Artema’s Universe

Mercury passing in front of the sun

Today’s APOD is a great example of how various objects in the solar system scale to one another. Most everyone has seen the elementary school planetary models of foam balls. To get such a model to scale would not be possible, so you must of course suspend your disbelief. How large is our star really? This shows Mercury passing in front of the sun. It may be hard to spot Mercury, it is the tiny dot. Mercury is that small in comparison to the sun, even at a distance of almost 58 million kilometers. Sunspots are another great way to determine that a star is unbelievably large. Here you can see a sunspot over 30 times the diameter of the earth and it appears as a spec on the surface of our local star.

Mysteries and miracles of Kevlar

A British Marine Commando, Eric Walderman, was shot in the head four times and all bullets were halted by his Kevlar helmet. He was serving in Iraq and was shot at Umm Qasr. He’s uninjured and still serving with the Alpha Company.

The facts on Kevlar:

Light ~ young and old

In past articles I’ve discussed the progression of fusion as a star gets larger, and directed you to a wonderful site which visually explains hydrogen to helium fusion. To go into more detail we’ll discuss the speed of light, and the distances between objects on galactic scale. This will open up for future discussion on distances between galaxies and red shift.

At its speed, 100% of light’s energy is being put into the first, second and third dimensions. The fourth dimension, time, has no remaining energy, and so the actual photon of light does not pass through time, only space. To the outside observer light travels at 299,792,458 meters (186,000 miles) per second.

The measurement of a light-year is for distance. To be even more specific it is the distance light travels in a year. That is 229,792,458 meters by 31,536,000 seconds, or over 7 quadrillion meters. It takes light approximately 8 seconds to reach us once it leaves the sun. The distance from the sun to the earth is 149,600,000 kilometers average, 1 AU, or 8 light-seconds. The distance from the sun to Pluto is 5,913,520,000 kilometers average, 39.5 AU, or 5 light-minutes. Our nearest star is 4.3 light-years away. Our galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter. Our nearest large galaxy, Andromeda (M31), is 2.9 million light-years away. I’ll talk about its double nucleus at another time.

Light has to travel a long way in this Universe. Sometimes it even loses the battle. At the extreme distances between galaxies the expansion of the universe is evident. As the actual fabric of space is accelerating outwards it is actually possible for the rate to exceed light’s capability to overcome it. There are many galaxies receding at well over the speed of light. Once a galaxy reaches this point, in relation to us, we can no longer receive updates on what is happening in said galaxy. It will appear frozen in time before it fades from view.

To come back to our solar system, and specifically the structure of the sun, I’ll discuss the rate at which light can escape the sun. In matter on earth you have lots of space involved. There is a great distance between atoms in your body. The great pressures involved in the core of a star compress the hydrogen to where the atoms bump into each other rapidly and fuse into helium. At this density exiting photons easily hit hydrogen nuclei, which absorb the photon, and send it back out in a completely random direction. This “random walk” can easily make the progression out of the star take 40,000 years. While the light you see may be that old, it still takes only 8 minutes to reach us, so we still see the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. With all this going on the photon hasn’t aged at all.

Open forum

This is an open discussion. Feel free to chat or talk about anything. Long-term discussions are welcome.

Where do you stand scientifically?

I’ve mentioned before in the article U.S. belief in pseudoscience is up that 70% of American adults do not understand the scientific process. If you’re interested in testing where you stand, for the purpose of improving yourself, check out these periodic table quizes.

I just went through one of the top level quizes, and I didn’t recognize a great deal of the names involved. This isn’t to say that you don’t understand the theories themselves. I plan to spend the next few weeks taking these and studying my results.

Water is lighter than air

What is lighter than air? Most would assume not much. There is a newly discovered sponge-like material that fits this category, but I may discuss that at another time. Water is actually lighter than air. This can be directly observed by viewing clouds. Separated molecules of water float on a layer of relatively dense air.

To explain why, when water is so light, does it sit below the atmosphere in the oceans you have to understand the extreme density of water. Water has a much stronger attractive force than do most gaseous molecules. The volume of 1 kilogram of water is much smaller than is 1 kilogram of, say, Nitrogen. However once separated you will find the lighter molecules begin to evaporate and are forced upwards by the greater weight of the surrounding air.

In clouds you have water molecules loosely moving through the atmosphere. As the area which makes up the cloud becomes denser with water it begins to coalesce into rain. Again, as dense water weighs more, it begins its downward fall.

There is a very fascinating story on the rain and heat cycles of the earth I will discuss soon.

Galactic scale distance & perspective

We see pictures of beautiful and colorful nebula provided by the world’s best telescopes. Orion’s outline can be traced with the human eye and a little creativity. Far away galaxies show patterns of gravitational arms. Most stars we can see are actually two, three, and even four. Our perspective from earth is funny in that we often miss the details for the bigger picture.

Now it is not to say that the bigger picture is more or less important than the details. It does offer us the ability to understand how large-scale physics works, which would be otherwise impossible. It does however introduce problems for studying things nearby.

The gravitational arms of spiral galaxies are a trait we could only easily detect from a distance. These massive arms are dense areas of a galaxy, rotating relatively slowly for an eternity. From inside the same galaxy, it would take countless observations and calculations to determine whether or not you were inside of a gravitational arm.

If you saw Orion from behind, do you think it would look like the same man, and the same belt? In actuality you wouldn’t be able to see half of the stars from behind. Many of the stars composing Orion are very bright, and very far away. The rest are progressively closer, and progressively dimmer. From our position in our galaxy this results in us seeing each point on Orion as nearly the same luminosity.

Nebulas are vastly spread out gas particles which at a great distance form a recognizable structure. The Gum Nebula is the closest supernova remnant to our sun. It spans 40 degrees, and resides between 450 and 1500 light-years away. It is so close we can barely see it, and we know almost nothing about it.

Ad hoc hypothesis & selective thinking

Do you know if you deceive yourself? If you have strong beliefs, do you fight against opposing ideas without wavering? Does your agenda blind you? I highly reccomend to everyone of all ages to read the following articles in the Skeptic’s Dictionary.

“Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits.” Michael Novak

See the Skeptical Dictionary’s entries on the following. I have put them in order of my preference: ad hoc hypothesis, selective thinking, the post hoc fallacy, communal reinforcement, testimonials, self-deception, subjective validation, confirmation bias, control study, Ockham’s razor, the placebo effect, cold reading, wishful thinking.

An ad hoc hypothesis is one created to explain away facts that seem to refute one

U.S. belief in pseudoscience is up

Check out this Space.com article on poor scientific literacy in the United States. It is an older article, but my blog is relatively new. “The study found that science literacy has improved only slightly since the previous survey and that 70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.”

I find these results truly sad. I wish all people would be as enthused as am I by the sciences. The education system in this country is poor. We don’t hire teachers based on their scientific beliefs as we should. Can you imagine a science teacher who believes in creationism? A co-worker of mine has told me his science teacher once laughed at him when he said he thought evolution was more likely. There are still states in this nation which on are the edge of teaching creationism in schools! We have so many answers in front of our faces, yet we ignore them. I fear the future will see the 20th and 21st centuries as a naive and cult-driven time.

Continue reading U.S. belief in pseudoscience is up…

Gravity, acceleration, speed and time

Gravity was “discovered” by Sir Isaac Newton. He observed that an apple goes from a position of rest on a limb, and accelerates during its fall. From that he gathered that a force must be accelerating it. He used the works of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler and derived the basis for the modern formula on gravity.

Time is very interesting. It appears time is affected by motion. To explain this better I will use an example from The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. Imagine you are traveling between two lines, one kilometer apart, and it takes 1 minute to reach the other side. Now, while still going in a straight line, start by facing left slightly, and it will take about 1 minute 5 seconds. You’ve gone from traveling in one dimension to two dimensions. There is a certain amount of energy distributed between the 4 dimensions, and when you put energy in one of the dimensions, it takes it away from the others. So as you travel in both the first and second dimensions, you’re taking energy away from the 4th dimension: time. Now imagine you’re traveling down hill slightly. The distance is still 1 kilometer as the bird flies, but driving distance will be greater as you’re still going to the left and now downhill as well. You end up taking 1 minute 20 seconds if going the same speed as before. You were traveling through all 3 dimensions this time, and it took even more energy from the 4th dimension, thus taking more time.

Incase you didn’t know, light is frozen in time. Photons are traveling at maximum speed, and all the energy that can be spread between the 4 dimensions are being put into the first 3, leaving none left for the 4th dimension. It is actually possible to do minor time travel in our solar system. It is not uncommon for a long space mission’s clock to be off a fraction of a second on its return to earth. Traveling away from the earth’s motion can literally make you lose time.

Speed and acceleration appear to be simple concepts. They are very rudimentary on earth. You go from a resting position to one in motion, and the change in speed is called acceleration. Once you stop accelerating, or changing your speed, you are at a constant, and no longer accelerating. One note on semantics that I want to point out is about deceleration, it is actually negative acceleration, decelerate is a poor term.

This article is to help explain my below article on my hypothesis on gravity.

My hypothesis on gravity

The following is my hypothesis on gravity. Do not take all of this as fact. I am deriving information from things I

Fundamental particles and interactions

So as to better understand what I say at times, as I can stray from layman’s terms, please view and learn the information on this chart. It will sufficiently explain the standard model of fundamental particles and interactions. This is very interesting, so please bear with it, and try to take in the concept of the interactions more so than the data.

Build a television capable media PC

I have half a terabyte of hard drive space for DivX and mpeg-4 videos. I open a video file with a mouse movement and 3 clicks, minimize media player, and watch it on my TV with digital sound to my AV receiver. I can use the computer at the same time without noticeable slowdown or having to limit my computer use in fear of skipping. It is seamless. I can pause, rewind, and watch the next episode immediately; anything I care to do it is at my fingertips. I will explain fully how to achieve this.

First you must start with a reasonable home theatre system. I recommend an AV receiver with digital input. Next you need to buy the smallest and best looking computer case you can bear to see in your living room or in whatever room your TV happens to be. Be careful when picking your case, as built in video will be unsatisfactory and, you need to have room for an AGP slot. I personally use the Antec Aria. There are some amazingly small cases out which are VCR, or even Gamecube sized. A processor from AMD or Intel rated at 2000 or above is recommended. 512 megabytes of RAM is my minimum.

If you are going to build a high quality media machine you will need the Matrox G400 Dual Head. The G450, G500, and G550 are similar cards, but the G400 is truly the best for the job. If you cannot find a G400 on Price Watch the others I mentioned will work passably, but do not go for another brand such as ATI All-In-Wonder. The much more expensive Matrox Parhelia isn’t necessary, but will work too.

If your AV receiver supports digital then I would get a motherboard with digital sound capability onboard. Digital sound is always flawless, so you need not worry about cheap components creating noise. If you have only analog audio, I recommend a sound card such as the SoundBlaster Audigy 2 or the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz.

Continue reading Build a television capable media PC…

Formation of metals and stars

The universe started when a singularity of all matter expanded. Superstrings attracted to each other and formed quarks. Quarks coalesced and formed protons. Protons and electrons formed neutrons. Protons, neutrons, and electrons formed hydrogen. Hydrogen clouds gathered and under its gravity formed massive bodies. As the bodies grew to enormous size to internal pressure caused hydrogen nuclei at the core to bounce into other hydrogen increasing temperature tremendously. At high enough pressure and temperature it begins to fuse into deuterium. This releases high energy particles. The galactic body now radiates. As more hydrogen gathers and pressures and temperature increase dramatically hydrogen begins to fuse into helium, which releases a large number of higher energy protons and electrons.

There are now a few things that can happen. The star can continue to gather hydrogen, either from accreting from a companion star, or attracting hydrogen clouds. If this continues the star will reach a point of energy output that exceeds its capacity. If you have ever used a firecracker you should know what happens when energy output exceeds the packaging

Barrycenter of a hollow sphere

The gravitational barrycenter is a fascinating thing. It creates a point between to massive objects in which their joined revolution is centered. The earth and our moon has one 1,100 kilometers beneath the earth’s surface. Pluto and Charon have one situated between the planets. If you were to have an imaginary hollow sphere made out of a very thick and massive material, and you were stuck inside, where do you think you would come to rest? Would you fall to the center? Would you fall to the edge? As it turns out, the mass of the side to which you are closest has a pull identical to the far end of the sphere’s mass. As it is farther away, its gravitational forces are lessened in perfect synchronicity. This is another of the many miracles of pi. Complete equilibrium throughout the entire structure. You would feel weightless as the gravitational pull of all sides counteracts itself.

Continue reading Barrycenter of a hollow sphere…

Tides: More than the ocean waves

The average person upon hearing the term tides would imagine the ocean waves receding and advancing on the beach. They would be wrong. This is only an affect of the tides produced by the gravitational disturbances related to the moon and the sun. You might think that the sun, being our closest star, and holding a volume of about 24,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic kilometers (24 quadrillion km3) of hydrogen, would create great tidal forces. This is true, but at our distance of 149,600,000 kilometers average (1 AU) its effects contribute to only 10% of earth’s tides. The moon, while only having a volume of 385,847,000,000 cubic kilometers (385 billion km3) of rock, actually attributes to the other 90% of the tidal forces felt on earth. This is because our moon is only 384,400 kilometers away. The locality of a much smaller body affects the earth far greater than such a large and distant body as the sun.

This leads to the question of how these tidal forces create the motion of the ocean. To picture this you have to understand the way the gravity on earth holds things together, and the resulting layers of matter. To start you have the inner and outer cores. These rotate within the earth at a speed approximately 550 miles per hour faster than the earth itself rotates. You then have the mantle, above that is the crust, above that is the oceans, and above that is the atmosphere (which has many layers itself). These, over billions of years, have been sorted through gravity and the rotation of the earth. The abundance of liquid water on earth added to the earth’s malleability, speeding up the process of separation.

The tides most easily affect the atmosphere. From our perspective on earth we cannot see this. The space shuttles and other non-earthly observatories have noted tremendous bulging of the earth’s gasses, creating an oblong near egg shape preceeding the moon’s revolutions along the equator. Water on earth’s surface affect is minor; to the point it will recede and advance only in terms of a several meters. The earth’s crust actually bulges as much as a 30 centimeters as well. The question remains, how does the gravity from our moon and sun play with earth’s surface?

The gravitational pull between earth and our moon actually creates a point of equilibrium, called a barrycenter. At this point no gravity is felt. I’ll explain this more in another post, but the earth is 12,756 kilometers in diameter, and our barrycenter is revolving at only 1,100 kilometers below the earth’s surface. This creates a literal vacuum at the point between the earth and the moon, and our atmosphere and oceans are the only matter which can significantly fill the void, which creates the bulge. Now there approximately two tides per day, so from where does the second bulge come? On the opposite side of the globe we have an area of slightly lower gravity, so the oceans fill that void as well.

If you remember I said that the ocean’s and atmosphere’s bulge preceeds the revolutions of the moon, rather than following it. This is caused by the rotation of the earth, pulling them slightly ahead of the moon’s pull. The matter in these bulges, as with any matter, has gravity of its own, and it pulls the moon as well, giving it more orbital energy, which in turn pushes the moon away from the earth at a rate of 2 centimeters per year. You might ask if the bulge can pull the moon, does the moon pull the bulge? As the bulge preceeds the moon due to rotation, and it is being pulled backwards, does this slow the rotation of the earth? Yep. We lose 0.002 seconds every day due to this.

The aforementioned effect of negative rotational acceleration due to the tides has caused the moon to have one side always face the earth. The same effect will one day have the earth’s most massive side always facing that side of the moon. Someone on the other side of the world may never see the moon! Billions of years ago the moon’s rotation was not locked with the earth, and was much closer. This would have been a sight, as the moon would take up a much larger portion of the sky, and you could see all sides! The earth’s days at this time would also be much shorter, in terms of 18 hours or so.

The moon revolves around the earth about once every 27 days. This lunar cycle controls countless things, including the menstrual cycle of countless animals, among other interesting things.

Center of the galaxy

There are many places in the universe which create immense gravitational forces. Individual stars are surprisingly on the lower end if measuring scale. Black holes are inescapably strong, but at a distance their pull is no stronger than an equally massive star. Globular clusters are regions in which star growth is, or was at one time, exceedingly rapid. Hydrogen nebulas coalesce and form hundreds and thousands of hot, blue young stars. Most globular clusters observed now consist of older red dwarves. Gathered at the center of these clusters are often white dwarves, neutron stars, and conceivably a small black hole. The concentration of massive objects allows the cluster to bend the fabric of the universe far more than your average areas of the galaxy.

By far the largest purveyors of gravitational forces in the universe are galaxies themselves. These monsters of mass can be in many different shapes. You rarely find a spherical galaxy as large as a spiral or elliptical galaxy. Spiral appears to be the most common, and has massive gravitational arms revolving around the center. These arms are fascinating; they are not made up of simply a specific bunch of stars and nebula. The arms are gravitational waves which concentrate matter as they come, and then spread it back out as they go by. A single star will go in and out of these arms constantly in its life; it gets tremendously closer, and again tremendously far away from its neighboring stars each wave. This phenomenon isn’t yet completely understood.

The center of a galaxy is probably the most fascinating. It appears that most large galaxies have a super-massive black hole powering the surrounding revolutions. These black holes have been measured at being sometimes billions of times more massive than our sun. Some galaxies have been observed to have two super-massive black holes in their center! Sagittarius A, the black hole in the center of the Milky Way, is approximately 2 million times the mass of our sun. The event horizon on this black hole has a diameter twice that of our solar system. That is approximately 24,000,000,000 kilometers in diameter. That is a volume of 127,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic kilometers (127 nonillion km3)! This is what makes the galaxy go-round. Also in the center are giant hydrogen clouds, enormous stars and things referred to as canes, threads, snakes, and arcs. This mass is enough to keep the inner galaxy revolving around it. The inner galaxy then adds its mass to keep the outer galaxy revolving.

Dark matter is likely one of the most abundant things to provide mass in the galaxy, but it is an unknown. My own hypothesis is it is simply hydrogen clouds not actively lit up by an active source of energy, so it does not emit any form of detectable energies itself. I will discuss many of the points in this article, of which I today just touched on, at another time.

Hydrogen to Helium fusion

I’ve been asked to explain how 4 hydrogen become 1 helium atom through fusion. Why does it take so many? This is a bit beyond my ability to put into layman’s terms, so I will link to a University of Oregon site which explains this through a 3 step video. I highly recommend everyone view this. Learning about quantum processes truly does help you more understand everything around you.

Astronomy picture of the day

Want to view new and amazing pictures of the cosmos? Check it out at NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day. The archive is available here. I truly recommend this as a daily view, if not set as your homepage! I use this for research. I find one that piques my interest, and research it further through other means.

I just learned about Universities Space Research Association Earth Science Picture of the Day. I know nothing about it as of yet, but I plan to go through the entire archive in the next few days. I’m excited!

How bad is your astronomy?

I encourage you all to peruse Phil Plait’s website Bad Astronomy. This is an excellent site reteaching you what you thought you knew, but actually didn’t. He gives one a great baseline for learning more serious astronomy. The site is a very interesting read, and he even has a book, which is even better. He explains everything from how the sun appears larger on the horizon, through eggs standing on their end in the equinox, to dissecting Hollywood

Formation of quark stars

Quark stars are what got me to pursue Astronomy as a hobby. Imagine a star so dense it cannot contain itself, explodes and is now so dense it cannot remain a neutron star. Normally this would form an event horizon and become a singularity. But there is a point of equilibrium between these two states. A star just less than 15 times the mass of our sun has a small chance of shattering the strong forces holding its own matter together, and collapsing into a ball of strange quarks the size of Manhattan. This phenomenon would have a gravitational pull just shy of a black hole, while being more massive, and smaller than a neutron star.

To start the discussion of quark stars I must first explain, in layman’s terms, the process of fusion igniting a star. Most planets are not much more than a collection of hydrogen (H2), the most common element in the universe. Saturn and Jupiter likely began as a relatively small rock, which gravitationally collected immense amounts of hydrogen to form a giant sphere. The deeper into these planets the more dense is the hydrogen.

Moving along to the next phase of gas giants come to the brown dwarf. These are not terribly larger than Jupiter, but can be multiple magnitudes more dense. This greatly increases the gravitational forces on the body, which compresses its core to the point of deuterium (2H2) fusion.

Due to its own gravity a more massive body can begin to press its core so greatly that four hydrogen nuclei fuse to become one helium (He) nucleus. This conversion leaves excess energy, which is expelled during the process. In a star the size of the sun, 2,000,000,000 kilograms of mass becomes energy through fusion every second.

When the mass becomes five times greater than our sun explosions can occur. Fusion process ends, and the mass of the core becomes denser, to the point of becoming completely iron. The outside expands greatly into a supergiant. The core undergoes gravitational collapse and rises to over 100,000,000,000 degrees. The gravity only briefly overcomes the repulsive force of the nuclei and creates a shockwave, blowing off the outer layers of the star. The outer layers smash together fusing into new elements and isotopes. The outer matter continues into space as a nebula. The core remaining is a super massive, but very small ball of neutrons. This neutron star is usually spinning at a very high speed, and has a tremendous amount of electrons, creating a strong magnetic field. This interacting with the expanding remnant creates gamma and x-rays.

What if the star was 15 times our sun or greater? Well the neutrons do not survive the collapse. They break down into an unknown form of matter and forms an event horizon outside of itself. The matter is now a super-massive singularity, a black hole.

As I mentioned up top, quark stars are at an odd state between a black hole and a much larger neutron star. A neutron is a bond between a proton and an electron, which is in a neutral state. 3 quarks make up a proton. When the gravitational collapse occurs, electrons are expelled and trapped as the matter undergoes this transformation to a smaller state. As this transformation ends the quarks can be found in a crystalline structure. It has now reached equilibrium between shattering into a quantum singularity and being a relatively simple ball of neutron.

Introduction Artema

It is my pleasure to open my blog to the public. My name is Michael Garza. I was born in Baton Rouge Louisiana in 1979, and raised in Montevallo Alabama. I have lived most of my adult life in Houston Texas. I serve in the US Air Force, and am a 1C6. I take in as much Astronomy and Cosmology as I can get. If you like, you may address me as Artema. This name was chosen in the 80s as my online name. It is the Japanese way of speaking “Ultima”.

I will be speaking on all ranges of topics. I mainly plan to discuss Astronomy and Cosmology, but I have little doubt I will stray into new technologies, a little politics, my family, and my friends. Expect an entry tonight on quark stars. Their formation is a truly fascinating phenomenon which originally got me interested in astronomy.