JOIN USRosetta's lost picture before it struck a comet
HIDDEN IMAGE
Rosetta’s lost picture before it struck a comet
Nearly a year after it crashed into a comet, the Rosetta spacecraft has given scientists a gift from beyond the grave: the final image of its resting place on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Researchers from the European Space Agency thought they had collected every picture beamed back by the probe during the two years it spent investigating the rubber-ducky shaped comet. But on September 28, they announced the discovery of one more hidden image in Rosetta’s final transmission. Grainy and blurry, it shows Comet 67P’s cold, rocky surface from about 60 feet above and covers about 10 square feet. The craft’s previous ‘last image’ was taken from about 80 feet above.
Together, they show the final moments of the first visit to a comet. As the spacecraft deliberately dived toward Comet 67P, Rosetta split this final image into six packets of data before attempting to send it to Earth. But the transmission was interrupted, and only three data packets made it back. When the scientists went back later and reanalysed the transmission, they stumbled upon the data fragments.
LOW-COST ATTACHMENT
Precision in observing space
A new, low-cost attachment to telescopes allows previously unachievable precision in ground-based observations of planets beyond our solar system. With it, ground-based telescopes can produce measurements of light intensity that rival the highest quality photometric observations from space. Pennsylvania State University astronomers, in close collaboration with the nanofabrication labs at RPC Photonics in New York, created custom ‘beam-shaping’ diffusers that are capable of minimising distortions from the Earth’s atmosphere that can reduce the precision of ground-based observations. A paper describing the effectiveness of the diffusers appears in Astrophysical Journal.
DOCUMENTARY
The Enemies of Reason
The Enemies of Reason, directed by Russell Barnes, is a two-part television documentary, written and presented by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. The documentary exposes areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell. In it, Richard talks to leading proponents in their field of expertise, meets the victims who have used their services and expose the history of the movements.
The Enemies of Reason also examines the growing suspicion the public has for science based medicine, despite its track record of successes like the germ theory of disease, vaccines, antibiotics and increased lifespan.
To watch Part 1 of the documentary,
visit www.bit.ly/2xto6wN and to watch Part 2, visit www.bit.ly/2i1fKW9.
GRAVITATIONAL WAVES
Detection of colliding black holes
In another step forward for the rapidly expanding universe of invisible astronomy, scientists said that on August 14 they had recorded the space-time reverberations known as gravitational waves from the collision of a pair of black holes 1.8 billion light years away. It was the fourth time in the last two years that astronomers have detected such ripples from the cataclysmic mergers of black holes — objects so dense that space and time are wrapped around them like a glove so that not even light can escape.
In the August event, one black hole with about 31 times the mass of the Sun and another, with 25 solar masses, combined to make a hole of 53 solar masses. The remaining three solar masses were converted into gravitational waves. The observation is in line with earlier gravitational wave detections, confirming an evolving view of the cosmic night. The detection, announced at a G7 meeting of science ministers in Italy, and in a paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, marked the successful debut of a new gravitational wave detector known as Virgo.
ATOMIC CLOCK
New forms of measurement
Physicists have created an entirely new design for an atomic clock, in which strontium atoms are packed into a tiny 3D cube at 1,000 times the density of previous one-
dimensional clocks.
In doing so, they are the first to harness the ultra-controlled behaviour of a so-called ‘quantum gas’ to make a practical measurement device. With so many atoms completely immobilised in place, JILA’s cubic quantum gas clock sets a record for a value called ‘quality factor’ and the resulting measurement precision. A large quality factor translates into a high level of synchronisation between the atoms and the lasers used to probe them, and makes the clock’s ‘ticks’ pure and stable for an unusually long time.