Archive for the ‘Physics’ Tag
Credits: Event Horizon Telescope collaboration et al.
So where does one begin on a day like today? I can’t honestly say what story could top seeing a photograph of an actual black hole. But the news certainly is fascinating. And check out the link. There’s a complete picture of Messier 87, a giant galaxy some 55 million light years away, located in Virgo.
Einstein theorized in a paper published in 1915 that star’s light rays curved around the sun during an eclipse. That meant the stars appeared about 1.75 second of arc away from their positions.
In May 29, 1919, when a six-minute total eclipse in Brazil caused British astronomer Arthur Eddington to determine that light rays from other stars bent when subjected to the gravitational field of our sun. He proved this through the use of photographs, and others have proven it since.
Jump to 2016. MIT graduate student Katie Bouman created the algorithm that produced the first image of the black hole. Her contributions seem to be a bit underreported, but thanks to her work, we now see the image pictured above.
Credit: Kennedy Space Center
The second big story (to me at least) is Falcon Heavy. It was supposed to launch today, but thanks to high winds aloft, we’re going to have to wait until tomorrow. But the cool thing about it is its three boosters, all expected to land perfectly. I’m always fascinated by this new generation of rockets. Elon Musk, for all his faults, is a genius. Not only did he create a better class of rockets, partly recyclable, he also made their capsules so sleekly modern.
And lastly, on April 11 NASA will host a teleconference on its study of its astronaut twins, Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly. This eagerly-awaited report will detail how Scott Kelly was affected by living in the ISS for 340 days, as compared to his twin brother, Mark Kelly, who remained on Earth. So far, these are the only twins who have both served on the ISS, and, as such, are uniquely qualified for this important study.
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Here’s a thought I had for today, since it seems there’s an element of American society terrified of the very portion of the Earth’s population that made the United States a successful nation. That, my folks, would be immigrants. It’s what made this nation great, and will continue to do so. It’s very important to remind ourselves of this, especially if one witnesses the horrific events taking shape in the United States today.
I’ll start off with one very important immigrant: Albert Einstein.
This immigrant was born in Ulm, Germany and came to the United States in 1933, a direct result of the atrocities unfolding in Europe. Nazis were conducting nuclear research with the intent of creating military weaponry. Einstein realized the potential of the catastrophic forces a nuclear bomb would unleash, and wrote President Roosevelt about it. Though it didn’t stop the eventual creation and bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he remained a pacifist and spent the rest of his life active in humanitarian causes. Seeing the parallels between Jewish atrocities and the Holocaust and the battle for civil rights unfolding in America, he joined the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
No…he didn’t invent that car, but it’s named after him: Nikola Tesla.
Born in Croatia in 1856, he came to the United States in 1884. He’s responsible for inventing alternating current electrical system, or AC – the way electricity is delivered to your house. An early partnership with Thomas Edison didn’t work out, but a later one with George Westinghouse did. Westinghouse purchased Tesla’s patent and eventually AC triumphed over Edison’s direct current electrical system, or DC. AC enabled electricity to be delivered over long distances, while Edison’s DC did not. Tesla also set the groundwork for long-distance wireless communication, but Guglielmo Marconi ultimately beat him to the punch with his radio communication technology. Tesla’s also known for his famous coil, still used in radio technology today.
Here’s an esteemed Nobel Prize winning physicist who also came from Germany: Maria Goeppert-Meyer.
Born in Kattowicz (now Katowice, Poland) in 1906. In 1930, she married American chemist and professor Joseph Mayer. Although it was difficult for a female scientist at that time to gain a foothold in the scientific community, she nevertheless published an important paper on double beta decay in 1935 while holding an assistant position at Johns Hopkins, where her husband worked. She also conducted early work in quantum sciences, and eventually came to Columbia University for an unpaid position, but during that time, she collaborated with Enrico Fermi, who tasked her to investigate the valence shell of the undiscovered transuranic elements. In 1942, she joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia to investigate separating the fissile uranium-235 isotope in natural uranium. Goeppert-Meyer developed a mathematical model for the structure of nuclear shells. For this, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 (sharing it with J. Hans D. Jensen and Eugene Wigner) and became the second female Nobel Prize winner after Marie Curie.
There are many, many others, of course, who have contributed in science, art, literature, politics, education, commerce and more. Since this country came to be as the result of immigration, each and every person who arrives upon our shores has much to contribute in making this country an example of what can be achieved…if we allow it.
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Moon, Stars and Beyond 