Wednesday, October 31, 2018
RIP, Kepler: Revolutionary Planet-Hunting Telescope Goes Dead [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
The most prolific planet-hunting machine in history is dead.
NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has discovered 70 percent of the 3,800 confirmed alien worlds to date, has run out of fuel, agency officials announced today (Oct. 30). Kepler can no longer reorient itself to study cosmic objects or beam its data home to Earth, so the legendary instrument's in-space work is done after nearly a decade. [Kepler's 7 Greatest Exoplanet Discoveries (So Far)]
And that work has been transformative.
"Kepler has taught us that planets are ubiquitous and incredibly diverse," Kepler project scientist Jessie Dotson, who's based at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, told Space.com. "It's changed how we look at the night sky."
Today's announcement was not unexpected. Kepler has been running low on fuel for months, and mission managers put the spacecraft to sleep several times recently to extend its operational life as much as possible. But the end couldn't be forestalled forever; Kepler's tank finally went dry two weeks ago, and its life is now officially over.
"This marks the end of spacecraft operations for Kepler, and the end of the collection of science data," Paul Hertz, head of NASA's Astrophysics Division, said during a telecon with reporters today.
Leading the exoplanet revolution
Kepler hunted for alien worlds using the "transit method," finding the brightness dips caused when a planet crosses its star's face from the spacecraft's perspective.
Those dips are tiny — so tiny, in fact, that NASA officials were originally dubious that a spacecraft could make such measurements. The driving force behind Kepler, Ames' Bill Borucki, had four mission proposals rejected in the 1990s before finally breaking through in 2000, after he and his team demonstrated the instrument's sensitivity at a test-bed facility on Earth. (Borucki retired in 2015.)
It still took a while for Kepler to get aloft. The spacecraft launched in March 2009, on a $600 million mission to gauge how common Earth-like planets are throughout the Milky Way galaxy.
Initially, Kepler stared continuously at a single small patch of sky, studying about 150,000 stars simultaneously. That work was incredibly productive, yielding 2,327 confirmed exoplanet discoveries to date.
In May 2013, however, the second of Kepler's four orientation-maintaining "reaction wheels" failed. The spacecraft couldn't keep itself steady enough to make its ultraprecise transit measurements, and Kepler's original planet hunt came to an end.
But the spacecraft wasn't done. Kepler's handlers soon figured out a way to stabilize it using sunlight pressure, and, in 2014, NASA approved a new mission called K2. (Sending astronauts to service Kepler is out of the question; the spacecraft orbits the sun, not Earth, and is millions of miles from our planet.)
During K2, Kepler studied a variety of cosmic objects and phenomena, from comets and asteroids in our own solar system to faraway supernova explosions, over the course of different 80-day "campaigns." Planet-hunting remained a significant activity; the K2 alien-world haul stands at 354 as of today.
Kepler's observations over both of its missions suggest that planets outnumber stars in the Milky Way and that potentially Earth-like worlds are common. Indeed, about 20 percent of sun-like stars in our galaxy appear to host rocky planets in the habitable zone, the range of distances where liquid water could exist on a world's surface.
"Kepler's exoplanet legacy is absolutely blockbuster," Dotson said.
But the mission's legacy extends to other fields as well, she stressed. For example, Kepler's precise brightness measurements — which the telescope has completed for more than 500,000 stars — are helping astronomers better understand the inner workings of stars. And the instrument's supernova observations could shed considerable light on some of the most dramatic events in the universe.
"We've seen explosions as soon as they happen, at the very beginning," Dotson said. "And that's very exciting if you'd like to figure out why things go, 'Boom!'"
0 of 10 questions complete
Alien Planet Quiz: Are You an Exoplanet Expert?
Astronomers have confirmed more than 800 planets beyond our own solar system, and the discoveries keep rolling in. How much do you know about these exotic worlds?
0 of questions complete
Not done yet
Even though Kepler has closed its eyes, discoveries from the mission should keep rolling in for years to come. About 2,900 "candidate" exoplanets detected by the spacecraft still need to be vetted, and most of those should end up being the real deal, Kepler team members have said.
A lot of other data still needs to be analyzed as well, Dotson stressed.
And Kepler will continue to live on in the exoplanet revolution it helped spark. For example, in April, NASA launched a new spacecraft called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is hunting for alien worlds circling stars that lie relatively close to the sun (using the transit method, just like Kepler).
Some of TESS' most promising finds will be scrutinized by NASA's $8.9 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2021. Webb will be able to scan the atmospheres of nearby alien worlds, looking for methane, oxygen and other gases that may be signs of life.
Kepler's death "is not the end of an era," Kepler system engineer Charlie Sobeck, also of NASA Ames, told Space.com. "It's an occasion to mark, but it's not an end."
Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/41363-kepler-exoplanet-hunting-telescope-dead.html RIP, Kepler: Revolutionary Planet-Hunting Telescope Goes Dead
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]RIP, Kepler: Revolutionary Planet-Hunting Telescope Goes DeadTuesday, October 30, 2018
Explore Darth Vader’s Castle in These Awesome Lego Pics! [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
The Dark Side of the Force is strong in Lego’s Darth Vader Castle, a 2018 set that transports you to Mustafar to see how Anakin Skywalker lived in his Empire days. (Mustafar, in case you were unaware, is where Anakin had his lightsaber showdown with Obi-wan Kenobi, only to be injured so severely he had to don his iconic Vader helmet and mechanical limbs.) The set, which Lego unveiled Oct. 4, is available exclusively from Amazon for the 2018 holiday season. Preorders for the $129.99 set are available now. See more awesome photos of the Star Wars-themed Lego set here!
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42277-lego-darth-vader-castle-star-wars-photos.html Explore Darth Vader's Castle in These Awesome Lego Pics!
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Explore Darth Vader’s Castle in These Awesome Lego Pics!Eddie Hall weight loss: Ex World’s Strongest Man loses FIVE stone in a year – here’s how [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
The 30-year-old is known for scooping a win at the World’s Strongest Man 2017 competition, as well as landing a world record for lifting 500kg under strongman rules the year before.
Eddie, who hails from Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, has also won the Strongest Man competitions in the UK and England a number of times.
However, last week, the athlete took to Instagram to unveil how his physique has changed in a matter of months.
Posting two photos side-by-side as before and after shots, the deadlifter – dubbed The Beast – showcased his noticeably slimmer figure, as well as his significantly more defined abdominal muscles.
Beside the post, Eddie explained how he had slimmed down by five stone, from around 30 stone 12 pounds to 25 stone to 12 pounds, within the year.
“196kg vs 164kg 2017 Vs 2018,” he wrote in view of his 896,000 followers.
“Lots of people asking for comparison photos from my biggest to now, well here it is…”
Shortly after delighting fans with the post, Eddie posted another capture of himself on his Instagram account.
The Staffordshire-based star, who announced he intended to retire from the World’s Strongest Man competitions last year, went on to share his thoughts about losing weight.
Sharing some tips about how to shift the pounds, Eddie insisted that dieters shouldn’t underestimate the importance of having a good breakfast in the morning.
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; this is where most people will make their first BIG mistake if they’re trying to lose weight,” he wrote.
The star went on to advise fans against sipping a cup of coffee while they enjoyed their first meal of the day.
“Coffee…. The caffeine in your morning coffee stops an enzyme called amylase from working correctly, which is located in your mouth and gut, and breaks down starchy carbs,” he wrote, before claiming: “If you have coffee with your cereal, toast or granola, this is the worst way to start your day.
“Try some citric acid instead, which can actually increase the production of amylase… a glass of orange juice instead is the perfect replacement.”
The Beast went on to tell fans to take a DNA test via the brand Muhdo, as well as find out some “interesting facts”.
Last week, Eddie also let fans in on what he thought had helped him to lose fat while gaining muscle at the same time.
In a lengthy post about how he currently weighed in at around 163-164kg, he told fans how he planned to remain the same weight, while changing his body shape.
“I’ll carry on loosing fat and keep gaining muscle at this weight all being well,” the athlete added.
“I keep taking my oblivion to help this happen and I’m feeling great and not looking too bad either. Oblivion from @myoband.teamsnf.”
Another celebrity who has lost a significant amount is TV chef Gordon Ramsay – who lost four stone by increasing what he ate.
The 51-year-old, who has appeared on shows including Hell’s Kitchen, Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare, and The F Word, said on The Today Show that he shed 50 pounds (3.6 stone) by eating more, but smaller, portions each day.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1038453/Eddie-Hall-weight-loss-deadlift-diet-tips-Instagram-before-after-pictures Eddie Hall weight loss: Ex World’s Strongest Man loses FIVE stone in a year – here's how
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Eddie Hall weight loss: Ex World’s Strongest Man loses FIVE stone in a year – here’s howApple cider vinegar weight loss: Drink vinegar at THIS time to lose the most weight [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Apple cider vinegar is becoming more and more popular as a weight-loss method.
The liquid has been used for cooking and to treat ailments for thousands of years, but is now a favourite with slimmers.
When drunk every day, apple cider vinegar is said to blast belly fat, decrease body fat percentage and speed up the metabolism.
Experts have revealed the best time of day to drink apple cider vinegar.
According to Healthy Hints, apple cider vinegar should be drunk in the morning before breakfast.
The claims come after a study showed that participants drinking the vinegar with their breakfast had a significant lower appetite compared to those not drinking the vinegar.
Those who drank the vinegar every day before breakfast found that they had an increased feeling of fullness, which led to eating less.
Apple cider vinegar works by boosting fat burning and decreasing fat and sugar production in the liver.
It also works by reducing the body’s fat storage abilities, by increasing the number of genes that reduce belly fat storage.
Apple cider vinegar can suppress the appetite and even increase the body’s amount of fat-burning genes.
According to Healthline.com, slimmers should be drinking one-two tablespoons (15-30ml) of the vinegar a day.
This amount should be spread out into two-three does a day, best consumed on an empty stomach before breakfast.
As apple cider vinegar is a potent, fermented liquid, it can be potentially damaging.
It should be mixed with water or made into a tea with other spices, such as ginger, to ease its effect on the stomach.
Apple cider vinegar has also been used for its health and medicinal properties for thousands of years, known for aiding digestion and lowering blood sugar levels.
Apple cider vinegar is made from apples, sugar and yeast and is loved by many celebrities such as Miranda Kerr and Kourtney Kardashian.
The vinegar has also been used to treat acne, cancer, colds and heartburn.
Daniel O’Shaughnessy, director of Nutrition at The Naked Nutritionist, agreed the vinegar could be beneficial for aiding weight loss.
He said: “Apple cider vinegar has been researched to improve insulin sensitivity and lower blood sugar after meals so can be helpful in weight loss.
“It may also help increase satiety therefore helping weight loss.”
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1038354/apple-cider-vinegar-weight-loss-time Apple cider vinegar weight loss: Drink vinegar at THIS time to lose the most weight
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Apple cider vinegar weight loss: Drink vinegar at THIS time to lose the most weightMonday, October 29, 2018
Space Calendar 2018: Launches, Sky Events & More [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
LAST UPDATED Oct. 15: These dates are subject to change, and will be updated throughout the year as firmer dates arise. Please DO NOT schedule travel based on a date you see here. Launch dates collected from NASA, ESA, Roscosmos, Spaceflight Now and others.
Watch NASA webcasts and other live launch coverage on our Watch Live page, and see our night sky webcasts here. (You can also watch NASA TV live via nasa.gov or YouTube.)
Find out what's up in the night sky this month with our visible planets guide and skywatching forecast. Spot the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and other satellites in the sky above with this satellite tracker.
October
Oct. 17: The U.S. military will launch its fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite aboard an Atlas V rocket provided by the United Launch Alliance. It will launch from pad SLC-41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415GMT).
Oct. 18: Conjunction of the moon and Mars. The Red Planet will make a close approach to the waning gibbous moon this evening. Look for the pair above the southeast horizon in the evening sky.
Oct. 19/20: Arianespace will use an Ariane 5 ECA rocket to launch the BepiColombo mission for the European Space Agency and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. BepiColombo will begin a seven-year journey to Mercury. The mission will lift off from Kourou, French Guiana at 9:45 p.m. EDT on Oct. 19 (0145 GMT on Oct. 20). [Watch Live]
Oct. 20: International Observe the Moon Night. Look up tonight to see the waning gibbous moon in all its lunar glory. Even better, attend one of more than 400 moongazing events around the world! (Here are Space.com's tips for observing the moon.)
Oct. 21-22: The Orionid meteor shower peaks.
Oct. 23: Uranus at opposition. Now is a great time to look for Uranus in the night sky (yes, it is visible to the naked eye)! The distant planet will be at its biggest and brightest, as it will be directly opposite the sun in the sky. Uranus will also make its closest approach to Earth around the same time.
Oct. 24: Full moon. The Hunter's Moon will become officially full at 12:45 p.m. EDT (1645 GMT).
Oct. 26: An air-launched Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket will send NASA's Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) satellite into orbit from Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands at 4:00-5:30 a.m. EDT (0800-0930 GMT).
Oct. 29: A Japanese H-2A rocket will launch the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite 2 (GOSAT 2) for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the KhalifaSat Earth-imaging satellite for the United Arab Emirates. It will lift off from the Tanegashima Space Center at 12:08-12:20 a.m. EDT (0408-0420 GMT).
Oct. 30: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the 71st Progress cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 8:53 p.m. EDT (0053 GMT on Oct. 31).
Also slated to launch in October (from Spaceflight Now):
- A Chinese Long March 2C rocket will launch the China-France Oceanography Satellite (CFOSAT) from Jiuquan, China.
November
Nov. 4: Daylight Saving Time in the United States. Americans get to enjoy an extra hour of sleep tonight.
Nov. 6/7: An Arianespace Soyuz rocket will launch the European Space Agency's MetOp C polar-orbiting weather satellite from the Guiana Space Center in Sinnamary, French Guiana at 8:47 p.m. EST on Nov. 6 (0047 GMT on Nov. 7).
Nov. 6: Mercury will reach its greatest elongation east of the sun and will be visible to skywatchers in the Southern Hemisphere just after sunset.
Nov. 11: Conjunction of the moon and Saturn. The crescent moon will make a close approach to Saturn in the night sky. Look for them after sunset in the southwest sky.
Nov. 15: Conjunction of the moon and Mars. The Red Planet and the moon will be less than one degree apart in the night sky. Look for them above the southeast horizon after dusk.
Nov. 15: A Northrop Grumman Antares rocket will launch a Cygnus cargo spacecraft from Wallops Island, Virginia at 4:49 a.m. EST (0949 GMT) for a cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station.
Nov. 17-18: The Leonid meteor shower peaks.
Nov. 19: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch Spaceflight's SSO-A rideshare mission from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Nov. 22: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the EgyptSat-A Earth-observation satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Nov. 23: Full moon. The Beaver Moon, also known as the Frost Moon, will become full at 12:39 a.m. EST (0539 GMT).
Nov. 27: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch a Dragon cargo spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Florida for a cargo delivery mission to the International Space Station.
Also slated to launch in November (from Spaceflight Now):
- India will launch the GSAT 29 communications satellite from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Es'hail 2 communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida for Qatar's national satellite communications company Es'hailSat.
- A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the Glonass M navigation satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia.
- A Rocket Lab Electron rocket will launch on its third mission, titled "It's Business Time," from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. (The mission was delayed from June due a technical problem with the rocket.)
- A Chinese Long March 5 rocket will launch the Shijian 20 communications satellite from Wenchang, China.
- India will launch the Hyperspectral Imaging Satellite (HySIS) and some small secondary payloads from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota, India.
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch 10 Iridium satellites (66-75) from Vandenberg Air Foce Base in California.
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Radarsat Constellation Mission for the Canadian Space Agency and Maxar Technologies. The mission will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
December
Dec. 3: A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket will launch a classified spy satellite (NROL-71) for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Dec. 13: NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and Russian cosmonaut Sergey Prokopyev are scheduled to undock their Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft from the International Space Station and land in Kazakhstan.
Dec. 13-14: The Geminid meteor shower peaks.
Dec. 14: An Arianespace Soyuz rocket will launch Italy's first COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation (CSG 1) radar surveillance satellite and the European Space Agency's Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite (CHEOPS) from the Guiana Space Center in South America.
Dec. 15: A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force's first third-generation navigation satellite for the Global Positioning System (GPS 3-01) from Cape Canaveral at 9:08 a.m. EST (1408 GMT).
Dec. 16: Comet 46P/Wirtanen will make its closest approach to the sun, and it will be visible to the naked eye just after dusk. [See Two Bright-Green Comets in 2018's Night Sky: How, Where and When to Look]
Dec. 19: NASA astronaut Anne McClain, Canadian Space Agency astronaut David Saint-Jacques and Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko will launch to the International Space Station aboard the Russian Soyuz MS-11 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:52 p.m. EST (0452 GMT on Dec. 20).
Dec. 21: Winter solstice. Beginning at 5:09 p.m. EST (2209 GMT), it will officially be winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere. It will also be the shortest day of the year for the Northern Hemisphere and the longest day in the Southern Hemisphere.
Dec. 22: Full moon. The Cold Moon, also known as the Long Nights moon, will become full at 12:49 p.m. EST (1749 GMT).
Dec. 26: A Russian Soyuz rocket will launch the Kanopus-V 5 and 6 Earth observation satellites from the Vostochny Cosmodrome.
Also slated to launch in December (from Spaceflight Now):
- An Arianespace Vega rocket will launch the Italian space agency's PRISMA satellite from Kourou, French Guiana.
- A Rocket Lab Electron rocket will launch on its fourth flight from the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. It will loft into orbit 10 cubesats for NASA and other U.S. research institutions.
Also coming in 2018…
- A Chinese Long March 3B rocket will launch the Chang'e 4 mission to attempt the first robotic landing on the far side of the moon.
Coming up in 2019…
- On Jan. 1, 2019, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew by Pluto in 2015, will reach its next target: Ultima Thule.
- A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Crew Dragon spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center in Florida for an uncrewed test flight to the International Space Station.
- A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch Boeing's first CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on an unpiloted Orbital Test Flight to the International Space Station. The capsule will dock with the space station, then return to Earth. (This test flight was delayed from August 2018 to mid-2019.)
- A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the Arabsat 6A communications satellite from Kennedy Space Center's historic Pad 39A.
- A SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket will launch the U.S. Air Force's Space Test Program-2 mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
- India will launch the Chandrayaan-2 mission to the moon.
- China will launch the Chang'e 5 mission to return samples from the moon. It will be the first lunar sample return mission attempted since 1976.
Please send any corrections, updates or suggested calendar additions to hweitering@space.com. Follow Space.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/32286-space-calendar.html Space Calendar 2018: Launches, Sky Events & More
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Space Calendar 2018: Launches, Sky Events & MoreWeight loss: Mum-of-two loses 4.5 STONE in 7.5 months by limiting THIS food every week [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Weight loss is something many people can struggle with, with slimmers sometimes shedding the pounds only to regain them shortly after.
But, for Nicola Stretch, a doctor’s concern about her health led to her feeling that her weight-loss journey had to be a success.
It came after a series of tragic events over recent years, including the loss of two family members within six months, saw her using food as a comfort – with Nicola eventually tipping the scales at her heaviest weight: 17 and a half stone.
The wedding cake maker said: “I’d always been on the heavier side but the sudden loss of my wonderful Auntie and amazing Grandad left me devastated.
“I couldn’t sleep at night and I turned to food for comfort.”
Realising she had to change her lifestyle, the mother-of-two found out her blood pressure was at higher than normal levels after she visited a nurse for a routine appointment back in 2016.
Having tried out different medication in order to lower her blood pressure, the results still came in at around 191/112 – much to her doctor’s concerns.
Worrying about her health saw her gain another stone, which was when Nicola weighed in at 17 and a half stone.
Nicola, now 41, explained: “My blood pressure increased and the medication didn’t seem to be working.
“On top of everything I was going through I had the worry that I was ill and couldn’t control it. I put on another stone and was the heaviest I had ever been.”
She continued: “I was absolutely horrified and hated what I saw in the mirror every day.
“I knew I had to make a change and had to lose weight for the sake of my health.”
Deciding to do something about her weight, Nicola soon noticed an article online about a slimmer who had been following the Terri Ann 123 Diet Plan.
Intrigued by the weight loss, the cake maker decided to try it out for herself – overhauling her eating habits.
The diet, created by founder Terri Ann Nunns back in 2011, is made up of three stages, which slimmers switch between on a weekly basis.
In the first stage, named the 10-day boost, users limit their intake of starchy carbohydrates, while boosting the amount of protein, vegetables and healthy fats in their diet.
Having kickstarted weight loss, fruit is reintroduced in the second stage, as well as increasing the amount of starchy carbohydrates.
In the third stage, slimmers limit starchy carbohydrates once again, but are allowed to tuck into fruit.
Nicola kept up with the plan, and after seven and a half months, she had lost an impressive four stone seven pounds.
Her dramatic weight loss even saw her shrink from a women’s UK size 20/22 to a size 14.
“It took me a couple of weeks to get my head around the plan,” she said.
“It was a complete overhaul of how, what and when I ate, so programming my brain to a new way of thinking after doing the same thing for 40 years wasn’t easy!
“However, I kept reading the book and got support from the advisers to create a plan for my first ten days. I made sure I was really organised with my food shopping and didn’t leave anything to chance, making it easier to follow the plan and stick to it.”
As well as having lost weight, Nicola also said her blood pressure has gone down “considerably”, adding: “My medication has been reduced and I’m now in a position where I could come off medication completely in the near future.”
Elsewhere, nutritionist Rick Hay has advised that eating grapefruit or lemon in warm water before breakfast could promote weight loss.
Speaking to Marie Claire about ways to kickstart fat burning, he said: “Grapefruit or lemon in warm water is good before breakfast to help cleanse and kick-start the lymphatic system.”
For more information about the Terri Ann 123 Diet Plan, go to: https://www.terriann123dietplan.co.uk/
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1037950/Weight-loss-diet-plan-meal-tips-Terri-Ann-Nunns-123 Weight loss: Mum-of-two loses 4.5 STONE in 7.5 months by limiting THIS food every week
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Weight loss: Mum-of-two loses 4.5 STONE in 7.5 months by limiting THIS food every weekGordon Ramsay weight loss: Gordon, Gino & Fred Road Trip star lost 4 stone by eating MORE [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Gordon Ramsay, 51, is a British celebrity chef, television star and restauranteur.
He rose to fame due to his fiery temper and foul use of language, appearing on television shows such as Hell’s Kitchen, The F Word and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmare.
He is currently appearing on a new TV show, Gordon, Gino and Fred: Road Trip.
During his career, Gordon has battled with his weight, but recently lost a staggering 50 pounds (3.6 stone).
The celebrity chef once weighed a heavy 270 pounds (19 stone) at his heaviest.
Earlier in the year, he revealed the reasons behind his weight loss, telling the Daily Mail: “Tana was not impressed with the way I was.”
“I was overweight, 18 stone. I looked like a sack of s***. I look at the pictures and think, ‘How did Tana stay around?’
“Because Tana has got better-looking and more gorgeous. And there she is, getting in bed with a fat f***.’”
Gordon began his body transformation, revealing to the public that he actually started eating more times – but in much smaller portions.
“I’m very good now at eating five times a day, but small amounts as opposed to a big breakfast, big lunch and big dinner,” he said on The Today Show.
The chef revealed more of his weight-loss secrets on a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread.
For breakfast the 51-year-old eats porridge, stating that it sets him up “for the rest of the day”.
He also explained that he goes on to eat “small bowls” during the day rather than a sit-down lunch or dinner.
He said: “So I don’t really sit down and do lunch. I certainly don’t sit down and eat dinner.”
“There’s nothing worse than eating dinner at 5:30 and then having to get up and cook for three hours.”
Along with eating porridge, there is another thing that can be done at breakfast time to help with weight loss.
In fact, doing one thing even before breakfast is eaten can help promote fat burning.
Cutting up a few slices of grapefruit and putting it into warm water can help kickstart fat burning.
If drunk before eating breakfast it can help cleanse the body, experts have said.
“Grapefruit or lemon in warm water is good before breakfast to help cleanse and kick-start the lymphatic system,” nutritionist Rick Hay told Marie Claire.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1037772/Gordon-Ramsay-weight-loss-diet-Gordon-Gino-and-Fred-Road-Trip Gordon Ramsay weight loss: Gordon, Gino & Fred Road Trip star lost 4 stone by eating MORE
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Gordon Ramsay weight loss: Gordon, Gino & Fred Road Trip star lost 4 stone by eating MORELandspace Fails to Reach Orbit with Milestone Private Chinese Launch [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
HELSINKI — Landspace suffered an issue with the third stage of its Zhuque-1 solid launch vehicle Saturday as it bid to become the first Chinese private launch company to reach orbit.
The three-stage Zhuque-1, named after the Vermillion Bird from Chinese mythology, lifted off from a mobile platform at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, northwest China, at 4 a.m. Eastern (4 p.m. local time).
No live coverage or reporting was available, but space enthusiasts tracking Chinese launches attended, posting apparent images and footage of the launch on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter-like microblogging service. [China Joins Private Space Race with Landmark OneSpace Rocket Launch]
After nominal first and second stages and fairing separation an issue with the third stage resulted in the spacecraft failing to achieve orbit, Landspace CEO Zhang Changwu confirmed to press at the site following the launch.
The lost payload was the Weila-1 ('Future') satellite with a mass of 10-30 kg for China Central Television (CCTV) and developed by Beijing MinoSpace Technology company, founded in 2017. The satellite was intended to be used by the broadcaster for a science outreach TV series.
The launch was China's 30th of 2018 and the first to fail to reach its intended orbit. The previous failure took place in July 2017 with a first-stage engine failure afflicting the second Long March 5, delaying major lunar exploration and space station missions.
First private Chinese launches
The Zhuque-1 orbital launch attempt was the first by a Chinese firm, following a government decision in late 2014 to open the space sector to private capital in the spheres of launch vehicles and small satellites.
The 19-meter-tall, 1.3-meter-diameter, 27-metric ton Zhuque-1 cost around $14 million to develop according to Chinese website thepaper.cn, following investment from partly-state-owned and private sector backers, and is targeting the emerging commercial space launch market for micro- and small satellites in China.
Landspace was previously planning to launch a different launch vehicle, named LS-1, and had in 2017 signed a contract with the Nordic company GOMspace to offer rideshare opportunities from the coast Wenchang launch center. However, a Chinese contractor providing crucial technology for the solid-propellant rocket ended cooperation with Landspace, prompting the development of Zhuque-1.
At least ten Chinese commercial launch companies are now operating, making for a crowded field of contenders, though at various stages of developing carrier rockets. 2018 has seen the first suborbital launches, with iSpace and OneSpace each carrying out two successful launches.
John Horack, the Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy at the Ohio State University, told SpaceNews ahead of Saturday’s launch that, “there is no doubt that the commercial space launch market is real, and there is money to be made in almost all payload categories.
Horack notes however that commercial markets are hard to predict and in particular the factors of, “cost, ease of transaction, and reliability are the three main factors I see at play to drive success for Landspace and others.”
OneSpace, with facilities in the capital Beijing and Chongqing, southwest China, appears set to make the next attempt at a fully successful orbital launch following the test-firing of fourth stage engines for its OS-M rocket—designed to carry a 205-kilogram payload to 300-kilometer low Earth orbit—on Oct. 23.
A OneSpace representative confirmed to SpaceNews that the company is looking to launch its first OS-M near the end of 2018, having already tested first stage and other engines from July onwards.
Even with early success there will be a long way to go for Landspace, OneSpace and others before becoming truly competitive.
“Reliability is only built up over time, and therefore launch cadence and experience will have to be acquired before reliability can be truly assessed for Landspace or any other launch company. One should expect failures, as this is not an easy business. SpaceX, Orbital, Virgin, and others have all dealt with this,” Horack said, adding that, “early failures can sink a company almost before they start.”
Landspace looking to methalox and medium-lift
Landspace had stated at the International Astronautical Congress in Bremen, Germany, earlier this month that it saw its future in the development of medium-lift launchers powered by liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellant.
The two-stage Zhuque-2 (ZQ-2), which Landspace aims to manufacture next year and launch for the first time in 2020, will measure 48.8-meters tall with a diameter of 3.35 meters and be capable of delivering a 4,000-kilogram payload capacity to a 200-kilometer low Earth orbit and 2,000 kilograms to 500-kilometer SSO, using 80-ton and 10-ton methalox engines.
It is not immediately clear how Saturday’s launch issue will affect financing for development of the rocket or future launchers planned for the series, and if and when a second Zhuque-1 solid rocket launch could take place.
Landspace had announced plans to further, larger Zhuque-2 series three-stage rockets—using variable thrust engines to allow attempting vertical landings and reuse of first stages—capable of carrying up to 32,000 kilograms to 200-kilometer low Earth orbit. Saturday’s setback underlines that there are huge challenges in living up to such ambitions.
This story was provided by SpaceNews, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42279-landspace-fails-to-reach-orbit-with-first-launch.html Landspace Fails to Reach Orbit with Milestone Private Chinese Launch
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Landspace Fails to Reach Orbit with Milestone Private Chinese LaunchWeight loss: Drinking THIS before breakfast will kickstart fat burning [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Breakfast can sometimes feel like the least important meal of the day but in fact it’s the most important.
Making healthy food choices at breakfast time can help kickstart weight loss.
It’s not always about what is eaten, however, what you drink can always make a difference.
There’s one beverage which is easily made and can help burn fat if consumed before eating breakfast.
Cutting up a few slices of grapefruit and putting it into warm water can help kickstart fat burning.
If drunk before eating breakfast it can help cleanse the body, experts have said.
“Grapefruit or lemon in warm water is good before breakfast to help cleanse and kick-start the lymphatic system,” nutritionist Rick Hay told Marie Claire.
It can also stop hunger cravings kicking in later in the day leading to overeating.
Nutritional therapist and chef Christine Bailey added: “Grapefruits are rich in water and soluble fibre – they can fill you up and curb hunger pangs.
“They can also help reduce insulin levels helping to prevent fat from being stored in the body.”
A study by the University of California suggested drinking grapefruit juice could be the key to weight loss.
The research – published in Plos One – showed that mice put on the same high-fat diet gained far less weight if they drank grapefruit juice rather than water.
The study also found improved levels of blood sugar and insulin among those given the juice. This serves to protect against diabetes.
It’s important to be savvy about drinks, however, as some contain a surprising number of calories.
Health and nutrition experts at Nuyoo.co compared four classic hot drinks from the five major coffee brands, to see which serves have the most calories and sugar.
When it comes to a cappuccino, the best high street option to get it from is Caffè Nero, which has just 65 calories and 5.2 grams of sugar.
For cappuccino lovers who are looking to slim down, it might be best to avoid the Starbucks’ offering, which has a whopping 129 calories and 11.4 grams of sugar.
Lattes can pack in more calories, so those looking to slim down might want to think twice before touching the milky drink.
Again, Caffè Nero takes the lead as the “healthiest” with 78 calories and 6.4 grams of sugar.
For those looking to speed up weight loss, there is a natural technique that promises great results.
Drinking apple cider vinegar can promote weight loss, also coming with a host of health benefits.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1037425/breakfast-lose-weight-grapefruit-water Weight loss: Drinking THIS before breakfast will kickstart fat burning
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Weight loss: Drinking THIS before breakfast will kickstart fat burningSunday, October 28, 2018
Spaceflight Might Expand Your Mind, But It Shrinks Your Brain [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Going to space does more than change the way you look at the world — it also changes your brain.
In a new small study, published today (Oct. 24) as a Letter to the Editor in The New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers from Germany, Belgium and Russia detailed changes in the brains of 10 cosmonauts before and after long-term missions to space, finding "extensive" changes to the brain's white and gray matter.
What these changes mean for the cosmonauts is still an open question. "However, whether or not the extensive alterations shown in the gray and the white matter lead to any changes in cognition remains unclear at present," study co-author Dr. Peter zu Eulenburg, a neurologist and professor of neuroimaging at Ludwig-Maximilians-Univeristat München in Germany, said in a statement.
What's more, the researchers found that the circulation of cerebrospinal fluid — the clear liquid that cushions the brain and spinal cord — remained altered long after spaceflight. [7 Everyday Things That Happen Strangely in Space]
"Taken together, our results point to prolonged changes in the pattern of cerebrospinal fluid circulation over a period of at least seven months following the return to Earth," zu Eulenburg said.
Before and after
To study the brain changes, the researchers looked at MRI scans of the cosmonauts' brains taken before spaceflight, shortly after (nine days, on average) returning from spaceflight and about seven months after spaceflight. All 10 cosmonauts participated in the first two brain scans; seven participated in the final scan.
The cosmonauts were all men with average age of 44 who traveled to the International Space Station. On average, they spent 189 days, or about six months, in space.
The researchers focused on three variables in the brain scans: gray matter volume, white matter volume and cerebrospinal fluid volume. Gray matter, which makes up the outer surface of the brain, contains the cell bodies of neurons and other support cells, while white matter contains the axons, the long branches that connect neurons.
Compared with gray matter volume pre-spaceflight, the researchers found "widespread" reduction in gray matter volume upon examination when the cosmonauts returned. However, at the long-term postflight follow-up, the researchers reported most of the reductions in gray matter volume had recovered toward preflight levels; in other words, these weren't lasting changes.
White matter was a different story: Compared with measurements before the cosmonauts' space travel, white matter volume decreased in one part of the brain. But when the seven cosmonauts returned for a follow-up scan seven months later, white matter volumes had decreased even more.
Cerebrospinal fluid volumes also changed after the cosmonauts' missions. On the first postflight brain scan, the CSF volume was increased in some areas and decreased in others relative to preflight levels. By the later scan, however, the CSF volume in the center of brain had returned to preflight levels, while the fluid in space between the brain and the skull had increased further.
Originally published on Live Science.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42272-spaceflight-brain.html Spaceflight Might Expand Your Mind, But It Shrinks Your Brain
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Spaceflight Might Expand Your Mind, But It Shrinks Your BrainWeight loss: The shocking amount of calories & sugar in your favourite hot drink REVEALED [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Weight loss can be hard, especially when the nights get longer and the days get colder.
Winter comes with a host of waist-line slimming obstacles, such as comfort food and less motivation to exercise.
Consumed by many Britons throughout the day, hot drinks are also a favourite for winter.
With 95 million cups of coffee consumed in the UK every day, how many calories are hidden in our favourite hot drinks?
Health and nutrition experts at Nuyoo.co (http://nuyoo.co/) decided to compare four classic hot drinks from the five major coffee brands, to see which serves have the most calories and sugar.
This included Costa, Starbucks, Pret a Manger, Greggs and Caffè Nero and the hot drinks were a cappuccino, latte, hot chocolate and mocha.
Cappuccinos
When it comes to a cappuccino, the best high street option to get it from is Caffè Nero, which has just 65 calories and 5.2 grams of sugar.
For cappuccino lovers who are looking to slim down, it might be best to avoid the Starbucks’ offering, which has a whopping 129 calories and 11.4 grams of sugar.
Lattes
Lattes can pack in more calories, so those looking to slim down might want to think twice before touching the milky drink.
Again, Caffè Nero takes the lead as the “healthiest” with 78 calories and 6.4 grams of sugar.
Starbucks loses the draw again, making the most calorific latte out of the five retailers with 143 kcal and 12.7 grams of sugar – roughly three teaspoons of sugar.
Hot chocolate
While Starbucks ranked low in the healthiest milky coffees, it did rank highly in the healthy hot chocolate stakes.
The coffee giant’s hot chocolate had the least amount of sugar (22.7 grams) and comes in at 234 calories.
In another contrast, Pret a Manger’s hot chocolate packs in the most amount of sugar, with 35.5 grams.
Mocha
Coffee and chocolate combined, the “lightest” mocha on the menu comes from Caffè Nero, with just 19 grams of sugar, but has the highest amount of calories at 305 kcal.
The lowest calories mocha went to Pret a Manger, with just 185.
For those looking to speed up weight loss, there is a natural technique that promises great results.
Drinking apple cider vinegar can promote weight loss, also coming with a host of health benefits.
Apple cider vinegar is a potent fermented liquid, and therefore should only be consumed in small quantities.
How much should you drink, and how should you drink it?
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1033216/weight-loss-hot-drinks-calories-sugar Weight loss: The shocking amount of calories & sugar in your favourite hot drink REVEALED
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Weight loss: The shocking amount of calories & sugar in your favourite hot drink REVEALEDCould Misbehaving Neutrinos Explain Why the Universe Exists? [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Scientists revel in exploring mysteries, and the bigger the mystery, the greater the enthusiasm. There are many huge unanswered questions in science, but when you're going big, it's hard to beat "Why is there something, instead of nothing?"
That might seem like a philosophical question, but it's one that is very amenable to scientific inquiry. Stated a little more concretely, "Why is the universe made of the kinds of matter that makes human life possible so that we can even ask this question?" Scientists conducting research in Japan have announced a measurement last month that directly addresses that most fascinating of inquiries. It appears that their measurement disagrees with the simplest expectations of current theory and could well point toward an answer of this timeless question.
Their measurement seems to say that for a particular set of subatomic particles, matter and antimatter act differently.
Matter v. Antimatter
Using the J-PARC accelerator, located in Tokai, Japan, scientists fired a beam of ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts (antineutrinos) through the Earth to the Super Kamiokande experiment, located in Kamioka, also in Japan. This experiment, called T2K (Tokai to Kamiokande), is designed to determine why our universe is made of matter. A peculiar behavior exhibited by neutrinos, called neutrino oscillation, might shed some light on this very vexing problem. [The 18 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics]
Asking why the universe is made of matter might sound like a peculiar question, but there is a very good reason that scientists are surprised by this. It's because, in addition to knowing of the existence of matter, scientists also know of antimatter.
In 1928, British physicist Paul Dirac proposed the existence of antimatter — an antagonistic sibling of matter. Combine equal amounts of matter and antimatter and the two annihilate each other, resulting in the release of an enormous amount of energy. And, because physics principles usually work equally well in reverse, if you have a prodigious quantity of energy, it can convert into exactly equal amounts of matter and antimatter. Antimatter was discovered in 1932 by American Carl Anderson and researchers have had nearly a century to study its properties.
However, that "into exactly equal amounts" phrase is the crux of the conundrum. In the brief moments immediately after the Big Bang, the universe was full of energy. As it expanded and cooled, that energy should have converted into equal parts matter and antimatter subatomic particles, which should be observable today. And yet our universe consists essentially entirely of matter. How can that be?
By counting the number of atoms in the universe and comparing that with the amount of energy we see, scientists determined that "exactly equal" isn't quite right. Somehow, when the universe was about a tenth of a trillionth of a second old, the laws of nature skewed ever-so-slightly in the direction of matter. For every 3,000,000,000 antimatter particles, there were 3,000,000,001 matter particles. The 3 billion matter particles and 3 billion antimatter particles combined — and annihilated back into energy, leaving the slight matter excess to make up the universe we see today.
Since this puzzle was understood nearly a century ago, researchers have been studying matter and antimatter to see if they could find behavior in subatomic particles that would explain the excess of matter. They are confident that matter and antimatter are made in equal quantities, but they have also observed that a class of subatomic particles called quarks exhibit behaviors that slightly favor matter over antimatter. That particular measurement was subtle, involving a class of particles called K mesons which can convert from matter to antimatter and back again. But there is a slight difference in matter converting to antimatter as compared to the reverse. This phenomenon was unexpected and its discovery led to the 1980 Nobel prize, but the magnitude of the effect was not enough to explain why matter dominates in our universe.
Ghostly beams
Thus, scientists have turned their attention to neutrinos, to see if their behavior can explain the excess matter. Neutrinos are the ghosts of the subatomic world. Interacting via only the weak nuclear force, they can pass through matter without interacting nearly at all. To give a sense of scale, neutrinos are most commonly created in nuclear reactions and the biggest nuclear reactor around is the Sun. To shield one's self from half of the solar neutrinos would take a mass of solid lead about 5 light-years in depth. Neutrinos really don't interact very much.
Between 1998 and 2001, a series of experiments — one using the Super Kamiokande detector, and another using the SNO detector in Sudbury, Ontario — proved definitively that neutrinos also exhibit another surprising behavior. They change their identity.
Physicists know of three distinct kinds of neutrinos, each associated with a unique subatomic sibling, called electrons, muons and taus. Electrons are what causes electricity and the muon and tau particle are very much like electrons, but heavier and unstable.
The three kinds of neutrinos, called the electron neutrino, muon neutrino and tau neutrino, can "morph" into other types of neutrinos and back again. This behavior is called neutrino oscillation. [Wacky Physics: The Coolest Little Particles in Nature]
Neutrino oscillation is a uniquely quantum phenomenon, but it is roughly analogous to starting out with a bowl of vanilla ice cream and, after you go and find a spoon, you come back to find that the bowl is half vanilla and half chocolate. Neutrinos change their identity from being entirely one type, to a mix of types, to an entirely different type, and then back to the original type.
Antineutrino oscillations
Neutrinos are matter particles, but antimatter neutrinos, called antineutrinos, also exist. And that leads to a very important question. Neutrinos oscillate, but do antineutrinos also oscillate and do they oscillate in exactly the same way as neutrinos? The answer to the first question is yes, while the answer to the second is not known.
Let's consider this a little more fully, but in a simplified way: Suppose that there were only two neutrino types — muon and electron. Suppose further that you had a beam of purely muon type neutrinos. Neutrinos oscillate at a specific speed and, since they move near the speed of light, they oscillate as a function of distance from where they were created. Thus, a beam of pure muon neutrinos will look like a mix of muon and electron types at some distance, then purely electron types at another distance and then back to muon-only. Antimatter neutrinos do the same thing.
However, if matter and antimatter neutrinos oscillate at slightly different rates, you'd expect that if you were a fixed distance from the point at which a beam of pure muon neutrinos or muon antineutrinos were created, then in the neutrino case you'd see one blend of muon and electron neutrinos, but in the antimatter neutrino case, you'd see a different blend of antimatter muon and electron neutrinos. The actual situation is complicated by the fact that there are three kinds of neutrinos and the oscillation depends on beam energy, but these are the big ideas.
The observation of different oscillation frequencies by neutrinos and antineutrinos would be an important step towards understanding the fact that the universe is made of matter. It’s not the entire story, because additional new phenomena must also hold, but the difference between matter and antimatter neutrinos is necessary to explain why there is more matter in the universe. [5 Mysterious Particles That May Lurk Beneath Earth's Surface]
In the current prevailing theory describing neutrino interactions, there is a variable that is sensitive to the possibility that neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate differently. If that variable is zero, the two types of particles oscillate at identical rates; if that variable differs from zero, the two particle types oscillate differently.
When T2K measured this variable, they found it was inconsistent with the hypothesis that neutrinos and antineutrinos oscillate identically. A little more technically, they determined a range of possible values for this variable. There is a 95 percent chance that the true value for that variable is within that range and only a 5 percent chance that the true variable is outside that range. The "no difference" hypothesis is outside the 95 percent range.
In simpler terms, the current measurement suggests that neutrinos and antimatter neutrinos oscillate differently, although the certainty does not rise to the level to make a definitive claim. In fact, critics point out that measurements with this level of statistical significance should be viewed very, very skeptically. But it is certainly an enormously provocative initial result, and the world's scientific community is extremely interested in seeing improved and more precise studies.
The T2K experiment will continue to record additional data in hopes of making a definitive measurement, but it's not the only game in town. At Fermilab, located outside Chicago, a similar experiment called NOVA is shooting both neutrinos and antimatter neutrinos to northern Minnesota, hoping to beat T2K to the punch. And, looking more to the future, Fermilab is working hard on what will be its flagship experiment, called DUNE (Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment), which will have far superior capabilities to study this important phenomenon.
While the T2K result is not definitive and caution is warranted, it is certainly tantalizing. Given the enormity of the question of why our universe seems to have no appreciable antimatter, the world's scientific community will avidly await further updates.
Originally published on Live Science.
Don Lincoln is a physics researcher at Fermilab. He is the author of "The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Stuff That Will Blow Your Mind" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), and he produces a series of science education videos. Follow him on Facebook. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.
Don Lincoln contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42271-misbehaving-neutrinos-why-universe-exists.html Could Misbehaving Neutrinos Explain Why the Universe Exists?
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Could Misbehaving Neutrinos Explain Why the Universe Exists?Saturday, October 27, 2018
Friday, October 26, 2018
How Did Inflation Happen — and Why Do We Care? [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Paul Sutter is an astrophysicist at The Ohio State University and the chief scientist at COSI science center. Sutter is also host of "Ask a Spaceman" and "Space Radio," and leads AstroTours around the world. Sutter contributed this article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
In 1980, physicist Alan Guth proposed a radical extension to the standard Big Bang model of the history of the universe. At the time, it was known that our cosmos is expanding — it's getting bigger and bigger single day — but the expansion rate is relatively mild. Guth hypothesized that in some of the very earliest moments of our universe (somewhere around the 10^-36 second mark), our universe underwent a period of exorbitant accelerated expansion. During this period, the universe inflated by a factor of 10^26 in a mere 10^-32 seconds — a lifetime compared to the then-age of the universe, but the tiniest sliver of a moment to our more mature eyes.
This transformative event, known as cosmic inflation, handily explains some perplexing features found in astronomical observations. These include the universe's peculiar geometric flatness at large scales, the apparent connection between far-flung corners of the universe and the absolute lack of exotic monopoles — particles with just one magnetic pole, instead of the usual two — that should have formed in abundance back in the cosmic day. [How Inflation Gave the Universe the Ultimate Kick Start (Infographic)]
In the decades since Guth's initial, tentative proposal, the concept of inflation has remained frustratingly mysterious, but it still stands as our leading theory of what went down when our universe was young and exotic.
Just make it bigger
In our modern conception of cosmic inflation, that period of rapid, accelerated expansion is driven by a new character to join the cosmological cast: something called the inflaton. Get it? The inflaton inflates. Not the most creative name, but there you go.
In this picture, the inflaton is a quantum field that permeates all of space and time. It's the same as any of the other quantum fields out there — the electromagnetic field responsible for photons, the Dirac field responsible for electrons and so on. Quantum fields are our theory explaining the underlying structure for all of matter and radiation, and they are kind of a big deal.
So, it's not entirely ridiculous to propose a new kind of quantum field that majorly affected the early universe but isn’t very noticeable today..
Another feature of quantum fields is that there's a certain amount of energy associated with them, even in the vacuum. If you take a box and evacuate all the particles and radiation from that box, resulting in an absolutely pure vacuum, the box will still contain some energy. This energy can be seen as a fundamental vibration in the quantum fields that make up reality.
That part is important, because that vacuum energy has the curious property of accelerating the expansion of the universe. We don't know ahead of time what the vacuum energy of any of the individual quantum fields might be. If it's zero, then we would see no accelerated expansion at cosmic scales. If it's a large value, then the universe might just inflate.
A universal balloon
In the inflation model, the inflaton is a quantum field that starts off with a large amount of vacuum energy. The universe goes whoosh, and inflation does its thing. But then, the inflaton (somehow) changes and reduces its vacuum energy, shutting off the inflationary epoch. I'm being kind of vague here, because the physics are, well, kind of vague.
At the close of inflation, the inflaton has one last trick up its sleeve. Before it fades into oblivion, it decays, transforming itself into a flood of regular matter and radiation. Again, this isn't as crazy as it seems, because quantum fields are perfectly capable of transforming into one another on a whim (this is the modern picture of complex particle interactions).
This last-minute event, known as reheating, seeded the large, cold and empty universe with fundamental bits and pieces. These would eventually grow up to be protons, atoms, gas clouds, stars and galaxies.
That's a nice story, but how do we know it's right?
Bumps and wiggles
For inflation, the devil is in the cosmological details. The inflation model predicts that the freshly deposited matter and radiation wasn't just scattered around without care. No, there was a pattern to it. The mechanism of inflation didn't just rapidly expand the universe; it also rapidly expanded everything in the universe, including the fundamental vibrations built in to the inflaton quantum field itself.
These vibrations were expanded one after another, leading to a universe full of tiny bumps and wiggles — minute variations in density from place to place. And inflation teaches us that those bumps and wiggles had a particular pattern. Specifically, there should be just as many small bumps and wiggles as large bumps and wiggles. Additionally, as those bumps and wiggles evolve in the newly inflated universe, they shouldn't really be connected to each other.
In the jargon of cosmology, these bumps and wiggles should be nearly scale-invariant (like an orchestra in which the low-pitched and high-pitched instruments have exactly the same loudness) and Gaussian (each member of the orchestra is playing from a different set of music, and there's nothing coordinating them).
These tiny differences in density grew as the universe evolved, with slightly higher-density pockets accumulating more and more matter. This, in turn, gave them a stronger gravitational influence on their surroundings, which caused them to grow ever larger, and so on.
Small differences in density became large differences in density, imprinting themselves in the temperature pattern found in the cosmic microwave background, the leftover light from when the universe was only 270,000 years old. From there, the differences continued to grow, accumulating matter to be become the seeds of all structure in the universe, from single stars to the cosmic web itself.
And detailed studies of those patterns reveal them to indeed be nearly scale-invariant and Gaussian, exactly what inflation predicts them to be. Even though the physics of the process aren't well understood at all and are admittedly pretty sketchy, inflation has succeeded in passing every experimental test thrown at it. Perhaps someday, a better understanding of this extraordinary epoch in our universe's history will paint a completely different picture, but in the meantime, the story of inflation — as thin as it might be — is our best bet.
Learn more by listening to the episode "Why Do We Need Cosmic Inflation? (Part 2)" on the "Ask a Spaceman" podcast, available on iTunes and on the Web at http://www.askaspaceman.com. Thanks to Massimiliano S., Lorenzo B., @ZachCoty, Pete E., Christian W., @up_raw, Vicki K., Thomas, Banda C., Steve S., Evan W., Andrew P., @MarkRiepe, @Luft08, @kazoukis, Gordon M., Jim W., Cosmic Wakes, Floren H., Gabi P., Amanda Z. and @scaredjackel for the questions that led to this piece! Ask your own question on Twitter using #AskASpaceman or by following Paul @PaulMattSutter and facebook.com/PaulMattSutter. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42261-how-did-inflation-happen-anyway.html How Did Inflation Happen — and Why Do We Care?
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]How Did Inflation Happen — and Why Do We Care?James Martin weight loss: Saturday Morning chef lost 6 stone by cutting out favourite food [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
James Martin, 46, is a British chef and television presenter, best known for presenting the BBC series Saturday Kitchen from 2006 to 2016.
He now stars in ITV’s James Martin’s American Adventure and Saturday Morning with James Martin.
The chef has made a name for himself cooking calorie-laden dishes, and admitted to having gorged on them himself.
But James has since turned his life around and has lost a considerable amount of weight. How did he do it?
James revealed earlier this year that he decided he needed to lose weight when he saw himself on TV.
The chef became self conscious after noticing “a bit of a chin” on the camera, spurring him on to lose a further one stone.
Talking to the Mail Online, he said: “You kind of watch and go, ‘Oh God there’s a bit of chin happening there’. And everybody’s TVs are bigger now. Before you used to watch TV on a small one and now they’re massive.”
The chef had previously lost five stone, being spurred on from his stint in Strictly Come Dancing.
Known for his indulgent dishes, James used to weigh 19st 7lb, and previously admitted to eating chunks of butter that he was using to cook with.
James took action and cut out fat-laden butter, along with cutting out many other high-fat foods.
He appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier this month to discuss his weight loss and reveal how he maintains it on tour.
“I’ve got a lot of mates of mine who are quite good chefs in the area who usually open late,” said the chef.
Presenter Ben Shepherd chipped in: “You must be burning up a lot of calories on stage.”
The chef replied: “Mainly because of stress more than anything else because it’s a lot of weight, you have to perform every night.”
James is currently on his UK tour, James Martin On the Road again, a tour which sees him travel around the country giving live cooking demos.
Another Briton who lost an impressive amount of weight is 57-year-old Clive Marriott.
Clive ditched the traditional weight-loss method of gymming daily and lost five stone in six months.
Clive began his weight-loss journey when his GP told him he had to lose weight, once weighing in at 250 pounds.
Spurred on for health reasons, he took advice from an ex-professional footballer he met at his local gym, who suggested he try exercising on an empty stomach.
He then got a specialised DNA test to determine what he needed to lose weight and shed five stone.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1036699/James-Martin-weight-loss James Martin weight loss: Saturday Morning chef lost 6 stone by cutting out favourite food
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]James Martin weight loss: Saturday Morning chef lost 6 stone by cutting out favourite foodVictoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2018: Angel reveals shocking four-hour weight-loss regime [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show is the most-watched fashion show in the world.
The show sees the world’s most beautiful models take to the runway to show off the lingerie giant’s wares.
Ahead of the show next month, the models have no doubt been hitting the gym hard and watching what they eat.
But one model has taken it to the extreme, shocking fans with her gruelling four-hour workouts.
In an effort to look her best for the upcoming show, Victoria’s Secret model Kelly Gale, 23, has been raising eyebrows with her regime.
The model posted her workout to Instagram this week, gaining lots of attention from users.
Kelly posted a mirror selfie to her 819,000 followers, showing her slender frame following a workout.
She captioned the image: “Just doubled up class and then I doubled up the double up. What I’m trying to say is I just smashed four hours and I’m proud.”
The model has been walking in the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show since she was 18, five years ago.
Last year she revealed her intense training regime for the 2017 Fashion Show, held in Shanghai.
Talking to Vogue magazine, the 23-year-old revealed: “On each day leading up to the [Victoria’s Secret] show, I did about four to five hours of walking.
“I also do one to two hours of intense workout sessions, 90-minute massages and sometimes 45-minute infrared sauna sessions.”
She has previously discussed how she walks 30km a day and does boxing, skipping, running, resistance training and pilates.
The shocking workout revelation comes just after fellow model, “plus-size” Robyn Lawley launched a petition to boycott the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show.
Speaking to The Project, Robyn said: “I’m sick of seeing Victoria’s Secret have the same body type every year, we need diversity.”
She has been vocal in her commending of the lingerie brand, revealing to The Daily Telegraph this month: “I’ve felt like s**t every year looking at that show. I shouldn’t have to feel that way.
“Where’s the inclusivity? Where’s the diversity? The perfection is intense. I want actual cellulite on a catwalk, I want girls to be relatable.”
Aside from gruelling workouts, the Victoria’s Secret Angels have other methods to get in top shape before the show.
The beautiful model’s diet plan has now been revealed, with the foods the models eat all listed.
Qualified nutritionist and personal trainer Rachael Attard revealed the intense plan on her blog.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1036500/victorias-secret-fashion-show-2018-angel-diet-weight-loss Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2018: Angel reveals shocking four-hour weight-loss regime
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2018: Angel reveals shocking four-hour weight-loss regimeThursday, October 25, 2018
Weight loss: Man lost five stone in just six months by DITCHING his daily gym visit – how? [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Weight loss is usually achieved by eating less and moving more.
But this seemingly foolproof formula is being overshadowed by new eating plans, fitness regimes and specially tailored packages.
One man that ditched the traditional weight-loss method of gymming daily was 57-year-old Clive Marriott.
He embarked on his own weight-loss journey, getting a specialised DNA test and losing a whopping 5 stone in just six months.
Clive began his weight-loss journey when his GP told him he had to lose weight, once weighing in at 250 pounds.
Spurred on for health reasons, he took advice from an ex-professional footballer he met at his local gym, who suggested he try exercising on an empty stomach.
The 57-year old would go to the gym daily, but didn’t see any results he was happy with.
“I was just so frustrated because after I retired as an NHS Facilities Manager, which was a very sedentary occupation,I was determined to get fitter, but despite a daily visit to the gym, I didn’t seem to be toning up or shifting the weight,” revealed Clive.
“I was intrigued by what the footballer had said about food intake and started to do some internet research about nutrition and its effect on fitness. It was then I came across FitnessGenes.”
The diet plan works by analysing DNA results and creating a tailored plan to suit each person’s metabolism.
“I have made seemingly small but important changes to my diet – for example, I’ve discovered that coffee has a direct effect on my personal metabolism,” revealed Clive.
“I cut down from eight to ten cups to just one or two per day, which has transformed my sleep quality.
“Easily the most surprising thing I learned was the amount of fat content my body needs – I don’t indulge in high fat foods, but I need a certain level of fat for my body to work at its best.
“My DNA analysis also shows that I need to manage my food intake evenly throughout the day, so I have got into the habit of breakfast, snack, lunch, snack and dinner – it works really well and is very easy.”
Clive downsized from 250 pounds to 180 pounds, reducing his chest size from 50” to 44”.
He also lost eight inches around his waist, going from 38” to 30”.
He added: “I feel great, I fit into clothes I never thought I would again and have to say, haven’t looked this good for years!”
Another Britons who lost an impressive amount of weight is celebrity chef and restaurateur, Tom Kerridge.
While Tom’s career was getting bigger and bigger, so was his waistline, and Tom was once also known for being overweight.
However, the star has recently shed almost half of his former body weight and revealed how he managed to do so.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1036392/weight-loss-without-gym-lose-weight-fast Weight loss: Man lost five stone in just six months by DITCHING his daily gym visit – how?
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Weight loss: Man lost five stone in just six months by DITCHING his daily gym visit – how?Weight loss: Trainer reveals the best way to get a flat stomach, abs & BLAST belly fat [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Weight loss can be challenging, with many Britons experiencing stubborn fat that refuses to move.
Often this stubborn fat is around the waist, with getting a flat stomach, and abs, often a body goal.
Talking to the Express.co.uk, celebrity trainer Cecilia Harris revealed the best exercises to get a flat stomach.
These exercises blast belly fat and can help shape those desirable stomach muscles.
Cecilia, who trains fitness mogul Lucy Mecklenburg, revealed her top tips for getting rid of stubborn fat around the middle.
Branch out from crunches
“We all want a toned, flat stomach. No surprise there,” states the trainer, “but let’s be clear, abs are made in the kitchen, so it’s very important to get your nutrition right and eat a varied diet of healthy foods.”
“Many of us still rely on crunches to get toned, flat abs but what a lot of people don’t realise is that crunching is not the most effective ab workout.
“Crunches work only the muscles on the front and sides of your abdomen, but it’s important to target all the muscles of the core to get more defined abs—including lower back, hips, and upper thighs.”
The best abs exercises
Side Plank
According to Cecilia, “This move is more challenging than a traditional plank because you’re supporting your entire body weight on two points of contact instead of four.”
As a result, you must work your core harder to stay stabilised.
Alligator drag
Another exercise endorsed by the fitness expert is the alligator drag. “This plank uses your entire core to keep your body stabilised and burns additional calories by adding movement (dragging yourself along the floor),” she reveals.
It mixes cardio, stability, and strength training to get you fast fat-burning results.
Plank with knee to elbow
These challenging planks work your core, stomach, and back. “In order to maintain proper form, you’ll have to engage all the muscles in your core,” advises the trainer.
Mountain Climbers
Mountain climbers are one of those ab moves that double as cardio. The faster you go, the harder your heart will have to work.
Cecilia adds: “They work your abs by forcing you to engage your core in the plank position.
“You’ll see that you need to tighten your middle to perform this move correctly. Mountain climbers work your lower abs, as well as your shoulders and quadriceps.”
Leg Lifts
“The thing with leg lifts is that they’re deceptively simple,” she reveals.
“The first few reps won’t feel like much, but your abs will start to burn by the end of your set. Burn, baby, burn!”
Leg lifts target your lower abs, and one might be able to feel the thighs working to keep the legs straightened out together.
Cecilia recommends including each exercise above in every workout and performing 15 reps and three sets of each.
Yesterday, Cecilia revealed what foods to eat to beat stomach bloating over the winter period.
Cecilia Harris is a personal trainer and co-founder of Results with Lucy. For more information on Results with Lucy and to sign up for your 10-day free trial, visit https://resultswithlucy.com/
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/diets/1036093/weight-loss-flat-stomach-belly-fat-lose-weight-fast Weight loss: Trainer reveals the best way to get a flat stomach, abs & BLAST belly fat
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Weight loss: Trainer reveals the best way to get a flat stomach, abs & BLAST belly fatAsk a Spaceman: The Quirks of Quark Star Physics [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Can a quark star exist? It's an open question in the astronomy community, but there appears to be an argument for quark stars if we examine the physics of dying stars in more detail, argues astrophysicist and Space.com columnist Paul Sutter. He goes deep into the details in this week's episode of "Ask a Spaceman."
In Episode 11 of the Facebook Watch series, Sutter continues the topic of quark stars, which he first began last week in Episode 10. It's best to watch last week's episode to get the full story, as Sutter touches upon a critical concept called degeneracy pressure in great detail. For a quick, one-sentence recap: Degeneracy pressure stops the collapse of an object (such as a white dwarf, which we'll get into in a moment) from collapsing because the fundamental particles within the object are crammed into a tiny space.
Sutter goes deep into physics in this week's episode, but he says it's necessary — the topic of quark stars is so complicated that it needs three parts to explain. "That's how intense it is," he says in the video. Here, he traces stellar evolution from a dying star through to smaller and smaller star variants: white dwarfs, neutron stars and the theoretical quark stars.
First, let's briefly talk about what happens when a star similar in mass to our sun reaches the end of its life. It sloughs off layers of gas and leaves behind a cooling white dwarf star. These are Earth-size objects with immensely strong gravity, some 350,000 times the gravity of Earth. White dwarfs hold off collapse through degeneracy pressure. The star's electrons — negatively charged particles — will cram into a small space and resist being squashed further, which stops the collapse.
But what if the genesis star was much larger than our sun? As Sutter explains, astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar theorized that after a star is roughly 1.4 times the mass of our sun, this electron degeneracy pressure can be overridden. So the star will keep shrinking into something called a neutron star, which is about the size of a city. (Chandrasekhar's theories took a while to be accepted, but he eventually co-won the 1983 Nobel Prize. Also, NASA's Chandra X-Ray Telescope is named after him.)
In a neutron star, the degeneracy pressure acts a little differently. Some of the electrons are pushed against another fundamental particle, called a proton (which has a positive charge, and is found in atoms' centers). The electron and the proton pushed together — a negative and a positive charge — end up combining and creating a neutral particle called a neutron. Neutrons can be "crammed much more tightly than electrons" Sutter explains. That's why a neutron star is so small.
So what if you override the neutrons' degeneracy pressure? In most cases, the star would collapse into a singularity — a stellar-mass black hole. That's an accepted path in stellar evolution for stars that are at least three times the mass of our sun. Black holes pull in gas, dust and any other objects nearby and have such a strong gravitational well that even light cannot escape.
But can you make a quark star? Well, neutrons are not the smallest fundamental particle. Each neutron is made up of even smaller particles called quarks. Quarks (and their antimatter counterparts) come in six types, or "flavors": up, down, top, bottom, strange and charm.
A quark star — if it actually exists — would happen if somehow you could collapse the neutron star even further. Not so far that it becomes a black hole, but into an intermediary stage. In this stage, the neutrons would be disassociated and there would be quarks balled up that are supported by their own degeneracy pressure, or their resistance to crunching even smaller. Hence, a quark star.
We can study quarks using huge colliders that smash up small particles, but the mathematics and physics are pretty complicated, Sutter says. For example, quarks tend to arise in swarms — not as individuals — which makes them hard to study.
To learn more about quark stars, stay tuned for next week's episode. The episodes will be released weekly on Wednesdays at 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT), so like the Facebook page or check back later to see more. Sutter also responds to reader questions in every episode. Check the page to learn more about past topics the show covered, such as the Big Bang, Pluto and galaxy collisions.
Sutter is a cosmologist at Ohio State University and chief scientist at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus, Ohio. He has a long-running podcast, also called "Ask A Spaceman." You can catch all past episodes of that podcast here.
Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. Original article on Space.com.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42243-ask-a-spaceman-quark-star-physics.html Ask a Spaceman: The Quirks of Quark Star Physics
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]Ask a Spaceman: The Quirks of Quark Star PhysicsWednesday, October 24, 2018
NASA’s Found a Weird, Rectangular Iceberg in the Antarctica [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
Look at that iceberg. It's beautiful. Perfectly rectangular. An object of near geometric perfection jutting into a polar sea of the usual squiggly, chaotic randomness of the natural world. It calls to mind the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey."
But, unlike the monolith from that very weird movie, this iceberg was not deposited on this world by space aliens. Instead, as Kelly Brunt, an ice scientist with NASA and at the University of Maryland, explained, it was likely formed by a process that's fairly common along the edges of icebergs.
"So, here's the deal," Brunt told Live Science. "We get two types of icebergs: We get the type that everyone can envision in their head that sank the Titanic, and they look like prisms or triangles at the surface and you know they have a crazy subsurface. And then you have what are called 'tabular icebergs.'" [In Photos: Huge Icebergs Break Off Antarctica]
Tabular icebergs are wide and flat, and long, like sheet cake, Brunt said. They split from the edges of ice shelves — large blocks of ice, connected to land but floating in the water surrounding iced-over places like Antarctica. This one came from the crumbling Larsen C ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.
From yesterday's #IceBridge flight: A tabular iceberg can be seen on the right, floating among sea ice just off of the Larsen C ice shelf. The iceberg's sharp angles and flat surface indicate that it probably recently calved from the ice shelf. pic.twitter.com/XhgTrf642Z
— NASA ICE (@NASA_ICE) October 17, 2018
Tabular icebergs form, she said, through a process that's a bit like a fingernail growing too long and cracking off at the end. They're often rectangular and geometric as a result, she added.
"What makes this one a bit unusual is that it looks almost like a square," Brunt said.
It's difficult to tell the size of the iceberg in this photo, she said, but it's likely more than a mile across. And, as with all icebergs, the part visible above the surface is just the top 10 percent of its mass. The rest, Brunt said, is hidden underwater.
In the case of tabular icebergs, she said, that subsurface mass is usually regular-looking and geometric, similar to what's visible above. This iceberg looks pretty fresh, she said — its sharp corners indicate that wind and waves haven't had much time to break it down.
But despite the berg's large mass, Brunt said, she wouldn't advise going on a walk on its surface.
"It probably wouldn't flip over," she said.
The thing is still much wider than it is deep, after all. But it's small enough to be unstable and crack up at any moment.
So, it's probably best to marvel at the thing from a distance.
Originally published on Live Science.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42234-weird-square-iceberg-antarctica.html NASA's Found a Weird, Rectangular Iceberg in the Antarctica
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]NASA’s Found a Weird, Rectangular Iceberg in the AntarcticaThe Purported Plumes of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Are Missing ‘Hotspot’ Engines [bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]
If Jupiter's moon Europa has geysers, the natural engines that power them are well-hidden.
Scientists have re-examined data from NASA's Galileo mission in greater detail in search of regions on Europa warm enough to be linked to plumes of water vapor. If hotspots exist on this moon — which harbors a huge ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell — they will most likely remain hidden until NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft arrives at Jupiter in the late 2020s or early 2030s, the researchers determined.
In 2016, scientists announced the provisional detection of a faint plume on Europa using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A second unconfirmed plume was announced the following year. Since then, the moon has remained quiet, and scientists have debated whether the features spotted by the space telescope were actually caused by wafting water vapor. [Possible Water Plumes on Europa: The Discovery in Images]
In an effort to solve the mystery, Julie Rathbun and her colleagues turned to data collected by Galileo when it orbited Jupiter in the 1990s and early 2000s. Rathbun is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona. The researchers had searched the moon for heat signals almost a decade ago, before the potential plumes were spotted. Now, they returned to examine the two potential source regions more closely, looking for signs of heat that might indicate geological activity. The results were less than encouraging.
"We didn't see any hotspots at those locations," Rathbun said yesterday (Oct. 22) during a news conference at the American Astronomical Society's annual Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Knoxville, Tennessee.
But that doesn't necessarily mean Europa isn't spouting off, added Rathbun.
The case of the missing hotspot
Plumes are common throughout the solar system. Jupiter's moon Io is constantly shooting volcanic material into the air. Saturn's icy moon Enceladus famously blasts water vapor and other material from its subsurface ocean into space via a set of geysers near the south pole. And Earth is rich in geysers, from Yellowstone National Park's Old Faithful to Iceland's Great Geysir.
Firing off the gas that makes up these plumes requires an energy source, which usually heats up the ground around the plume source. Enceladus, Io and Earth all have hotspots around their geysers and volcanoes.
But not Europa, as far as we can tell. Rathbun and her colleagues saw no hotspots at either of the purported plume locations described in the Galileo data.
There are four possible reasons for this result, Rathbun said. First, it's possible that the jets don't exist. It's also possible that the hotspots exist but are subtler than could be detected with Galileo or the Earth-based Atacama Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA). Another option is that the plumes are sporadic and just didn't fire off while Galileo was nearby. Finally, Europa's plumes may operate differently from the geysers on other worlds.
"Europa was expected to be active," Rathbun said. "Folks have been wondering where [the plumes] are and what happened to them." [Photos: Europa, Mysterious Icy Moon of Jupiter]
Another chance
Both Europa and Enceladus are icy moons, and each is thought to host a subsurface ocean. So, it's no surprise that the planetary scientists based their Europa search on the geysers confirmed on Enceladus. The geysers from Saturn's moon come from long, narrow "tiger-stripe" fissures with roughly the same area as that probed on Europa, and the expected temperatures are also similar.
It's possible, however, that Europa's plume regions have a different configuration than those of the Saturn satellite.
"I don't think it's a tiger stripe [that produced the plume], but there could be some small source that's there that we're just not detecting," Rathbun said.
Timing is another concern. Galileo explored Jupiter and its moons from 1995 to 2003, more than a decade before Hubble spotted the plumes. If Europa's fountains are sporadic, their hosting sites may not yet have become active while Galileo was looking. Similarly, ALMA peered at the moon several months after Hubble's observations, potentially giving the area time to cool off.
Sunlight further complicates the issue. At the beach, sand and rocks heat up and cool at different rates based on their composition. After the plumes were first spotted, ALMA identified a region near a young crater called Pwyll that seemed warmer than surrounding areas. However, Rathbun said that Galileo showed that the same region is coolerthan its environment on the nightside; ALMA's observations, like all those made from Earth, show only the moon's dayside. Rathbun said that the variations most likely originated from features with different compositions.
"It's much more consistent with different thermal properties than there being a hotspot," she said.
0 of 10 questions complete
Jupiter Quiz: Test Your Jovian Smarts
Jupiter, the giant of our solar system, is as fascinating as it is photogenic. How much do you know about the king of the planets?
0 of questions complete
Ideally, the same instrument would compare daytime and nighttime observations to rule out heat from the sun as an explanation for the temperature differences, but unfortunately, Galileo didn't gather daytime images of the puzzling region.
Rathbun said the final possibility is that the plume-generating mechanism on Europa doesn't heat things up the way familiar geyser features do. It's currently unknown what kind of mechanism could do that, but she said the possibility can't be ruled out.
"I am constantly amazed at how many things we find in the outer solar system that don't make any sense," she said.
While there isn't enough data to determine which of the four explanations likely represents reality, Rathbun said that her favorite option is the bizarre answer.
"I'd love it if there's something different going on," she said. "That's always the most fun."
Europa probably won't be able to keep such secrets for much longer. NASA's Europa Clipper spacecraft, which is currently scheduled to launch in 2022, will make 45 flybys of Europa at altitudes ranging from 1,700 miles to 16 miles (2,700 kilometers to 25 km).
One of the instruments Clipper will carry is the Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), a heat detector that will take thermal images of the moon at various wavelengths.
"If there is a hotspot somewhere on Europa, then E-THEMIS will see it," Rathbun said.
Follow Nola Taylor Redd on Twitter @NolaTRedd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com.
Let’s block ads! (Why?)
https://www.space.com/42230-jupiter-moon-europa-plume-no-hot-spots.html The Purported Plumes of Jupiter's Moon Europa Are Missing 'Hotspot' Engines
[bestandroiddoubledinheadunit950.blogspot.com]The Purported Plumes of Jupiter’s Moon Europa Are Missing ‘Hotspot’ Engines