Posts Tagged ‘Van Allen Belt’
“There is not a discovery in science, however revolutionary, however sparkling with insight, that does not arise out of what went before”*…
Analysis of an ancient codebreaking tablet has revealed that Babylonian astronomers had calculated the movements of Jupiter using an early form of geometric calculus some 1,400 years before we thought the technique was invented by the Europeans.
This means that these ancient Mesopotamian astronomers had not only figured out how to predict Jupiter’s paths more than 1,000 years before the first telescopes existed, but they were using mathematical techniques that would form the foundations of modern calculus as we now know it…
Look more closely at the foundations of modern calculus at “This ancient Babylonian map of Jupiter just changed history as we know it.” And read the Science article reporting the findings here.
* Isaac Asimov
###
As we calculate the differential, we might send radiant birthday greetings to James Alfred Van Allen; he was born on this date in 1914. A space scientist who learned to miniaturize electronics during World War II, he was instrumental in establishing the field of magnetospheric research in space, and led the scientific community for the inclusion of scientific research instruments on space satellites. The Van Allen radiation belts were named after him, following their discovery by his Geiger–Müller tube instruments in 1958 on the Explorer 1, Explorer 3, and Pioneer 3 satellites during the International Geophysical Year.
Monsters of Grok…
From Amorphia Apparel:
Fake band t-shirts for history’s greatest minds: I don’t know about you, but I think science and philosophy are pretty bad ass, so join me in rocking out with some the most influential thinkers of all time!
More sagacious shirts at Amorphia Apparel…
As we opt for ring-spun wisdom, we might wish a thoughtful Happy Birthday to cognitive and computer scientist John McCarthy; he was born on this date in 1927. A recipient of the Turing Award, McCarthy coined the phrase “Artificial Intelligence” (in a 1955 proposal for a 1956 Dartmouth conference), founded the first A.I. Lab (at MIT in 1958), and created LISP (List Processing Language), the computer language most commonly used in AI research.
In 1961, McCarthy was the first to imagine and propose a future in which computers could be shared by multiple users, and computing could be provided as a utility. The idea was popular in the late 60s, then waned in the 70s, as it became clear that hardware and software weren’t (yet) up to the task. But with the new millennium, McCarthy’s concept retook the fore– and in the last few years, rose to The Cloud…
They Came from Outer Space!…
source: NASA, via IEEE Spectrum
For years, scientists have known that satellites and astronauts are vulnerable to “space weather,” more specifically to geo-magnetic storms that generate “killer electrons” powerful enough to penetrate shielding, damage spacecraft, and injure spacemen. But no one has been able to explain just how these nefarious particles are produced… so there’s been no trustworthy ability to predict– and avoid– them.
Now, as IEEE Spectrum and the European Space Agency report, scientists affiliated Los Alamos National Labs and a separate team at the ESA have begun to explain the phenomenon. The details are referenced in the cited reports; here suffice it to say that the electrons (originating in the Van Allen Belt) are accelerated– to velocities approaching the speed of light– by a combination of Very Low Frequency and (higher amplitude) Ultra Low Frequency electromagnetic waves, themselves excited by the impact of solar storms on the earth’s protective electromagnetic bubble.
And not a moment too soon: As Philippe Escoubet, an ESA scientist remarks, “These new findings help us to improve the models predicting the radiation environment in which satellites and astronauts operate. With solar activity now ramping up, we expect more of these shocks to impact our magnetosphere over the months and years to come.”
As we re-fit our tin foil helmets, we might recall that it was on this date in 1845 that Stephen Perry patented the rubber band. The milk of the rubber tree had been long used by folks who lived where the trees were native to make shoes, clothes, and “bottles”– which were brought back to England by returning sailors. In 1820, Thomas Hancock sliced up one of the bottles to create elastic garters and “belts.” Perry, who owned a rubber manufacturing company was sufficiently taken with Hancock’s idea to file a patent on the rubber band– the first of which were made from vulcanized rubber. (They are now commonly made of a combination of rubber and latex.)
(It was also on this date in 1950 that Glenn Seaborg and a team of colleagues at UC Berkeley announced a new element, number 98– Californium– a radioactive element the isotopes of which have important medical and industrial uses, as they are powerful point sources of neutrons.)
You must be logged in to post a comment.