NASA to launch Cold Atom Lab in Space

Free falling: NASA is putting ultracold atoms in space

A laboratory for cooling an atomic gas to just a billionth of a degree above absolute zero will soon be sent up to the International Space Station (ISS) by physicists working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The goal of the Cold Atom Lab (CAL) mission is to create long-lived Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) that could lead to better sensors and atomic clocks for use on spacecraft. The BECs could even provide important insights into the nature of dark energy, according to the researchers.

First created in 1995, a BEC is made by trapping and cooling an atomic gas to an extremely low temperature so the atoms fall into the same low-energy quantum state. Instead of behaving like a collection of individual atoms, a BEC is essentially a large quantum object. This makes it very sensitive to disturbances such as stray magnetic fields and accelerations, and therefore BECs can be used to create extremely good sensors.

Falling down
Here on Earth, gravity puts an upper limit on the lifetime of a BEC – the atoms fall down and after a fraction of a second the BEC has dropped out of view of the experiment. In the microgravity environment of the ISS, however, NASA's Robert Thompson and colleagues reckon that their BECs should be observable for 5–10 s. As well as allowing physicists to make more precise measurements of the quantum properties of BECs, the longer lifetime should also make the BECs better sensors. With further development, the team believes that BECs in space could endure for hundreds of seconds.

Five scientific teams will do experiments using Cold Atom Lab, including one led by Eric Cornell of the University of Colorado – who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Physics for creating the first BECs.



As well as creating BECs, CAL will also cool fermionic atoms to create degenerative Fermi gases. These systems can be made to mimic the behaviour of electrons in solids and could provide important insights into phenomena such as superconductivity. Physicists will also study ultracold mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms. Other planned experiments include atom interferometry and very precise measurements of gravity itself.

Pervasive forces
"Studying these hyper-cold atoms could reshape our understanding of matter and the fundamental nature of gravity," says Thompson. "The experiments we'll do with the Cold Atom Lab will give us insight into gravity and dark energy – some of the most pervasive forces in the universe."



CAL will be contained within a package about the size of an "ice box". This will contain a vacuum chamber, lasers and electronics. It will also include an electromagnetic "knife", which will be used to cool the atoms. The lab is currently in the final stages of assembly and will be launched in August on a SpaceX CRS-12 rocket.
Author
Hamish Johnston is editor of physicsworld.com

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The Universe's largest supernova: a spinning, star eating black hole

By: Alexandria Addesso

According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a supernova is defined as one of the largest explosions that take place in space, in particular the explosion of a star. A supernova usually manifests when there is a change in the core, or center, of a star.

The brightest supernova ever recorded, and actually categorized as a super-luminous supernova, was the explosion of an extremely massive star at the end of its life. It was named ASASSN-15lh. ASASSN-15 lhn, was first observed in 2015 by the All Sky Automated Survey for Super-Novae (ASAS-SN). It was twice as bright as the previous record holder, and at its peak was 20 times brighter than the total light output of the entire Milky Way.



"We observed the source for 10 months following the event and have concluded that the explanation is unlikely to lie with an extraordinarily bright supernova,” said Giorgos Leloudas the leader of the team that observed the event at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. “Our results indicate that the event was probably caused by a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole as it destroyed a low-mass star."
After a series of further observations, it was discovered that the massive explosion took place about 4 billion light-years from Earth in a distant galaxy. It is believed that the star that the black hole consumed in order to produce such a massive explosion was its solar system's biggest star, comparable to our own sun. Since then rays have been observed traveling from the black hole towards us at the speed of light. These rays are forming a disc of gas around the black hole as it converts gravitational energy into electromagnetic radiation, producing a bright source of light visible on multiple wavelengths.



"Incredibly, this source is still producing X-rays and may remain bright enough for Swift to observe into next year," said David Burrows, the lead scientist of the team utilizing NASA's Swift satellite to monitor the massive black hole as well as a professor of astronomy at Penn State University. "It behaves unlike anything we've seen before."

Could such an explosion happen in our solar system with our own sun? This is a question scientists and inquiring minds are still trying to figure out.

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Imagining Humans on Mars

Billionaire Elon Musk hopes to build self-sustaining human colonies on Mars. How have science fiction writers imagined the possible role of Mars in humanity’s future?

Last month in Guadalajara, Mexico, Elon Musk, a former graduate student in physics and founder of the space exploration company SpaceX, made headlines with a daring plan: to put human beings on Mars as early as 2024. Musk’s vision is not of a small handful of astronauts or astrotourists taking a short walk on Mars’s surface. Rather, he sees Mars as the future home of a self-sustaining human colony.

At times Musk’s presentation to the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) felt like the opening scene of a science fiction movie—a comparison that he would probably not dislike. Indeed, SpaceX’s work has been littered with references to science fiction. The company’s Falcon 9 rocket is a nod to the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars. And at the IAC, Musk suggested that the first SpaceX ship to Mars might be named Heart of Gold, after the ship in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Those works, however, imagine travel between stars and planets far from the Milky Way. How has science fiction envisioned space exploration closer to home, especially as advances in spaceflight have made human travel to Mars seem almost within our reach?



Mars as utopia and refuge
In the late 19th century, astronomical observations of Mars led to intense speculation about whether its surface might harbor life. American astronomer Percival Lowell even built an observatory in Arizona to get a closer look at what he believed were artificially constructed Martian canals. Although most astronomers agreed that there was little evidence for life on Mars, the idea of a Martian race quickly took hold in fiction.

Many of the first science fiction novels about Mars described travelers to the Red Planet who encountered not merely life forms, but utopian civilizations. In A Plunge into Space (1890), Irishman Robert Cromie envisions a Martian society in which air travel is common and society has evolved beyond the need for politicians. In their novel Unveiling a Parallel (1893), Iowa feminists Alice Jones and Ella Merchant send their protagonist to two egalitarian societies on Mars—one in which women and men are equally promiscuous and violent and another in which equality of the sexes has resulted in a scientifically and philosophically advanced utopia.

A spherical steel spacecraft transports people to a Red Planet utopia in A Plunge into Space (1890). War-waging Martians attack Earth in The War of the Worlds (1898).



The most famous English-language science fiction novel of the late 19th century, H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898), imagines a significantly less peaceful encounter between humans and Martians. The book’s unnamed English narrator first reads about possible activity on Mars in Nature. Weeks later, he finds himself fleeing for his life as tentacled Martians kill or imprison his fellow humans. Only a humble bacterial infection saves humanity from total defeat. At the end of the novel, the narrator muses that humans, too, might travel beyond their planet one day—but they will have to contend with the surviving Martians if they do:

If the Martians can reach Venus, there is no reason to suppose that the thing is impossible for men, and when the slow cooling of the sun makes this earth uninhabitable, as at last it must do, it may be that the thread of life that has begun here will have streamed out. . . . It may be, on the other hand, that the destruction of the Martians is only a reprieve. To them, and not to us, perhaps, is the future ordained.

Wells’s vision of humans traveling to other planets to escape a crisis on Earth became a staple of mid-20th-century science fiction. Once again, Mars proved a popular destination. In several novels, including Red Planet (1949), avowedly libertarian author Robert Heinlein imagines political discontent as a motivation for Martian settlement—and for eventual rebellion from Earth authorities.



Ray Bradbury’s celebrated short story collection The Martian Chronicles (1950) describes humanity fleeing a coming nuclear war and encountering telepathic Martians. The collection also deals with life on war-torn Earth; perhaps the most famous story in The Martian Chronicles is “There Will Come Soft Rains,” which tells of a mechanized California house carrying on its work after its occupants die in a nuclear blast. Nuclear disaster also prompts the creation of Martian colonies in Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968). However, the colonists—and the androids they build—find Mars so desolate that many sneak back to Earth illegally.

The scientific challenges of Mars
Advances in space science during and after the Cold War have seemed to bring a human landing on Mars closer and closer to reality. In the 1960s NASA’s Mariner program successfully executed a series of Mars flybys that garnered the agency increasingly clear images of the planet. In 1975 NASA successfully landed Viking 1 and Viking 2 on Mars’s surface. Further missions to Mars have only become more ambitious. The celebrated Mars rovers, including Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity, have mapped Mars’s surface, sampled its soil and rocks, and helped scientists assess whether the planet was habitable in the past.

Viking 1 and Curiosity have provided scientists and sci-fi writers with striking views of the real Red Planet.

As scientists learn more about Mars’s geology and atmosphere, novelists have increasingly focused on the scientific and technological requirements for putting humans on the planet. Some of the most celebrated contemporary authors of Martian fiction have backgrounds in science or engineering. The most popular example is The Martian (2011), the debut novel by computer engineer Andy Weir, which chronicles the struggles and adventures of an astronaut accidentally left for dead on Mars’s surface.



The Martian focuses on living on Mars as it is. In contrast, Kim Stanley Robinson’s acclaimed Mars Trilogy imagines a centuries-long scientific effort to terraform the planet to support human life. Red Mars/i> (1993), the first book in the trilogy, focuses on the scientific challenges of remaking an entire planet, from the geological to the psychological. Scientific problems are not the only ones Robinson’s characters face: Conflict soon arises over whether Mars should be terraformed at all or whether it should be preserved in its natural desert state.



Science fiction has the unique ability to pose “what-if” questions about scientific and technological developments and to reflect on how those developments might affect human society. Each wave of Mars fiction has evolved alongside new knowledge of the Red Planet and has also raised questions related to the social concerns and political controversies of the day. Nineteenth-century Martian novels also served as commentaries on Victorian culture. In 20th-century fiction, colonies on Mars function as both a bastion of hope for humanity’s future and a sign that something has gone terribly wrong on Earth. Dick and Bradbury were implicitly condemning the casual use of nuclear weapons when they imagined humans fleeing to another planet. Robinson’s work explores the possible effect humans might have on Mars while reminding the reader that, humans are already altering Earth.

Musk’s plan for colonizing Mars within the next century is reminiscent of many of the novels about humans living on the Red Planet. In a recent interview, Robinson suggested that Musk modernize his sci-fi-inspired vision: “Musk’s science fiction story needs some updating, some real imagination using current findings from biology and ecology.” Perhaps as SpaceX hones its Mars settlement plan Musk should reread the Mars Trilogy along with The Martian, which depicted a human living on Mars with 21st-century technology.



If Musk’s ambitious plan succeeds, new takes on Mars in science fiction novels and movies will likely arise—along with new questions about what the achievement will mean for humanity.
Source: Melinda Baldwin is the Books editor at Physics Today.

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The Real Search for Life in Mars Begins

NASA's Astrobiology Institute (NAI) announced that the SETI Institute has been selected as a new member of the NAI for a 5-year research program

The team called “Planetary Environments and the Fingerprints of Life" led by planetary geologist and Senior Research Scientist, Nathalie Cabrol, the team's work will address key questions. How can we identify the signature of life not just here on Earth, but on Mars as well? How does a planet's changing environment impact the evidence for life?

"I am absolutely thrilled that the SETI Institute is joining the NAI. In the next five years, along with our partner institutions, we will focus on decoding the fingerprints of life--the ‘biosignatures’--in extreme environments here on Earth to help us look for life on Mars. Our goal is to understand the survival of ‘biosignatures’ from an early, wetter Mars to the harsh environment of the red planet today.

Understanding the role that the changing Martian environment has had on biosignatures will inform us on how to recognize these signatures, and how to explore them. We bring to this ambitious quest new exploration tools and, with NASA's Mars 2020 on the horizon, the timing could not be more perfect," stated Cabrol. "Personally and professionally, this is a tremendously exciting project because we aim to develop a roadmap to’ biosignature’ exploration for Mars for future missions."



"I am delighted at the news that the SETI Institute led team has been chosen as one of the new members in the NASA Astrobiology Institute. The team worked hard at putting together an outstanding proposal and it is a positive reflection on the process that is in place to review the proposals that their effort is recognized and rewarded by their professional peers. We look forward to an exciting five years of outstanding research under the aegis of this award," said David Black, President and CEO of the SETI Institute.

To model and test strategies for ‘biosignature’ detection, Cabrol's team will conduct fieldwork in extreme environments on Earth that are analogous to sites on Mars where water once flowed. Fieldwork will be done at Yellowstone National Park, sites in California and Chile, Axel Heiberg Island in the high Arctic, and Western Australia.



Each site is an analog to Mars: volcanic and hydrothermal terrain, lake sediments, evaporates, and perennial cold springs. Sites will be explored from satellites, air, ground, and at the microscopic level in the field and laboratory. Understanding how to integrate this multi-scale information will help scientists learn how to select the best sites for discovering ‘biosignatures’ on Mars.

Cabrol assembled a diverse team of experts in planetary science, robotics, laboratory experimentation, and exploration to conduct fieldwork, analyze samples, and develop a ‘biosignature’ roadmap to guide the search for life on Mars.

In addition to more than a dozen scientists at the SETI Institute, her team brings together scientists from universities, government agencies and industry partners in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and South America. In the US, partners include Arizona State University, University of Montana, University of Tennessee, Carnegie Mellon, Georgia Institute of Technology, Honeybee Robotics, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and NASA Ames Research Center. Non-US partners include McGill University (Canada), Centro de Astrobiología (CAB, Madrid, Spain), Deutscher Wetterdienst (Germany), Friedrich-Alexander University (Germany), and Campoalto for logistics in Chile.

Over the next 5 years, more than twenty scientists will work together to help answer the question of where, what and how to search for the right rocks on Mars to discover the fingerprints of life on the red planet.



Source: SETI Institute

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The Robot Humanoids, will they replace astronauts in future space missions?

As it continues to appear, the scientific community has made advancements in the field of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Consequently, it has allowed many to view the future of science much more broadly.


NASA recently announced in the news that they have made a collaboration with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has agreed that they will provide a humanoid robot with the intention of developing robotic strategies that will sustain future space travel to Mars and even other planets as well.

The humanoid type robot weighs approximately 280 pounds and is about 6 feet tall. It is known that MIT assigned the responsibilities of this project to Russ Tedrake, Chief Researcher, to develop the respective algorithms. "An algorithm is a prescribed set of well-defined rules or instructions and finite orders, that enables activity through successive performing steps that do not generate doubts, to who should perform such activity, where given an initial state and an entry, following successive steps It reaches a final state and a solution” that will be included in the robot named "Valkyrie " and also in the " R5 ".

The researchers aim to finish the project in just enough time to be part of the next planetary exploration conducted by NASA. The intent of the research is also to perfect robotic techniques that will be integrated into Valkyrie and become much more autonomous and skillful so that in the future it may replace the astronauts in complex and dangerous journeys. It is undoubtedly an ambitious and challenging project that involves various sciences in which physics and mathematics play the dominant roles.


The researchers were selected based on the Projects Agency Defense and Advanced Research (APDIA). It was reported that the initial amount the will receive is $250,000 per year for two years. We think it is a good investment of NASA.

NASA has shown its interest in humanoid robots, and believes that this project can help replace astronauts in future space travel on extreme environments. The R5 prototype is designed to be used in future space missions, as well as managing the mission until the astronauts arrives or as assistant to the mission team. In the first instance, the R5 robot was designed to complete relief maneuvers. Now the R5’s main goal will be to engage in deeper explorations.



Steve Jurczk, researcher, reported that "Advances in robotics, including collaboration in human robotics are essential for the development of the necessary skills for future missions to Mars." Jurczk is an associate administrator for the Office of Technology Space Mission (STMD) NASA in Washington. "We are very pleased to engage these research groups, university students, to help NASA with this next big step in the development of robotics technology."

As head of the Locomotive Group of Robotic LOCOM (GLR), Jurczk has great experience with autonomous robots. In the last three years he has led a team of over 20 researchers to develop algorithms for a company, associated with the government.

Jurczk tried to develop a 6 foot humanoid robot; called Atlas. The functions that Atlas we was responsible for was opening doors, turning valves, drilling holes, climbing stairs, climbing concrete blocks, and driving a car. These functions were given for completion in about one hour.

Tedrake is also part of another project of more than $ 25,000.00 in the research center, funded by the Toyota of CSAIL. To develop autonomous cars, focusing specifically on the algorithms and systems that allow such vehicles to perceive and navigate in an environment with advanced security and making decisions without human intervention.

The largest partnership will be coordinated by Gill Pratt PhD '89, a former MIT professor, who recently served as program director in the Office of DARPA Defense Sciences. In addition, Tedrake’s team in CSAIL, NASA also gave a robot R5 to a team led by Taskin Padir of the Northeastern University.



As we have continued to see progress in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence, individuals have led a relentless march to help humanity. Every day, movies such as Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. are beginning to look more and more real, making a bevy science fiction. According to a scientist at NASA's humanoid robotics project, this can all be a reality within 20 to 30 years. Subsequently space travel will be led by Robots probably within the middle of this century, or perhaps earlier.

NASA EXPOSED

The story is quite incredible and makes a potential NASA hack of all times. So there is this guy, a computer hacker, who one day figured he would hack into i.a. NASA computers to search for evidence of aliens and alien technology as he heard NASA (and other US government agencies) may be hiding something from the public. And so he did. Quite simply. As it turned out the NASA computer network defense systems were literally non-existent. Not only some of their machines, holding tons of secret data, were running on Windows, but were still “secured” with the default administrator password provided with every fresh installation of the system. So job was easy. Yet, true shock came later, when he realized he was on to something. As he was sniffing around the network he managed to access secret information that confirmed his suspicions. McKinnon’s NASA hack was detected, eventually, and US requested his extradition to face a trial. Ever since McKinnon has found himself entangled in a legal struggle over the extradition, as the Americans accused him of causing nearly 1 million USD worth of damage to computers he had hacked and he was likely to face many decades in prison.


In March 2002 Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon was arrested by police at his dingy flat in Wood Green, north London. Scotland Yard detectives were acting on allegations from the Americans that he had hacked into US military computer systems in an attempt to bring them down. He allegedly immobilized sensitive systems in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Mr McKinnon, now 46, admits hacking into US computers but says he had been on a “moral crusade” to find classified documents about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). He got his first computer when he was 14 years old. Three years later he left school and became a hairdresser. But in the early 1990s friends convinced him to get a qualification in computers. After completing a course he started doing contract work in the computing field.

By the late 1990s Mr McKinnon decided to use his hacking skills to “research” his belief the US government was withholding critical information about UFOs. His search quickly turned into an obsession.

The Americans continue to press for the extradition of a man who they say caused $800,000 (£487,000) worth of damage to computers between 2001 and 2002. If he was convicted in the US he could face up to 70 years in prison.

Completely unknown at the time of his arrest, Mr McKinnon became a symbol of the controversial US-UK extradition treaty, gaining a wealth of celebrity backers as diverse as Terry Waite, Sting and Julie Christie.

In August 2008 Mr McKinnon was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome – a form of autism. He was diagnosed after an expert in autism watched him in a television interview and contacted his solicitor. The initial hunch was confirmed by Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, a leader in the field. Asperger’s syndrome sufferers commonly become obsessed with certain activities and interests and are known to have a level of social naiveté when it comes to evaluating the consequences of their actions. Prof Baron-Cohen said this was consistent with Mr McKinnon’s “obsessive search for truth”.

It is claimed that between February 2001 and March 2002 Mr McKinnon hacked into dozens of US army, navy, air force, and Department of Defense computers, as well as 16 Nasa computers. The Americans allege he altered and deleted files at a US naval air station not long after the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. They describe Mr McKinnon’s hacking as “intentional and calculated to influence and affect the US government by intimidation and coercion”.

But Mr McKinnon, or Solo as he was known online, has always said he is no web vandal, nor virus writer, and he never acted with malicious intent.

In a BBC interview in 2005 he said: “I found out that the US military use Windows and having realized this, I assumed it would probably be an easy hack if they hadn’t secured it properly.” Using commercially available software, Mr McKinnon probed dozens of US military and government networks. He found many machines without adequate password or firewall protection. So he simply hacked into them, he said.

‘Crashed UFOs’

In 2009 he told the BBC: “I am not blind to criminality, but I was on a moral crusade.

“I was convinced, and there was good evidence to show, that certain secretive parts of the American government intelligence agencies did have access to crashed extra-terrestrial technology which could, in these days, save us in the form of a free, clean, pollution-free energy.”

He added: “I thought if someone is holding onto that, that is unconstitutional under American law. I didn’t think about jail sentences at the time.”

“I’d stopped washing at one point. I wasn’t looking after myself. I wasn’t eating properly. I was sitting around the house in my dressing gown, doing this all night,” he said.

Mr McKinnon did not try very hard to cover his tracks, even using his own e-mail address. When Britain’s hi-tech crime unit finally came for him in 2002, Mr McKinnon was not surprised.

He told the BBC: “I almost wanted to be caught, because it was ruining me. I had this classic thing of wanting to be caught so there would be an end to it.”

He thought he would be tried in Britain, and that he might get, at the most, three to four years in prison. But the Gary McKinnon saga dragged on for 10 years and in that time there have been seven home secretaries. During that time he appealed unsuccessfully to the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights.

One of his major arguments against extradition was that he believed he would not get a fair trial in the US and would be punished more severely because he had contested the extradition process. The case had been in Theresa May’s in-tray since she became Home Secretary in May 2010 and in October she finally ruled that he should not be extradited. She said there was no doubt Mr McKinnon was “seriously ill” and said: “Mr McKinnon’s extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr McKinnon’s human rights.”

Now, the director of public prosecutions has ruled Mr McKinnon will not face charges in the UK – bringing his 10-year battle to a close.



http://www.unacknowledged.info/gary-mckinnon-nasa-hack/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=email_this&utm_source=email
Added by Weyland Yutani on November 19, 2013.