There Will Be No Armageddon
The Large Hadron Collider is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts.by Yury ZaitsevMoscow (RIA Novosti) Jun 20, 2008A black hole will appear in mid-July on the border between France and Switzerland, swallowing up first Europe and then the entire planet. Such are the apocalyptic forecasts being made ahead of the scheduled launching, in three weeks, of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The ambitious research project, aimed at looking into superconductivity, high energies and God or devil knows what else, is an international effort involving several countries, including Russia. The report that the LHC will also produce a black hole is the most talked about item.
Remarkably, the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe are not those driven by thermonuclear reactions or annihilation processes. Much more powerful are high-density objects called black holes and neutron stars.
The force of gravity around these bodies is tremendous, and accelerates any matter caught by its pull to immense speeds. Matter impacting on the surface of a neutron star does so at half the speed of light. The efficiency at which energy is released from such impacts is more than ten times that of nuclear or thermonuclear reactions.
The general theory of relativity says black holes appear when matter is compressed into a more compact shape than that of a neutron star.
As a result, a black hole has a gravitational field so strong that neither a material body nor any kind of radiation (including light) is able to escape its embrace. The black holes are, therefore, impossible to see. They can only be identified indirectly, by observing the matter they absorb from a neighboring visible star, for example.
The gas flowing from such a star does not fall into the black hole at once. First, it forms the so-called "accretion disk", where the matter rotates for a long time. As it accelerates, it picks up a speed approaching that of light and starts emitting super-high energy X-radiation, which can be measured by instruments placed in space.
Will it be possible to reproduce these phenomena, as yet only theoretically predicted, in the ground-based accelerator in the Alps?
The hadron collider straddling the French-Swiss border is a ring accelerator designed to collide charged particles into each other at massive speeds. When it is turned on more than a billion collisions per second will occur inside it. The huge circumference of the collider ring (26.65 km) will allow the LHC to whisk particles to speeds close to that of light and produce super-high energy collisions.
The LHC is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV).
Electron-proton bunches will collide with energies of up to 1.5 TeV, and bunches of heavy ions, such as lead, with a total energy of over 1,250 TeV. This is nothing short of a new phenomenon in physics, in particular the likely confirmation of a theory that teraelectronic energies and corresponding gravitation give rise to black holes.
Some theorists, however, and the public at large have started voicing fears that when such processes are modeled there will be a danger of collider experiments getting out of hand and giving rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet. The most widely expressed fear is that microscopic black holes may appear and capture the surrounding matter.
Some people take this threat extremely seriously. In March of this year a claim was even filed with the Hawaii district court charging CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), which is building the accelerator, with an attempt at Armageddon, and demanding a ban on the accelerator's launching.
Meanwhile, several years ago, it was discovered that black holes "evaporate" with time - a crucial discovery for understanding their physics. Larger ones do so only slowly, over billions of years, while smaller ones, practically instantaneously, within 10-17 of a second. Naturally, they simply do not have the time to absorb any sizeable amount of matter.
Some researchers also believe that black holes arise when space rays bombard, at much higher energies, the Earth's atmosphere, the Moon and the surfaces of other planets. We just cannot see them because the process is too short-lived.
Black holes are expected to appear (or be detected appearing) in the LHC every second or so. As they evaporate they will leave a trail of radiation that will be registered by the accelerator's monitoring devices.
Such holes pose no threat, even in theory. On the other hand, they should help improve our understanding of the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravitation, because evaporation of black holes is a quantum mechanical process.
It is estimated that it will take about 20 million CDs to record the data produced by the collider and 70,000 mainframe computers to process it. But what is important is not the volume of data but the findings physicists can draw from it.
The super-accelerator, by throwing light on the evolution of black holes, will also recreate the conditions that obtained in the universe within one-billionth of a second of the Big Bang. That, scientists hope, will help to answer many questions about how our world began, questions usually still discussed on a theoretical plane.
Yury Zaitsev is an analyst at the Institute of Space Research.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
There Will Be No Armageddon!
There Will Be No Armageddon
The Large Hadron Collider is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts.by Yury ZaitsevMoscow (RIA Novosti) Jun 20, 2008A black hole will appear in mid-July on the border between France and Switzerland, swallowing up first Europe and then the entire planet. Such are the apocalyptic forecasts being made ahead of the scheduled launching, in three weeks, of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The ambitious research project, aimed at looking into superconductivity, high energies and God or devil knows what else, is an international effort involving several countries, including Russia. The report that the LHC will also produce a black hole is the most talked about item.
Remarkably, the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe are not those driven by thermonuclear reactions or annihilation processes. Much more powerful are high-density objects called black holes and neutron stars.
The force of gravity around these bodies is tremendous, and accelerates any matter caught by its pull to immense speeds. Matter impacting on the surface of a neutron star does so at half the speed of light. The efficiency at which energy is released from such impacts is more than ten times that of nuclear or thermonuclear reactions.
The general theory of relativity says black holes appear when matter is compressed into a more compact shape than that of a neutron star.
As a result, a black hole has a gravitational field so strong that neither a material body nor any kind of radiation (including light) is able to escape its embrace. The black holes are, therefore, impossible to see. They can only be identified indirectly, by observing the matter they absorb from a neighboring visible star, for example.
The gas flowing from such a star does not fall into the black hole at once. First, it forms the so-called "accretion disk", where the matter rotates for a long time. As it accelerates, it picks up a speed approaching that of light and starts emitting super-high energy X-radiation, which can be measured by instruments placed in space.
Will it be possible to reproduce these phenomena, as yet only theoretically predicted, in the ground-based accelerator in the Alps?
The hadron collider straddling the French-Swiss border is a ring accelerator designed to collide charged particles into each other at massive speeds. When it is turned on more than a billion collisions per second will occur inside it. The huge circumference of the collider ring (26.65 km) will allow the LHC to whisk particles to speeds close to that of light and produce super-high energy collisions.
The LHC is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV).
Electron-proton bunches will collide with energies of up to 1.5 TeV, and bunches of heavy ions, such as lead, with a total energy of over 1,250 TeV. This is nothing short of a new phenomenon in physics, in particular the likely confirmation of a theory that teraelectronic energies and corresponding gravitation give rise to black holes.
Some theorists, however, and the public at large have started voicing fears that when such processes are modeled there will be a danger of collider experiments getting out of hand and giving rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet. The most widely expressed fear is that microscopic black holes may appear and capture the surrounding matter.
Some people take this threat extremely seriously. In March of this year a claim was even filed with the Hawaii district court charging CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), which is building the accelerator, with an attempt at Armageddon, and demanding a ban on the accelerator's launching.
Meanwhile, several years ago, it was discovered that black holes "evaporate" with time - a crucial discovery for understanding their physics. Larger ones do so only slowly, over billions of years, while smaller ones, practically instantaneously, within 10-17 of a second. Naturally, they simply do not have the time to absorb any sizeable amount of matter.
Some researchers also believe that black holes arise when space rays bombard, at much higher energies, the Earth's atmosphere, the Moon and the surfaces of other planets. We just cannot see them because the process is too short-lived.
Black holes are expected to appear (or be detected appearing) in the LHC every second or so. As they evaporate they will leave a trail of radiation that will be registered by the accelerator's monitoring devices.
Such holes pose no threat, even in theory. On the other hand, they should help improve our understanding of the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravitation, because evaporation of black holes is a quantum mechanical process.
It is estimated that it will take about 20 million CDs to record the data produced by the collider and 70,000 mainframe computers to process it. But what is important is not the volume of data but the findings physicists can draw from it.
The super-accelerator, by throwing light on the evolution of black holes, will also recreate the conditions that obtained in the universe within one-billionth of a second of the Big Bang. That, scientists hope, will help to answer many questions about how our world began, questions usually still discussed on a theoretical plane.
Yury Zaitsev is an analyst at the Institute of Space Research.
The Large Hadron Collider is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts.by Yury ZaitsevMoscow (RIA Novosti) Jun 20, 2008A black hole will appear in mid-July on the border between France and Switzerland, swallowing up first Europe and then the entire planet. Such are the apocalyptic forecasts being made ahead of the scheduled launching, in three weeks, of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
The ambitious research project, aimed at looking into superconductivity, high energies and God or devil knows what else, is an international effort involving several countries, including Russia. The report that the LHC will also produce a black hole is the most talked about item.
Remarkably, the most powerful sources of radiation in the universe are not those driven by thermonuclear reactions or annihilation processes. Much more powerful are high-density objects called black holes and neutron stars.
The force of gravity around these bodies is tremendous, and accelerates any matter caught by its pull to immense speeds. Matter impacting on the surface of a neutron star does so at half the speed of light. The efficiency at which energy is released from such impacts is more than ten times that of nuclear or thermonuclear reactions.
The general theory of relativity says black holes appear when matter is compressed into a more compact shape than that of a neutron star.
As a result, a black hole has a gravitational field so strong that neither a material body nor any kind of radiation (including light) is able to escape its embrace. The black holes are, therefore, impossible to see. They can only be identified indirectly, by observing the matter they absorb from a neighboring visible star, for example.
The gas flowing from such a star does not fall into the black hole at once. First, it forms the so-called "accretion disk", where the matter rotates for a long time. As it accelerates, it picks up a speed approaching that of light and starts emitting super-high energy X-radiation, which can be measured by instruments placed in space.
Will it be possible to reproduce these phenomena, as yet only theoretically predicted, in the ground-based accelerator in the Alps?
The hadron collider straddling the French-Swiss border is a ring accelerator designed to collide charged particles into each other at massive speeds. When it is turned on more than a billion collisions per second will occur inside it. The huge circumference of the collider ring (26.65 km) will allow the LHC to whisk particles to speeds close to that of light and produce super-high energy collisions.
The LHC is expected to generate collision energies of proton bunches (rather than traveling in a continuous beam, particles in accelerators are generally "bunched" together) as high as 7 teraelectronvolts (TeV).
Electron-proton bunches will collide with energies of up to 1.5 TeV, and bunches of heavy ions, such as lead, with a total energy of over 1,250 TeV. This is nothing short of a new phenomenon in physics, in particular the likely confirmation of a theory that teraelectronic energies and corresponding gravitation give rise to black holes.
Some theorists, however, and the public at large have started voicing fears that when such processes are modeled there will be a danger of collider experiments getting out of hand and giving rise to a chain reaction that could destroy our planet. The most widely expressed fear is that microscopic black holes may appear and capture the surrounding matter.
Some people take this threat extremely seriously. In March of this year a claim was even filed with the Hawaii district court charging CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), which is building the accelerator, with an attempt at Armageddon, and demanding a ban on the accelerator's launching.
Meanwhile, several years ago, it was discovered that black holes "evaporate" with time - a crucial discovery for understanding their physics. Larger ones do so only slowly, over billions of years, while smaller ones, practically instantaneously, within 10-17 of a second. Naturally, they simply do not have the time to absorb any sizeable amount of matter.
Some researchers also believe that black holes arise when space rays bombard, at much higher energies, the Earth's atmosphere, the Moon and the surfaces of other planets. We just cannot see them because the process is too short-lived.
Black holes are expected to appear (or be detected appearing) in the LHC every second or so. As they evaporate they will leave a trail of radiation that will be registered by the accelerator's monitoring devices.
Such holes pose no threat, even in theory. On the other hand, they should help improve our understanding of the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravitation, because evaporation of black holes is a quantum mechanical process.
It is estimated that it will take about 20 million CDs to record the data produced by the collider and 70,000 mainframe computers to process it. But what is important is not the volume of data but the findings physicists can draw from it.
The super-accelerator, by throwing light on the evolution of black holes, will also recreate the conditions that obtained in the universe within one-billionth of a second of the Big Bang. That, scientists hope, will help to answer many questions about how our world began, questions usually still discussed on a theoretical plane.
Yury Zaitsev is an analyst at the Institute of Space Research.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Saturday, January 07, 2006
The Insat 4A
The INSAT 4A
As some of you have been Asking me Some details Regarding INSAT4A and its operation i take this opportunity to describe it ..through the press releases and some insights
These Release was after launch.
Indian space scientists on Thursday received signals of INSAT-4A, which was launched by Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou in French Guyana and said the health of the satellite is 'good'."Satellite signals have been acquired by our station (Master Control Facility) at Hassan (in Karnataka). Signals are good. Health of the satellite is good," Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair said soon after the launch.
"INSAT-4A is the most advanced, heaviest and most powerful satellite (of India)," Nair said, describing its launch as a "very important milestone in the history of ISRO".
It carries 12 ku band and 12 c band transponders, which would add to the capacity of 150 transponders that the INSAT series possesses today, he said.
"So, this is going to revolutionise the TV broadcasting directly to the home and improve the entertainment scenario in India," he Said. According to ISRO officials in Bangalore, 12 ku band transponders provide around 140 to 150 DTH channels. The satellite is expected to be operational by next month end, they said.
INSAT-4A blasts off from Kourou in French Guyana
The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India.Onboard new generation spacecraft Ariane-5G rocket, the INSAT-4A was placed in geosynchronous transfer orbit in 3-axis stabilized mode shortly after launch, drawing cheers for the fact that it was the first launch of a 3,080 kg satellite by India.
It is the also the first Indian satellite to meet the requirement of the DTH television services.
"Insat-4A is the most advanced, heaviest and powerful satellite and it's a very important milestone in the history of India's space program," said Madhavan Iyer, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. "This is going to revolutionize TV broadcasting directly to the homes and improve the entertainment scenario in India."
After completing orbit-raising operations and a few tests, INSAT-4A will become fully operational in early 2006. It will be positioned in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator.
For the DTH wannabes then, this is indeed good news because even as the country's TV viewership explodes, peculiar broadcasting laws and lack of transponder availability has been obstructing proliferation of DTH services in the country for years.
DTH services were first proposed in India in 1996, but due to concerns of national security and a cultural invasion -- from mainly the Western countries -- it did not pass approval of the Indian government. In 1997 the government even imposed a ban when the Rupert Murdoch-owned Indian Sky Broadcasting was about to launch its DTH services in India.
Finally in 2000 DTH was allowed. But the new policy mandated that all operators can only broadcast using Indian satellites. Moreover, companies offering DTH service were also told to appoint only a local resident as chief and foreign equity was capped at 49 percent. There was, however, no limit stipulated on the number of companies applying for the DTH license.
Clearly the first company to jump into the fray was the state-owned TV broadcasting giant Doordarshan (DD) (using C-band transponder). And even as DD penetrated 4.6 million homes in no time, triggering DTH interests of private players, not many could start operations owing to lack of availability of KU transponder capacity in Indian satellites.
DTH services can also be beamed through S band and C band transponders for which capacity is available in the existing Indian satellites, but according to industry sources DTH through KU transponders is preferred in India since a KU band dish -- set up at homes to receive the signals from satellite -- is much smaller and cheaper.
Currently besides DD, the only other DTH operator is a broadcaster known as DishTV that is owned by a local TV channel. Both use the NSS6 Satellite (C band) to air their DTH services.
And waiting in the queue are Tata Sky, a joint venture between the local Tata group and Rupert Murdoch's Star group; and, reportedly two very large local players, the Sun Network and Anil Ambani of the Reliance Group.
Clearly the first to launch DTH would be Tata Sky. It already bagged its clearances from the Telecommunications Ministry last week and from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry much earlier. Moreover, Star group has booked all the KU band transponders of INSAT 4A, say ISRO sources.
But prospective DTH players should not lose heart, because ISRO has already contracted Arianespace for launch of Insat-4B, which will also carry 12 KU-band and 12 C-band transponders, to be followed by Insat-4C, an exclusive KU-band spacecraft with 12 KU-band transponders.
Besides, ISRO says that it also plans to launch Insat-4D and Insat-4E from home soil, as Insat-4F and Insat-4G projects, which complete the Insat-4 series, is awaiting government nod.
After everything is said and done., its all but a sat-tv repeater...
and so i'll post further details after i edit em...
As some of you have been Asking me Some details Regarding INSAT4A and its operation i take this opportunity to describe it ..through the press releases and some insights
These Release was after launch.
Indian space scientists on Thursday received signals of INSAT-4A, which was launched by Ariane-5 rocket from Kourou in French Guyana and said the health of the satellite is 'good'."Satellite signals have been acquired by our station (Master Control Facility) at Hassan (in Karnataka). Signals are good. Health of the satellite is good," Indian Space Research Organisation Chairman G Madhavan Nair said soon after the launch.
"INSAT-4A is the most advanced, heaviest and most powerful satellite (of India)," Nair said, describing its launch as a "very important milestone in the history of ISRO".
It carries 12 ku band and 12 c band transponders, which would add to the capacity of 150 transponders that the INSAT series possesses today, he said.
"So, this is going to revolutionise the TV broadcasting directly to the home and improve the entertainment scenario in India," he Said. According to ISRO officials in Bangalore, 12 ku band transponders provide around 140 to 150 DTH channels. The satellite is expected to be operational by next month end, they said.
INSAT-4A blasts off from Kourou in French Guyana
The successful launch Thursday of India's heaviest satellite from spaceport of Kourou in French Guyana may have boosted the country's space research efforts to yet another level, but it has also lifted the spirits of at least three Direct-To-Home televisions broadcasters, one of which has been waiting for years to launch its services in India.Onboard new generation spacecraft Ariane-5G rocket, the INSAT-4A was placed in geosynchronous transfer orbit in 3-axis stabilized mode shortly after launch, drawing cheers for the fact that it was the first launch of a 3,080 kg satellite by India.
It is the also the first Indian satellite to meet the requirement of the DTH television services.
"Insat-4A is the most advanced, heaviest and powerful satellite and it's a very important milestone in the history of India's space program," said Madhavan Iyer, the chairman of the Indian Space Research Organization. "This is going to revolutionize TV broadcasting directly to the homes and improve the entertainment scenario in India."
After completing orbit-raising operations and a few tests, INSAT-4A will become fully operational in early 2006. It will be positioned in geostationary orbit 36,000 km above the equator.
For the DTH wannabes then, this is indeed good news because even as the country's TV viewership explodes, peculiar broadcasting laws and lack of transponder availability has been obstructing proliferation of DTH services in the country for years.
DTH services were first proposed in India in 1996, but due to concerns of national security and a cultural invasion -- from mainly the Western countries -- it did not pass approval of the Indian government. In 1997 the government even imposed a ban when the Rupert Murdoch-owned Indian Sky Broadcasting was about to launch its DTH services in India.
Finally in 2000 DTH was allowed. But the new policy mandated that all operators can only broadcast using Indian satellites. Moreover, companies offering DTH service were also told to appoint only a local resident as chief and foreign equity was capped at 49 percent. There was, however, no limit stipulated on the number of companies applying for the DTH license.
Clearly the first company to jump into the fray was the state-owned TV broadcasting giant Doordarshan (DD) (using C-band transponder). And even as DD penetrated 4.6 million homes in no time, triggering DTH interests of private players, not many could start operations owing to lack of availability of KU transponder capacity in Indian satellites.
DTH services can also be beamed through S band and C band transponders for which capacity is available in the existing Indian satellites, but according to industry sources DTH through KU transponders is preferred in India since a KU band dish -- set up at homes to receive the signals from satellite -- is much smaller and cheaper.
Currently besides DD, the only other DTH operator is a broadcaster known as DishTV that is owned by a local TV channel. Both use the NSS6 Satellite (C band) to air their DTH services.
And waiting in the queue are Tata Sky, a joint venture between the local Tata group and Rupert Murdoch's Star group; and, reportedly two very large local players, the Sun Network and Anil Ambani of the Reliance Group.
Clearly the first to launch DTH would be Tata Sky. It already bagged its clearances from the Telecommunications Ministry last week and from the Information and Broadcasting Ministry much earlier. Moreover, Star group has booked all the KU band transponders of INSAT 4A, say ISRO sources.
But prospective DTH players should not lose heart, because ISRO has already contracted Arianespace for launch of Insat-4B, which will also carry 12 KU-band and 12 C-band transponders, to be followed by Insat-4C, an exclusive KU-band spacecraft with 12 KU-band transponders.
Besides, ISRO says that it also plans to launch Insat-4D and Insat-4E from home soil, as Insat-4F and Insat-4G projects, which complete the Insat-4 series, is awaiting government nod.
After everything is said and done., its all but a sat-tv repeater...
and so i'll post further details after i edit em...
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