physics-istheshit

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Just finished watching the Martian and where’s the 5hr version with all the science and engineering for us nerds damn it

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For Anybody Who Needs This

GET YO PAPERS DONE/STUDY FOR FINALS AND PUT YO DAMN PHONE DOWN

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TODAY IN HISTORY: On July 25, 1984, Soviet cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to walk in space, conducting an EVA outside the Salyut 7 space station for 3 hours and 35 minutes.

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The Sombrero Galaxy

js

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Sky above me. Earth below me. Fire within me.

(via the-wolf-and-moon)

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An Astronaut’s View From the ‘Corner Office’ via NASA http://ift.tt/2rQJJmL

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An Astronaut’s View From the ‘Corner Office’ via NASA http://ift.tt/2rQJJmL

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The brain is a three pound mass you can hold in your hand that can conceive of a universe a hundred billion light-years across.

Marian Diamond. Professor (via purplebuddhaproject)

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Dot by dot, star by star…

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A brand new linear accelerator for CERN

CERN - European Organization for Nuclear Research logo. 9 May 2017 At a ceremony today, CERN inaugurated its linear accelerator, Linac 4, the newest accelerator acquisition since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Linac 4 is due to feed the CERN accelerator complex with particle beams of higher energy, which will allow the LHC to reach higher luminosity by 2021. After an extensive testing period, Linac 4 will be connected to CERN’s accelerator complex during the upcoming long technical shut down in 2019-20. Linac 4 will replace Linac 2, which has been in service since 1978. It will become the first step in CERN’s accelerator chain, delivering proton beams to a wide range of experiments. “We are delighted to celebrate this remarkable accomplishment. Linac 4 is a modern injector and the first key element of our ambitious upgrade programme, leading up to the High-Luminosity LHC. This high-luminosity phase will considerably increase the potential of the LHC experiments for discovering new physics and measuring the properties of the Higgs particle in more detail,” said CERN Director General, Fabiola Gianotti. “This is an achievement not only for CERN, but also for the partners from many countries who contributed to designing and building this new machine,” said CERN Director for Accelerators and Technology, Frédérick Bordry. “Today, we also celebrate and thank the wide international collaboration that led this project, demonstrating once again what can be accomplished by bringing together the efforts of many nations.”

Image above: At a ceremony today, CERN inaugurated its linear accelerator, Linac 4, the newest accelerator acquisition since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (Image: Maximilien Brice/ CERN). The linear accelerator is the first essential element of an accelerator chain. In the linear accelerator, the particles are produced and receive the initial acceleration; the density and intensity of the particle beams are also shaped in the linac. Linac 4 is an almost 90-metre-long machine sitting 12 metres below the ground. It took nearly 10 years to build. Linac 4 will send negative hydrogen ions, consisting of a hydrogen atom with two electrons, to CERN’s Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB), which further accelerates the negative ions and removes the electrons. Linac 4 will bring the beam up to 160 MeV energy, more than three times the energy of its predecessor. The increase in energy, together with the use of hydrogen ions, will enable double the beam intensity to be delivered to the LHC, thus contributing to an increase in the luminosity of the LHC. Luminosity is a parameter indicating the number of particles colliding within a defined amount of time. The peak luminosity of the LHC is planned to be increased by a factor of five by 2025. This will make it possible for the experiments to accumulate about 10 times more data over the period 2025 to 2035 than before. The High-Luminosity LHC will therefore provide more accurate measurements of fundamental particles than today, as well as the possibility of observing rare processes that occur beyond the machine’s present sensitivity level. Note: CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research. Its business is fundamental physics, finding out what the Universe is made of and how it works. At CERN, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments are used to study the basic constituents of matter — the fundamental particles. By studying what happens when these particles collide, physicists learn about the laws of Nature. The instruments used at CERN are particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before they are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. Founded in 1954, the CERN Laboratory sits astride the Franco–Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe’s first joint ventures and now has 22 Member States. Related links: Large Hadron Collider (LHC): http://home.cern/topics/large-hadron-collider Linac 2: http://home.cern/about/accelerators/linear-accelerator-2 Linac 4: http://home.cern/about/accelerators/linear-accelerator-4 CERN’s Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB): http://home.cern/about/accelerators/proton-synchrotron-booster For more information about European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Visit: http://home.cern/ Image (mentioned), Text, Credits: CERN/Harriet Kim Jarlett. Best regards from the very close neighbor of the CERN, Orbiter.ch Full article

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Will I ever be done studying for physics??? No probably not

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Basic Tips for Success in Physics Courses

What’s the best way to study physics? Practice, practice, practice. Much like pure math courses, if you get behind it can be difficult to get back up to speed. Also, make sure you’re practicing every day, even if you just decide to do one single problem. And be sure to go over your notes, as well. This will allow you to catch any errors in your thinking/process and address them before the last minute (when it’s likely too late to make a difference).

If you have online homework for physics (which seems to be the trend), I would recommend 1) doing it as early as you can 2) doing it with a group. The best part about working in a group is that one person might have a novel idea related to a problem you would have gotten wrong. Collaborating on this stuff is also practice for “the real world”, as my physics professor says.

You might also consider making an equation sheet and updating it regularly. Depending on the class you take, you may or may not have equation sheets available for your exams. It’s faster to have them in your head than looking it up, anyway. The best way to memorize equations? Use them frequently (i.e., practice).

One last little tip… Don’t get stuck in the routine of “plug and chug”. It might seem fine for the first few weeks, but eventually questions get more difficult and all of the sudden you have no idea what to do. What you should do instead, in addition to practice, is to rearrange the equations (no numbers) in order to understand relationships. You will most certainly have situations where you have to combine two equations. If you don’t understand the relationship you may not be able to figure out how to do that.

Happy studying!

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Diving into New Magnetic Territory with the MMS Mission

Our Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, or MMS, is on a journey to study a new region of space.  

On May 4, 2017, after three months of precisely coordinated maneuvers, MMS reached its new orbit to begin studying the magnetic environment on the ever-rotating nighttime side of Earth.

The space around Earth is not as empty as it looks. It’s packed with high energy electrons and ions that zoom along magnetic field lines and surf along waves created by electric and magnetic fields.  

MMS studies how these particles move in order to understand a process known as magnetic reconnection, which occurs when magnetic fields explosively collide and re-align.

After launch, MMS started exploring the magnetic environment on the side of Earth closest to the sun. Now, MMS has been boosted into a new orbit that tops out twice as high as before, at over 98,000 miles above Earth’s surface.

The new orbit will allow the spacecraft to study magnetic reconnection on the night side of Earth, where the process is thought to cause the northern and southern lights and energize particles that fill the radiation belts, a doughnut-shaped region of trapped particles surrounding Earth.  

MMS uses four separate but identical spacecraft, which fly in a tight pyramid formation known as a tetrahedron. This allows MMS to map the magnetic environment in three dimensions.

MMS made many discoveries during its first two years in space, and its new orbit will open the door to even more. The information scientists get from MMS will help us better understand our space environment, which helps in planning future missions to explore even further beyond our planet. Learn more about MMS at nasa.gov/mms.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

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What is the scariest part of your job?

I love my job, and I think the scariest thing for me is making a mistake. So I work hard to learn everything I can to avoid making mistakes and be as methodical as I can to avoid that.

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Did the training ever get so hard that you would regret getting into this?

No because the end goal is space!