This week’s Top 5 engineering technology articles include some outer space discoveries that may have us saying, it’s a small universe isn’t it.
- Amazing Photo Shows Likely Alien Planet 1,200 Light-Years Away
- First Test For Machine That Could Change The Future Of Particle Physics
- NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Is Almost To Jupiter
- Technique For ‘Phase Locking’ Arrays Of Tiny Lasers Could Lead To Terahertz Security Scanners
- LIGO Detects A Second Set Of Gravitational Waves
Amazing Photo Shows Likely Alien Planet 1,200 Light-Years Away
Space.com
Since I work out of our headquarters location, I’m in close proximity to the city of Pittsburgh. Within the past seven days, Pittsburgh has seen their hockey team, the Penguins, win the Stanley Cup and host a victory parade within the city limits. I was in the front row of the barricade among the other 400,000 folks attending.
So what makes any of this relevant? I had a cell phone and a DSLR camera and still had multiple shots were someone’s hand got in the way, I moved or shook the camera for a blurry picture or just flat out missed the actual shot I wanted. However, the European Southern Observatory managed to capture a clear photo of a possible alien planet more than 200 times further from Earth than Alpha Centauri. This planet could potentially be 1,200 light years or 7 quadrillion miles away.
The picture, which shows a small brown dot representing the planet right next to CVSO 30 a bright blueish star, is the second potential planet in this particular orbit. And considering how clear the picture is from the ESO telescopes, it kind of makes my photography look like a crayon drawing next to a Renoir or Monet.
First Test For Machine That Could Change The Future Of Particle Physics
Popular Science
The Large Hadron Collider that I’ve written of on this blog before is nearly five miles in diameter. So, particle physics isn’t really something you can randomly stumble on in your parent’s garage…unless your parents are Bill and Melinda Gates I guess.
However, now the folks at CERN are looking at advancements that may decrease that size by a factor of a hundred or more. In order to smash the particles within the accelerator, they have to be moving at a fairly fast speed which is where the size comes in with a regular collider. The AWAKE experiment proposes to make those speed ups more efficient by using a completely new method in speeding up the particles.
And even though we’re a long way off from seeing this come to fruition, it could mean phenomenal advancements if/when it does come to pass.
NASA’s Juno Spacecraft Is Almost To Jupiter
Science Alert
Speaking of spectacular pictures, we’re within a few weeks of receiving some clear and close pictures of the fifth planet that is, as far as I know, still a planet – unlike my friend Pluto.
On July 4th, Juno is set to start making close orbits of Jupiter. It was launched back in 2011 so this is quite a long time waiting. The amount of radiation that will be absorbed by Juno will be equal to about 100 million dental x-rays. At the core of Juno is a titanium “vault” housing the central computer weighing approximately 400 lbs. And, even with all the armor protecting Juno, it is only expected to last about 20 months before it is overwhelmed by the amount of radiation.
Technique For ‘Phase Locking’ Arrays Of Tiny Lasers Could Lead To Terahertz Security Scanners
Phys.org
A Hertz is a unit of frequency equal to one cycle per second. So, over the course of the last several decades to see things regularly cross into ranges like megahertz (1 million cycles per second) and gigahertz (1 billion cycles per second), it seems well within the realm of possibility and yet still amazing that we’re discussing things like terahertz (1 trillion cycles per second).
And yet, researchers at MIT and Sandia National Laboratories are working on new ways to build terahertz lasers that would reduce power consumption and size. These phase locking techniques being developed could pave the way for a whole new generation of chip technology.
LIGO Detects A Second Set Of Gravitational Waves
Astronomy Magazine
Scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) were pretty confident they had found a second gravitational wave in December of last year. It took them a few months to clarify what they had found by February they had made the findings public.
Gravity waves are weak and not easily detected due to the nature of most cosmic events. So to discover a second set means that a pretty significant cosmic event had to happen. That event was the collision of two black holes approximately 1.4 billion light years away. This makes the six-year trip to Jupiter or the 1,200 light years to the new planet look like a weekend getaway in comparison.
A number of technologies went into detecting and pinpointing the signal properly, but LIGO is confident that they can continue to make huge advancements in this field. Who knows, maybe one day with the right propulsion system, detecting items like this up close and person could be like a weekend getaway.
That’s all for me this week. Keep your eyes open for all the new advancements around you and continue to be amazed.
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