time travel

ince the 1930’s, physicists have speculated about the existence of “wormholes” in the fabric of space. Wormholes are essentially gateways between different parts of the universe and are made by linking a pair of black holes. This effectively creates a tunnel through time and space: A traveler entering at one end would exist the other at a different time as well as a different place. The difficulty lies in keeping the wormhole open while the traveler makes his journey: If the opening snaps shut, he will never survive to emerge at the other end.

For years, scientists believed that the transit was physically impossible. But recent research, especially by the U.S. physicist Kip Thorne, suggests that it could be done using exotic materials capable of withstanding the immense forces involved. Even then, the time machine would be of limited use – for example, you could not return to a time before the wormhole was created. Using wormhole technology would also require a society so technologically advanced that it could master and exploit the energy within black holes. But the trip would not be impossible – just very, very difficult!

Mathematicians Solve E8 Structure
Posted by: travel, in Physics, Space

After four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most complicated structures in mathematics, scientists said late Sunday.

Jeffrey Adams, project leader and mathematics professor at the University of Maryland said E8 was discovered over a century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure could ever be understood.

“This groundbreaking achievement is significant both as an advance in basic knowledge, as well as a major advance in the use of large scale computing to solve complicated mathematical problems,” Adams said.

He added that the mapping of E8 may well have unforeseen implications in mathematics and physics which won’t be evident for years to come.

E8 belongs to so-called Lie groups that were invented by a 19th century Norwegian mathematician, Sophus Lie, to study symmetry.

The theory holds that underlying any symmetrical object, such as a sphere, is a Lie group.

Balls, cylinders or cones are familiar examples of symmetric three-dimensional objects.

However, mathematicians study symmetries in higher dimensions. In fact, E8 itself is 248-dimensional.

Today string theorists search for a theory of the universe by looking at E8 X E8.

While the human genome, which contains all the genetic information of a cell, is less than a gigabyte in size, the result of the E8 calculation, which contains all the information about E8, is 60 gigabytes in size, they said.

This is enough to store 45 days of continuous music in MP3-format. If written out on paper, the answer would cover an area the size of Manhattan.

Many people every year travel to Europe, and go about their sight seeing in many different ways. Traveling by rail is one of the most acclaimed ways of traveling the country. It has been said that Rail travel is not only quick and reliable, but it also takes travelers though almost thirty thousand European Cities. The European Rail network, which is also called "Eurasia", spans over one hundred and fifty thousand kilometers of beautiful European scenery. It beats driving across the country, considering that you have to pay attention to the road and fellow drivers, rather than being able to simply look out your window and enjoy the vast beauty of this exotic and diverse country. With approximately eighty thousand train departures per day, it is more than easy to plan your trip around traveling the Eurail. Traveling Europe by rail is actually pretty cheap, and traveling at night can save you money on hotels, and time on planning reservations for the different cities you wish to see. If you are planning on seeing many different countries during your trip, this can be a very helpful accommodation, saving you from the headache of trying to make reservations to many hotels in different countries. Relaxing and comfortable, many people simply sleep on the rail at night when taking a long trip across Europe.

In the early 1900s, Edwin Hubble made the startling discovery that our Milky Way galaxy is not alone. It is just one of many galaxies, or “island universes,” as Hubble dubbed them, swimming in the sea of space.

Now, a century later, NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer is helping piece together the evolution of these cosmic species. Since its launch in 2003, the mission has surveyed tens of thousands of galaxies in ultraviolet light across nine billion years of time. The results provide new, comprehensive evidence for the “nurture” theory of galaxy evolution, which holds that the galaxies first described by Hubble – the elegant spirals and blob-like ellipticals — are evolutionarily linked.

According to this “nurture” theory, a typical young galaxy begins life as a spiral that is actively churning out stars. Over time, the spiral might merge with another spiral or perhaps an irregular-shaped galaxy, before kicking out a few more bursts of newly minted stars. Eventually, the galaxy slows down its production of stars and settles into later life as an elliptical.

“Our data confirm that all galaxies begin life forming stars,” said Chris Martin, the principal investigator for the Galaxy Evolution Explorer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. “Then through a combination of mergers, fuel exhaustion and perhaps suppression by black holes, the galaxies eventually stop producing stars.”

When astronomers talk about galaxies today, they tend to refer to them by their color, either blue or red, instead of by their shape. Most blue galaxies are smaller spirals or irregulars, and most red galaxies are larger ellipticals, though there are some exceptions.

Why color-code the galaxies? Their color indicates how actively they are making new stars. Younger stars shine in ultraviolet or blue light, so galaxies that appear blue are busily producing stars. Older stars emit infrared or red light, so galaxies that look red have shut down their star-making factories. Roughly half of all galaxies are blue and half are red.

Scientists have long postulated that blue galaxies grow up to become red. They proposed that something happens to the blue galaxies to cause them to run out of star-making material, or gas, and mature into the passive red ones. For this “nurture” theory to be true, there should be a population of “teenage” galaxies in the process of transitioning from blue to red, or young to old. But such a cosmic metamorphosis should take billions of years. How can astronomers, with a significantly shorter lifespan, study a process that takes that long?

One solution is to look at lots and lots of galaxies. Imagine a hypothetical alien trying to figure out how and if humans age from only a handful of snapshots showing people of different ages. The aliens might assume that little people grow into big ones, but they could better piece together the life of a typical human if they could look through boxes and boxes of photographs.

The Galaxy Evolution Explorer was designed to provide astronomers with just such a massive portfolio of galaxies. Its troves of data have allowed scientists to find a significant number of teenage galaxies – and thus proof that youthful spiral, or blue, galaxies will eventually grow up to become the elderly elliptical, or red, galaxies.

“The nurture theory of galaxy evolution predicted that there would be galaxies in transition,” said Martin. “Finding these galaxies required ultraviolet light, because they really stand out at this wavelength. And because they are rare, we had to look at many. The Galaxy Evolution Explorer allowed us to do this.”

Visible-light data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey also helped to establish the age of the teenage galaxies and the rates at which they are running out of star-making fuel. These findings suggest that some of the young galaxies are ripening into old age quickly, while others are leisurely strolling into their golden years.

Evidence for the “nurture” theory of galaxy evolution can be found in a report in the Astrophysical Journal. Martin is the lead author.

Interesting article from 2004:

Eight years ago, American and British scientists who conducted investigations in Antarctica made a sensational discovery. US physicist Mariann McLein told the researchers noticed some spinning gray fog in the sky over the pole on January 27 which they believed to be just ordinary sandstorm. However, the gray fog did not change the form and did not move in the course of time. The researchers decided to investigate the phenomenon and launched a weather balloon with equipment capable to register the wind speed, the temperature and the air moisture. But the weather balloon soared upwards and immediately disappeared.

In a little while, the researchers brought the weather balloon back to the ground with the help of a rope attached to it before. They were extremely surprised to see that a chronometer set in the weather balloon displayed the date of January 27, 1965, the same day 30 years ago. The experiment was repeated several times after the researchers found out the equipment was in good repair. But each time the watch was back it displayed the past time. The phenomenon was called “the time gate” and was reported to the White House.

Today investigation of the unusual phenomenon is underway. It is supposed that the whirl crater above the South Pole is a tunnel allowing to penetrate into other times. What is more, programs on launching people to other times have been started. The CIA and the FBI are fighting for gaining control over the project that may change the course of history. It is not clear when the US federal authorities will approve the experiment.

Famous Russian scientist Nikolay Kozyrev conducted an experiment to prove that moving from the future to the past was possible. He substantiated his views with the hypotheses on instant information spreading through physical characteristics of time. Nikolay Kozyrev even supposed that “time could execute the work and produce energy.” An American physics theorist has arrived at a conclusion that time is what existed before existence of the world.

It is known that each of us feels a different course of time under different conditions. Once lightning hit a mountain-climber; later the man told he saw the lightning got into his arm, slowly moved along it, separated the skin from the tissues and carbonized his cells. He felt as if there were quills of thousands hedgehogs under his skin.

Russian investigator of anomalous phenomena, philosopher and author of numerous books Gennady Belimov published his article under the headline “Time Machine: First Speed On” in the newspaper On the Verge of Impossible. He described unique experiments conducted by a group of enthusiasts led by Vadim Chernobrov, the man who began creation of time machines, devices with electromagnetic pumping in 1987. Today the group of enthusiasts can slow down or speed up the course of time using special impact of the magnetic field. The biggest slowing down of time made up 1.5 seconds within an hour of the equipment’s operation in labs.

In August 2001, a new model of the time machine meant for a human was set in a remote forest in Russia’s Volgograd Region. When the machine even operated on car batteries and had low capacity, it still managed to change the time by three per cent; the change was registered with symmetrical crystal oscillators.

At first, the researchers spent five, ten and twenty minutes in the operating machine; the longest stay lasted for half an hour. Vadim Chernobrov said that the people felt as if they moved to a different world; they felt life here and “there” at the same time as if some space was unfolding. “I cannot define the unusual feelings that we experienced at such moments.”

Neither TV nor radio companies reported the astonishing fact; Gennady Belimov says the Russian president was not informed of the experiment. However, he tells that already under Stalin there was a Research Institute of the Parallel World. Results of experiments conducted by Academicians Kurchatov and Ioffe can be now found in the archives. In 1952, head of the Soviet secret police organization Lavrenty Beria initiated a case against researchers participating in the experiments, as a result of which 18 professors were executed by shooting and 59 candidates and doctors of physical sciences were sent to camps. The Institute recommenced its activity under Khruschev. But an experimental stand with eight leading researchers disappeared in 1961, and buildings close to the one where experiments were conducted were ruined. After that, the Communist Party political bureau and the Council of Ministers decided to suspend researchers of the Institute for an uncertain period.

The program was resumed in 1987 when the Institute already functioned on the territory of the Soviet Union. A tragedy occurred on August 30, 1989: an extremely strong explosion sounded at the Institute’s branch office on the Anjou islands. The explosion destroyed not only the experimental module of 780 tons but also the archipelago itself that covered the area of 2 square kilometers. According to one of the versions of the tragedy, the module with three experimenters collided with a large object, probably an asteroid, in the parallel world or heading toward the parallel world. Having lost its propulsion system, the module probably remained in the parallel world.

The last record made in the framework of the experiment and kept at the Institute archives says: “We are dying but keep on conducting the experiment. It is very dark here; we see all objects become double, our hands and legs are transparent, we can see veins and bones through the skin. The oxygen supply will be enough for 43 hours, the life support system is seriously damaged. Our best regards to the families and friends!” Then the transmission suddenly stopped.

Olga Zharina

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen’s University-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.

“Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed,” reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. “It’s something we’d envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable.”

One of 44 Canadian research initiatives to receive a total of $100 million (IPY) research funding from the federal government, Dr. Lamoureux’s new four-year project on remote Melville Island in the northwest Arctic brings together scientists and educators from three Canadian universities and the territory of Nunavut. They are studying how the amount of water will vary as climate changes, and how that affects the water quality and ecosystem sustainability of plants and animals that depend on it.

The information will be key to improving models for predicting future climate change in the High Arctic, which is critical to the everyday living conditions of people living there, especially through the lakes and rivers where they obtain their drinking water.

Other members of the research team include, from the Queen’s Geography Department: Paul Treitz, Melissa Lafreniere and Neal Scott; Myrna Simpson and Andre Simpson from U of T; and Pierre Francus from INRS-ETE, Quebec. Linda Lamoureux of Kingston’s Martello School will work with the scientists to develop learning tools for schools in the north.

From their camp on Melville Island last July, where they recorded air temperatures over 20ºC (in an area with July temperatures that average 5ºC), the team watched in amazement as water from melting permafrost a metre below ground lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom “that piled up like a rug,” says Dr. Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. “The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades to come.”

Comparing this summer’s observations against aerial photos dating back to the 1950s, and the team’s monitoring of the area for the past five years, the research leader calls the present conditions “unprecedented” in scope and activity. What’s most interesting, he says, is that their findings represent the impact of just one exceptional summer.

“A considerable amount of vegetation has been disturbed and we observed a sharp rise in erosion and a change in sediment load in the river,” Dr. Lamoureux notes. “With warmer conditions and greater thaw depth predicted, the cumulative effect of this happening year after year could create huge problems for both the aquatic and land populations. This kind of disturbance also has important consequences for existing and future infrastructure in the region, like roads, pipelines and air strips.”

If this were to occur in more inhabited parts of Canada, it would be “catastrophic” in terms of land use and resources, he continues. “It would be like taking an area the size of Kingston and having 15 per cent of it disappear into Lake Ontario.”

The Queen’s-led project is working with other IPY research groups including: Arctic HYDRA, an international group investigating the impact of climate change on water in the Arctic; Science Pub, a Norwegian group working on broad research from science to public education about the impacts of global warming; and CiCAT, a University of British Columbia-led group of 48 researchers investigating the impacts of climate change on tundra vegetation.

International Polar Year (IPY) is the largest-ever international program of coordinated scientific research focused on the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the first in 50 years.

From http://qnc.queensu.ca

Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions

Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth’s northern polar region.

“The decline in the amount of thick ice that survives the summer melt season this year is quite remarkable,” said Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “The extent of this ‘perennial’ sea ice and the area it covers are both nearly 38 percent lower than average. Compared to the record low in 2005, the extent and area are 24 percent and nearly 26 percent lower this year, respectively.”

“From what we know of how Arctic sea ice behaves after nearly 30 years of continuous satellite observations, this kind of drop in sea ice usually takes more than three years to happen. The rapid trend of the perennial ice previously reported in 2002 appears now to be in an accelerated mode,” Comiso observed.

Because Arctic ice cover varies so much year to year, it can be dangerous to look at any one year and draw too much of a conclusion from it,” said Waleed Abdalati, head of Goddard’s Cryospheric Sciences Branch. “But this year, the amount of ice is so far below that of previous years that it really is cause for concern. The trend in decreasing ice cover seems to be getting stronger and stronger as time goes on.”

NASA developed the original capability to observe the extent and concentration of sea ice from space using passive microwave sensors. More recently, NASA launched an advanced microwave instrument in 2002 — the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on the Aqua satellite — that provides a view of sea ice dynamics in greater detail than has ever been seen before. Researchers use this information to study polar bear habitats and the unique movements of sea ice from season to season. AMSR-E is a joint project of NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan.

The accelerating decline in sea ice may be due to changes in climate brought on by the lack of sea ice itself, Comiso believes. “When there is less sea ice in the summer, the Arctic Ocean receives more heat. The warmer water makes it harder for the ice to recover in the winter, and, therefore, there is a higher likelihood that sea ice will retreat farther during the summer. This process repeats itself year after year,” Comiso said.

“The longer this process continues, the less likely recovery becomes,” Abdalati believes. “The implications on global climate are not well known, but they have the potential to be quite large, since the Arctic ice cover exhibits a tremendous influence on our climate. It really is imperative that we try to understand the interactions between the ice, ocean and atmosphere. And satellites hold the key to developing this understanding.”

Current satellites, however, can map sea ice in two dimensions, but it is much more difficult to find out how the thickness of the ice contributes to the change in the total volume of the ice. NASA’s ICESat spacecraft (Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite), launched in 2003, with the primary goal of determining how much ice sheets are contributing to sea-level rise. ICESat is also collecting data that enables scientists to make estimates of sea ice thickness with unprecedented detail.

“What we need to truly understand the interaction of the ice, ocean and atmosphere in the Arctic is sea ice thickness information,” said Abdalati. “The new capability we have with ICESat is expected to be extended into the next decade based on recent recommendations by the National Research Council for a follow-on mission. Ultimately, like the 29-year record we have now of sea ice cover, a long-term ice thickness record will help scientists understand these complex interactions and what the changes in the ice cover will mean to the ecology of the Arctic and to life on Earth.”

Having explored Mars for three-and-a-half years in what were missions originally designed for three months, NASA’s Mars rovers are facing perhaps their biggest challenge.

For nearly a month, a series of severe Martian summer dust storms has affected the rover Opportunity and, to a lesser extent, its companion, Spirit. The dust in the Martian atmosphere over Opportunity has blocked 99 percent of direct sunlight to the rover, leaving only the limited diffuse sky light to power it. Scientists fear the storms might continue for several days, if not weeks.

“We’re rooting for our rovers to survive these storms, but they were never designed for conditions this intense,” said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

If the sunlight is further cut back for an extended period, the rovers will not be able to generate enough power to keep themselves warm and operate at all, even in a near-dormant state. The rovers use electric heaters to keep some of their vital core electronics from becoming too cold.

Before the dust storms began blocking sunlight last month, Opportunity’s solar panels had been producing about 700 watt hours of electricity per day, enough to light a 100-watt bulb for seven hours. When dust in the air reduced the panels’ daily output to less than 400 watt hours, the rover team suspended driving and most observations, including use of the robotic arm, cameras and spectrometers to study the site where Opportunity is located.

On Tuesday, July 17, the output from Opportunity’s solar panels dropped to 148 watt hours, the lowest point for either rover. On Wednesday, Opportunity’s solar-panel output dropped even lower, to 128 watt hours.

NASA engineers are taking proactive measures to protect the rovers, especially Opportunity, which is experiencing the brunt of the dust storm. The rovers are showing robust survival characteristics. Spirit, in a location where the storm is currently less severe, has been instructed to conserve battery power by limiting its activities.

“We are taking more aggressive action with both rovers than we needed before,” said John Callas, project manager for the twin rovers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

By Opportunity’s 1,236th Martian day, which ended Tuesday, driving and all science observations had already been suspended. The rover still used more energy than its solar panels could generate on that day, drawing down its battery. “The only thing left to cut were some of the communication sessions,” Callas said.

To minimize further the amount of energy Opportunity is using, mission controllers sent commands on Wednesday, July 18, instructing the rover to refrain from communicating with Earth on Thursday and Friday. This is the first time either of the rovers has been told to skip communications for a day or more in order to conserve energy. Engineers calculate that skipping communications sessions should lower daily energy use to less than 130 watt hours.

A possible outcome of this storm is that one or both rovers could be damaged permanently or even disabled. Engineers will assess the capability of each rover after the storm clears.

NASA will provide mission updates as events warrant. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the rover project for the Science Mission Directorate.

For more information about the rovers, visit:

From http://www.nasa.gov/rovers

Scientists have recently discovered that the planet Saturn is turning 60 - not years, but moons.

“We detected the 60th moon orbiting Saturn using the Cassini spacecraft’s powerful wide-angle camera,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team scientist from Queen Mary, University of London. “I was looking at images of the region near the Saturnian moons Methone and Pallene and something caught my eye.”

The newly discovered moon first appeared as a very faint dot in a series of images Cassini took of the Saturnian ring system on May 30 of this year. After the initial detection, Murray and fellow Cassini imaging scientists played interplanetary detective, searching for clues of the new moon in the voluminous library of Cassini images to date.

The Cassini imaging team’s legwork paid off. They were able to locate numerous additional detections, spanning from June 2004 to June 2007. “With these new data sets we were able to establish a good orbit for the new moon,” said Murray. “Knowing where the moons are at all times is important to the Cassini mission for several reasons.”

One of the most important reasons for Cassini to chronicle these previously unknown space rocks is so the spacecraft itself does not run into them. Another reason is each discovery helps provide a better understanding about how Saturn’s ring system and all its billions upon billions of parts work and interact together. Finally, a discovery of a moon is important because with this new knowledge, the Cassini mission planners and science team can plan to perform science experiments during future observations if and when the opportunity presents itself.

What of this new, 60th discovered moon of Saturn? Cassini scientists believe “Frank” (the working name for the moon until another, perhaps, more appropriate one is found) is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide and, like so many of its neighbors, is made mostly of ice and rock. The moon’s location in the Saturnian sky is between the orbits of Methone and Pallene. It is the fifth moon discovered by the Cassini imaging team.

“When the Cassini mission launched back in 1997, we knew of only 18 moons orbiting Saturn,” said Murray. “Now, between Earth-based telescopes and Cassini we have more than tripled that number - and each and every new discovery adds another piece to the puzzle and becomes another new world to explore.”

Murray and his colleagues may get the chance to explore Saturn’s 60th moon. The Cassini spacecraft’s trajectory will put it within 7,300 miles (11,700 kilometers) in December of 2009.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

From http://www.fda.gov