Dark Matter and WIMP Catchers

Image Credit: Nasa.gov

WIMPs, which is an acronym for weakly interacting massive particles, are thought to be potential particles born of the big bang that pass through us billions at a time per second.  The exact function of WIMPs?  To keep our galaxy and other conglomerate areas of the universe from flying apart by providing the necessary mass for balance.

Tom Shutt, who holds the Agnar Pytte Chair of Physics at Case Western Reserve and is the principal investigator for the project, uttered the words we hear often from physicists, “We know there is dark matter, we just don’t know what it is yet.”

LHC to Resume Operation in November

Image Credit: ATLAS Gallery

Yes, after a year of waiting, the Large Hadron Collider is back for round two.  As of now, the LHC is scheduled to begin operating again in November of this year.  However, researchers are only cranking it up to half power, and will not reach full power until after 2010.  Press officer James Gillies said this idea came about as a compromise as to not cause any more damage to the LHC and still retain enough energy to get good experimental results.

Tom LeCompte, physics coordinator for CERN’s ATLAS experiment, which will study collisions of protons, said “We’re still doing the same physics plan we had envisioned all along, but it’s happening at a slower pace.”

Mars Mysteries

Image Credit: ESA Mars Express Project

Discovering the existence of methane on Mars in 2004 meant only one of two things: Either there is life on Mars, or there is volcanic activity under the Martian surface.  Today, we may be getting closer to that answer.  Back in December 2003, ESA’s Mars Express arrived smoothly in orbit around the red planet.  As the Express began taking data, Vittorio Formisano, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario CNR, Rome, and the rest of the instrument team saw a puzzling signal.

In addition to the atmospheric gases they were expecting to encounter (carbon dioxide and water vapor), they also detected a substantial amount of methane.  “Methane was a surprise, we were not expecting that,” says Agustin Chicarro, ESA Mars Lead Scientist.  The reason they were so surprised?  On Earth, almost all the methane released into our atmosphere comes from some form of evolved life, like cattle when they digest food.  In other words, all of our farting contributes to an awful lot of methane.

This discovery changed the way scientists looked at and studied Mars.  Now, we may be making a breakthrough as to what it all means for the red planet.

Environment Conscientious Galaxies?

Image Credit: Cardamone, Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Almost all galaxies appear either red shifted or blue shifted when observed from Earth.  However, recently scientists have discovered a group of green shifted galaxies, which has intrigued them greatly.  Volunteers of the Galaxy Zoo project have found ~250 green shifted galaxies that they’ve so aptly dubbed ‘Green Pea’ Galaxies, or just Green Peas.

The image at left shows just a handful of these newly discovered galaxies.  Interestingly, scientists are now beginning to speculate that these galaxies could allow us to gain insight into the formation of stars.

Mars Becomes Even More Interesting

It seems like every few weeks we are getting more new information about Mars, and it’s exciting.

No one is suggesting that Mars has flatulent cows, but a new study shows that the Red Planet, like Earth, spews methane. Researchers say it’s possible that the gas could be generated by bacteria living beneath the Martian surface.

Black Holes and the Young Universe

For years, astronomers have pondered a cosmic version of the chicken-and-egg problem: Which came first, monster black holes or the galaxies in which they reside? A new study hints that the black holes formed first.

Supermassive black holes cram the equivalent of millions to billions of suns into a volume smaller than the solar systems at the centers of galaxies. The preliminary finding suggests that early in the universe, supermassive black holes had already packed on most of their mass, and that the fireworks and fierce winds associated with the holes’ rapid growth triggered the formation of the black holes’ host galaxies, says Chris Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, N.M. He reported his team’s study at a January 7 press briefing during the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Probability and Design

This post is inspired by a comment my English 11 teacher made in class yesterday.  Before I say anything, I must clarify that I respect this guy; he’s a really smart teacher.  However, while reading a poem by Whalt Whitman, a line in the poem made reference to the transcendentalist belief of the life cycle (i.e. born from earth, live on earth, die on earth, become earth, bring forth more life).  This resulted in a class discussion about death, what lies thereafter, God, etc.  The discussion was very enlightening and healthy, especially considering we come from an area where born-again Christians dominate society (and that’s an understatement).  However, when my teacher made the following comment, I wanted to argue against it.

Massive Subsurface Glaciers Found on Mars

It seems Mars gets icier the more scientists study it.  The recently departed Phoenix Lander dug up ice water and spotted falling snow from its position in the northern polar plains. And now data from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter point to vast glaciers buried beneath thin layers of crustal debris, much closer to the equator.

The findings, published today in Science, come from the spaceraft’s shallow radar, or SHARAD, which is able to penetrate the surface and examine what lies beneath. In this case, SHARAD indicated that two long-visible mid-latitude features, one of which is roughly three times the size of Los Angeles, are almost completely composed of water ice. (The suspect glaciers are covered by debris that obscures them but also insulates the ice from sublimating into water vapor, much as street grit forms an opaque, protective blanket over roadside snowbanks.)

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

One of the questions I am most often asked is, “what happened before the big bang?” or something similar.  Usually if it is a religious argument the question is better phrased “what caused the big bang?”  Today, I plan to answer both of these questions to the best of science’s ability.  Before doing so however, we must admit, as all good scientists do, that we cannot know for certain how the big bang happened, or even if our universe began with a big bang.  However, we do know that all the evidence points towards a big bang and we can therefore conclude that a big bang is a logical way of viewing the creation of our universe.

Now, onto the argument.

Jupiter – Enemy or Ally?

For some time now, it has been accepted that Jupiter acts as a protector of the inner planets.  Astronomical and mathematical simulations show that the gas giant shields Earth from space debris left over from the planet making process.  However, new studies have shown that Jupiter can sometimes “throw” space objects towards Earth.

Kevin Grazier of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and his colleagues used a model of some 40,000 planetesimals to study this phenomena in detail.  They found that debris in the outer solar system initially had circular orbits and posed no threat to Earth or the other inner planets early in the history of the solar system. But the researchers showed that, through a series of close gravitational encounters with the outer planets, especially Jupiter, the objects assumed more elongated orbits and were handed down to the inner solar system.