Hinode & Solar Mysteries

Hinode (Sunrise in Japanese) was launched to study magnetic fields on the Sun and their role in powering the solar atmosphere and driving solar eruptions. With its Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), effectively a solar speed camera, it is now possible to pinpoint the source of eruptions during solar flares and to find new clues about the heating processes of the corona.

The speed camera is a spectrometer, an instrument that splits the light coming from solar plasma, a tenuous and highly variable gas, into its distinct colours (or spectral lines), providing detailed information about the plasma. The velocity of the gases in a solar feature is measured by the Doppler effect - the same effect that is used by police radars to detect speeding motorists.

Read more Hinode helps unravel long-standing solar mysteries
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Princeton scientists confirm long-held theory about source of sunshine
Voyager Interstellar Mission Proceeds from Centauri Dreams
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Moving to the Sun's Rythm

Scientists from the Ulysses mission have proven that sounds generated deep inside the Sun cause the Earth to shake and vibrate in sympathy. They found that Earth’s magnetic field, atmosphere and terrestrial systems, all take part in this cosmic sing-along.

The HISCALE experiment on board Ulysses, a joint mission between ESA and NASA, present evidence that proves that Earth moves to the rhythm of the Sun. They show that distinct, isolated tones, predicted to be generated by pressure and gravity waves in the Sun, manage to reach Earth and are detectable in our environment.

Just as seismologists on Earth use sound waves to probe the interior of our world, solar scientists would like to use g-modes to probe the core of the Sun, if only they could detect them. G-modes have been undetectable optically.

The team examined a wide range of data sets covering natural phenomena and technological systems in fields as diverse as telecommunications and seismology and continued to find new evidence of discrete tones with characteristics of solar oscillations in what was previously considered background “noise”. This added to the puzzle posed by the Ulysses findings.

David Thomson from the Ulysses team believes that the key to the problem is magnetism. He suggests that the g-mode vibrations are picked up by the magnetic field at the Sun’s surface. Part of this magnetic field is then carried away from Sun into interplanetary space by solar wind, where it can be detected by space probes like Ulysses.

The magnetic field of the solar wind in turn interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field and causes it to vibrate in sympathy, retaining the characteristic g-mode signals. The motions of the geomagnetic field then couple into the solid Earth to produce small, but easily detectable, responses as Earth, with many of its technological systems, moves to the rhythm of the Sun.

Ulysses is a joint ESA/NASA mission studying the interplanetary medium and solar wind in the inner heliosphere, beyond the Sun's equator, for the first time.

Read more Moving to the Rythm of the Sun from ESA
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How Solar Neutrinos make the Sun's heart beat @ Scientific Blogging
Voyager Interstellar Mission Proceeds from Centauri Dreams
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Nasa's Phoenix Mission to Mars

The aeroshell which contains the phoenix lander is visible in this close-up view of the spacecraft entering the martian atmosphere.


NASA's Phoenix Mars Mission blasted off Saturday, aiming for a May 25, 2008, arrival at the Red Planet and a close-up examination of the surface of the northern polar region.

Perched atop a Delta II rocket, the spacecraft left Cape Canaveral Air Force Base at 5:26 a.m. Eastern Time into the predawn sky above Florida's Atlantic coast.

Phoenix Mars Mission @ Arizona Education
NASA Phoenix Mission, going to the artic planes of Mars
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NASA's Endeavour Launch from Quasar9
NASA's Space Shuttle Cargo from Space COM
What Makes Mars Magnetic? from Science Daily & ESF
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NASA Fusion Jet

The journey time from Earth orbit to Mars could be slashed from six months to less than six weeks if NASA's idea for a nuclear fusion-powered engine takes off.

The space-flight engine is being developed by a team led by Bill Emrich, an engineer at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. He predicts his fusion drive would be able to generate 300 times the thrust of any chemical rocket engine and use only a fraction of its fuel mass.

That means interplanetary missions would no longer need to wait for a "shortest journey" launch window. You can launch when you want.

The principle is to sustain an on-board fusion reaction and fire some of the energy created out the back of the spacecraft, generating thrust. Of course, harnessing fusion is no easy task. Scientists have struggled to contain the super-hot plasmas of charged ions needed for fusion reactions.

Bare nuclei
To achieve fusion, scientists heat the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium to at least 100 million kelvin. This strips electrons from the isotopes, creating a plasma of bare nuclei. If this plasma is hot and dense enough, the two types of nuclei fuse, giving off neutrons and huge amounts of energy.

However, the plasma can only be contained by strong magnetic fields, and creating containment fields that do not leak has proved very difficult. What is more, no one has managed to generate a stable fusion reaction that passes the "break-even" point, where the reaction is generating more energy than it takes to sustain it.

Fortunately for Emrich, the reaction would not need to go far beyond the break-even point to generate thrust. And containment is less of a headache because you actually want some of the plasma to escape, he says. "That's where the thrust comes from."

The problem is 100 million kelvin is not hot enough to generate thrust. At that temperature, the fusion reaction only generates neutrons, which are uncharged and therefore cannot be steered and fired through a magnetic jet nozzle. To produce thrust, you need charged particles.


Bold solution
Emrich is proposing a bold solution. He wants to use microwaves to heat the plasma to 600 million kelvin, triggering a different kind of fusion reaction that generates not neutrons but charged alpha particles - helium nuclei. These can then be fired from a magnetic nozzle to push the craft along.

Emrich has tested the idea with a scaled-down version using an argon plasma. He found that he could get around many of the containment problems by using a long, cylindrical magnetic field with powerful magnets at each end (see graphic).

In a fusion drive, the fields at the end could easily be controlled to release the highly energetic alpha particles and propel the craft.

If fusion researchers can ever achieve stable, break-even fusion, Emrich believes a full-scale fusion drive - perhaps 100 metres long - could be ready and waiting within two decades.

Nuclear fusion could power NASA spacecraft
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Superconducting Turbojet

An all-electric aircraft could soon appear over the horizon thanks to high-flying scientific research published today in the Institute of Physics' journal, Superconductor Science and Technology. The new type of aircraft, currently on the drawing board, could be far more efficient than conventional aircraft, produce less greenhouse emissions, and be quieter.

Air travel is on the increase, but it comes at a price in terms of the emissions driving climate change. Aircraft currently account for about 5% of UK emissions with a single long-haul flight the equivalent of a ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. With such worrying figures making the headlines, alternatives to combustion-based propulsion systems could be the key.

Superconducting motors could be one such alternative, according to scientists in America. Philippe Masson and Cesar Luongo from Florida State University, who have collaborated with Gerald Brown at NASA and Danielle Soban at Georgia Institute of Technology, explain that because superconductors lose no energy through electrical resistance, they could be very efficient components for a new type of aircraft propulsion.

The researchers explain that to build an electric aircraft will require propulsion motors that are high power, lightweight and compact. Current technology cannot meet these demands because an electric motor using conventional magnets can weigh up to five times as much as conventional jet engine and not be as fuel efficient.

In contrast, a superconducting motor would be very lightweight and far more efficient electrically, generating three times the torque of a conventional electric motor for the same energy input and weight. In addition, an electric aircraft would be far quieter than a conventional jet as there are no internal combustion processes involved. It is the combustion of fossil fuels to drive a conventional aircraft that makes them so noisy.

However, superconducting magnets not only have to be cold, but require a unique energy supply. Masson and his colleagues believe they could solve both problems by using chilly liquid hydrogen to run an electric fuel cell. Liquid hydrogen is cold enough to make the superconducting magnets work but also has four times as much energy weight for weight than aviation fuel.

A fuel cell produces no polluting emissions, just warm water as the hydrogen combines with oxygen. This, say the researchers would mean zero carbon emissions from the aircraft as it flies. "The idea is to reduce the emissions from the aircraft and airports," explains team leader Masson, "The energy needed to produce the liquid hydrogen could come from a remote powerplant". Such a powerplant might be solar or wind powered.

"We could potentially build a superconducting motor and generator smaller than a gas turbine, which would make possible electric propulsion," says Masson. Electrical propulsion would not only decrease emissions but also reduce to a minimum the needs for maintenance as all hydraulic systems would be eliminated, he adds. The team has designed such systems with high fidelity models and optimization tools.

Masson adds that the team is now looking for an industrial partner to build a prototype of the superconducting "turbofan". "The technology is there," he says, "it is a matter of finding a source of funding."

Original Source: Institute of Physics, News
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