Sky Nerds Wanted

A place for your poems, thoughts, rants, art, short stories, quote

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Space Weather News http://spaceweather.com

GEOMAGNETIC STORM IN PROGRESS:

A G1-class geomagnetic storm is underway oas Earth moves into a stream of solar wind.

The gaseous material is flowing faster than 600 km/s from a hole in the sun’s atmosphere.

G1-class storms are relatively minor and have little effect on power grids and satellites.

However, they can confuse migratory animals that navigate using magnetism at high latitudes and, moreover, may spark bright auroras around the Arctic Circle.

Tonight’s nearly new Moon will provide a dark backdrop for Northern Lights.

[world-of-astrophysics]

Physics Joke Time!

Schrödinger was crossing the Mexican/US border illegally when he got caught by an immigration agent. The agent asked a few preliminary questions, and then, suspecting foul play, requested to inspect the trunk of the car. Schrödinger popped it open, and heard the agent say, “Did you know there is a dead cat in here?”, to which Schrödinger replied, “Well, I do now.”

[world-of-astrophysics]

Daily Science Dump: General Relativity Edition

Aaaaaannnnnd we’re back!! I am so sorry I’ve been so inactive on making new posts for Daily Science Dump. But finals are now over, I (barely) survived, and we can continue with some really interesting stuff! Let’s get right back into it!

So this post originally started out as a post to explain a phenomena called Einstein Rings, but in order to do that I would have to go over gravitational lensing and to do that I’d have to go over general relativity so I decided to make it 2 separate posts, one about relativity and one about gravitational lensing/Einstein Rings. There’s a lot that goes in it and we’ll have to hit the “Because Physics” button a few times but it will be purely conceptual. So let’s get into this doozy!

Theory of General Relativity

I’m almost certain each and every one of you has heard of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity before. When asked what it is, many people just say it has something to do with gravity… and well… they are not wrong. But there’s so much more to it. One familiar concept brought out by General Relativity is the curvature of Space-Time. Before we go into detail, let’s break down this concept.

Imagine a big stretchy piece of fabric stretched out. Easy enough. What happens when you put a golf ball on the fabric? It kind of bends, right? What happens when you put a bowling ball in it? It bends even more. Similar to the fabric, Einstein came up with the idea that the 3-dimensional space and 1-dimensional time could act as a sheet of fabric, and anything that has mass puts a bend to that sheet. Even you are creating a dimple in space-time! This idea is now widely accepted as the reason why planets orbit stars and moons orbit planets. For a while, we thought orbits happen because the gravity of the star reaches out and basically captures the planet. Although partly true, the more accepted reason is because planets get trapped in the curvature of space-time created by the star. 

The bigger the mass, the bigger the curvature, the bigger the gravitational influence. Our sun creates a relatively medium sized dimple in the fabric of space-time. But imagine the size of the dimple created by something like a galaxy or a black hole!

Because of the gravitational “dimple” created by a cosmic body, light that passes close enough to the dip gets bent. This is the point in General Relativity where gravitational lensing comes in! Next Edition we will talk about how this phenomena works and the cool things it can create.

For a little bit more explanation of General Relativity, here is a short video on how Einstein kind of got to the conclusion of curved space-time. 

That concludes today’s Edition! It was very short but understand lensing we’ll need to grasp the concept of the curvature of space-time. Come back tomorrow to see how this concept is observed. To give you a hint, I’ll add this picture that I took last year!

As Always,

Stay Nerdy!

R.L.

[the-wolf-and-moon]

View Of The United States from ISS

[a--penny--for--ur--thoughts]

“How cold will it be tomorrow?”

....is probably the question the public asks the most to meteorologists. “Do I need to wear my jacket to work? Should I put on the AC?” Society takes for granted everything that happens in the atmosphere that eventually produces the temperature they feel outside.So first things first What is temperature?Formally, Temperature is defined as the average kinetic energy, or the average speed, of the molecules of a substance. There are three basic ways scientists measure this: Celsius, Fahrenheit, and Kelvin.Kelvin is the most logical as 0 Kelvin (Absolute Zero) is the measure of temperature when all molecular motion ceases to exist. However, no one says answers the question with “It’s 293 K outside!” This temperature scale was created by William Thompson. He felt that it was necessary to have a scale marking zero as something that is “infinitely cold”. To make things easier he made the same interval as Celsius. Any calculation that is done in physics uses Kelvin. Though the Celsius Scale and Kelvin Scale are in the same interval, not all calculations work in Celsius. Almost ALL calculations will work in Kelvin though. (Sidebar: The unit Kelvin does not have degrees like more common temperature scales. It is simply 273K, not 273ºK)Celsius is the most used temperature scale used worldwide. This scale to makes 0ºC the freezing point of water and 100ºC the boiling point of water. Since water vapor is arguably the most important substance in our atmosphere, it makes sense that most people use this scale.Lastly, there is Fahrenheit. 32ºF is the freezing point of water and 212ºF is the boiling point of water. A scientist named Daniel Fahrenheit created this scale by creating a brine that is equal parts salt and water. 0ºF is the freezing point of this brine. The upper scale used to create the interval was his best guess of the average human body temperature of 96ºF. Now it’s simply defined by the freezing and boiling point of water. Somehow this just seems more accurate.Below is a scale of how these temperatures relate to each other.

So now that you know the different Scales of Temperature.... we can move on to more things about temperature. Again, you may not see the light in this post, but trust me, It’s one more way we are making our unpredictable world, a little more predictable. 

[theweatherlab]

[earthstory]

Lightning over Utah This spectacular photo, taken on the 14th of September 2013, shows a thunderstorm in action over Southern Utah and Northern Arizona. It the centre of the image, we can see a powerful cloud-to-ground lightning bolt which has illuminated the dark sky. A strike like this one can produce volts of electricity in the range of over 200 million volts. The other lightning strikes visible in this image are the more common type; cloud to cloud which occur within the storm system. -Jean Image courtesy of David Rankin ( http://www.rankinstudio.com/)

[fyphysica]

Tailwinds and supersonic flight   

In 2015, a 777-200 made the Newyork-London route in 5 hours,16 minutes where the usual journey time is ~7 hours.

The flight reached ground speeds of up to 1200 km/h (745 mph), riding a powerful jet stream of up to 322 km/h (200 mph) tailwinds and  breaking the sonic barrier ( 1224 km/h (761 mph)).

Tail and headwinds

The principle is analogous to those high school problems in relative velocity:

“A man rows a boat in a river. The velocity of the boat is … Find the stream velocity”

If you are headed downstream i.e in the same direction as the river stream you will reach your destination faster than if you were rowing upstream.

Similarly a tailwind is one that blows along the same direction of the aircraft increasing the net speed of the aircraft ,and headwind is one that blows in the opposite direction and slows the craft down.

So, does this mean that if you are moving at v kmph and there is a headwind of -v kmph, you would just hover? Hell yeah!

Take a look at this video:

Wind shear

A phenomenon known as ‘wind shear’ occurs when the wind speed changes abruptly, which can cause turbulence and rapid increase/decrease in velocity of flight.

This can be really challenging during landing since if the headwind turns tailwind, there is a possibility of the aircraft overshooting the runway due to the increased velocity.

What causes this ?

The aviation industry takes advantage of trade winds and jet streams in order to cut time off the flight and save fuel.

Tradewinds are caused by the unequal heating of the atmosphere at different latitudes and altitudes and by the effects of the Earth’s rotation (Coriolis effect).

                           Trade wind pattern. Credit: Earth Wind Map

Jet streams on the other hand are this narrow current of fast moving winds in the upper troposphere flowing west to east. And riding one can definitely make your travel time shorter.

                               Jet streams in the northern hemisphere

As a result of jet streams, within North America  the time needed to fly east across the continent can be decreased by about 30 minutes if an airplane can fly with the jet stream, or increased by more than that amount if it must fly west against it.

How do pilots know about this ?

Pilots receive a weather briefing actively during flight. Included in the briefing is the best combination of jetstreams and other wind patterns that the pilot can take advantage of saving time and fuel.

Many airports have runways facing in different directions in order to allow the pilots to use the runway that faces the wind during take off/landing.

Have a great day!

[a--penny--for--ur--thoughts]

So if you’re going to learn about weather, you’re going to need to know maps

Ask weather weenie you know and they’ll agree; Knowing how to read a map is the most vital part of meteorology. Now, as one learns more and more about meteorology and how to forecast, they’ll learn that maps can get quite complicated. Just take a look at this map below. 

This map forecasts 4 different sets of data. It may take a couple minutes for your eyes to adjust to the lines that cross over and seemingly random splotches of color at first glance. But with training, one will eventually distinguish the different isopleths over the United States. To start understanding the mess above, you need to start with the basics. 

First thing first, know your map projection. If you look Wikipedia’s page for “List of Map Projections” you’ll find some crazy distortions of maps. These various distortions are caused by the trouble of transferring a 3d surface on to a 2d a piece of paper. Out of these many distortions, there are two mainly used when looking at weather systems. 

First, Let's have a look at a Mercator Map.

Mercator Maps have no distortion at the equator with increasing distortion as one moves closer to the poles. Each rectangle on this map represents the same area. As a point of reference, Greenland is actually smaller than Australia, though it appears much larger here. Here’s a cool graphic depicting how this map is distorted.

 If you are into the math behind the distortions, check this link out. 

http://www.math.ubc.ca/~israel/m103/mercator/mercator.html

Maps like these are often used for hurricane models, as hurricanes often form in the tropics and rarely passed the mid-latitudes as threatening storms. 

The other map we use in Meteorology is one called Polar Stereographic. 

This map is recognized by a distortion of stretching near the equator and a distortion of shrinking near the poles, making the mid-latitudes the most accurate. One thing to note is that cardinal direction is not preserved on these maps. Rather than East being right, it’s more like East in clockwise following the latitude lines. As projections are zoomed in, it may not be as obvious. Always pay attention to latitude and longitude lines to determine direction. 

For your math nerds look here to how these are drawn. 

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/StereographicProjection.html

You may not see what this has to do with weather yet, but fear not! You have to get through the basics in order to analyze our crazy atmosphere. Reading maps is just one small step in making our unpredictable world, just a tad more predictable.  

[a--penny--for--ur--thoughts]

Hey Nerds

So most people start weather twitters. I wanna start a blog of my meteorology education. Kinda as a diary of all I learned. So other cool sky and science stuff will pop up. But close to daily I want to make a post summarizing some cool weather stuff. It’ll probably help my communication skills as well. Here goes nothing.

[earthstory]

View this post on Instagram

abcnews Astonishing electrical storm seen in timelapse video lighting up the sky above Western Australia.

[freddieardley]

Sun - Fog - Sun - Fog

Photographed by Frederick Ardley

Follow on Instagram @frederickardley

[raychelsnr]

Wouldn’t be crazy to see some snow around/just before Christmas for sure (as you’ve probably heard). Overall moisture with this system (more than a week out still) not yet appearing crazy impressive, but its a long time away from now and this is the S. Plains. So #WaitAndSee

[leahberman]

cloud whisper

instagram

[earthstory]

Satellite frames of the Moon’s shadow across the northern hemisphere

[thebeautyofbecoming]

[diananock]

Aw, yeah, that’s the good shit.

[midnightruin]

I love abandoned ruins so much

[signalrun-deactivated20190312]

the world taken back by nature is my aesthetic

[inanothertime]

In another time, you’re finally in my arms.