NASA Releases Sounds From Space On SoundCloud

NASA recently released over a half a century of sounds on SoundCloud, ranging from eerie noises from our solar system to historic moments in space exploration. The U.S. space agency recently created a SoundCloud page to reveal some of the most unusual sounds ever recorded, according to Mother Nature Network.

Although sounds in space are stifled by a vacuum, scientists have discovered ways of capturing noise using special instruments on the Voyager space probe that converts electromagnetic vibrations into sound, Gigwise reports.

The recordings include sounds of Saturn’s rings, Neptune, Jupiter, and Uranus, as well as what Earth would sound like millions of miles away. The files also contain sounds of shuttle launching and famous quotes from NASA astronauts.

Some of the sounds are quirky, chilling, and otherworldly. Here are seven of NASA’s most interesting uploads.

1. “Earthsong” It is also called “Chorus” and is NASA’s most popular feed. The sound is produced by our own planet. It is described as an electromagnetic phenomenon caused by plasma waves in Earth’s radiation belts that hover 8,000 miles above the surface. The sound is too high for humans to hear, however ham radio operators have detected it for a long time, especially in the morning. It has been compared to the sound of birdsongs, from which the moniker is derived. NASA recorded this in 2012 with its EMFISIS probe.


2. “Saturn Radio” Saturn is home to dramatic auroras that are a lot like the northern and southern lights that dance around the Earth’s poles when solar wind hits the upper atmosphere. These lights are closely related to the planet’s strong radio emissions, first detected by the Cassini spacecraft 2002.


3. “Interstellar Plasma” It has taken NASA’s Voyager 1 three decades since it left Earth to escape the sun’s magnetic field. This clip represents data that was recorded outside the heliosphere in 2012 and 2013. NASA calls it “The Sounds of Interstellar Space.”


4. “Sonified Starlight” Scientists now may “sonify” non-auditory data by translating its values to noises, a lot like a Geiger counter converts silent radiation to audible clicks. Locating patterns in in data is often easier by ear, even if the data doesn’t represent sounds. The technique also helps scientists understand faraway stars, as with this clip of sonified light waves from KIC 7671081B, a variable star listed in NASA’s Kepler Input Catalog (KIC).


5. “Eerie Enceladus” This is Saturn’s sixth-largest of its several dozen moons. Enceladus spews enormous plumes of water vapor from its ice-covered surface. In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft detected a “significant atmosphere around it,” recording data from ion cyclotron waves.


6. “A Giant Leap” Neil Armstrong’s most famous words when his foot touched the surface of the moon. This was the first SoundCloud clip that NASA posted online.


7. “Lift Off” These are the sounds of the first manned-mission to the moon, Apollo 11. The clip includes lift off, as well as the applause in the space center.

Some of NASA’s files might sound familiar to gamers.

NASA’s release of sounds from space on its SoundCloud page comprises of 63 files so far, including several of the most historic and mind-bending moments from the past 50 years of space exploration.
Source : inquisitr

"Unexpected Planet" Discovered by Yale Astronomers

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Astronomers have discovered a new planet that has a highly inconsistent orbit time around its Sun.

The low-mass, low-density planet, known only as PH3c, which is 2,300 light years away from the Earth, has an atmosphere loaded with hydrogen and helium.

The planet nearly escaped detection as PH3c does not have a consistent orbit time around its Sun due to the gravitational influence of other planets on its system.

“On the Earth, these effects are very small, only on the scale of one second or so,” said Joseph Schmitt, a graduate student at Yale University.

“PH3c’s orbital period changed by 10.5 hours in just 10 orbits,” explained Schmitt.

This inconsistency kept the planet out of reach for automated computer algorithms that search stellar light curves and identify regular dips caused by objects passing in front of stars, he said.

The researchers discovered the new planet with the help of Planet Hunters programme coordinated by Yale University and University of Oxford.

The programme, which has found over 60 planet candidates since 2010, enlists citizen scientists to check survey data from the Kepler spacecraft.

Not only did Planet Hunters spot PH3c, but the discovery also enabled astronomers to better characterise two other planets - one on each side of PH3c.

An outer planet PH3d is slightly larger and heavier than Saturn. An inner planet, PH3b may have a rocky composition like the Earth.

“Finding the middle planet was key to confirming the others and allowing us to find their masses,” Schmitt explained.

Evidence Builds for Dark Matter Explosions at the Milky Way’s Core

This Fermi map of the Milky Way center shows an overabundance of gamma-rays (red indicates the greatest number) that cannot be explained by conventional sources.

So far, dark matter has evaded scientists’ best attempts to find it. Astronomers know the invisible stuff dominates our universe and tugs gravitationally on regular matter, but they do not know what it is made of. Since 2009, however, suspicious gamma--ray light radiating from the Milky Way’s core—where dark matter is thought to be especially dense—has intrigued researchers. Some wonder if the rays might have been emitted in explosions caused by colliding particles of dark matter. Now a new gamma-ray signal, in combination with those already detected, offers further evidence that this might be the case.

One possible explanation for dark matter is that it is made of theorized “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs. Every WIMP is thought to be both matter and antimatter, so when two of them meet they should annihilate on contact, as matter and antimatter do. These blasts would create gamma-ray light, which is what astronomers see in abundance at the center of our galaxy in data from the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. The explosions could also create cosmic-ray particles—high-energy electrons and positrons (the antimatter counterparts of electrons)—which would then speed out from the heart of the Milky Way and sometimes collide with particles of starlight, giving them a boost of energy that would bump them up into the gamma-ray range. For the first time scientists have now detected light that matches predictions for this second process, called inverse Compton scattering, which should produce gamma rays that are more spread out over space and come in a different range of energies than those released directly by dark matter annihilation.

“It looks pretty clear from their work that an additional inverse Compton component of gamma rays is present,” says Dan Hooper, an astrophysicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory who was not involved in the study, but who originally pointed out that a dark matter signal might be present in the Fermi telescope data. “Such a component could come from the same dark matter that makes the primary gamma-ray signal we've been talking about all of these years.” University of California, Irvine scientists Anna Kwa and Kevork Abazajian presented the new study October 23 at the Fifth International Fermi Symposium in Nagoya, Japan and submitted their paper to Physical Review Letters.

None of the intriguing gamma-ray light is a smoking gun for dark matter. Other astrophysical processes, such as spinning stars called pulsars, can create both types of signal. “You can make models that replicate all this with astrophysics,” Abazajian says. “But the case for dark matter is the easiest, and there’s more and more evidence that keeps piling up.”

The official Fermi telescope team has long been cautious about drawing conclusions on dark matter from their data. But at last week’s symposium, the group presented its own analysis of the unexplained gamma-ray light and concluded that although multiple hypotheses fit the data, dark matter fits best. “That’s huge news because it’s the first time they’ve acknowledged that,” Abazajian says. Simona Murgia, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Irvine and a member of the Fermi collaboration’s galactic-center analysis team, presented the team’s findings. She says the complexity of the galactic center makes it difficult to know for sure how the excess of gamma rays arose and whether or not the light could come from mundane “background” sources. “It is a very interesting claim,” she says of Abazajian’s analysis. “However, detection of extended excesses in this region of the sky is complicated by our incomplete understanding of the background.”

The dark matter interpretation would look more likely if astronomers could find similar evidence of WIMP annihilation in other galaxies, such as the two dozen or so dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I think a convincing claim of discovery would probably require a corresponding signal in another location—or by a non-astrophysical experiment—as well as the galactic center,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology astrophysicist Tracy Slatyer, who has also studied the Fermi data from the Milky Way’s center.

Non-astrophysical experiments include the handful of so-called direct-detection experiments on Earth, which aim to catch WIMPs on the extremely rare occasions when they bump into atoms of normal matter. So far, however, none of these has found any evidence for dark matter. Instead they have steadily whittled away at the tally of possible types of WIMPs that could exist.

Other orbiting experiments, such as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station, which detects cosmic rays, have also failed to find convincing proof of dark matter. In fact, the AMS results seem to conflict with the most basic explanations linking dark matter to the Fermi observations. “Most people would agree that there is something rather unexpected happening at the galactic center, and it would be tremendously exciting if it turns out to be a dark matter annihilation signal,” says Christoph Weniger of the University of Amsterdam, another astrophysicist who has studied the Milky Way’s core. “But we have to confirm this interpretation by finding corroborating evidence in other independent observations first. Much more work needs to be done.”

Source : scientificamerican

EXPLOSION OF NASA'S UNMANNED ROCKET ANTARES

An unmanned Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from a commercial launch pad in Virginia on Tuesday, marking the first accident since NASA turned to private operators to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, but officials said no one was hurt.

The 14-story rocket, built and launched by Orbital Sciences Corp, blasted off its seaside launch pad at the Wallops Flight Facility at 6:22 p.m. EDT carrying a Cygnus cargo ship for the space station. It exploded in a huge fireball moments later.

Orbital Sciences stock was down 12.74 percent after hours, or down $3.87 at $26.50.

The cause of the accident was not immediately known, said NASA mission commentator Dan Huot.

Huot said there were no reports of any personnel in the vicinity of the explosion. An Accomack County Sheriff's spokeswoman added, "As far as we know, all personnel are accounted for and everyone's OK."

Orbital Sciences said in a statement: "We've confirmed that all personnel have been accounted for. We have no injuries in the operation today."

NASA launch control said damage appeared to be limited to the launch facility and rocket. The Antares rocket has been launched successfully on four previous missions.

"This has been a lot of hard work to get to this point," Orbital Sciences Executive Vice President Frank Culbertson told the launch team just before liftoff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSJ2kcDirEo

Launch had been delayed one day after a boat sailed into a restricted safety zone beneath the rocket's intended flight path.

Virginia-based Orbital Sciences is one of two companies hired by NASA to fly cargo to the station after the space shuttles were retired. Tuesday's planned flight was to be the third of eight under the company's $1.9 billion contract with NASA.

The second U.S. supply line to the station is run by privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which is preparing for its fourth flight under a separate $1.6 billion NASA contract.

Outfitted with a new, more powerful upper-stage engine, the Antares rocket launched on Tuesday carried a Cygnus spacecraft packed with 5,055 pounds (2,293 kg) of supplies, science experiments and equipment, a 15 percent increase over previous missions.

Cygnus was to loiter in orbit until Nov. 2, then fly itself to the station so astronauts can use a robotic crane to snare the capsule and attach it to a berthing port. The station, a $100 billion research laboratory owned and operated by 15 nations, flies about 260 miles (418 km) above Earth.

In addition to food, supplies and equipment, the Cygnus spacecraft was loaded with more than 1,600 pounds (725 kg) of science experiments, including an investigation to chemically analyze meteors as they burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.

The Cygnus also carried a prototype satellite owned by Redmond, Washington-based startup Planetary Resources Inc., which is developing technology to mine asteroids. The satellite, designated A3, was to be released into space by a commercially owned small spacecraft launcher aboard the station.

Source : Reuters

New Horizons to Explore Pluto

In January 2006, New Horizons was launched for its long journey to explore Pluto and its five known moons. This will be NASA’s first opportunity to explore the distant planet of which little is known since its 1930 discovery.

Pluto is the most famous resident of the Kuiper Belt, an area of space beyond Neptune that is filled with innumerable objects that are believed to be remnants of the formation of the solar system. A Dutch astronomer, Jan Oort, theorized that comets might originate from this distant region. Gerard Kuiper first envisioned the existence of icy objects beyond Neptune in 1951.

The Kuiper Belt is about 3 billion miles from Earth and is similar to the asteroids that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter.   The asteroid belt is filled with rocky objects whereas the Kuiper Belt’s objects are icy. Several dwarf planets, of which Pluto is one, exist in these far reaches of space. Dwarf planets are not only smaller than regular planets, but their lack of size does not give them the ability to clear space around them.

Currently in a hibernation state, New Horizons will awake and begin preparing for its encounter with Pluto on Dec. 6. The actual flyby will begin in January with the spacecraft’s closest encounter occurring on July 15, 2015. A scheduled trajectory adjustment burn was not deemed necessary and has left the craft with additional fuel.

The additional fuel has NASA officials searching for additional Kuiper Belt objects for New Horizons to explore. To identify potential targets, officials used the Hubble telescope to locate objects of interest. These targets had to be in line with Pluto so that additional use of fuel would not be required. The Hubble data identified three additional objects that will be tracked to ascertain their orbital path.

New Horizons crossed Neptune’s orbital path on Aug. 25. On Sept. 12 NASA, using the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager, began its initial preparatory testing of the approaching Pluto system. Hydra, a small moon of Pluto, was detected. It was not anticipated to view the moon until early in 2015. Locating Hydra this early in the process bodes well for the team’s ability to locate potential unknown moons or planetary rings.

New Horizons took 48 images, each lasting 10 seconds, of Pluto on two separate occurrences in July. While these images revealed Hydra, officials were unable to see Nix, another of Pluto’s moons. New Horizons was still 267 million miles from Pluto when these images were taken. Those images also revealed its largest moon, Charon. Some astronomers consider Pluto-Charon as a binary planet.

NASA has completed its detailed engineering review of the mission and has begun the process of planning for the approach science. By next month sequences for planetary approach will be developed. Each sequence serves as a two-week flight plan for the spacecraft and takes about eight weeks to develop, test and certify.

New Horizon’s exploration of Pluto and the Kuiper Belt is NASA’s first extensive look at this distant part of the solar system. Pluto was still classified as a planet when the mission initially launched. It has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet.