Astronomer Vera Rubin was captivated by the stars as a child in D.C.
'Then one by one many angry sounding men got up to tell me why I could not do 'that',' Vera C. Rubin wrote about the way she was treated by the American Astronomical Society at its December 1950 meeting.
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CBS News
13 minutes ago
- CBS News
Perseids meteor shower will peak this week. But will the moon ruin it for viewers?
The Perseids meteor shower — considered one of the best shows in the sky — is set to peak this week. But the peak for fireballs shooting through the night sky coincides this year with a bright moon that is expected to negatively impact visibility for eager viewers. The Perseids peak in 2025 is Aug. 12-13, specifically early Wednesday for those in North America. At that time, the moon will be 84% full, according to the American Meteor Society. "In 2025, the waning gibbous moon will severely compromise this shower at the time of maximum activity," the organization says. "Such conditions will reduce activity by at least 75 percent as only the brighter meteors will be visible." Viewers this year can expect to see between 10-20 Perseids each hour, as opposed to 50 Perseids per hour under darker conditions, it says. "The strength of each Perseid display varies year to year, mainly due to lunar conditions," writes Robert Lunsford with the American Meteor Society. "If a bright moon is above the horizon during the night of maximum activity, then the display will be reduced. Most of the Perseid meteors are faint and bright moonlight will make it difficult to view." The Perseids meteor shower has been ongoing for several weeks. It started in mid-July and will continue until Aug. 23. A planetarium program coordinator at a museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, is advising people to instead go out a week or so past the peak when the moon isn't so bright. The Perseids "are an incredible meteor shower," Thaddeus LaCoursiere, of the Bell Museum, told The Associated Press. NASA says the best time to view the Perseids is early in the morning, before the sun comes up, in the Northern Hemisphere. However, meteors sometimes can be seen as early as 10 p.m. When looking at the Perseids, they appear to come from the constellation Perseus, which is why this meteor shower has its name. But the meteors don't originate from the constellation; they are space debris left by a comet. That debris interacts with Earth's atmosphere, disintegrating and resulting in colorful lines in the sky, according to NASA and the American Meteor Society. "The pieces of space debris that interact with our atmosphere to create the Perseids originate from comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle," which last visited the inner solar system in 1992, NASA says. During peak, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, the Earth will pass closest to the core orbit of comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, Lunsford writes. "To view the Perseids successfully, it is suggested you watch from a safe rural area that is as dark as possible," he says. "The more stars you can see, the more meteors will also be visible."
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Scientists freeze hot glass nanoparticles' rotation at record quantum purity of 92%
The intriguing rules of quantum physics almost always fail when you move from atoms and molecules to much larger objects at high temperatures. This is because the bigger an object gets and higher the temperature is, the harder it becomes to stop it from interacting with surroundings, a phenomenon that usually erases the delicate quantum behavior. However, a new study has managed something that seriously pushes these limits. The research has shown that a tiny glass sphere—still over a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand but huge by quantum standards—can have its rotational motion cooled down to almost the quietest state allowed by quantum physics at about 92% purity, even while the particle itself is burning hot at several hundred degrees. This is the first time scientists have reached such a pure quantum state without having to chill the entire object to near absolute zero, opening doors to experiments once thought impossible outside of deep-freeze labs."The purity reached by our room-temperature experiment exceeds the performance offered by mechanically clamped oscillators in a cryogenic environment, establishing a platform for high-purity quantum optomechanics at room temperature," the study authors note. A clever shortcut targeting object's specific motion Normally, to see quantum behavior in an object larger than a molecule, researchers have to go to extremes: levitating the particle in a vacuum to shield it from outside interference, and cooling its surroundings to near -273.15°C so its motion becomes as orderly as quantum rules allow. Even then, it's tricky. This is because motion in the quantum world is quantized—it can only happen in specific chunks called vibration quanta. There is a lowest-energy mode called the ground state, a first excited state with a little more energy, and so on. Though the particle can exist in a mix of these states. Reaching the ground state for a large particle has been a milestone goal. Until now, it required cooling everything to frigid extremes. The study authors took a clever shortcut. Instead of trying to chill the particle's entire internal energy (which is massive compared to the energy of its motion), they targeted just one specific motion: its rotation. Controlling laser light, mirror systems to drain rotational energy The researchers used a nanoparticle shaped not as a perfect sphere, but as a slightly stretched ellipse. When trapped in an electromagnetic field, such a particle naturally rotates around a fixed alignment, like a compass needle wobbling around north. By precisely controlling laser light and mirror systems, forming a high-finesse optical cavity, the team could influence this wobble. The trick here is that the laser can either feed energy into the rotation or take energy away from it. By carefully adjusting the mirrors so that energy removal was far more likely than energy addition, scientists drained almost all the rotational energy away. While doing so, they also had to account for and control quantum noise from the lasers, random fluctuations that could otherwise ruin the delicate process. This resulted in a rotational motion freezing into a state extremely close to the quantum ground state, with just 0.04 quanta of residual energy and about 92% quantum purity, even though the particle's internal temperature was still hundreds of degrees Celsius. The key to making quantum systems more practical This result breaks a long-standing barrier in quantum research. It shows that one does not have to cool an entire object to ultra-low temperatures to study its quantum properties. Instead, by treating different types of motion, like rotation, separately, one can selectively bring parts of a system into the quantum regime while the rest remains hot and messy. This approach could make it much easier to explore quantum effects in bigger, more complex systems—from biological structures to engineered devices—without requiring massive cryogenic setups. However, the work focused on one specific motion in a carefully chosen nanoparticle. Hence, it is not yet an universal recipe for every large object. Future research will likely explore whether the same principles can control other motions or work with different shapes and materials. The study has been published in the journal Nature Physics. Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meteorite identified after crashing into Georgia home
ATHENS, Ga. – A meteorite that streaked across the sky of the Southeast and ended up crashing into a Georgia home has now been studied by researchers at the University of Georgia. The space debris, now known as the "McDonough Meteorite," crashed through Earth's atmosphere on June 26, creating a large fireball before damaging a home outside of Atlanta. Scott Harris, a planetary geologist and impact expert with UGA's Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, examined fragments that were recovered from the scene and traced their composition to around 4.5 billion years ago – long before the formation of Earth. "It belongs to a group of asteroids in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that we now think we can tie to a breakup of a much larger asteroid about 470 million years ago," Harris told the university's news service. "But in that breakup, some pieces get into Earth-crossing orbits, and if given long enough, their orbit around the sun and Earth's orbit around the sun end up being at the same place, at the same moment in time." See The Objects Humans Left Behind On The Moon The incoming meteor quickly broke apart when it sailed through Earth's atmosphere, with the largest piece that struck the Henry County home estimated to be the size of a cherry tomato. Despite its small size, the meteorite was large enough to leave behind a hole in the roof, damage to HVAC ductwork and a significant dent in the wood floor. No one was injured during the incident, but the impact was said to be as loud as a gunshot. The UGA was granted access to study 23 grams of the 50 grams recovered from the home and is working in coordination with Arizona State University on further research. According to the UGA, the event was the 27th meteorite that has been recovered in the Peach State. "This is something that used to be expected once every few decades and not multiple times within 20 years," Harris stated. "Modern technology in addition to an attentive public is going to help us recover more and more meteorites." Did The National Weather Service Capture A Photo Of Bigfoot During A Pennsylvania Storm Survey? The latest update won't be the final word on the McDonough Meteorite, as Harris and his team plan to publish a paper detailing the object's composition and dynamics. Additional recovered pieces of the meteorite are scheduled to go on display at the Tellus Science Museum near Atlanta. The university did not state if the homeowner has completed repairs to his property, but damage caused by a meteorite usually falls under a standard insurance article source: Meteorite identified after crashing into Georgia home
