WBB's World of Science

Springtime for Aurora Borealis

I was fast asleep last night when my friend Della 'phoned and woke me from my slumber. "Go outside and look at the Northern Lights, they're f@*king awesome!" she said. I did, they were.

I've not seen them properly before - I saw them for the first time on the distant horizon in the middle of Saskatchewan when I stopped for a p!ss while driving to Manitoba last fall. It wasn't amazing, but it was nice to see it for the first time.

Anyway, last night blew my mind! Utterly, utterly amazing . Above and below are photos I took from the deck in my back garden last night. Unfortunately, by the time I had stopped standing around going "Ooh" and "Aah", got my camera, realised I'd taken some out of focus images, then got my tripod and set it all up again, the best of it was over. Never mind, better luck next time.

Apparently the vernal equinox, for that's what we're approaching, is the best time of year to see the Northern lights. Strange really as one would assume that midsummer would be the best time of year, what with the magnetic north pole being more angled toward the sun; but no, the vernal equinox is the best time.

There's a great deal we don't understand about the Aurora Borealis (and Australis of course). For example, why do auroras sometimes erupt with little warning and surprising intensity. What triggers the eruptions? Where is the energy stored?

The reasons for this have eluded scientists for a long time, but they now seem to be piecing together parts of the puzzle. In February 2007 NASA launched five spacecraft, collectively called THEMIS. THEMIS may have found the storm's power supply. "The satellites have detected magnetic ropes connecting Earth's upper atmosphere directly to the Sun," says Dave Sibeck, project scientist for the mission at the Goddard Space Flight Center. "We believe that solar wind particles flow in along these ropes, providing energy for geomagnetic storms and auroras."

Which brings us back to spring. It turns out that magnetic connections between the Sun and Earth are favored in springtime. It's a matter of geometry: As Earth goes around in its orbit, Earth's magnetic poles move back and forth. (The poles don't really move, but the combinations of Earth's 23° polar tilt plus orbital motion makes the poles appear to move from the Sun's point of view.) Around the time of the equinox, Earth's magnetic field is best oriented for connecting-up with the Sun. But there are two equinoxes, spring and fall, with similar magnetic geometry. In fact, autumn is aurora season, too but according to historical records you are still more likely to see them in the spring.

THEMIS is only really just getting started. The five spacecraft are on a 2-year mission to explore Earth's magnetic field.

LHC Update - ATLAS detector almost complete

For those of you that may not have heard of the Large Hadron Collider (though I'm sure you have) at CERN there is a little background in the post.

Things are going well at CERN as the last part of the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) detector was lowered into place on Friday. Weighing 7000 tons and consisting of 100 million sensors the ATLAS detector will be used to to identify and measure the momentum of particles that will be created in the 14 TeV (terra electron volts) head-on proton-proton collisions. As particles pass through a magnetic field produced by superconducting magnets, this detector has the ability to accurately track them to the width of a human hair. The ATLAS experiment will now concentrate on preparation work before the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this summer.

The LHC will give physicists a massive leap in the amount of energy produced in particle accelerators compared to those that have gone before. Travelling at 99.99991% the speed of light, the proton beams will travel 11,245 times round the 26.66 kilometre (16.5 mile) ring every second. It is hoped that many predicted particles will be discovered, in particular the Higgs boson - the only Standard Model particle not yet observed. The Higgs boson would help explain how otherwise massless elementary particles still manage to construct mass in matter. We feel the effects of gravity and how it acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain why particles have the masses they have. The experiments "attached" to the LHC, such as ATLAS, may provide the answer.

Other LHC experiments will look for the vast amounts of yet unseen and therefore "dark" matter and energy in the Universe, they will investigate the reason why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the Universe, they will recreate matter as it existed millionths of a second after the Big Bang and look for extra dimensions of spacetime (to either hopefully confirm or discredit super string theory once and for all).

So not much to look forward to then! I think this could well be one of the biggest leaps forward in human understanding of the Universe. Probably in our lifetimes at least.

Oh, and if you hear some idiot mention the dangers of the earth being destroyed by a black hole created by the LHC you have my permission to punch them in the face!

Welcome, traveller.

I have decided that the reason I haven't been posting on my blog for so long is that I have not known what to write about. I am not able to write in such a amusing and witty manner as DriverChris, nor do I particularly enjoy writing about my day at work or what I watched on TV (though I scarcely watch it these days).

I like the focus of DriverChris's blog. All things automotive and those related to the world of the internal combustion engine; it's a good idea.

So, I have decided to focus my blog on an area of my life that interests me greatly, that of the physical sciences. Cosmology, particle physics, astronomy, geology and biology.

Big up an' ting to DriverChris for his hard work on the new look for my blog.

I hope some of you still stop by.

TTFN

WBB

I'm sorry, but...

Go Giants!

No-one thought the Giants could beat the perfect Pats, including me.

I love rooting for the underdog, and the fact that ex-Steelers player Plaxico Burress was on the Giants team was more than half a reason for me to put my (substantial) weight behind the Giants. I gotta be honest though, I fuckin' hate the Pats. What with their gung-ho, rah-rah, imperialist, U-S-A! U-S-A! stylings and their play stealing twat of a coach I don't care who's playing them. 18-1 you losers! Actually, Tom Brady seems a genuinely nice guy. But still, I hate the Pats.

We had a basement full of friends, a whole mess o' wings, chips, dips and beers, and few games of pool, some rockin' rock music, a jumbo screen and an awesome game of football. Good times!

I like the Manning boys as well. Even though they've caused my beloved Steelers a lot of problems, I still like 'em. It was nice to see the dorky little brother of Peyton (the one no commentator would ever give a hope in hell) follow his big bro' to Super Bowl victory. Out of all the QB's in the NFL, Eli Manning is the nerds choice. It's a victory for us dorks!

Peace out!

Blizzard - UPDATE

Well guys, we hit the big -40 Celsius (-40 Fahrenheit) this morning. With wind chill it's, like, -55 Celsius or summat. Step outside and it feels as though you have bits of glass up your nose as all the moisture immediately freezes and within 30 seconds your hands and feet are frozen and numb. This is full on arctic weather like I've never felt before. One of the guys that lives downtown came into the office and had huge bushy white eyebrows which was freezing fog that got stuck to his face, and he could stand his scarf up on his desk as it had frozen solid!!!

Funny to think in 5 months time we'll be in the +30's. That's around 75 C difference in temperature between summer and winter. Kerrrrrazy!