Tag: anomolies

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Chaos Theory and Controlling the Weather

Researchers have used computer simulations to show that weather phenomena such as sudden downpours could potentially be modified by making small adjustments to certain variables in the weather system. They did this by taking advantage of a system known as a “butterfly attractor” in chaos theory, where a system can have one of two states—like the wings of a butterfly—and that it switches back and forth between the two states depending on small changes in certain conditions.

While weather predictions have reached levels of high accuracy thanks to methods such as supercomputer-based simulations and data assimilation, where observational data is incorporated into simulations, scientists have long hoped to be able to control the weather. Research in this area has intensified due to climate change, which has led to more extreme weather events such as torrential rain and storms.


There are methods at present for weather modification, but they have had limited success. Seeding the atmosphere to induce rain has been demonstrated, but it is only possible when the atmosphere is already in a state where it might rain. Geoengineering projects have been envisioned, but have not been carried out due to concerns about what unpredicted long-term effects they might have.


As a promising approach, a team of researchers from the Japanese RIKEN Center for Computational Science have looked to chaos theory to create realistic possibilities for mitigating weather events such as torrential rain. Specifically, they have focused on a phenomenon known as a butterfly attractor, proposed by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorentz, one of the founders of modern chaos theory. Essentially, this refers to a system that can adopt one of two orbits that look like the wings of a butterfly, but can change the orbits randomly based on small fluctuations in the system.


To perform the work, the RIKEN team ran one weather simulation, to serve as the control of “nature” itself, and then ran other simulations, using small variations in a number of variables describing the convection—how heat moves through the system—and discovered that small changes in several of the variables together could lead to the system being in a certain state once a certain amount of time elapsed.


According to Takemasa Miyoshi of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science, who led the team, “This opens the path to research into the controllability of weather and could lead to weather control technology.


The work, published in Nonlinear Processes of Geophysics. ( https://npg.copernicus.org/articles/29/133/2022/).

 

AR #55

Weather Wars

by John Kettler

 

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Fusion Energy: New Approach Opens the Door?

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have uncovered critical new details about fusion facilities that use lasers to compress the fuel that produces fusion energy. The new data could help lead to the improved design of future laser facilities that harness the fusion process that drives the sun and stars.

Fusion combines light elements in the form of plasma — the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei — that generates massive amounts of energy. Scientists are seeking to replicate fusion on Earth for a virtually inexhaustible supply of power to generate electricity.

Major experimental facilities include tokamaks, the magnetic fusion devices that PPPL studies; stellarators, the magnetic fusion machines that PPPL also studies and have recently become more widespread around the world; and laser devices used in what are called inertial confinement experiments.

The researchers explored the impact of adding tungsten metal, which is used to make cutting tools and lamp filaments, to the outer layer of plasma fuel pellets in inertial confinement research. They found that tungsten boosts the performance of the implosions that cause fusion reactions in the pellets. The tungsten helps block heat that would prematurely raise the temperature at the center of the pellet.

The research team confirmed the findings by making measurements using krypton gas, sometimes used in fluorescent lamps. Once added to the fuel, the gas emitted high-energy light known as X-rays that was captured by an instrument called a high-resolution X-ray spectrometer. The X-rays conveyed clues about what was happening inside the capsule.  
“I was excited to see that we could make these unprecedented measurements using the technique we have been developing these past few years. This information helps us evaluate the pellet’s implosion and helps researchers calibrate their computer simulations,” said PPPL physicist Lan Gao, lead author of the paper reporting the results in Physical Review Letters. “Better simulations and theoretical understanding in general can help researchers design better future experiments.”

The scientists performed the experiments at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a DOE user facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The facility shines 192 lasers onto a gold cylinder, or hohlraum, that is one centimeter tall and encases the fuel. The laser beams heat the hohlraum, which radiates X-rays evenly onto the fuel pellet within.

https://www.pppl.gov/news/2022/uncovering-novel-way-bring-earth-energy-powers-sun-and-stars

 

AR #82

New Energy Scientists Get New Respect

by Jeanne Manning

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Colossal Black Holes Dance at Heart of Galaxy

Astronomers find evidence for the tightest-knit supermassive black hole duo observed to date

By Whitney Clavin

Locked in an epic cosmic waltz 9 billion light years away, two supermassive black holes appear to be orbiting around each other every two years. The two giant bodies each have masses that are hundreds of millions of times larger than that of our sun, and the objects are separated by a distance roughly 50 times that which separates our sun and Pluto. When the pair merge in roughly 10,000 years, the titanic collision is expected to shake space and time itself, sending gravitational waves across the universe.

A Caltech-led team of astronomers has discovered evidence for this scenario taking place within a fiercely energetic object known as a quasar. Quasars are active cores of galaxies in which a supermassive black hole is siphoning material from a disk encircling it. In some quasars, the supermassive black hole creates a jet that shoots out at near the speed of light. The quasar observed in the new study, PKS 2131-021, belongs to a subclass of quasars called blazars in which the jet is pointing toward the Earth. Astronomers already knew quasars could possess two orbiting supermassive black holes, but finding direct evidence for this has proved difficult.


Reporting in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the researchers argue that PKS 2131-021 is a very rare candidate for a pair of supermassive black holes caught in the act of merging. The first candidate pair, within a quasar called OJ 287, orbit each other at greater distances, circling every nine years versus the two years it takes for the PKS 2131-021 pair to complete an orbit.


The telltale evidence came from radio observations of PKS 2131-021 that span 45 years. According to the study, a powerful jet emanating from one of the two black holes within PKS 2131-021 is shifting back and forth due to the pair’s orbital motion. This causes periodic changes in the quasar’s radio-light brightness. Five different observatories registered these oscillations, including Caltech’s Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO), the University of Michigan Radio Astronomy Observatory (UMRAO), MIT’s Haystack Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Metsähovi Radio Observatory in Finland, and NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space satellite.


The combination of the radio data yields a nearly perfect sinusoidal light curve unlike anything observed from quasars before.


“When we realized that the peaks and troughs of the light curve detected from recent times matched the peaks and troughs observed between 1975 and 1983, we knew something very special was going on,” says Sandra O’Neill, lead author of the new study and an undergraduate student at Caltech who is mentored by Tony Readhead, Robinson Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus.


Most, if not all, galaxies possess monstrous black holes at their cores, including our own Milky Way galaxy. When galaxies merge, their black holes “sink” to the middle of the newly formed galaxy and eventually join together to form an even more massive black hole. As the black holes spiral toward each other, they increasingly disturb the fabric of space and time, sending out gravitational waves, which were first predicted by Albert Einstein more than 100 years ago.

 

AR #114

Gravity’s Riddle

by Susan Martiinez, Ph.D.

 

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‘Dark’ Free-Floating Black Hole Detected

By Robert Sanders

Astronomers may have discovered the first free-floating black hole in the Milky Way galaxy, thanks to a technique called gravitational microlensing. With new observations, they hope to find many more such ghost stars.

If, as astronomers believe, the death of large stars leave behind black holes, there should be hundreds of millions of them scattered throughout the Milky Way galaxy. The problem is, isolated black holes are invisible.
Now, a team led by University of California, Berkeley, astronomers has for the first time discovered what may be a free-floating black hole by observing the brightening of a more distant star as its light was distorted by the object’s strong gravitational field — so-called gravitational microlensing.


The team, led by graduate student Casey Lam and Jessica Lu, a UC Berkeley associate professor of astronomy, estimates that the mass of the invisible compact object is between 1.6 and 4.4 times that of the sun. Because astronomers think that the leftover remnant of a dead star must be heavier than 2.2 solar masses in order to collapse to a black hole, the UC Berkeley researchers caution that the object could be a neutron star instead of a black hole. Neutron stars are also dense, highly compact objects, but their gravity is balanced by internal neutron pressure, which prevents further collapse to a black hole.


Whether a black hole or a neutron star, the object is the first dark stellar remnant — a stellar “ghost” — discovered wandering through the galaxy unpaired with another star.


“This is the first free-floating black hole or neutron star discovered with gravitational microlensing,” Lu said. “With microlensing, we’re able to probe these lonely, compact objects and weigh them. I think we have opened a new window onto these dark objects, which can’t be seen any other way.”


Determining how many of these compact objects populate the Milky Way galaxy will help astronomers understand the evolution of stars — in particular, how they die — and of our galaxy, and perhaps reveal whether any of the unseen black holes are primordial black holes, which some cosmologists think were produced in large quantities during the Big Bang.


The analysis by Lam, Lu and their international team has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Notably, a competing team from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore analyzed the same microlensing event and claims that the mass of the compact object is closer to 7.1 solar masses and indisputably a black hole. A paper describing the analysis by the STScI team, led by Kailash Sahu, has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal.

 

AR #64

Human Evolution and the Cygnus Connection By Greg Little