Bang, crash…Thud!

This month, with so much excitement happening in space, our topics are all based around the science of Astronomy. So much has been happening that the Science Page is going to run a little longer than is usual.

Echoes of the Big Bang

“And though the sound were parted thence,
Still left an echo in the sense.”
Ben Jonson

Sound is carried by ripples or waves or vibrations in a medium…for human speech it usually travels by air. The vibrations condense areas of the carrying matter and then the sensitive hairs in your ears vibrate in sympathy and convert them into a recognisable noise. Some waveforms are so deep and large that you can sense them with your bones and organs rather than just your ears. You can visualise this process by tapping a tuning fork, and holding a second fork beside the thrumming original; the second fork will also thrum. Sound can be so powerful; sonic resonance has been known to destroy bridges.

Imagine a waveform so large as to shape a universe.

Two major studies have discovered that our universe still bears the pattern of its birth, as the galaxies have been clustered by sound from the Big Bang. The ripples from that waveform would have been the largest, most tremendous that the universe will ever see. The Big Bang caused a ringing that lasted for 600,000 years, creating clumps and ripples in the matter of the infant universe that eventually condensed into the stars and dark matter. The birth of galaxies tended to occur at the leading edge of the ripple, where matter was slightly denser and gravitational forces slightly stronger.

Now, as I have mentioned in previous articles, the universe isn’t expanding in the conventional sense, with the force coming from one central point. The universe is expanding all over at once, like the skin of an inflating balloon. So these ripples are sutble and complex. It took intense statistical studies to locate this pattern.

For the record, Australian astronomers played a large part in these findings. Even though the Stromlo Observatory STILL isn’t rebuilt, Australia is making a solid contribution to the science of Astronomy, thanks to Anglo-Australian Observatory scientists.

Crashing the Comet

Who ever said that being a scientist
didn’t mean you couldn’t have big, loud, glorious fun?
Lynne Green

NASA has launched a rocket designed to crash into a comet. The collision, to occur on the 4th of July this year (American Independence Day), will take place at 23,000 mph. The rocket and its mocule are called Deep Impact, after the 1998 disaster movie.

The rocket and module has been uniquely-designed to make the actual collision into the comet, Tempel 1. The comet will be just outside the orbit of Mars when this event is to occur. Researchers are hoping that the impact will throw a large amount of the comet’s matter into space, where it can be analysed. It is theorised that comets contain elements similar to the infant universe. Scientists are also attempting to take photos of the formation of the crater.

No one knows if a comet’s contruction is ‘hard’ or’soft’. The impact should be able to provide that much information, if nothing else.

A Titantic Thud

“This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;”
Percy Bysshe Shelley

After a seven year jouney, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe made a safe landing on Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is sending back both aural and visual data, with stunning photos of an eerie, pale tangerine landscape scraped raw by ammonia blizzards. My personal favourite is the soundwave of the landing sonar – it gave me a real buzz to hear the echoes of an alien planet. (I blame Arthur C Clarke’s ‘Imperial Earth’ for my excitement.) As well, there is metal rod to test the texture of the soil of the landing site, and chemical sensors for ‘smelling’ the atmosphere.

The mission is already considered a success, even though two of the data channels appeared to be malfunctioning. The ‘back-up’ data stream was able to compensate for the losses.

Scientists will be spending years comparing this data to the Mars data, and back to terrestrial conditions. Titan has an atmosphere, like Earth and Mars, and therefore experiences weather; it also has complex hydrocarbons as part of its atmosphere. Even if life is unlikely in such a cold, harsh environment, there is still a lot to be discovered about the climates of other planets.

Biography – Robert H Goddard

Robert H Goddard is considered the father of modern Rocketry. Born in 1882, Goddard earned a science degree in 1908 and a Ph.D. in Physics in 1911. He also grew interested in rocketry as a teenager, attributed to his interest in science fiction and to his reading of the works of H.G. Wells. By 1914, he had patents relating to rocket apparatus and in 1919 he published a small book entitled ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes’.

This was not a man to suffer from a failure of imagination, or to be easily discouraged. He worked out a lot of his ideas for rocket propulsion while convalescing from tuberculosis. He was scorned by his scientific colleagues and in the media when he discussed the possibility of sending a rocket to the moon in ‘A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes’; they considered the whole idea as science fiction. Then, in 1926, he successfully launched a rocket powered by gasoline and liquid oxygen, which reach an altitude of 12.5 metres.

Strange to say, people stopped laughing. Goddard attracted minimal funding from the Smithsonian Institute. His second rocket carried a barometer, a thermometer, and a small camera to photograph the proceedings. It was the first instrument carrying rocket. Unfortunately, people complained about the noise generated by this experiment, and he was asked to stop firing rockets in Massachusetts.

But others were able to share Goddard’s vision. Daniel Guggenheim, a philanthropist, awarded Goddard a grant of $50,000. Goddard moved his efforts to a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico. There, he designed and launched rockets that exceeded the speed of sound, reached over 2000 metres into the air, and some that had gyroscopic guidance systems. During this fruitful period, he accrued 214 patents, including a patent for a multistage rocket.

The US government did not recognise the treasure that they had. Goddard’s work was virtually ignored by the government until WW2, where he helped develop the bazooka and rockets to help launch plains from carriers. When the US did become interested in rocketry, they imported German scientists – who promptly inquired after Goddard, whose research was the basis for their own work.

Goddard died in 1945, his brilliance still unrecognised, and with his main contribution to the space program yet to come. He never got to see an American rocket fired into space. And yet, after his death, he was awarded both the Congressional Gold Medal and the Langley Gold Medal. To me, it seems a pity he couldn’t have had a little fame and glory within his own lifetime.

Concept of the Month
Perigee and Apogee

These two terms represent points in the orbit of an artificial satellite or spacecraft. Perigee is the point, in an elliptical orbit, where the satellite is closest to the Earth. Apogee is the opposite point, where the satellite is farthest from the Earth. These terms can also be applied to the orbit of any satellite or spacecraft around another celestial body in space, such as another planet or moon.