Spring is sprung
time to increase your viewing pleasure!
Amateur astronomers are able to use their telescopes year-round and, in
fact, some of the best viewing in our locale is in winter. The air is
less polluted and the shimmering waves we see as a result of the heat
escaping the earth in the summertime evenings aren’t there in the
January/March period. Additionally, the clouds that almost depressed us
in November have decreased significantly and many evenings are clear.
However, it is so darn cold! As a result, we tend to increase our
viewing of the skies when the warm weather arrives. It is now that time
of year and I hope all of you who have been dormant vis-à-vis telescope
use during the past while are now going to increase your activity for
the next several months. Our star party at Waterloo Park on Saturday,
April 27th will be the beginning of KW-RASC’s community activities for
2013. Please visit our website often to be informed about what is
happening where and when.
On another note, we have good news! Einstein’s theory of gravity
(general relativity) has been confirmed again by a newly-discovered
relativist binary system. This must be the umpteenth time that
Einstein’s theory has been confirmed but there have always been
doubters and it seems that we have to reconfirm the theory every so
often. In a nutshell, this theory, describes how matter warps
space-time and thus causes gravity and, in so doing, predicts that
objects in orbit will produce ripples called gravitational waves.
Gravitational waves have still not been detected but the energy carried
away by them will cause the orbit of a binary system to shrink by a
specific amount each year. Scientists have now, in fact, detected such
a change in a binary orbit. They have detected a decline in the orbital
period for the double pulsar system PSR B1913+16 (commonly referred to
as the ‘Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar’). Sooooo, Einstein’s theory lives
on undeterred!
Staying with cosmological matters, it is intriguing that we now have
results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aboard the International
Space Station (ISS) that suggests there is evidence of annihilation
from dark matter particles. Interestingly, the revised estimate of the
makeup of the universe is now 4.9% ordinary matter, 26.8% dark matter
and 68.3% dark energy.
We have known about dark matter for the better part of a century but we
have only been able to understand its existence by its gravitational
influence on ordinary matter. Now, however, we are attempting to
directly detect dark matter particles by:
1) creating dark matter particles in particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider
2) catching dark matter particles that whizz through the earth in deep underground detectors
3) looking in space to find evidence of rare dark matter collision events
I find the last of these methods to be especially interesting. When two
dark matter particles collide, they will annihilate each other and
transform their energy into high-energy photons and high-energy
particles. Fascinatingly, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer that was
installed on the exterior of the ISS can detect these particles!
Therefore, we may be on the cusp of finally determining definitively
the existence of dark matter.
These really are exciting times for astronomers and astronomy. I hope
you rev up that telescope and/or binoculars and go out there and
sightsee the celestial wonders.
Gerry Bissett,
President