Tag: space

Lucky Worms Survived The Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster

By Anupum Pant

February 1, 2003 was a sad day for science. Space shuttle Columbia, during re-entry, due to a broken piece of insulation, got completely disintegrated. With the shuttle, died all the 7 astronauts who were aboard. [Remembering Columbia]

Scientists had lost hope on all of the 80 experiments that were on board. Only several days later while sifting through the wreckage they found something interesting – at least not all was lost. A live group of lucky worms (roundworms) was successfully salvaged from the wreckage. Yes, odd, but true.

Why were there worms in the shuttle?

The space shuttle Columbia was a research flight and contained 80 experiments on board. The group of live worms, sealed in a metal container which was ensconced in a safe locker, was a part of one of those 80 experiments.

Although the particular gene experiment that had to be conducted with fresh-worms-from-space was lost because they had entered Earth several days back, the worms still proved useful for other science experiments.

From these worms scientists learned a great deal about what micro-gravity could do to animals – Like weakening of muscles and manifestation of diabetic symptoms. When in space, these are the similar things that happen to humans as well.

How did they not get killed?

Firstly, they were in a strong metal container that was nicely protected by a second layer – a reinforced locker meant to really protect things.

Since the shuttle was coming in at a speed more than 2 times the speed of sound, the locker must have hit the ground pretty hard, right? No, till the time it reached the surface, the drag slowed it down. So, the worms basically experienced just a harder-than-normal landing.

What are they doing now?

Well, as round worms don’t really live longer than 2 years usually, they must have died long back. But their descendants have been stored safely in a genetic center – lucky worms indeed. Some of these descendants were lucky enough to be sent to space during 2011 in the shuttle Endeavour.

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World’s Most Powerful Sound Systems Can Kill You

By Anupum Pant

In the past we’ve seen sound systems that used plasma instead of magnets to produce sound. Well, those plasma sound systems were pretty well equipped to kill you, but they would do it in a different manner – by electrocuting you. This one we are talking about today, literally kills you with sound.

LEAF

European Space Agency uses an extra-large speaker that throws extra-big sound at test objects. It is known to recreate the sound that a launcher produces while taking off and travelling through atmosphere. This speaker, known as, the Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF) in Netherlands, is used by the European Space Agency to test satellite parts.

The Glory: They say that if any person listens to sound playing on this speaker, he/she won’t survive. This is the reason, the most powerful sound system in Europe, is enclosed in a facility that has walls that 17 meters in height, are half a meter thick and are overlaid with a resin on the inner walls that reflects sound & does not let it escape. Also, it has a safety mechanism that doesn’t allow anyone to power it on, if the doors are not shut properly.

Nitrogen is pumped in great amounts through the huge ear-canal-like thing which enables it to produce sounds up to 154 decibel! If you are wondering how loud 154 decibel is, you should check this out – How Loud Can it Get. In short, it is loud enough to rupture your eardrums and probably kill you too.

I came across this equipment first at [PopSci]
More information at [ESA]

So I wondered, if this is the most powerful sound system in Europe, are there more powerful ones elsewhere in the world?
Duh! Yeah. And as expected, it is in USA.

Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility (RATF)

Orion-Integrated-Environmental-TestingThe Orion Integrated Environmental Testing at the NASA Space Power Facility (SPF), a huge facility which looks pretty much like a nuclear power plant from afar, houses several other testing facilities, and the world’s largest space environment simulation chamber, also has the worlds most powerful sound system – The Reverberant Acoustic Test Facility. [Image]

The horns that produce sound here, are also powered by Nitrogen and there are 36 of them. It is able to produce a total sound pressure of 163 dB, which is a lot more than what LEAF can produce (because dB scale is not linear) – About seven times more powerful than standing next to a jet engine or a Formula 1 race car. In here, it is far too easy to kill a full grown man.

8 Million Years Later Our Descendants Will Receive Our Message

By Anupum Pant

Thanks to the LAser GEOdynamics Satellite or LAGEOS 1 developed by NASA, we can rest assured that a message ensconced in it will be received by our descendants 8 million years from now, when the satellite is estimated to crash land on Earth.

Note: LAGEOS 2 was a joint effort by NASA and ASI of Italy

Background

Structure: LAGEOS is basically a heavy metal ball measuring 60 cm in diameter containing no electronics or any sensors whatsoever. Its body is made up of aluminum and the internal core is made of brass. The brass core has been used to make sure that it weighs enough to do its job properly – the complete satellite weighs around 400 kg. The outer part is embedded with 422 reflectors. These reflectors make sure that the craft reflects back the light (laser) shone at it, to its source with minimum scattering.

Purpose: The primary purpose of the satellite isn’t to send a message to our future races, rather the satellite has been put up on orbit around the Earth to monitor several kinds of changes in long-term data like – exact shape of the planet, motion of tectonic plates, gravitational field measurement, measurement of the Earth’s wobble etc. This is done by sending laser pulses towards it from bases around the world located in US, Mexico, France, Germany, Poland, Australia, Egypt, China, Peru, Italy, and Japan. These laser pulses are reflected back to the Earth bases by those 422 reflectors. As the satellite has a very stable orbit, the measurement of time difference taken to send and receive the laser pulse gives away a lot of useful information.

 The message plaque:

Quoting from the NASA’s website:

LAGEOS 1 also contains a message plaque addressed to human and other beings of the far distant future with maps of the Earth from 3 different eras – 268 million years in the past, present day, and 8 million years in the future (the satellite’s estimated decay date).

The Evil Lunar Dust

By Anupum Pant

Space exploration is a tough job. Besides a myriad of challenges that have to be dealt with, space equipment and astronauts travelling to places like the moon or mars, have to deal with a peculiarly wicked foe – The dust.

This isn’t the kind of normal dust we deal with here on earth. ‘Downright evil’ is the phrase that describes the dust on moon! We may not realize it, but lunar dust is a filthy thing and causes a lot of problems. Of course, the dust on mars is no better.

Back in 1972

For instance, let us see how moon dust makes things complicated for engineers and astronauts.

Most of the upper surface of the moon is covered with a mixture of loose material comprising of dust, soil, rocks and pebbles (and other random stuff too). Normally, at places, this layer of mixture ranges from 4 to 6 meters in thickness.

The fine part of this mixture is called the lunar soil and is significantly different from the soil found on earth. It is present almost everywhere on the surface of the moon and is a result of breaking of rocks into small particles by meteorite and micrometeorite impacts; also there is no wind and rain to soften the pieces. This is the part of that loose stuff which is known for causing immense troubles.

The dust is super-fine and extremely hard. You can think of it as collection of little shards of glass. Despite being completely dry, it sticks to everything it touches and as it is super-fine, it can get into tiny creases. If inhaled, it can be toxic; like millions of tiny sharp shards piercing into the inner walls of your respiratory system. A tiny amount of it can eventually kill a full grown man.

Back in 1972, the Apollo 17’s crew learnt this as soon as they stepped out. The dust started clogging their air vents and started dropping the pressure. When returning to their space capsule, Jack Schmitt and Eugene Cernan forgot to brush off the dust. They were stuck with it for the whole time during their journey back home. Some of the dust went airborne in the craft and Schmitt started complaining of congestion. Fortunately, the amount was too small to hurt them a lot. Soon the symptoms subsided and space agencies learnt a lesson – Find a way to deal with the lunar dust.

On mars: Dust on mars can travel places due to dust storms and cause more problems.

Solution

Scientists at NASA found a great way to deal with this dust using an electric zap. They were able to develop electrical fields which can clear about 99% of the dust from the equipment. These dust shields will be tried on in the year 2016.

The Day When The Whole World Saw Auroras

By Anupum Pant

The record of geomagnetic storms has been kept for around 160 years now and among all the flares observed till date, the Carrington event was the most powerful ever.

The Carrington super flare

The 1859 Solar Superstorm, or the Carrington Event, was an enormous magnetic shock wave sent towards the Earth by the Sun. It caused a massive disturbance in Earth’s magnetosphere. The effects of this super flare observed here on earth were literally awesome.

Effects

Story: While studying sunspots on Sept 1, 1859 Richard Carrington, an astronomer observed a blinding white light that appeared over local parts of the sun. And 5 minutes later, it was all gone. As if nothing had happened.

Before dawn the next day, skies all over planet lit up. The lights in the sky were so brilliant that people said they could read text like they could read it in the daylight. Red, green and purple auroras pulsated even at  tropical areas like Cuba, Bahamas, Jamaica, El Salvador, and Hawaii. The whole world saw auroras that day.

An American newspaper reported:

The phenomenon was very similar to the display on Sunday night, though at times the light was, if possible, more brilliant, and the prismatic hues more varied and gorgeous. The light appeared to cover the whole firmament, apparently like a luminous cloud, through which the stars of the larger magnitude indistinctly shone. The light was greater than that of the moon at its full, but had an indescribable softness and delicacy that seemed to envelop everything upon which it rested. Between 12 and 1 o’clock, when the display was at its full brilliancy, the quiet streets of the city resting under this strange light, presented a beautiful as well as singular appearance. – from Wikipedia.

Telegraph systems all over the world went out of control. Some discharges shocked telegraph operators and fires were reported at few places. Due to the temporary disturbance in the magnetic field, current was induced in the wires and machines disconnected from the batteries still allowed telegraphs to be sent.

Luckily in those times, we did not have any satellites, or more importantly, any humans up in the sky; they would have been fried.

What if it happened now?

Today, electronic technologies have become far more refined and have moved into the common man’s life. If an event of such sizes takes place now, power lines and long-distance telephone cables could get seriously affected by it. A similar event of a little lesser intensity happened in 1989 – It was Friday the 13th and several ill effects were experienced.

Radar, cell phone communications, and GPS receivers could get disrupted. Humans in space would be in great danger. Astronauts, after having observed a flash of light would have only minutes to find shelter – probably a properly shielded spacecraft.

Scientists say that there is little we can do to protect our things from a storm like this. It is estimated that re-occurrence of a Carrington class event today, could cost the world economy around $2.6 trillion.

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Space Oddities – Part I

By Anupum Pant

Note

During the past few days, I came across a couple of interesting things related to space, which I felt were worth sharing. Individually, none of them could have been made into a good long article. So, I thought of compiling a list of these amusing post-lets to form a single good read.

Also, in the words of Chris Hadfield: Since Space is profound, endless, a textured black, a bottomless eternal bucket of untouchable velvet and untwinkling stars, it is a place that holds infinite possibilities for me to collect more of such amusing ideas. Therefore, I have suffixed the title of this post with a phrase – Part 1 – that leaves an open possibility for other such articles. If you’d like to contribute snippets for the upcoming parts of this post, you can get in touch with me. [About Page]

Space oddities begin

1. A year in Venus:

Two facts. Venus rotates on its axis only once every 243 earth days. It orbits the sun every 224.64 earth days. But, both of these things put together mean that on Venus, a day is longer than a year. Or simply put, almost everyday is everyone’s birthday. Wonderful, isn’t it?
Also, Venus rotates backwards. So, the sun as seen from Venus, rises from the west and sets in the east. The rotation is so slow that it is unable to generate a magnetic field like earth.

2. International Space Station:

Floating around in the ISS, it is often possible for an astronaut to get struck floating in the middle of a room when walls are out of reach. To get out of such a position, astronauts have to be patient and have use the drafts of light crosswinds from fans or call for help for a physical push. – [Source]

3. Going from ‘a planet’ to ‘not a planet’:

Discovered in 1930, Pluto was originally classified as the ninth planet from the Sun. In the year 2006, this definition excluded Pluto and reclassified it as a member of the new “dwarf planet” category.
For the whole time during which Pluto was a planet, it did not complete even half a orbit. That means within half a Pluto year, it went from being called a planet to not a planet. Sad.
Today, Pluto is the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun or the largest object in the Kuiper belt.

4. Visibility from space:

We have always been told that the only man-made object that can be seen from space is the Great Wall of China, but it is NOT true. You cannot actually see the great wall of China from space.
What you can actually see is the biggest structure made by living organisms (not humans) – The Great Barrier Reef.

5. Sun as seen from Mercury:

On Mercury, the sun appears to briefly reverse its usual east to west motion once every Mercurian year. The effect is visible from any place on Mercury, but there are certain places on its surface, where an observer would be able to see the Sun rise about halfway, reverse and set, and then rise again, all within the same day. [Sun’s unusual behaviour as seen from Mercury]

6. Flying on Titan is easy:

The largest moon of Saturn is a very peculiar place. It is the only known moon to have an atmosphere. But that isn’t all.
Its atmosphere has 1.19 times more mass than the earth’s atmosphere. Secondly, the gravity is far lower as compared to earth. This means, had there been humans on Titan, they would have been able fly in Titan by just flapping wings attached to their arms.

In the end, I’d like to leave you with two very interesting things. An inspirational comic by Zen Pencils and a revised version of David Bowie’s Space Oddity, recorded by Commander Chris Hadfield on board the International Space Station (I had this on repeat the entire time I was writing this article):

Lycurgus Cup – An Ancient Nanotech Marvel

By Anupum Pant

The concepts of modern nanotechnology must have been first seeded in the year 1959 by the renowned physicist Richard Feynman, but Romans were already doing it back in 300 AD (around 290-325 AD). About 1700 years back, utilizing the principles of Nanotechnology, Roman engineers had crafted a magnificent chalice – Lycurgus Cup (picture). Like the Prince Rupert’s drop, this is another glass marvel you should know about.

Side note: You can listen to the legendary lecture by Dr. Feynman on YouTube – There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom, where he discusses the “possibility of synthesis via direct manipulation of atoms”, or Nanotechnology.

Lycurgus cup description

The Lycurgus cup was probably the first ever optical artificial [meta]material – Ruby Glass – engineered to have properties that may not be found in nature. Its unusual optical properties are something that makes it stand out.

Normally, the cup appears green, but if it is illuminated from the inside or lit up using a light placed behind it, it glows ruby-red; hence the name, ruby glass. This kind of glass is known as a Dichroic glass. Dichroic  literally means ”two colored” and is derived from the Greek words ”di” for two, and ”chroma” for color; in this case, the colors green and red.

The technology behind this cup baffled scientists for around 40 years (from 1950s to 1990s). It was only in 1990s that they figured out how it really worked. The goblet has been preserved well, and is presently at display in the British Museum.

Dichroic glass

Dichroic glasses do not use paints, dyes, or any coloring agents for the color. They are made using fine coatings on glass. The coatings themselves do not have a color, but rather they bend light to reflect colors like a prism does, to make rainbows.

These colors are visible due to the presence of very minute amounts of finely ground gold and silver particles in it. Romans could have included these powders unknowingly as contaminants or might have added them on purpose to achieve the very effect, we’ll never know.

Inspired by an age-old technology

NASA, in the 1950s, used a similar technology to fabricate a kind of glass that could selectively reflect light wavelengths. They achieved this by depositing a thin-film of metal on the glass.

With innumerable combinations of oxides, glass colors and patterns available, the possibilities to utilize this phenomenon for various useful purposes are endless.
The unusual properties of this cup have also inspired material scientists to create concepts for an invisibility cloak using modern nanofabrication technology. [Source]

I want to study interesting materials like these

If you think the Lycurgus cup, Wolverine’s claws and Aerogels (If you haven’t heard about it, you must definitely check this out!) are awesome. You can make a career in researching materials like these by making a foray into Materials Science and Engineering. Most good universities offer a course in it. It is a budding field, growing at a rapid pace, replete with real-world challenging conundrums waiting to be resolved.

Tardigrades – Toughest Creatures on Earth

By Anupum Pant

Visit blogadda.com to discover Indian blogs
So, if you think elephants or cockroaches are tough, that could be because you probably haven’t heard about these amazing creatures called Tardigrades (picture).

What are Tardigrades?

Tardigrades, also known as moss piglets or waterbears, are oddly cute little animals that live in water and feed on moss. Their size ranges from 0.1 mm to 1.5 mm and they have eight legs (they walk like bears). The most extreme thing about these extremophiles is that they can survive almost anything (actually, they kind of die for a while with an option to come back to life later). Here is a list of things Tardigrades can survive. They can:

  • Survive without water and food for 10 years.
  • Waddle away in the vacuüm of space (for 10 days & get exposed UV radiation), come back and walk around as if nothing happened.
  • Survive 1000 times more radiation that would kill an elephant.
  • Live through extremely low temperatures (almost absolute zero) or high temperatures (~150 degree Centigrade)
  • Repair their own DNA after getting exposed to lethal amounts of radiation.
  • Survive pressures of about 300 Jumbo jets stacked on a person. (6 times more than the deepest ocean trenches)

Scientists love them

People at NASA and the European Space Agency love doing tests on them because they think, Tardigrades can help them understand the origin of life on earth (probably by supporting Panspermia). Also, scientists want to find out more about their extreme capabilities. If you ask them, if these things are aliens, they’ll tell you – “Probably not”

[Learn more about Tardigrades]

Deal with Poverty or Go to Mars?

by Anupum Pant

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its Mars orbiter, Mangalyan (Translation: Mars Craft) on November 5th 2013 with a hope to become the 4th such organization in the world, to step into Mars exploration. I must say, it is quite a fete for a developing country which has to deal with a myriad of other socio-economic menaces. Besides that, this mission also placed India above every other Mars mission ever, in terms of the total cost involved. Frugal engineering, has helped ISRO to go to Mars with low costs – with a mere $73 Million dollar budget, MOM (Mars Orbiter Mission) has become the cheapest mission ever to Mars. [silly comparisions to put this into perspective]

Side note: India’s other pioneering low cost endeavors – World’s cheapest car; World’s cheapest tablet and cheapest house.

But, this successful launch came with a throng of detractors, ridiculing India for not using these $73 Million to deal with poverty (or “clean feces off its roads”). Clearly, they did not think it through before making such comments.

  1. A nation’s economy is a huge and complex thing. Things aren’t as simple as, stop space exploration funds and divert them to tackle poverty. A number of things run in parallel. Also, every nation has its own set of problems and they don’t stop spending billions of dollars for technological advancement to focus only on social or economic issues. And, I’m sure that the government India is also taking enough steps to tackle its national issues with a firm footing on advancement of technological avenues like space exploration.
  2. The main part of this article: In contrary to what is popularly believed, money spent on space exploration does not nebulously float out of earth (on the other hand, distributing this money among the poor would breed complacency among them and cause the money to literally float out). It plays a major role in creating new technologies, products, jobs and businesses. Let us take the example of NASA here:
    Space exploration has led to development of many things that you use daily. There wouldn’t have been any computers, wrist watches, Velcro, cell phones, GPS navigators etc, if funds were never allocated to the “wasteful” space research.  Without this, there is a chance that you wouldn’t have heard of solar energy, cryogenics or even robotics. Also, several improvements in health care, energy and the environment are a result of research done for space exploration. [10 NASA inventions you use everyday].
    When you think of all this, $73 Million seems like an extremely small number. Remember, that this is also helping other businesses (vendors etc) flourish, which in turn are creating jobs for the poor and spurring innovation.
  3. Thirdly, The Indian Space Research Organization is a unique organization which has managed to stay the world’s most profitable space organization and has sustained on a minuscule budget of about $1 Billion. It relies on the Indian low-cost mantra to develop innovative technologies. As a result, this intelligent government venture has helped to create a profitable environment for space research. Hence, it isn’t a “wasteful” allocation of funds. Additionally, with its engineers living off a small salary ($20,000) as compared to American engineers ($100,000), we can definitely place our trust on an organization like ISRO – Like previous missions, they’ll make much more than $23 Million from this mission too. In other words, they’ll bring money in, not let it float out (better option for dealing with poverty, than just distributing it among the poor).

That said, 21 out of 51 missions to Mars have failed and it means that there is still a long way for this absurdly low-cost Indian mission [also a risky one] to be a completely successful one. So far, it is doing pretty good. We can only wait and see, what the end will be like.

How Loud Can it Get?

by Anupum Pant

Wives and moms can scream really well. But is it loud enough to inflict physical pain? Can sounds get louder than a nuclear bomb? How much damage can a loud sound cause? How about mass extinction? Read on to find out the answers.

What is sound?

Sound, as most of us know is a longitudinal, mechanical wave. That means, it is just a series of pressure changes [compressions and rarefactions] in a particular medium. So, the property of sound is as good as the medium it uses to travel. For instance, sound cannot travel in a vacuum due to the absence of any medium, but it can travel much faster in solids than in air. That is the reason you can’t hear someone talking in space (yes, movies that show loud explosions in space, lie). Also, the faster speed of sound in steel rails is exactly the reason why, you can tell a train is approaching, if you stick your ears to the rails (do not try this on electric rails).

Two of the fundamental parameters that describe a sound wave in numbers are pitch and amplitude. Pitch is measured in hertz – we’ll talk about it some other day. But, the amplitude of a sound wave determines how powerful it is; greater the amplitude, louder the sound. The loudness of sound is measured in Decibels (abbreviated dB).

More about decibel scale

Like most other linear scales, Decibel isn’t as easy to understand. A 10 point rise in the dB scale can be visualized as a 10 times increase in the loudness. Adding dB levels of different sound sources also doesn’t really work, the calculation is much more complicated; the resultant loudness depends on the coherency of the source [See this decibel addition applet]. Also, the perceived loudness is obviously lesser as you go away from the sound. Normally, a decibel scale ranging from 0 dB to 130 dB is enough for measuring the loudness of most things. But, things can get louder…much louder.

To get an idea of the decibel scale: 10 dB is 10 times more powerful than 0 dB, not 10 points greater. Similarly, 20 dB is 100 times more powerful and 140 dB is 100,000,000,000,000 times more powerful than a o dB sound.

0 dB is the loudness of near silence (a mosquito 10 feet away), while 120 dB is the loudness of a loud car horn heard from 1 meter away. Humans can hear sounds starting from 0 dB. But it can be quieter than 0 dB [the world’s quietest room]. It measures record setting -9 dB and can literally drive you crazy. In fact, the longest someone stayed in that room was for 45 minutes.
On the upper side of dB spectrum, a whisper is around 15 dB, conversations range from 40 – 60 dB and a jet engine measures 130 dB on the decibel scale. Like I said before, the perceived loudness depends on your ear’s distance from the source, so the loudness of a lawnmower can range anything from 90 dB to as much as 110 dB if you stand 3 feet away from it. [see the Decibel chart]

90 Decibels or a sound as loud as only a raised voice can cause gradual hearing loss (Refer to the hearing safety chart here). While 140 dB can cause physical pain. After 150 dB (firecracker) sounds can be felt in the form of shock waves. The pressure difference they cause in the medium can actually be felt by your body.

Beyond Decibels

Since the loudness depends on the medium, the maximum loudness a medium can propagate is dependent on its density. Our atmosphere can do nothing more than 190 dB, that, by the way, is enough to make you deaf or cause death. Sounds in water can get louder. A pistol shrimp is able to create a 200+ dB sound at 97 km/h to stun or kill its prey by snapping claws really fast. This is a very short lived pulse which doesn’t carry enough energy to do us any harm.

For events like the Saturn V launch, volcanic explosion, nuclear bomb explosion, earthquakes, star-quakes the concept of sound doesn’t really apply anymore. They are measured in terms of the shock wave they produce using the Richter scale. On this scale, 9 means total destruction (8.2 was measured during the explosion of the largest bomb ever, Tsar Bomba). An earthquake or earthly event measuring 10 has never been observed.

However, in the universe beyond earth, the starquake on the magnetar SGR 1806-20 registered 22.8 to 32 on the Richter scale. The magnetar released more energy in one-tenth of a second than our sun has released in 100,000 years. An event which thankfully took place 50,000 light-years away from earth. Had it been even 10 light-years away, the energy released would have wiped off life on earth. [read this BBC article for more information on this event]