, if your object is not located exactly where all forces cancel, then its position will oscillate around the point of balance in paths called librations. (Not to be confused with the particular spots on Earth’s surface where one’s mind oscillates from ingested libations.) These librations are equivalent to the back-and-forth rocking a ball would undergo after rolling down a hill and overshooting the bottom. More than just orbital curiosities, L4 and L5 represent special places where one might build and establish space colonies. All you need do is ship raw construction materials to the area (mined not only from Earth, but perhaps from the Moon or an asteroid), leave them there with no risk of drifting away, and return later with more supplies. After all the raw materials were collected in this zero-gravity environment, you could build an enormous space station—tens of miles across—with very little stress on the construction materials. And by rotating the station, the induced centrifugal forces could simulate gravity for its hundreds (or thousands) of residents. The space enthusiasts Keith and Carolyn Henson founded the “L5 Society” in August 1975 for just that purpose, although
the society is best remembered for its resonance with the ideas of Princeton physics professor and space visionary Gerard K. O’Neill, who promoted space habitation in his writings such as the 1976 classic The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. The L5 Society was founded on one guiding principle: “to disband the Society in a mass meeting at L5,” presumably inside a space habitat, thereby declaring “mission accomplished.” In April 1987, the L5 Society merged with the National Space Institute to become the National Space Society, which continues today.
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JOHANNES KEPLER, a German mathematician and occasional mystic, made the first-ever discovery of an unchanging physical quantity in the universe. In 1618, after a decade of engaging in mystical drivel, Kepler figured out that if you square the time it takes a planet to go around the Sun, then that quantity is always proportional to the cube of the planet’s average distance from the Sun. Turns
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Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, a ninth-century Iraqi whose name lives on in the word “algorithm,”
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Bradley’s observation may seem a bit esoteric, but he was the first to confirm—through direct measurement rather than by inference—two major astronomical ideas: that light has a finite speed and that Earth is in orbit around the Sun. He also improved on the accuracy of light’s measured speed, giving 187,000 miles per second.
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The speed needed to achieve low Earth orbit (affectionately called LEO) is a little less than 18,000 miles per hour sideways, making the round trip in about an hour and a half.
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V-2 (the “V” stands for Vergeltungswaffen, or “vengeance weapon”)
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von Braun was brought to the United States, where in 1958 he directed the launch of Explorer 1, the first U.S. satellite. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to the newly created National Aeronautics and Space Administration. There he developed the Saturn V, the most powerful rocket ever created, making it possible to fulfill the American dream of landing on the Moon.
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the figure-eight three-body orbit an astrophysically irrelevant mathematical curiosity.
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nobody tells you the thin air already contains over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten septillion) atoms per cubic meter. The best laboratory vacuum chambers can pump down to as few as 10,000,000,000 (ten billion) atoms per cubic meter.
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nobody tells you the thin air already contains over 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (ten septillion) atoms per cubic meter. The best laboratory vacuum chambers can pump down to as few as 10,000,000,000 (ten billion) atoms per cubic meter. Interplanetary space gets down to about 10,000,000 (ten million) atoms per cubic meter, while interstellar space is as low as 500,000 atoms per cubic meter. The award for nothingness, however, must be given to the space between galaxies, where it is difficult to find more than a few atoms for every 10 cubic meters.
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These “lines” through the light were discovered in 1802 by the English medical chemist William Hyde Wollaston, who naively (though sensibly) suggested that they were naturally occurring boundaries between the colors.
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Fraunhofer is often referred to as the father of modern spectroscopy, but I might further make the claim that he was the father of astrophysics.
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In 1932 Karl Jansky, in the employ of Bell Telephone Laboratories and armed with a radio antenna, first “saw” radio signals that emanated from somewhere other than Earth; he had discovered the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
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In 1965, this big bang remnant was serendipitously measured in a Nobel Prize–winning observation conducted at Bell Telephone Laboratories by the physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.
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the elusive neutrino is a subatomic particle that forms every time a proton transforms into an ordinary neutron and positron, which is the antimatter partner to an electron. As obscure as the process sounds, it happens in the Sun’s core about a hundred billion billion billion billion (1038) times each second.
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For several minutes during the descent, the heat is so intense that every molecule surrounding the space capsule becomes ionized, cloaking the astronauts in a temporary plasma barrier, through which none of our communication signals can penetrate. This is the famous blackout period when the craft is aglow and Mission Control knows nothing of the astronauts’ well-being. As the craft continues to slow down through the atmosphere, the temperature cools, the air gets denser, and the plasma state can no longer be sustained. The electrons go back home to their atoms and communications are quickly restored.
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Speaking of air, at a given time and place on Earth the air temperature in full sunlight is basically the same as the air temperature under a nearby tree. What the shade does is shield you from the Sun’s radiant energy, nearly all of which passes unabsorbed through the atmosphere and lands on your skin, making you feel hotter than the air would by itself. But in empty space, where there is no air, there are no moving molecules to trigger a thermometer reading. So the question “What is the temperature of space?” has no obvious meaning. With nothing touching it, the thermometer can only register the radiant energy from all the light, from all sources, that lands upon it. On the daytime side of our airless Moon, a thermometer would register 400 K (260 degrees F). Move a few feet into the shadow of a boulder, or journey to the Moon’s night side, and the thermometer would instantly drop to 40 K (–390 degrees F). To survive a lunar day without wearing a temperature-controlled space suit, you would have to do pirouettes, alternately baking and then cooling all sides of your body, just to maintain a comfortable temperature.
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the element technetium, which, in 1937, was the first element to be synthesized in the laboratory. (The name technetium, along with other words that use the root prefix “tech-,” derives from the Greek word technetos, which translates to “artificial.”)
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The current inventory of molecules drifting between the stars is heading toward 130. The largest and most structurally intricate of them are anthracene (C14H10) and pyrene (C16H10), discovered in 2003 in the Red Rectangle Nebula, about 2,300 light-years from Earth, by Adolf N. Witt of the University of Toledo in Ohio and his colleagues. Formed of interconnected, stable rings of carbon, anthracene and pyrene belong to a family of molecules that syllable-loving chemists call polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. And just as the most complex molecules in space are based on carbon, so, of course, are we.
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A version of the Drake equation reads: Start with the number of stars in the galaxy (hundreds of billions). Multiply this large number by the fraction of stars with planets. Multiply what remains by the fraction of planets in the habitable zone. Multiply what remains by the fraction of those planets that evolved life. Multiply what remains by the fraction that have evolved intelligent life. Multiply what remains by the fraction that might have developed a technology with which to communicate across interstellar space. Finally, when you introduce a star formation rate and the expected lifetime of a technologically viable civilization you get the number of advanced civilizations that are out there now, possibly waiting for our phone call.
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only four objects in our solar system have an atmosphere of any significance: Venus, Earth, Mars, and Titan.
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there are so many planets in the universe that, for example, they outnumber the sum of all sounds and words ever uttered by every human who has ever lived.
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And here’s one for your calendar: On Friday the 13th of April, 2029, an asteroid large enough to fill the Rose Bowl as though it were an egg cup, will fly so close to Earth that it will dip below the altitude of our communication satellites. We did not name this asteroid Bambi. Instead, it’s named Apophis, after the Egyptian god of darkness and death. If the trajectory of Apophis at close approach passes within a narrow range of altitudes called the “keyhole,” the precise influence of Earth’s gravity on its orbit will guarantee that seven years later in 2036, on its next time around, the asteroid will hit Earth directly, slamming in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. The tsunami it creates will wipe out the entire west coast of North America, bury Hawaii, and devastate all the land masses of the Pacific Rim. If Apophis misses the keyhole in 2029, then, of course, we have nothing to worry about in 2036.
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The potential energy of the weights was transferred into the water and successfully raised its temperature. Joule describes his effort: The paddle moved with great resistance in the can of water, so that the weights (each of four pounds) descended at the slow rate of about one foot per second. The height of the pulleys from the ground was twelve yards, and consequently, when the weights had descended through that distance, they had to be wound up again in order to renew the motion of the paddle. After this operation had been repeated sixteen times, the increase of the temperature of the water was ascertained by means of a very sensible and accurate thermometer…. I may therefore conclude that the existence of an equivalent relation between heat and the ordinary forms of mechanical power is proved…. If my views are correct, the temperature of the river Niagara will be raised about one fifth of a degree by its fall of 160 feet. (Shamos 1959, p. 170)
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A common variety of black hole contains several times the mass of the Sun, but packs it all within an event horizon only about a dozen miles across. These are what most astronomers discuss in casual conversations on the subject. In a fall toward this beast, your body would begin to break apart within 100 miles of the center. Another common variety of black hole reaches a billion times the mass of the Sun and is contained within an event horizon that is nearly the size of the entire solar system. Black holes such as these are what lurk in the centers of galaxies.
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In 1735, the Board of Longitude’s challenge was met by a portable, palm-sized clock designed and built by an English mechanic, John Harrison. Declared to be as valuable to the navigator as a live person standing watch at a ship’s bow, Harrison’s chronometer gave renewed meaning to the word “watch.”
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Perhaps Mark Twain said it best: Get your facts first, and then you can distort ’em as much as you please. (1899, Vol. 2, Chap. XXXVII)
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When the Moon is a thin crescent, you can find the Sun 20 or 30 degrees to its right. As the Moon orbits Earth, the angle between it and the Sun grows, allowing more and more of its visible surface to be lit, reaching 100 percent frontal illumination at 180 degrees. (This monthly Earth-Sun-Moon configuration is known as syzygy, which reliably gives you a full Moon and, occasionally, a lunar eclipse.)
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