KREUZADER (Posts tagged space)

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Choosing a Maximum Drift Rate in a SETI Search: Astrophysical Considerations “ A radio transmitter which is accelerating with a non-zero radial component with respect to a receiver will produce a signal that appears to change its frequency over time....

Choosing a Maximum Drift Rate in a SETI Search: Astrophysical Considerations

       A radio transmitter which is accelerating with a non-zero radial component with respect to a receiver will produce a signal that appears to change its frequency over time. This effect, commonly produced in astrophysical situations where orbital and rotational motions are ubiquitous, is called a drift rate. In radio SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) research, it is unknown a priori which frequency a signal is being sent at, or even if there will be any drift rate at all besides motions within the solar system. Therefore a range of potential drift rates need to be individually searched, and a maximum drift rate needs to be chosen. The middle of this range is zero, indicating no acceleration, but the absolute value for the limits remains unconstrained. A balance must be struck between computational time and the possibility of excluding a signal from an ETI. In this work, we examine physical considerations that constrain a maximum drift rate and highlight the importance of this problem in any narrowband SETI search. We determine that a normalized drift rate of 200 nHz (eg. 200 Hz/s at 1 GHz) is a generous, physically motivated guideline for the maximum drift rate that should be applied to future narrowband SETI projects if computational capabilities permit.    
Source: arxiv.org
seti astronomy radio radio astronomy space
Still Working After All These Years: The Voyager Plasma Wave Subsystem NASA is always keen to highlight the space agency’s many successes, and rightly so — those who pay for these expensive projects have a right to know what they’re getting for their...

Still Working After All These Years: The Voyager Plasma Wave Subsystem

NASA is always keen to highlight the space agency’s many successes, and rightly so — those who pay for these expensive projects have a right to know what they’re getting for their money. And so the news was recently sprinkled with stories of the discovery of electron bursts beyond the edge of our solar system, caused by shock waves from coronal mass ejection (CME) from our Sun reflecting and accelerating electrons in interstellar plasmas. It’s a novel mechanism and an exciting discovery that changes a lot of assumptions about what happens out in the lonely space outside of the Sun’s influence.

The recent discovery is impressive in its own right, but it’s even more stunning when you dig into the details of how it was made: by the 43-year-old Voyager spacecraft, each now about 17 light-hours away from Earth, and each carrying an instrument so simple and efficient that they’re still working all after this time — and which very nearly were left out of the mission’s science payload.

Source: hackaday.com
voyager nasa space physics
A Beamed Sail to the Sun’s Gravity Focus Our recent discussions about Claudio Maccone’s FOCAL mission to the Sun’s gravitational focus, and the ongoing work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts office, have had...

A Beamed Sail to the Sun’s Gravity Focus

Our recent discussions about Claudio Maccone’s FOCAL mission to the Sun’s gravitational focus, and the ongoing work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts office, have had Alex Tolley thinking about alternative scenarios. Yes, a spacecraft moving along the focal line extending from the solar gravitational lens (SGL) would be capable of extraordinary imaging, and could serve as a communications relay for interstellar probes, but that tricky Sundiver maneuver suggested by Slava Turyshev and team in their ‘string of pearls’ concept puts huge demands on sail materials. Moreover, we’d ideally like to be able to slow the craft as it moves along the focus, to allow maximum time for observations. To achieve both fast transit and maneuverability at the gravitational focus, Alex advocates beamed propulsion, a method whose advantages and consequences are discussed below. Synergies with the ongoing Breakthrough Starshot effort are apparent.

Source: centauri-dreams.org
seti astronomy space
Cornell postdoc detects possible exoplanet radio emission By monitoring the cosmos with a radio telescope array, an international team of scientists has detected radio bursts emanating from the constellation Boötes – that could be the first radio...

Cornell postdoc detects possible exoplanet radio emission

By monitoring the cosmos with a radio telescope array, an international team of scientists has detected radio bursts emanating from the constellation Boötes –  that could be the first radio emission collected from a planet beyond our solar system.

The team, led by Cornell postdoctoral researcher Jake D. Turner, Philippe Zarka of the Observatoire de Paris - Paris Sciences et Lettres University and Jean-Mathias Griessmeier of the Université d’Orléans will publish their findings in the forthcoming research section of Astronomy & Astrophysics, on Dec. 16.

“We present one of the first hints of detecting an exoplanet in the radio realm,” Turner said. “The signal is from the Tau Boötes system, which contains a binary star and an exoplanet. We make the case for an emission by the planet itself. From the strength and polarization of the radio signal and the planet’s magnetic field, it is compatible with theoretical predictions.”

Source: news.cornell.edu
astronomy space radio astronomy
China collects Moon samples, may not share with NASA due to Wolf Amendment China’s increasingly ambitious space program completed a 23-day mission on Wednesday that culminated in the return of about 2kg of rocks from the Moon. During the final phase...

China collects Moon samples, may not share with NASA due to Wolf Amendment

China’s increasingly ambitious space program completed a 23-day mission on Wednesday that culminated in the return of about 2kg of rocks from the Moon. During the final phase of the mission, a singed spacecraft carrying the lunar cargo landed in Mongolia and was recovered by Chinese teams.

This Chang'e 5 mission represents a significant success for China and its space program, becoming only the third nation—after the United States with its crewed Apollo program and the Soviet Union with a robotic program in the 1970s—to return samples from the Moon.

Source: Ars Technica
china cnsa chang'e-5 moon space
A signal from Proxima? Likely intelligent, unlikely from aliens Astronomers looking for signs of alien life on other planets in the galaxy have found an unusual signal from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, that is… intriguing. It was...

A signal from Proxima? Likely intelligent, unlikely from aliens

Astronomers looking for signs of alien life on other planets in the galaxy have found an unusual signal from Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun, that is… intriguing. It was just a single detection that came and went, but it does have some characteristics you’d expect from an intelligent source. The problem is, as it always is, that source may be us.I want to be very clear here right off the bat, because The Internet: This is by no means proof that aliens are out there, or even (yet) good evidence of it. I’ll explain the science of what was seen, but at the moment, the default assumption is that this is a human-made signal until shown otherwise.

Source: syfy.com
proxima centauri seti radio radio astronomy space
A Flare-type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather Studies of solar radio bursts play an important role in understanding the dynamics and acceleration processes behind solar space weather events, and the influence of...

A Flare-type IV Burst Event from Proxima Centauri and Implications for Space Weather

Studies of solar radio bursts play an important role in understanding the dynamics and acceleration processes behind solar space weather events, and the influence of solar magnetic activity on solar system planets. Similar low-frequency bursts detected from active M-dwarfs are expected to probe their space weather environments and therefore the habitability of their planetary companions. Active M-dwarfs produce frequent, powerful flares which, along with radio emission, reveal conditions within their atmospheres. However, to date, only one candidate solar-like coherent radio burst has been identified from these stars, preventing robust observational constraints on their space weather environment. During simultaneous optical and radio monitoring of the nearby dM5.5e star Proxima Centauri, we detected a bright, long-duration optical flare, accompanied by a series of intense, coherent radio bursts. These detections include the first example of an interferometrically detected coherent stellar radio burst temporally coincident with a flare, strongly indicating a causal relationship between these transient events. The polarization and temporal structure of the trailing long-duration burst enable us to identify it as a type IV burst. This represents the most compelling detection of a solar-like radio burst from another star to date. Solar type IV bursts are strongly associated with space weather events such as coronal mass ejections and solar energetic particle events, suggesting that stellar type IV bursts may be used as a tracer of stellar coronal mass ejections. We discuss the implications of this event for the occurrence of coronal mass ejections from Proxima Cen and other active M-dwarfs.

Source: iopscience.iop.org
astronomy radio astronomy space
BLC1: A candidate signal around Proxima So, the media is abuzz about a BLC1, a candidate signal around Proxima. I’ve been all over Twitter about this, so I’m collecting my thoughts here. But first, a disclaimer: as a member of the Breakthrough Listen...

BLC1: A candidate signal around Proxima

So, the media is abuzz about a BLC1, a candidate signal around Proxima. I’ve been all over Twitter about this, so I’m collecting my thoughts here.

But first, a disclaimer: as a member of the Breakthrough Listen Advisory Board and a Breakthrough Listen member’s current PhD adviser, I have a little bit more information than the public than this, but I am not a BL team member and have not seen the data. My comments here are purely general and, while they can provide context for what’s going on, they do not actually add anything to what’s known about the actual candidate signal beyond what is already in the press.

Source: sites.psu.edu
radio radio astronomy proxima centauri seti space blc1
Unexpected Circular Radio Objects at High Galactic Latitude “ We have found a class of circular radio objects in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot Survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. The objects appear...

Unexpected Circular Radio Objects at High Galactic Latitude

We have found a class of circular radio objects in the Evolutionary Map of the Universe Pilot Survey, using the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope. The objects appear in radio images as circular edge-brightened discs, about one arcmin diameter, that are unlike other objects previously reported in the literature. We explore several possible mechanisms that might cause these objects, but none seems to be a compelling explanation.    
Source: arxiv.org
astronomy space radio astronomy