Snow Angel

Object Names: S106, Sh2-106, Sharpless 2-106
Image Type: Astronomical/Illustration

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

December 15, 2011: The bipolar star-forming region, called Sharpless 2-106, or S106 for short, looks like a soaring, celestial snow angel. The outstretched "wings" of the nebula record the contrasting imprint of heat and motion against the backdrop of a colder medium. Twin lobes of super-hot gas, glowing blue in this image, stretch outward from the central star. This hot gas creates the "wings" of our angel. A ring of dust and gas orbiting the star acts like a belt, cinching the expanding nebula into an "hourglass" shape. See: Hubble Serves Up a Holiday Snow Angel

Keeping Research Exciting

Comet LoveJoy

Comet Lovejoy seen by SOHO

“On average, new Kreutz-group comets are discovered every few days by SOHO, but from the ground they are much rarer to see or discover,” says Karl Battams, Naval Research Laboratory, who curates the Sun-grazing comets webpage. See Also: The beginning of the end for comet Lovejoy

 One instrument watching for the comet was the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which adjusted its cameras in order to watch the trajectory. Not only does this help with comet research, but it also helps orient instruments on SDO -- since the scientists know where the comet is based on other spacecraft, they can finely determine the position of SDO's mirrors. This first clip from SDO from the evening of Dec 15, 2011 shows Comet Lovejoy moving in toward the sun. 

Comet Lovejoy survived its encounter with the sun. The second clip shows the comet exiting from behind the right side of the sun, after an hour of travel through its closest approach to the sun. By tracking how the comet interacts with the sun's atmosphere, the corona, and how material from the tail moves along the sun's magnetic field lines, solar scientists hope to learn more about the corona. This movie was filmed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory in 171 Angstrom wavelength, which is typically shown in yellow.

Credit: NASA/SDO

The Very Latest SOHO Images

Explanation on Quantum Gravity in a Nutshell

Although Aristotle in general had a more empirical and experimental attitude than Plato, modern science did not come into its own until Plato's Pythagorean confidence in the mathematical nature of the world returned with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton. For instance, Aristotle, relying on a theory of opposites that is now only of historical interest, rejected Plato's attempt to match the Platonic Solids with the elements -- while Plato's expectations are realized in mineralogy and crystallography, where the Platonic Solids occur naturally.Plato and Aristotle, Up and Down-Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D.

The goal of string theory is to explain the "?" in the above diagram.

 I enjoyed the Livescribe demonstration by Clifford of  Asymptotia along with the explanation for Quantum Gravity. The two pillars for me were very emblematic with regards to "pillars of science."  This as well as the arch  is very fitting to me of what becomes self evident. If  under such an examination of the two areas Clifford is talking about,  Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity then are the attempts at unification.

 
The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei. DVD-ROM, 2002. ISBN 3936122202. Distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH.

That question mark can be demonstrated above as to where in the location in Cliffords diagrams is related to the Aristotelian Arch in my view?

See:

•  Clifford Scribbling About Quantum Gravity
•  Quantum Gravity in a Nutshell

Higgs Update Today

Backgrounder:

Guido Tonelli(CMS spokesperson) Higgs update English 1404258

Fabiola Gianotti (ATLAS spokesperson) Higgs update English 1403055

Heuer with Gianotti and Tonelli

See:

• Higgs Update Today: Inconclusive, As Expected

• Firm Evidence Of A Higgs Boson At Last!

See Also:

• Possible Hints of the Higgs Remain in Latest Analyses

• Possible signs of the Higgs remain in latest analyses

Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln describes the concept of how the search for the Higgs boson is accomplished. The latest data is revealed! Several large experimental groups are ht on the trail of this elusive subatomic particle which is thought to explain the origins of particle mass.

Tools For Cern Public Annoucement

CERN PUBLIC SEMINAR

 Tuesday, December 13, 2011 from 14:00 to 16:00 (Europe/Zurich)
at CERN ( Main Auditorium )

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

• 14:00 - 14:30 Update on the Standard Model Higgs searches in ATLAS 30'

  Speaker:

  Fabiola Gianotti

• 14:30 - 15:00 Update on the Standard Model Higgs searches in CMS 30'

  Speaker:

  Guido TONELLI

• 15:00 - 16:00 Joint question session 1h0' 

Located at Indico Cern Conference

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See:

• Article #1 on Standard Model Higgs: How It Is Produced at the LHC
•  Fundamental Glossary For The Higgs Broadcast
• Higgs boson
  

See Also:

• What is a Higgs boson?
• How do we search for Higgs bosons?

Kepler-22b

Images credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech

This image is an artist's conception of planet Kepler-22b, a planet known to comfortably circle in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. It is the first planet that NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed to orbit in a star's habitable zone -- the region around a star where liquid water, a requirement for life on Earth, could persist. The planet is 2.4 times the size of Earth, making it the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star like our sun. See: Kepler-22b, Super-Earth in the habitable zone of a Sun-like Star

Bolshoi Simulation: WMAP Explorer

Bolshoi Simulation Visualization from UC-HPACC on Vimeo. Watch With Music.

  Visualization of the dark matter in 1/1000 of the gigantic Bolshoi cosmological simulation, zooming in on a region centered on the dark matter halo of a very large cluster of galaxies.  Visualized by Chris Henze, NASA Ames Research Center. This visualization was narrated in the National Geographic TV special "Inside the Milky Way".  It was used with the piece "Dark Matter" in Bjork's Biophilia concert. 

 The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made (“bolshoi” is the Russian word for “great” or “grand”).  The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world’s astronomers and astrophysicists. See: Introduction: The Bolshoi Simulation

See Also:

• Bolshoi simulations and their implications
•  NASA Supercomputer Enables Largest Cosmological Simulations

Gordon Kane Post on Reference Frame

Fig.3 Revisionist History and String Theory and the Real World

See: "Learning from theory and data about our string vacuum"

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Also for viewing:

NAS Produces Animations of Dark Matter for Planetarium Shows

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The newly-installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS)

 Description


Excerpt from "Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer - A Physics Experiment on the International Space Station" by Dr. Sam Ting: The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) is a state-of-the-art particle physics detector constructed, tested and operated by an international team composed of 60 institutes from 16 countries and organized under United States Department of Energy (DOE) sponsorship. The AMS-02 will use the unique environment of space to advance knowledge of the universe and lead to the understanding of the universe's origin by searching for antimatter, dark matter and measuring cosmic rays.

Experimental evidence indicates that our Galaxy is made of matter; however, there are more than 100 hundred million galaxies in the universe and the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe requires equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Theories that explain this apparent asymmetry violate other measurements. Whether or not there is significant antimatter is one of the fundamental questions of the origin and nature of the universe. Any observations of an antihelium nucleus would provide evidence for the existence of antimatter. In 1999, AMS-01 established a new upper limit of 10^-6 for the antihelium/helium flux ratio in the universe. AMS-02 will search with a sensitivity of 10^-9, an improvement of three orders of magnitude, sufficient to reach the edge of the expanding universe and resolve the issue definitively.

The visible matter in the universe (stars) adds up to less than 5 percent of the total mass that is known to exist from many other observations. The other 95 percent is dark, either dark matter (which is estimated at 20 percent of the universe by weight or dark energy, which makes up the balance). The exact nature of both still is unknown. One of the leading candidates for dark matter is the neutralino. If neutralinos exist, they should be colliding with each other and giving off an excess of charged particles that can be detected by AMS-02. Any peaks in the background positron, anti-proton, or gamma flux could signal the presence of neutralinos or other dark matter candidates.

Six types of quark (u, d, s, c, b and t) have been found experimentally, however all matter on Earth is made up of only two types of quarks (u and d). It is a fundamental question whether there is matter made up of three quarks (u, d and s). This matter is known as Strangelets. Strangelets can have extremely large mass and very small charge-to-mass ratios. It would be a totally new form of matter. AMS will provide a definitive answer on the existence of this extraordinary matter. The above three examples indicates that AMS will probe the foundations of modern physics.

Cosmic radiation is a significant obstacle to a manned space flight to Mars. Accurate measurements of the cosmic ray environment are needed to plan appropriate countermeasures. Most cosmic ray studies are done by balloon-borne satellites with flight times that are measured in days; these studies have shown significant variations. AMS-02 will be operative on the ISS for a nominal mission of 3 years, gathering an immense amount of accurate data and allowing measurements of the long term variation of the cosmic ray flux over a wide energy range, for nuclei from protons to iron. After the nominal mission, AMS-02 can continue to provide cosmic ray measurements. In addition to the understanding the radiation protection required for manned interplanetary flight, this data will allow the interstellar propagation and origins of cosmic rays to be pinned down. See: The newly-installed Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS)

Apex Experiment

APEX is one of several experiments hunting for the carrier of a new force, a hypothetical boson dubbed A’. This graph shows the range of the parameter space covered by these proposed experiments. The solid red is the slice of parameter space covered by APEX’s test run. The full APEX experiment will search the entire area above the red curve. See: PI Science: Hunting for New Forces

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We present a search at Jefferson Laboratory for new forces mediated by sub-GeV vector bosons with weak coupling $\alpha'$ to electrons. Such a particle $A'$ can be produced in electron-nucleus fixed-target scattering and then decay to an $e^+e^-$ pair, producing a narrow resonance in the QED trident spectrum. Using APEX test run data, we searched in the mass range 175--250 MeV, found no evidence for an $A'\to e^+e^-$ reaction, and set an upper limit of $\alpha'/\alpha \simeq 10^{-6}$. Our findings demonstrate that fixed-target searches can explore a new, wide, and important range of masses and couplings for sub-GeV forces. See: Search for a new gauge boson in the $A'$ Experiment (APEX)

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Rouven Essig, Search for a New Vector Boson Decaying to e+e- (talk to Hall A Collaboration on APEX Motivation ).