ESA’s Planck satellite capture the Milky Way's magnetic fingerprint

The magnetic field of our Milky Way Galaxy as seen by ESA’s Planck satellite. 

This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of polarised light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way. 

The magnetic field is displayed using a visualisation technique called line integral convolution (LIC). 

Credit: ESA Planck Collaboration

Our Galaxy's magnetic field is revealed in a new image from ESA’s Planck satellite. This image was compiled from the first all-sky observations of 'polarised' light emitted by interstellar dust in the Milky Way.

Light is a very familiar form of energy and yet some of its properties are all but hidden to everyday human experience.

One of these, polarisation, carries a wealth of information about what happened along a light ray's path, and can be exploited by astronomers.

Light can be described as a series of waves of electric and magnetic fields that vibrate in directions that are at right angles to each other and to their direction of travel.

Usually, these fields can vibrate at all orientations. However, if they happen to vibrate preferentially in certain directions, we say the light is 'polarised'.

This can happen, for example, when light bounces off a reflective surface like a mirror or the sea.

Special filters can be used to absorb this polarised light, which is how polarised sunglasses eliminate glare.

In space, the light emitted by stars, gas and dust can also be polarised in various ways.

By measuring the amount of polarisation in this light, astronomers can study the physical processes that caused the polarisation.

In particular, polarisation may reveal the existence and properties of magnetic fields in the medium light has travelled through.

The map presented here was obtained using detectors on Planck that acted as the astronomical equivalent of polarised sunglasses.

Swirls, loops and arches in this new image trace the structure of the magnetic field in our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

In addition to its hundreds of billions of stars, our Galaxy is filled with a mixture of gas and dust, the raw material from which stars are born.

Even though the tiny dust grains are very cold, they do emit light but at very long wavelengths – from the infrared to the microwave domain.

If the grains are not symmetrical, more of that light comes out vibrating parallel to the longest axis of the grain, making the light polarised.

If the orientations of a whole cloud of dust grains were random, no net polarisation would be seen.

However, cosmic dust grains are almost always spinning rapidly, tens of millions of times per second, due to collisions with photons and rapidly moving atoms.

Sun's Magnetic 'Heartbeat' Revealed

A simulation of magnetic fields at the time of solar maximum.

CREDIT: University of Montreal Solar Physics Research Group

A magnetic "solar heartbeat" beats deep in the sun's interior, generating energy that leads to solar flares and sunspots, according to new research.

A new supercomputer simulation, described in the April 4 edition of the journal Science, probes the sun's periodic magnetic field reversals.

Every 40 years, according to the model, the sun's zonal magnetic field bands switch their orientation, or polarity.

That cycle is about four times longer than the 11-year sunspot cycle that governs the level of solar activity. Being able to model such a regular, long-term process is remarkable, the scientists said.

The new research, led by the University of Montreal's Paul Charbonneau, describes work from both his research group and other, independent coalitions simulating the sun's interior.

Temperature variability on a model intended to approximate what goes on inside the sun.

CREDIT: University of Montreal Solar Physics Research Group

Dissipating turbulence
Modeling the sun has been a sticky problem for decades.

The first attempts in the 1980s captured only a rough approximation of the turbulence inside of the sun.

Turbulence, when it occurs, happens at both large and small scales.

The large scales are easy to simulate, but in the sun, a small feature only about tens of miles across is just as important in understanding how fluid propagates.

When energy from turbulence dissipates, the turbulence flows into smaller and smaller whirlpool shapes, called vortices.

You can see this for yourself, Charbonneau said, when swirling your hand in a full bathtub. The movement will produce a vortex in the water that will gradually break up into tinier ones that dissipate the energy.

On the sun, dissipation takes place at a scale of tens of yards. That's extremely minute, compared with the size of the sun, which is 1 million times larger than Earth. "There's no way we can capture that in a simulation," Charbonneau stated.

To approximate this process, scientists typically limit the resolution to about 6.2 miles (10 kilometers). This, however, creates an energy buildup in the simulation that will "blow up" the model before it can run for very long, Charbonneau said.

NASA Discovers New Radiation Belt Around Earth

Two giant swaths of radiation, known as the Van Allen Belts, surrounding Earth were discovered in 1958. 

In 2012, observations from the Van Allen Probes showed that a third belt can sometimes appear.

The radiation is shown here in yellow, with green representing the spaces between the belts.

CREDIT: NASA/Van Allen Probes/Goddard Space Flight Center

A ring of radiation previously unknown to science fleetingly surrounded Earth last year before being virtually annihilated by a powerful interplanetary shock wave, scientists say.

NASA's twin Van Allen space probes, which are studying the Earth's radiation belts, made the cosmic find. The surprising discovery — a new, albeit temporary, radiation belt around Earth — reveals how much remains unknown about outer space, even those regions closest to the planet, researchers added.


After humanity began exploring space, the first major find made there were the Van Allen radiation belts, zones of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles first discovered in 1958.

"They were something we thought we mostly understood by now, the first discovery of the Space Age," said lead study author Daniel Baker, a space scientist at the University of Colorado.

These belts were believed to consist of two rings: an inner zone made up of both high-energy electrons and very energetic positive ions that remains stable in intensity over the course of years to decades; and an outer zone comprised mostly of high-energy electrons whose intensity swings over the course of hours to days depending primarily on the influence from the solar wind, the flood of radiation streaming from the sun.

The discovery of a temporary new radiation belt now has scientists reviewing the Van Allen radiation belt models to understand how it occurred.

On Aug. 31, 2012, a giant prominence on the sun erupted, sending out particles and a shock wave that traveled near Earth. 

This event may have been one of the causes of a third radiation belt that appeared around Earth a few days later, a phenomenon that was observed for the very first time by the newly-launched Van Allen Probes. 

This image of the prominence before it erupted was captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. 

CREDIT: NASA/SDO/AIA/Goddard Space Flight Center

The giant amounts of radiation the Van Allen belts generate can pose serious risks for satellites. To learn more about them, NASA launched twin spacecraft (RBSP), the Van Allen probes, in the summer of 2012.

The RBSP satellites were armed with a host of sensors to thoroughly analyze the plasma, energetic particles, magnetic fields and plasma waves in these belts with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.


The identical Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) will follow similar orbits that will take them through both the inner and outer radiation belts. 

The highly elliptical orbits range from a minimum altitude of approximately 373 miles (600 kilometers) to a maximum altitude of approximately 23,000 miles (37,000 kilometers). 

CREDIT: JHU/APL, NASA

It remains uncertain how this temporary radiation belt arose. Van Allen mission scientists suspect it was likely created by the solar wind tearing away the outer Van Allen belt.

"It looks like its existence may have been bookended by solar disturbances," Baker said.

Future study of the Van Allen belts can reveal if such temporary rings of radiation are common or rare.

"Do these occur frequently, or did we get lucky and see a very rare circumstance that happens only once in a while?" Baker said. "And what other unusual revelations might come now that we are really looking at these radiation belts with new, modern tools?"

The scientists detailed their findings online Feb. 28 in the journal Science.

Magnetic Flux Loops on the Sun Surface

This is an image of magnetic loops on the sun, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

It has been processed to highlight the edges of each loop to make the structure more clear.

A series of loops such as this is known as a flux rope, and these lie at the heart of eruptions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs.) 

This is the first time scientists were able to discern the timing of a flux rope's formation. (Blended 131 Angstrom and 171 Angstrom images of July 19, 2012 flare and CME.)

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

Startram the Maglev train: Destination low earth orbit (LEO)

Getting into space is one of the harder tasks to be taken on by humanity.

The present cost of inserting a kilogram (2.2 lb) of cargo by rocket into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) is about US$10,000.

A manned launch to LEO costs about $100,000 per kilogram of passenger (except in China) but who says we have to reach orbit by means of rocket propulsion alone?

Instead, imagine sitting back in a comfortable magnetic levitation (maglev) train and taking a train ride into orbit.

Dr George Maise invented the Startram orbital launch system along with Dr James Powell, who is one of the inventors of superconducting maglev - for which he won the 2002 Franklin Medal in engineering. Startram is in essence a superconducting maglev launch system.

The system would see a spacecraft magnetically levitated to avoid friction, while the same magnetic system is used to accelerate the spacecraft to orbital velocities, just under 9 km/sec (5.6 miles/s).

Maglev passenger trains have carried passengers at nearly 600 kilometers per hour (373 mph) - spacecraft have to be some 50 times faster, but the physics and much of the engineering is the same.

The scope of the project is challenging.

A launch system design for routine passenger flight into LEO should have rather low acceleration - perhaps about 3 g's maximum, which then requires 5 minutes of acceleration to reach LEO transfer velocities. In that period, the spacecraft will have traveled 1,000 miles (1,609 km).

The maglev track must be 1,000 miles in length - similar in size to maglev train tracks being considered for cross-country transportation.

Read more of this article here

NASA Juno Spacecraft Refines its Path to Jupiter

NASA's Juno spacecraft passes in front of Jupiter in this artist's depiction. 

Juno, the second mission in NASA's New Frontiers program, will improve our understanding of the solar system by advancing studies of the origin and evolution of Jupiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft successfully refined its flight path Wednesday with the mission's first trajectory correction maneuver.

The maneuver took place on Feb. 1. It is the first of a dozen planned rocket firings that, over the next five years, will keep Juno on course for its rendezvous with Jupiter.

"We had a maneuver planned soon after launch but our Atlas V rocket gave us such a good ride we didn't need to make any trajectory changes," said Rick Nybakken, Juno project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"It is good to get another first under our belt. This burn couldn't have gone any better."

The trajectory correction maneuver, which adjusts the spacecraft's flight path, began at 10:10 a.m. PST (1:10 p.m. EST) on Feb. 1. The Juno spacecraft's thrusters fired for 25 minutes, consumed about 6.9 pounds (3.11 kilograms) of fuel and changed the spacecraft's speed by 3.9 feet, or 1.2 meters, per second.

The next big maneuver for Juno will occur in late August of 2012 when Juno executes its first of two deep space maneuvers to set the stage for its Earth flyby - and gravity assist - on its way to Jupiter.

Launched on Aug. 5, 2011, Juno is 182 days and 279 million miles (449 million kilometers) into its five-year, 1,740-million-mile (2,800-million-kilometer) journey to Jupiter.

Once in orbit, the spacecraft will orbit the planet's poles 33 times and use its collection of eight science instruments to probe beneath the gas giant's obscuring cloud cover to learn more about Jupiter's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere, and look for a potential solid planetary core.

Juno's name comes from Greek and Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, and his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature.

Magnetic tongue to produce tastier tinned tomatoes

Factories could use a tongue-like detector to test flavour during production (Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features)
 
Talk about a metal mouth. A "magnetic tongue" can predict the taste of tinned tomatoes.

The sensor could help food manufacturers tweak their production methods to maximise flavour.

Experienced taste tasters rate flavours, texture and consistency on a numerical scale. Anders Malmendal, at the University of Copenhagen, and his colleagues wanted to replicate this human-like flavour detection with an artificial sensor.


They analysed the chemical composition of 18 different types of tinned tomatoes by examining hydrogen atoms with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The proton in the nucleus of a hydrogen atom acts like a tiny magnet.

A pulse of energy flips the proton's magnetic field, and the proton releases energy as it relaxes back to its original orientation.

A hydrogen atom's location in a complex molecule like a sugar influences how quickly it relaxes, giving each hydrogen atom a unique signal based on its relaxation speed.

Using these signals, the scientists identified several common sugars and protein building blocks called amino acids in each tomato sample.

Statistical analysis correlated collections of these compounds with flavours like saltiness, sweetness, and bitterness, as ranked by trained tasters. The "magnetic tongue" tastes tomato liquid practically straight from the can.

Manufacturers could sample tomatoes during production with this sensor and quickly adjust their methods to create better tasting products, Malmendal says.

Other artificial taste and smell sensors recognize patterns of compounds connected with certain flavors as well. Electronic tongues sample wine and electronic noses sniff out insects, cancer and human skin .

Journal reference: Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jf203803q

Ultra high speed film - Femtoseconds

How fast an intense laser pulse can change the electrical properties of solids is revealed by researchers from Kiel University in the current edition of Nature (09.03.2011). Scientists in the team of Professor Michael Bauer, Dr. Kai Roßnagel and Professor Lutz Kipp from the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, together with colleagues from the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Colorado in Boulder, U.S.A., are following the course of electronic switching processes which occur within fractions of a second (femtoseconds).


The results of their research may trigger future developments of custom-made and ultra fast opto-electronic components in order to increase data transmission rates or to accelerate optical switches, to name just one example of potential areas of application.

“These techniques that we have developed enables us to record films of extremely fast processes in a much more comprehensive manner than it was previously possible with similar techniques”, Bauer explains. “We are able to, for example, directly track phase transitions in solids or catalytic reactions on surfaces.”


To record the films, the Kiel scientists used ultra short flashes of light in the soft x-ray spectral region generated with a specific laser system. Bauer: “The amount of information gained from our pictures when played back in slow motion is vast.

We will get completely new insights into most relevant electronic properties of solids which are important for a variety of current and future technologies, for example, in telecommunications.”

The Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) has proven international expertise as a North German research university in the field of nanosciences and surface science, for example, in the German Research Foundation’s Collaborative Research Centre 855 “Magnetoelectric Composites — Future Biomagnetic Interfaces”.

Furthermore, the CAU is applying for the current round of the Excellence Initiative with the excellence cluster “Materials for Life”.

Background information:

Femto means “one part in a thousand million million”. When, for example, molecules react with one another or when the switching states in electronic components change, processes at the atomic length scale are involved which take place on time scales of femtoseconds.

Ultra short laser pulses in the so-called “soft x-ray spectral region” — i.e. light with very short wavelengths — enables one to make snapshots of the electronic states which are transiently formed during a switching process, for example.

The shots are combined in series to deliver a film depicting such switching processes with a level of detail and a temporal resolution which could previously not be achieved.

Original Paper:
www.nature.com/nature under: 10.1038/nature09829

NASA IBEX: first images of magnetotail structures

Image courtesy of NASA/IBEX Science Team

This image shows the first-ever view of the magnetospheric plasma sheet in profile, as seen by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) from outside the magnetosphere.

It shows the densest portions of the plasma sheet, largely following the modeled magnetic structure.

Invisible to the naked eye, yet massive in structure around the Earth is the magnetosphere, the region of space around the planet that ebbs and flows in response to the million-mile-per-hour flow of charged particles continually blasting from the Sun.

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft, designed to image the invisible interactions occurring at the edge of the solar system, captured images of magnetospheric structures and a dynamic event occurring in the magnetosphere as the spacecraft observed from near lunar distance.

Neodymium iron-boron rare-earth magnet

Ferrofluids are colloidal mixtures - where one substance is microscopically dispersed evenly throughout a carrier fluid - containing magnetic nanoparticles.

When placed in a magnetic field, the suspended particles cause the entire fluid to become strongly magnetised.

In this image a small drop of ferrofluid is placed within a magnetic field created by a neodymium iron-boron rare-earth magnet. The peaks and troughs result as the magnet tries to pull the liquid along its field lines.

Ferrofluids are being used in experimental cancer treatments called magnetic hyperthermia, and are the basis for a new breed of shape-shifting telescope lenses.

Deceivers have less grey matter

A study appearing in the British Journal of Psychiatry documents evidence of structural brain abnormalities in people who habitually lie, cheat and manipulate others.

The researchers, from the University of Southern California, built on previous research that showed there is heightened activity in the prefrontal cortex - the area of the brain that enables most people to feel remorse or learn moral behaviour - when normal people lie.

The new study provides evidence of structural differences in that area among pathological liars.

The subjects for the study were taken from a Los Angeles' temporary employment pool. The researchers conducted a series of psychological tests and interviews that categorized the subjects according to their propensity for mistruth.

"We looked for things like inconsistencies in their stories about occupation, education, crimes and family background," said Adrian Raine, co-author of the study. After categorisation, Raine and co-researcher Yaling Yang used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to explore structural brain differences between the groups.

What the researchers found was that the liars had significantly more "white matter" - the wiring in the brain - and slightly less "gray matter", than the truthful subjects. The researchers explained that white matter is the "networking" tissue that holds together and links the grey matter.

Apparently, pathological liars have a surplus of white matter and a deficit of gray matter, meaning they have more tools to lie, coupled with fewer moral restraints. When compared to the normal control subjects, liars had a 22 percent increase in white matter and a 14 percent decrease in prefrontal gray matter.

NASA Themis Cluster discovers magnetic Spacequakes

Researchers using NASA's fleet of five THEMIS spacecraft have discovered a form of space weather that packs the punch of an earthquake and plays a key role in sparking bright Northern Lights. They call it "the spacequake."

A spacequake is a temblor in Earth's magnetic field. It is felt most strongly in Earth orbit, but is not exclusive to space. The effects can reach all the way down to the surface of Earth itself.

"Magnetic reverberations have been detected at ground stations all around the globe, much like seismic detectors measure a large earthquake," says THEMIS principal investigator Vassilis Angelopoulos of UCLA.

It's an apt analogy because "the total energy in a spacequake can rival that of a magnitude 5 or 6 earthquake," according to Evgeny Panov of the Space Research Institute in Austria. Panov is first author of a paper reporting the results in the April 2010 issue of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL).

In 2007, THEMIS discovered the precursors of spacequakes. The action begins in Earth's magnetic tail, which is stretched out like a windsock by the million mph solar wind. Sometimes the tail can become so stretched and tension-filled, it snaps back like an over-torqued rubber band. Solar wind plasma trapped in the tail hurtles toward Earth.

On more than one occasion, the five THEMIS spacecraft were in the line of fire when these "plasma jets" swept by. Clearly, the jets were going to hit Earth. But what would happen then? The fleet moved closer to the planet to find out.

"Now we know," says THEMIS project scientist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Plasma jets trigger spacequakes."

According to THEMIS, the jets crash into the geomagnetic field some 30,000 km above Earth's equator. The impact sets off a rebounding process, in which the incoming plasma actually bounces up and down on the reverberating magnetic field. Researchers call it "repetitive flow rebuffing."

It's akin to a tennis ball bouncing up and down on a carpeted floor. The first bounce is a big one, followed by bounces of decreasing amplitude as energy is dissipated in the carpet.

"We've long suspected that something like this was happening," says Sibeck. "By observing the process in situ, however, THEMIS has discovered something new and surprising."