It's Not All Space Cats

Reflection time! This image above was one that I showed during my Senior Presentations to the class. I told them that one day I would understand everything that was on that board. I explained that its not all about the pretty pictures of space, minus the space cats of course, but about understanding the math. I have come to find that not only do I understand the math better but also

I NOW KNOW SOME OF THESE WORDS!

Women in Physics Conference at Stanford 2012

All 150 of us!

The group of us from UCR!

At the beginning of the quarter some of the women in physics gathered to talk about many topics that ranged from grad school to when to have children. They talked about many different and exciting fields in physics. Everything from high energy to astrophysics to bio-medical physics.

The part that caught my interest the most was the talk about outreach with videos of the universe that I have linked here. Take a look and let me know what you think!

Galaxies in Real and Simulated Universes

How typical are the satellites of the Milky Way?








If you get a chance check out her page!
Risa Wechsler

Particle Physics: Neutrino

Interesting sometimes how life works out. Just as we are about to study random topics in class with many things coming back to the neutrino, I run across an article in WIRED science about it:  Strange Effects: The Mystifying History of Neutrino Experiments. Again having only a slight knowledge of some of these words I dove into the article to see what I could learn and boy was I ignorant. 


A friend of mine once told me, after a rant that I wanted to be in the field of astronomy, that I would need to know some particle physics. Thinking I knew better (don't all freshmen!?!) I blew off the advice and never perused taking the class. Now I have come to find that it is impossible to take as no professor has taught it in the last 2 years at UCR. So I guess this article, with respect to the neutrino, is the best I am going to get. 

Here's what I learned:

1.          In terms of numbers, there are A LOT of neutrinos. For every 1 proton or electron there is at least one billion neutrinos. Or this analogy:  Look at the nail on your pinky finger: Every second, about 65 billion neutrinos pass through it. Almost all were produced inside the giant nuclear reactor in our sun's belly. You would think with numbers like that we would know just about everything about them. But this leads me to my second discovery... 

2.         We know almost jack shit about them and jack just left town. Why? Well they are the priss particles of the universe. They barley interact with matter and have nothing that turns them on aka no charge. No wonder Frederick Reines would win the Noble in 1995 for the discovery. They are involved in many different processes: Beta Decay, nuclear reactors, gamma radiation, our sun, other suns, and causing problems with other experiments such as looking for proton decay. 

         In 2001, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada detected all three types of neutrinos

         coming from the sun, helping solve the solar neutrino problem. (Roy Kaltschmidt/Lawrence Berkeley National Lab) 

3.         There are three types of neutrinos: the electron neutrino that is the one that is produced in the sun or from the nuclear reactors and muon or tau neutrinos that are involved in all other processes such as when they are inbound to Earth from the sun. The types of neutrino found is based on the distance it has traveled from the source. LSND has possibly found a fourth type of neutrino but that has not been confirmed.  

A physicist sits inside the LSND detector. (Los Alamos National Laboratory) 

And there are many future experiments that will hopefully shed more photons on the situation. It seems every time they get closer and closer to an answer more questions arise. But this is why we do science!

       

A Well Timed Final

         Oh dear it's almost time! Finals are so close I am starting to stress if I have a blue book or not. Then again in these upper div classes we rarely need one. Ok ramble done. So I don't know how many of you have noticed but the scheduling of our Astro final is the ......VERNAL EQUINOX! I think that this is an omen that we are all going to pass! 
         But what is the VERNAL EQUINOX? So if we think about to the very first weeks of class, and believe me I know how hard this can be, it is when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun. Therefore the center of the Sun is in the same plane as the Earth's equator. What does that look like:

This equinox was meant to mean equal day that night but this is not always the case for everyone on Earth. Today the convention means that there is roughly 12 hours between sunrise and sunset. But how did all this madness get started? Well back in the day the Conqueror and Popes had a lot of control of the worlds  calendar. The first time the date was assigned was 45 BC by Julius Caesar and the date he chose was March 25th. Later it was shifted to March 21st by Pope Gregory XIII to create his modern Gregorian calendar. This time he was not swayed by a Emperor but to restore the edicts about the date of Easter of the Council of Nicaea of AD 325. 


FUN FACT:
The date at which sunset and sunrise becomes exactly 12 hours apart is known as the equilux. Because sunset and sunrise times vary with an observer's geographic location (longitude and latitude), the equilux(I searched equilux and this came up) likewise depends on location and does not exist for locations sufficiently close to the Equator. The equinox, however, is a precise moment in time which is common to all observers on Earth. 


In pursuit of humor I looked for a cartoon for the spring equinox and this is the best that was out there:

Connected Just By Being Alive

          I found another video that I will show my students. It sums up for me what is the most important fact about our relationship with the Universe. Thanks to Matt Chiapa on Facebook who posted this. I recommend that you watch in HD. Astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson was asked by a reader of TIME magazine, "What is the most astounding fact you can share with us about the Universe?" This is his answer.