mY liFe mY waY :Stephen Hawking

Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded

The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.

In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: “Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.”

He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going.”

In A Brief History of Time, Prof Hawking's most famous work, he did not dismiss the possibility that God had a hand in the creation of the world.

He wrote in the 1988 book: "If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we should know the mind of God.”

Has Stephen Hawking ended the God debate?

Stephen Hawking has declared that his latest work shows there was no creator of the universe. But we shouldn't imagine that will settle the God vs science debate, says Graham Farmelo.

Stephen Hawking: God was not needed to create the Universe

A useful characteristic of a scientific theory is that it must be possible, at least in principle, for experimenters to prove it wrong. Newton and Darwin, two of the greatest theoreticians, both set out ideas in this way, putting their heads on Nature's chopping block. In Newton's case, at least, his ideas have been superseded after proving inadequate in some circumstances. Unlike many religions, science has no final authority; the Royal Society, the UK academy of sciences, expresses this neatly in its motto "Take nobody's word for it".

No religion has ever been set out in terms of scientific statements. This is why scientists are able to mock the claims of religions but have never been able to deal a knock-out blow: in the end, a religious believer can always fall back on a faith that does not depend on verification.

The most famous atheist scientist of our times is the fearless Richard Dawkins, whose God Delusion set out to discredit religion once and for all. For him, it was Darwin's theory of evolution that dealt the fatal blow to religious belief. Powerful and eloquent though it was, religion continues to flourish, and scientists (albeit a minority) continue to go to church, just as Galileo, Newton, Faraday and others have done in the past. I suspect that none of them would have abandoned their respective faiths after reading Dawkins (admittedly, not a scientific statement). Religions will survive so long as they steer clear of making statements that can be shown to be factually wrong.

The kind of science done by Stephen Hawking, one of the leading theoretical physicists of modern times, has an almost religious ring to it. He and his colleagues are trying to find the patterns in the basic fabric of reality – the mathematical laws that govern the workings of nature at its finest level. There is plenty of evidence that these laws hold good all the way back to the beginning of time, which is how scientists have put together an extremely detailed and well-tested theory of the Big Bang, the first few minutes of the universe. The Large Hadron Collider will soon be reproducing, at will, the conditions in the universe within a billionth of a second of the beginning of time.

This has led writers to invest these experiments with a theological significance. The distinguished experimenter Leon Lederman labelled the Higgs particle, being sought at the Collider, as the God Particle, with no good reason except as a hook to promote his book, which he named after it. Yet these experiments will tell us nothing about God. They will simply steer us towards an improved theoretical understanding of our material universe, ultimately in terms of principles set out in mathematics.

Yet this is where religion can sneak back into the picture. Einstein, to the frustration of many of his colleagues, was fond of referring to God when he was talking about the laws expressing the fundamental harmonies of the universe. As Dawkins rightly stresses, it is quite clear that Einstein did not think of God as a white-bearded benefactor capable of interfering with the functioning of the universe. Rather, Einstein followed closely the views of the philosopher Spinoza, for whom the concept of God is an expression of the underlying unity of the universe, something so wondrous that it can command a spiritual awe.

Einstein's views were largely shared by his acquaintance Paul Dirac, the greatest English theoretician since Newton. Dirac, like Newton and Hawking, held the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge University. For Dirac, the greatest mystery of the universe was that its most fundamental laws can be expressed in terms of beautiful mathematical equations. Towards the end of his life, in the 1970s and early 1980s, Dirac often said that mathematical beauty "is almost a religion to me".

As a young man, he was an outspoken atheist, drawing his colleague Wolfgang Pauli to comment, "There is no God and Dirac is his prophet." Decades later, in 1963, Dirac was happy to use theological imagery: "God is a mathematician of a very high order." He was speaking metaphorically, but we know what he meant. Yet I think it is misleading, especially when talking about science to non-specialists, to play fast and loose with the idea of God.

Hawking's view appears to be that the belief in a God-created universe can be supplanted by a belief in M-theory, a good candidate for a fundamental theory of nature at its finest level. Experts assure us of the potential of this theory and I for one am quite prepared to believe them.

One problem with the theory is that it looks as though it will be extremely difficult to test, unless physicists can build a particle accelerator the size of a galaxy. Even if the experimenters find a way round this and M-theory passes all their tests, the reasons for the mathematical order at the heart of the universe's order would remain an unsolvable mystery.

Even religious scientists – and there are still a few – never use the God concept in their scientific work. Perhaps it is time for a moratorium on the use of the concept in popularisations, too? This would avoid mixing up scientific and non-scientific statements and put an end to the consequent confusions. I think it wise for scientists and religious believers to keep out of each other's territory – no good has come out of their engagement and I suspect it never will.

But this is naive. The science-religion relationship, in so far as there is one, continues to be a crowd-pleaser. It seems to be a fundamental law of PR that the God-science debate is a sure-fire source of publicity. Always welcome when one has a book to sell.

Graham Farmelo's biography of theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, 'The Strangest Man', won the Costa Biography Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

mY liFe mY waY: univers news

Hubble Studies Dark Matter Filament in 3-D

by sandeep janjirala on OCTOBER 16, 2012

Hubble’s view of massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745. The large field of view is a combination of 18 separate Hubble images. Credit:
NASA, ESA, Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa) & Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM)

Earlier this year, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope were able to identify a slim filament of dark matter that appeared to be binding a pair of distant galaxies together. Now, another filament has been found, and scientists a have been able to produce a 3-D view of the filament, the first time ever that the difficult-to-detect dark matter has been able to be measured in such detail. Their results suggest the filament has a high mass and, the researchers say, that if these measurements are representative of the rest of the Universe, then these structures may contain more than half of all the mass in the Universe.

Dark matter is thought to have been part of the Universe from the very beginning, a leftover from the Big Bang that created the backbone for the large-scale structure of the Universe.

“Filaments of the cosmic web are hugely extended and very diffuse, which makes them extremely difficult to detect, let alone study in 3D,” said Mathilde Jauzac, from Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille in France and University of KwaZulu-Natal, in South Africa, lead author of the study.

The team combined high resolution images of the region around the massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 (or MACS J0717 for short) – one of the most massive galaxy clusters known — and found the filament extends about 60 million light-years out from the cluster.

The team said their observations provide the first direct glimpse of the shape of the scaffolding that gives the Universe its structure. They used Hubble, NAOJ’s Subaru Telescope and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, with spectroscopic data on the galaxies within it from the WM Keck Observatory and the Gemini Observatory. Analyzing these observations together gives a complete view of the shape of the filament as it extends out from the galaxy cluster almost along our line of sight.

The team detailed their “recipe” for studying the vast but diffuse filament. .

First ingredient: A promising target. Theories of cosmic evolution suggest that galaxy clusters form where filaments of the cosmic web meet, with the filaments slowly funnelling matter into the clusters. “From our earlier work on MACS J0717, we knew that this cluster is actively growing, and thus a prime target for a detailed study of the cosmic web,” explains co-author Harald Ebeling (University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA), who led the team that discovered MACS J0717 almost a decade ago.

Second ingredient: Advanced gravitational lensing techniques. Albert Einstein’s famous theory of general relativity says that the path of light is bent when it passes through or near objects with a large mass. Filaments of the cosmic web are largely made up of dark matter [2] which cannot be seen directly, but their mass is enough to bend the light and distort the images of galaxies in the background, in a process called gravitational lensing. The team has developed new tools to convert the image distortions into a mass map.

Third ingredient: High resolution images. Gravitational lensing is a subtle phenomenon, and studying it needs detailed images. Hubble observations let the team study the precise deformation in the shapes of numerous lensed galaxies. This in turn reveals where the hidden dark matter filament is located. “The challenge,” explains co-author Jean-Paul Kneib (LAM, France), “was to find a model of the cluster’s shape which fitted all the lensing features that we observed.”

Finally: Measurements of distances and motions. Hubble’s observations of the cluster give the best two-dimensional map yet of a filament, but to see its shape in 3D required additional observations. Colour images [3], as well as galaxy velocities measured with spectrometers [4], using data from the Subaru, CFHT, WM Keck, and Gemini North telescopes (all on Mauna Kea, Hawaii), allowed the team to locate thousands of galaxies within the filament and to detect the motions of many of them.

A model that combined positional and velocity information for all these galaxies was constructed and this then revealed the 3D shape and orientation of the filamentary structure. As a result, the team was able to measure the true properties of this elusive filamentary structure without the uncertainties and biases that come from projecting the structure onto two dimensions, as is common in such analyses.

The results obtained push the limits of predictions made by theoretical work and numerical simulations of the cosmic web. With a length of at least 60 million light-years, the MACS J0717 filament is extreme even on astronomical scales. And if its mass content as measured by the team can be taken to be representative of filaments near giant clusters, then these diffuse links between the nodes of the cosmic web may contain even more mass (in the form of dark matter) than theorists predicted.

Timeline: 15 Years of Cassini

by NANCY ATKINSON on OCTOBER 16, 2012

The Cassini spacecraft takes an angled view toward Saturn, showing the southern reaches of the planet with the rings on a dramatic diagonal. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The Cassini mission has been a source of awe-inspiring images, surprising science and incredible longevity. Since launching on Oct. 15, 1997, the Cassini spacecraft has logged more than 6.1 billion kilometers (3.8 billion miles)of exploration – enough to circle Earth more than 152,000 times. After flying by Venus twice, Earth, and then Jupiter on its way to Saturn, Cassini pulled into orbit around the ringed planet in 2004 and has been spending its last eight years weaving around Saturn, its glittering rings and intriguing moons.

The spacecraft has sent back some 444 gigabytes of scientific data so far, including more than 300,000 images. More than 2,500 reports have been published in scientific journals based on Cassini data, describing the discovery of the plume of water ice and organic particles spewing from the moon Enceladus; the first views of the hydrocarbon-filled lakes of Saturn’s largest moon Titan; the atmospheric upheaval from a rare, monstrous storm on Saturn and many other curious phenomena.

The folks from the Cassini mission have put together a great infographic that provides a timeline of Cassini’s mission and some of its “greatest hits” — major events and discoveries. See below:

Extreme Solar Systems: Why Aren’t We Finding Other Planetary Systems Like Our Own?

by sandeep janjirala on OCTOBER 16, 2012

Artist concept of a previous multi-planet solar system found by the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: NASA/Tim Pyle

Most planetary systems found by astronomers so far are quite different than our own. Many have giant planets whizzing around in a compact configuration, very close to their star. An extreme case in point is a newly found solar system that was announced on October 15, 2012 which packs five — count ‘em — five planets into a region less than one-twelve the size of Earth’s orbit!

“This is an extreme example of a compact solar system,” said researcher Darin Ragozzine from the University of Florida, speaking at a press conference at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences meeting. “If we can understand this one, hopefully we can understand how these types of systems form and why most known planetary systems appear different from our own solar system.”

This new system, currently named KOI-500, was found with data from the Kepler planet-finding spacecraft, and Ragozzine said astronomers have now uncovered a new realm of exo-planetary systems.

“The real exciting thing is that Kepler has found hundreds of stars with multiple transiting planets,” he said. “These are the most information-rich systems, as they can tell you not only about the planets, but also the architecture of how solar systems are put together.”

The fact that almost all solar systems found so far are vastly different than our own has astronomers wondering if we are, in fact, the oddballs. A study from 2010 concluded that only about 10 – 15 percent of stars in the Universe host systems of planets like our own, with terrestrial planets nearer the star and several gas giant planets in the outer part of the solar system.

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Part of the reason our dataset of exoplanets is skewed with planets that are close to the star is because currently, that is all we are capable of detecting.

But the surprising new population of planetary systems discovered in the Kepler data that contain several planets packed in a tiny space around their host stars does give credence to the thinking that our solar system may be somewhat unique.

However, perhaps KOI-500 used to be more like our solar system.

“From the architecture of this planetary system, we infer that these planets did not form at their current locations,” Ragozzine said. “The planets were originally more spread out and have ‘migrated’ into the ultra-compact configuration we see today.”

There are several theories about the formation of the large planets in our outer solar system which involves the planets moving and migrating inward and outward during the formation process. But why didn’t the inner planets, including Earth, move in closer, too?

“We don’t know why this didn’t happen in our solar system,” Ragozzine said, but added that KOI-500 will “become a touchstone for future theories that will attempt to describe how compact planetary systems form. Learning about these systems will inspire a new generation of theories to explain why our solar system turned out so differently.”

A few notes of interest about KOI-500:

The five planets have “years” that are only 1.0, 3.1, 4.6, 7.1, and 9.5 days.

“All five planets zip around their star within a region 150 times smaller in area than the Earth’s orbit, despite containing more material than several Earths (the planets range from 1.3 to 2.6 times the size of the Earth). At this rate, you could easily pack in 10 more planets, and they would still all fit comfortably inside the Earth’s orbit,” Ragozzine noted. KOI-500 is approximately 1,100 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, the harp.

Four of the planets orbiting KOI-500 follow synchronized orbits around their host star in a completely unique way — no other known system contains a similar configuration. Work by Ragozzine and his colleagues suggests that planetary migration helped to synchronize the planets.

“KOI” stands for Kepler Object of Interest, and Ragozzine’s findings on this system have not yet been published, and so the system has yet to officially be considered a confirmed planetary system. “Every time we find something like this we give it a license-plate-like number starting with KOI,” Ragozzine said.

When does a KOI become an official planet? Ragozzine said the process is by confirming and validating the data. “Basically you need to prove statistically or by getting a specific measurement that it is not some other astronomical signal,” he said.

mY liFe mY waY:Baumgartner’s Record

Baumgartner’s Record-Breaking Jump: Images and Video

by sandeep janjirala on OCTOBER 15, 2012

Pilot Felix Baumgartner of Austria jumps out of the capsule during the final manned flight for Red Bull Stratos in Roswell, New Mexico, USA on October 14, 2012. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Daredevil Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier today during a skydive from the stratosphere, from approximately 38.5 km (128,000 ft, 24.24 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Baumgartner reached Mach 1.24 or 1,342 km/h (833.9 miles per hour), going faster than the speed of sound. 

The crane that holds the capsule as the balloon ascends. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

The crane follows the balloon with the capsule at the flight line during the launch of Baumgartner’s flight. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner seen on a screen at mission control center while he is still inside the capsule, while he talks to Joe Kittinger (back of his head is visible). Kittinger previously held the record for longest and fastest freefall before Baumgartner’s jump today. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Screens at the mission control shows Felix Baumgartner of Austria as he jumps from the capsule. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

The view from a camera inside the capsule as Baumgartner jumps. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner moves from his seat to the ledge outside the capsule. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner floats down to Earth on a parachute. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Just before Baumgartner lands. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner lands on his feet and celebrates. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner falls to his knees after landing successfully. Credit Red Bull Stratos.

Felix Baumgartner celebrates after successfully completing his record-breaking jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner after his successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner and Technical Project Director Art Thompson celebrate together after the successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner with members of his family following the successful jump. Credit: Red Bull Stratos.

Baumgartner, Kittinger and the Red Bull Stratos team at a press conference following the jump. Credit: Red Bull

What Happens When the Winds of Giant Stars Collide?

by sandeep janjirala on OCTOBER 12, 2012

XMM-Newton observation of the core of the very massive cluster Cyg OB2 located in the constellation of Cygnus, 4700 light-years from Earth. Credit: ESA/G. Rauw

From an ESA press release:

Two massive stars racing in orbit around each other have had their colliding stellar winds X-rayed for the first time, thanks to the combined efforts of ESA’s XMM-Newton and NASA’s Swift space telescopes. Stellar winds, pushed away from a massive star’s surface by its intense light, can have a profound influence on their environment. In some locations, they may trigger the collapse of surrounding clouds of gas and dust to form new stars. In others, they may blast the clouds away before they have the chance to get started.

Now, XMM-Newton and Swift have found a ‘Rosetta stone’ for such winds in a binary system known as Cyg OB2 #9, located in the Cygnus star-forming region, where the winds from two massive stars orbiting around each other collide at high speeds.

Cyg OB2 #9 remained a puzzle for many years. Its peculiar radio emission could only be explained if the object was not a single star but two, a hypothesis that was confirmed in 2008. At the time of the discovery, however, there was no direct evidence for the winds from the two stars colliding, even though the X-ray signature of such a phenomenon was expected.

This signature could only be found by tracking the stars as they neared the closest point on their 2.4-year orbit around each other, an opportunity that presented itself between June and July 2011.

As the space telescopes looked on, the fierce stellar winds slammed together at speeds of several million kilometres per hour, generating hot plasma at a million degrees which then shone brightly in X-rays.

The telescopes recorded a four-fold increase in energy compared with the normal X-ray emission seen when the stars were further apart on their elliptical orbit.

“This is the first time that we have found clear evidence for colliding winds in this system,” says Yael Nazé of the Université de Liège, Belgium, and lead author of the paper describing the results reported in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

“We only have a few other examples of winds in binary systems crashing together, but this one example can really be considered an archetype for this phenomenon.”

Unlike the handful of other colliding wind systems, the style of the collision in Cyg OB2 #9 remains the same throughout the stars’ orbit, despite the increase in intensity as the two winds meet.

“In other examples the collision is turbulent; the winds of one star might crash onto the other when they are at their closest, causing a sudden drop in X-ray emission,” says Dr Nazé.

“But in the Cyg OB2 #9 system there is no such observation, so we can consider it the first ‘simple’ example that has been discovered – that really is the key to developing better models to help understand the characteristics of these powerful stellar winds. ”

“This particular binary system represents an important stepping stone in our understanding of stellar wind collisions and their associated emissions, and could only be achieved by tracking the two stars orbiting around each other with X-ray telescopes,” adds ESA’s XMM-Newton project scientist Norbert Schartel.

mY liFe mY waY :today univers

MESSENGER Marks 8th Anniversary of Launch

by sandeep janjirala on 09 sept, 2012

The MESSENGER spacecraft launched eight years ago today — on August 3, 2004 — embarking on a six-and-a-half year journey to become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury. The spacecraft's 4.9-billion mile (7.9-billion kilometer) cruise to history included 15 trips around the Sun, a flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury. 

The mission began capturing ground-breaking science and images from outer space almost immediately. During its gravity assist swing-by of Earth, on August 2, 2005, MESSENGER's cameras captured several hundred images of our planet. These images were sequenced into a movie documenting the view from MESSENGER as it departed Earth toward the inner Solar System.

On October 24, 2006, the spacecraft soared above the cloud deck of Venus for the first time, then returned less than a year later on June 5, 2007, marking the first time in flight that all seven instruments were turned on and operating collectively in science-observing mode. MESSENGER turned its wide-angle camera back to the planet and acquired a departure sequence that provided a spectacular good-bye to the cloud-shrouded planet while also acquiring valuable calibration data for the camera team.

MESSENGER made history on January 14, 2008, when it flew over a portion of Mercury that had never before been seen at close range. In this first of three flybys of the planet, the probe's cameras took 1,213 images and other sophisticated instruments made the first spacecraft measurements of the planet and its environment since Mariner 10's third and final flyby on March 16, 1975.

The mission's penultimate accomplishment — entering orbit about Mercury — was celebrated on March 17, 2011, by a crowd of hundreds gathered at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. The event was covered live, and the webcast is still available online at http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/mer_orbit.html. 

On March 17, 2012, MESSENGER successfully completed a year-long campaign to perform the first global reconnaissance of the geochemistry, geophysics, geologic history, atmosphere, magnetosphere, and plasma environment of the solar system's innermost planet. The following day, March 18, 2012, marked the official start of an extended mission phase designed to build upon those discoveries. This animationshows a sunward view of MESSENGER above Mercury's north polar region during the two orbit-correction maneuvers on April 16 and April 20, 2012, which shortened the orbit period from 12 to 8 hours, allowing MESSENGER an even closer look at the planet.

Less than five months into the extended mission, the team has already made substantial progress on its new objectives. Next week, the team will gather for its 27th Science Team Meeting in Salem, Massachusetts, to discuss the new findings and firm up plans for a second extended mission.

"Our small spacecraft has been a hardy traveler," says MESSENGER Principal Investigator Sean Solomon, of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. "Across billions of miles, during more than 1,000 orbits about the planet with the greatest extremes in surface temperature, and in the face of streams of energetic particles from an increasingly active Sun, MESSENGER has continued to surpass expectations. Mercury, too, has continued to surprise the scientific community, and the MESSENGER team looks forward to learning more about one of the nearest yet least studied worlds."

Large water reservoirs at the dawn of stellar birth

by sandeep janjirala on 09 sept, 2012

Herschel’s infrared view of part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud, within which the bright, cold pre-stellar cloud L1544 can be seen at the lower left. It is surrounded by many other clouds of gas and dust of varying density. The Taurus Molecular Cloud is about 450 light-years from Earth and is the nearest large region of star formation. The image covers a field of view of approximately 1 x 2 arcminutes.

Close-up of L1544 with the water spectrum seen by Herschel, taken from the centre of the pre-stellar core. The peak of the graph shows an excess in brightness, or emission, while the trough shows a deficit, or absorption. These characteristics are used to indicate the density and motions of the water molecules within the cloud. Emission arises from molecules that are approaching the centre where the new star will form, from the back of the cloud from Herschel’s viewpoint. The amount of emission indicates that these molecules are moving within the densest part of the core, which spans about 1000 Astronomical Units. The absorption signature is due to water molecules in front of the cloud flowing away from the observer towards the centre. These water molecules are in less dense regions much further away from the centre. Together, the emission and absorption signatures indicate that the cloud is undergoing gravitational contraction, that is, it is collapsing to form a new star. Herschel detected enough water vapour in L1544 to fill Earth’s oceans more than 2000 times over.

A KMOS Spectrograph being inspected by engineers in the lab at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre.

UK contributes 24 robotic arms in giant leap forward in near-infrared astronomy

by sandeep janjirala on 09 sept, 2012

A new high-tech instrument with 24 robotic arms has crossed the Atlantic from Edinburgh to a mountain top in Chile to address in more detail than ever before, some of the key questions surrounding the beginnings of the Universe, stars and galaxies. KMOS (K-Band Multi Object Spectrometer) has been provisionally accepted by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) after it completed final assembly and testing at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC) in Edinburgh. It will now be fitted to one of the four telescopes which make up the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO-VLT) at Paranal in Chile, providing astronomers with a far quicker solution to uncover details about galaxies and their properties.

What makes KMOS unique is its ability to image many galaxies simultaneously either in a cluster or in isolation but in both cases, still see the individual properties of each single galaxy. Until now, each galaxy has had to be identified individually to obtain that information, a process that takes years. KMOS will be able to see the same amount of detail in just two months. 

Each of the 24 cryogenic robotic arms, which have gold plated mirrors on their tips, can be moved into position to pinpoint with extreme accuracy the light coming from distant galaxies. 

Dr Michele Cirasuolo is the lead instrument scientist for KMOS at UK ATC. He said: “KMOS represents a pivotal step in our quest to scrutinise the distant Universe. The ability to observe in the near-infrared 24 galaxies simultaneously is an enormous leap forward compared to any other current instrument.  KMOS will allow a much faster survey speed…most of the observations done by similar near-infrared spectrographs over the last 10 years could be done in just two months with KMOS.”

This novel capability means astronomers will be able to make a detailed study of the mass assembly and star formation in distant, high red-shift galaxies addressing fundamental questions about when these first formed and how they evolve. This ability to observe multiple galaxies at once enables scientists to build up large statistical samples of galaxies at different cosmic epochs necessary to unveil the physical mechanisms that shape their formation and evolution. 

An aerial view of the Very Large Telescope in Chile. (Credit: ESO)

KMOS creates this detailed picture using integral field spectroscopy and obtains spectra over a two-dimensional area, covering the entire galaxy. The light from each segment of galaxy (its core, the bulge, the spiral arms and the outer parts) is analysed simultaneously and each can be given physical and chemical properties. Not only therefore, can a complete galaxy be measured, but each individual part too, allowing a comprehensive picture to be built.

“For each of the galaxies, KMOS will give an incredible amount of information. It’s not just a picture of a galaxy, but 3D spectroscopy providing the spatially resolved physics and the chemistry and the dynamics. This is crucial to understand how galaxies assemble their mass and shape their structure as a function of cosmic time, up to the formation of the very first galaxies, more than 13 billion years ago” explains Michele Cirasuolo.  

The specialised mechanisms inside KMOS have been designed to work in cryogenic conditions below minus two hundred degrees centigrade, which has been a major challenge, but which is necessary to observe distant galaxies at near-infrared wavelengths. This is because, unless cooled, the thermal emission from the instrument itself will swamp the faint signal from the astronomical sources.  

Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts said: "It’s excellent to see the UK playing a leading role in the development of such a sophisticated piece of technology and overcoming some very complex engineering challenges on the way. This instrument will now take its place on a world leading telescope to help improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe around us."

The instrument is a collaboration of six institutions in Germany and the UK, including STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UK ATC), Durham University, Oxford University and RAL Space at STFC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The team of internationally respected scientists and engineers at UK ATC played a major role in the KMOS project, being responsible, amongst others, for the construction of the cryostat, the 24 robotic pick-off arms, the cable co-rotator and the final assembly and test of the complete instrument. RAL Space applied their cryogenic lens mounting technology in the three camera barrels they provided for spectrographs in KMOS. Durham University has the PI of the entire project and produced the complex system of more than 1000 mirrors in the integral field unit. Oxford University provided the design and assembly of the three spectrographs in KMOS.

Each incredibly powerful unit telescope on the VLT contains a mirror eight metres in diameter. It is onto the VLT Unit 1 telescope, Antu that the new KMOS equipment will be fitted

SSTL assists Rapid Eye ground station upgrade

by sandeep janjirala on 09 sept, 2012

Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) is undertaking a project to assist geospatial information provider RapidEye AG in upgrading and consolidating its ground station facilities.

Engineers from SSTL’s Ground Systems Group are providing a new and upgraded Spacecraft Control Centre for RapidEye’s headquarters in Brandenburg, Germany and relocating its Tracking, Telemetry and Command (TT&C) ground station equipment to the Kongsberg Satellite Services AS (KSAT) facility in Svalbard, Norway, which receives Earth Observation data from its constellation of five satellites. 

As part of the project, SSTL’s Ground Systems Group will also provide new ground station equipment, to incorporate tracking, telemetry and command and S-band data recovery to the existing X-Band SG-9 antenna system currently used at the KSAT facilities in Svalbard.

The current Spacecraft Control Centre in Brandenburg, Germany, was built by SSTL in 2006 as part of the 5-spacecraft RapidEye constellation mission. The improved Centre will allow RapidEye to continue command and control of their constellation remotely from Germany, while retaining back-up TT&C services through the ground station facilities at SSTL in Guildford, UK.

About SSTL

Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) is the world's leading small satellite company, delivering operational space missions for a range of applications including Earth observation, science and communications. The Company designs, manufactures and operates high performance satellites and ground systems for a fraction of the price normally associated with space missions, with 500 staff working on turnkey satellite platforms, space-proven satellite subsystems and optical instruments.

Since 1981 SSTL has built and launched 39 satellites – as well as providing training and development programmes, consultancy services, and mission studies for ESA, NASA , international governments and commercial customers, with its innovative approach that is changing the economics of space.

In 2008 the Company set up a US subsidiary, Surrey Satellite Technology US LLC (SST-US) with facilities in Denver, Colorado to address the United States market and its customers for the provision of small satellite solutions, applications and service

Galileo satellites moved to pad for Friday launch

by sandeep janjirala on 09 sept, 2012

Galileo IOV satellites attached to their launch dispenser and encapsulated beneath the fairing of their Soyuz ST-B launcher

Soyuz VS03, the third Soyuz flight from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana, was transferred to the launch zone on 8 October 2012. The vehicle was rolled out horizontally on its erector from the preparation building to the launch zone and then raised into the vertical position. Soyuz VS03 will lift off on 12 October 2012. The rocket will carry two satellites of Europe’s Galileo navigation system into orbit.

The two Galileo In-Orbit Validation satellites are protected during their launch by Soyuz by a launch fairing. Once the Soyuz has passed most of the way through the atmosphere, this fairing can then be ejected

Falcon 9 Experienced Engine Anomaly But Kept Going to Orbit

by sandeep janjirala on OCTOBER 8, 2012

During last night’s launch of the Dragon capsule by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, there was an anomaly on one of the rocket’s nine engines and it was shut down. But Dragon still made it to orbit – just a little bit later than originally expected. At about 1:20 into the flight, there was a bright flash and a shower of debris. SpaceX’s CEO Elon Muskissued a statement about the anomaly saying:

“Falcon 9 detected an anomaly on one of the nine engines and shut it down. As designed, the flight computer then recomputed a new ascent profile in realtime to reach the target orbit, which is why the burn times were a bit longer. Like Saturn V, which experienced engine loss on two flights, the Falcon 9 is designed to handle an engine flameout and still complete its mission. I believe F9 is the only rocket flying today that, like a modern airliner, is capable of completing a flight successfully even after losing an engine. There was no effect on Dragon or the Space Station resupply mission.”