The Local Area Augmentation System (LAAS) is an all-weather aircraft landing system based on real-time differential correction of the GPS signal. Local reference receivers located around the airport send data to a central location at the airport. This data is used to formulate a correction message, which is then transmitted to users via a VHF Data Link. A receiver on an aircraft uses this information to correct GPS signals, which then provides a standard ILS-style display to use while flying a precision approach. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) calls this type of system a Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS).
Thursday, 24 March 2016
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System
The Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System or IRNSS is an indigenously developed Navigation Satellite System that is used to provide accurate real-time positioning and timing services over India and region extending to 1500 km around India. The fully deployed IRNSS system consists of 3 satellites in GEO orbit and 4 satellites in GSO orbit, approximately 36,000 km altitude above earth surface. However, the full system comprises nine satellites, including two on the ground as stand-by. The requirement of such a navigation system is driven because access to foreign government-controlled global navigation satellite systems is not guaranteed in hostile situations, as happened to the Indian military depending on American GPS during the Kargil War.The IRNSS would provide two services, with the Standard Positioning Service open for civilian use, and the Restricted Service (an encrypted one) for authorized users (including the military).
IRNSS would have seven satellites, out of which six are already placed in orbit. The constellation of seven satellites is expected to operate from June 2016 onwards.
A satellite navigation
A satellite navigation or satnav system is a system of satellites that provide autonomous geo-spatial positioning with global coverage. It allows small electronic receivers to determine their location (longitude, latitude, and altitude/elevation) to high precision (within a few metres) using time signals transmitted along a line of sight by radio from satellites. The signals also allow the electronic receivers to calculate the current local time to high precision, which allows time synchronisation. A satellite navigation system with global coverage may be termed a global navigation satellite system (GNSS).
As of April 2013, only the United States NAVSTAR Global Positioning System (GPS) and the Russian GLONASS are global operational GNSSs. China is in the process of expanding its regional BeiDou Navigation Satellite System into the global Compass navigation system by 2020. The European Union's Galileo is a GNSS in initial deployment phase, scheduled to be fully operational by 2020 at the earliest., India has a regional satellite-based augmentation system, GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation (GAGAN), which enhances the accuracy of NAVSTAR GPS and GLONASS positions, and is developing the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS). France and Japan are in the process of developing regional navigation systems.
Global coverage for each system is generally achieved by a satellite constellation of 20–30 medium Earth orbit (MEO) satellites spread between several orbital planes. The actual systems vary, but use orbital inclinations of >50° and orbital periods of roughly twelve hours (at an altitude of about 20,000 kilometres or 12,000 miles).
artificial satellite
In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an artificial object which has been intentionally placed into orbit. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as Earth's Moon.
The world's first artificial satellite, the Sputnik 1, was launched by the Soviet Union in 1957. Since then, thousands of satellites have been launched into orbit around the Earth. Some satellites, notably space stations, have been launched in parts and assembled in orbit. Artificial satellites originate from more than 40 countries and have used the satellite launching capabilities of ten nations. About a thousand satellites are currently operational, whereas thousands of unused satellites and satellite fragments orbit the Earth as space debris. A few space probes have been placed into orbit around other bodies and become artificial satellites to the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Vesta, Eros, Ceres, and the Sun.
Satellites are used for a large number of purposes. Common types include military and civilian Earth observation satellites, communications satellites, navigation satellites, weather satellites, and research satellites. Space stations and human spacecraft in orbit are also satellites. Satellite orbits vary greatly, depending on the purpose of the satellite, and are classified in a number of ways. Well-known (overlapping) classes include low Earth orbit, polar orbit, and geostationary orbit.
About 6,600 satellites have been launched. The latest estimates are that 3,600 remain in orbit. Of those, about 1,000 are operational; the rest have lived out their useful lives and are part of the space debris. Approximately 500 operational satellites are in low-Earth orbit, 50 are in medium-Earth orbit (at 20,000 km), the rest are in geostationary orbit (at 36,000 km).
Satellites are propelled by rockets to their orbits. Usually the launch vehicle itself is a rocket lifting off from a launch pad on land. In a minority of cases satellites are launched at sea (from a submarine or a mobile maritime platform) or aboard a plane (see air launch to orbit).
Satellites are usually semi-independent computer-controlled systems. Satellite subsystems attend many tasks, such as power generation, thermal control, telemetry, attitude control and orbit control.
The International Space Station (ISS)
The International Space Station (ISS) is a space station, or a habitable artificial satellite, in low Earth orbit. Its first component launched into orbit in 1998, and the ISS is now the largest artificial body in orbit and can often be seen with the naked eye from Earth. The ISS consists of pressurised modules, external trusses, solar arrays, and other components. ISS components have been launched by Russian Proton and Soyuz rockets as well as American Space Shuttles.
The ISS serves as a microgravity and space environment research laboratory in which crew members conduct experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology, and other fields. The station is suited for the testing of spacecraft systems and equipment required for missions to the Moon and Mars. The ISS maintains an orbit with an altitude of between 330 and 435 km (205 and 270 mi) by means of reboost manoeuvres using the engines of the Zvezda module or visiting spacecraft. It completes 15.54 orbits per day.
ISS is the ninth space station to be inhabited by crews, following the Soviet and later Russian Salyut, Almaz, and Mir stations as well as Skylab from the US. The station has been continuously occupied for 15 years and 142 days since the arrival of Expedition 1 on 2 November 2000. This is the longest continuous human presence in space, having surpassed the previous record of 9 years and 357 days held by Mir. The station is serviced by a variety of visiting spacecraft: Soyuz, Progress, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, the H-II Transfer Vehicle, Dragon, and Cygnus. It has been visited by astronauts, cosmonauts and space tourists from 17 different nations.
After the US Space Shuttle programme ended in 2011, Soyuz rockets became the only provider of transport for astronauts at the International Space Station, and Dragon became the only provider of bulk cargo-return-to-Earth services (downmass capability of Soyuz capsules is very limited).
The ISS programme is a joint project among five participating space agencies: NASA, Roscosmos, JAXA, ESA, and CSA.The ownership and use of the space station is established by intergovernmental treaties and agreements. The station is divided into two sections, the Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) and the United States Orbital Segment (USOS), which is shared by many nations. As of January 2014, the American portion of ISS was funded until 2024.Roscosmos has endorsed the continued operation of ISS through 2024,but has proposed using elements of the Russian Orbital Segment to construct a new Russian space station called OPSEK.
On 28 March 2015, Russian sources announced that Roscosmos and NASA had agreed to collaborate on the development of a replacement for the current ISS.NASA later issued a guarded statement expressing thanks for Russia's interest in future cooperation in space exploration, but fell short of confirming the Russian announcement.
The Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a partially reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was Space Transportation System (STS), taken from a 1969 plan for a system of reusable spacecraft of which it was the only item funded for development. The first of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights beginning in 1982. They were used on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011, launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST); conducted science experiments in orbit; and participated in construction and servicing of the International Space Station. The Shuttle fleet's total mission time was 1322 days, 19 hours, 21 minutes and 23 seconds.
Shuttle components included the Orbiter Vehicle (OV), a pair of recoverable solid rocket boosters (SRBs), and the expendable external tank (ET) containing liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. The Shuttle was launched vertically, like a conventional rocket, with the two SRBs operating in parallel with the OV's three main engines, which were fueled from the ET. The SRBs were jettisoned before the vehicle reached orbit, and the ET was jettisoned just before orbit insertion, which used the orbiter's two Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) engines. At the conclusion of the mission, the orbiter fired its OMS to de-orbit and re-enter the atmosphere. The orbiter then glided as a spaceplane to a runway landing, usually at the Shuttle Landing Facility of KSC or Rogers Dry Lake in Edwards Air Force Base, California. After landing at Edwards, the orbiter was flown back to the KSC on the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, a specially modified Boeing 747.
The first orbiter, Enterprise, was built for Approach and Landing Tests and had no orbital capability. Four fully operational orbiters were initially built: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, and Atlantis. Of these, two were lost in mission accidents: Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, with a total of fourteen astronauts killed. A fifth operational orbiter, Endeavour, was built in 1991 to replace Challenger. The Space Shuttle was retired from service upon the conclusion of Atlantis's final flight on July 21, 2011.
Abietic acid
Abietic acid (also known as abietinic acid or sylvic acid) is an organic compound that occurs widely in trees. It is the primary component of resin acid, is the primary irritant in pine wood and resin, isolated from rosin (via isomerization) and is the most abundant of several closely related organic acids that constitute most of rosin, the solid portion of the oleoresin of coniferous trees. Its ester or salt is called an abietate
The history of chemistry
The history of chemistry represents a time span from ancient history to the present. By 1000 BC, civilizations used technologies that would eventually form the basis to the various branches of chemistry. Examples include extracting metals from ores, making pottery and glazes, fermenting beer and wine, extracting chemicals from plants for medicine and perfume, rendering fat into soap, making glass, and making alloys like bronze.
The protoscience of chemistry, alchemy, was unsuccessful in explaining the nature of matter and its transformations. However, by performing experiments and recording the results, alchemists set the stage for modern chemistry. The distinction began to emerge when a clear differentiation was made between chemistry and alchemy by Robert Boyle in his work The Sceptical Chymist (1661). While both alchemy and chemistry are concerned with matter and its transformations, chemists are seen as applying scientific method to their work.
Chemistry is considered to have become an established science with the work of Antoine Lavoisier, who developed a law of conservation of mass that demanded careful measurement and quantitative observations of chemical phenomena. The history of chemistry is intertwined with the history of thermodynamics, especially through the work of Willard Gibbs.
The timeline of chemistry
The timeline of chemistry lists important works, discoveries, ideas, inventions, and experiments that significantly changed humanity's understanding of the modern science known as chemistry, defined as the scientific study of the composition of matter and of its interactions. The history of chemistry in its modern form arguably began with the Irish scientist Robert Boyle, though its roots can be traced back to the earliest recorded history.
Early ideas that later became incorporated into the modern science of chemistry come from two main sources. Natural philosophers (such as Aristotle and Democritus) used deductive reasoning in an attempt to explain the behavior of the world around them. Alchemists (such as Geber and Rhazes) were people who used experimental techniques in an attempt to extend the life or perform material conversions, such as turning base metals into gold.
In the 17th century, a synthesis of the ideas of these two disciplines, that is the deductive and the experimental, leads to the development of a process of thinking known as the scientific method. With the introduction of the scientific method, the modern science of chemistry was born.
Known as "the central science", the study of chemistry is strongly influenced by, and exerts a strong influence on, many other scientific and technological fields. Many events considered central to our modern understanding of chemistry are also considered key discoveries in such fields as physics, biology, astronomy, geology, and materials science to name a few.
A chemist
A chemist is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe the properties they study in terms of quantities, with detail on the level of molecules and their component atoms. Chemists carefully measure substance proportions, reaction rates, and other chemical properties. The word 'chemist' is also used to address Pharmacists in Commonwealth English.
Chemists use this knowledge to learn the composition, and properties of unfamiliar substances, as well as to reproduce and synthesize large quantities of useful naturally occurring substances and create new artificial substances and useful processes. Chemists may specialize in any number of subdisciplines of chemistry. Materials scientists and metallurgists share much of the same education and skills with chemists. The work of chemists is often related to the work of chemical engineers, who are primarily concerned with the proper design, construction and evaluation of the most cost-effective large-scale chemical plants and work closely with industrial chemists on the development of new processes and methods for the commercial-scale manufacture of chemicals and related products.
Semiconductors
Semiconductors are crystalline or amorphous solids with distinct electrical characteristics.They are of high resistance - higher than typical resistance materials, but still of much lower resistance than insulators. Their resistance decreases as their temperature increases, which is behavior opposite to that of a metal. Finally, their conducting properties may be altered in useful ways by the deliberate introduction ("doping") of impurities into the crystal structure, which lowers its resistance but also permits the creation of semiconductor junctions between differently-doped regions of the crystal. The behavior of charge carriers at these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors and all modern electronics.
Semiconductor devices can display a range of useful properties such as passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable resistance, and sensitivity to light or heat. Because the electrical properties of a semiconductor material can be modified by controlled addition of impurities, or by the application of electrical fields or light, devices made from semiconductors can be used for amplification, switching, and energy conversion.
The modern understanding of the properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain the movement of electrons and holes (collectively known as "charge carriers") in a crystal lattice. Doping greatly increases the number of charge carriers within the crystal. When a doped semiconductor contains mostly free holes it is called "p-type", and when it contains mostly free electrons it is known as "n-type". The semiconductor materials used in electronic devices are doped under precise conditions to control the concentration and regions of p- and n-type dopants. A single semiconductor crystal can have many p- and n-type regions; the p–n junctions between these regions are responsible for the useful electronic behavior.
Although some pure elements and many compounds display semiconductor properties, silicon, germanium, and compounds of gallium are the most widely used in electronic devices. Elements near the so-called "metalloid staircase", where the metalloids are located on the periodic table, are usually used as semiconductors.
Some of the properties of semiconductor materials were observed throughout the mid 19th and first decades of the 20th century. The first practical application of semiconductors in electronics was the 1904 development of the Cat's-whisker detector, a primitive semiconductor diode widely used in early radio receivers. Developments in quantum physics in turn allowed the development of the transistor in 1947 and the integrated circuit in 1958.
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology ("nanotech") is manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal of precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale products, also now referred to as molecular nanotechnology. A more generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defines nanotechnology as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometers. This definition reflects the fact that quantum mechanical effects are important at this quantum-realm scale, and so the definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research category inclusive of all types of research and technologies that deal with the special properties of matter that occur below the given size threshold. It is therefore common to see the plural form "nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the broad range of research and applications whose common trait is size. Because of the variety of potential applications (including industrial and military), governments have invested billions of dollars in nanotechnology research. Until 2012, through its National Nanotechnology Initiative, the USA has invested 3.7 billion dollars, the European Union has invested 1.2 billion and Japan 750 million dollars.
Nanotechnology as defined by size is naturally very broad, including fields of science as diverse as surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology, semiconductor physics, microfabrication, etc. The associated research and applications are equally diverse, ranging from extensions of conventional device physics to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, from developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale to direct control of matter on the atomic scale.
Scientists currently debate the future implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology may be able to create many new materials and devices with a vast range of applications, such as in nanomedicine, nanoelectronics, biomaterials energy production, and consumer products. On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as any new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios. These concerns have led to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted.
Lamprophyres
Lamprophyres are uncommon, small volume ultrapotassic igneous rocks primarily occurring as dikes, lopoliths, laccoliths, stocks and small intrusions. They are alkaline silica-undersaturated mafic or ultramafic rocks with high magnesium oxide, >3% potassium oxide, high sodium oxide and high nickel and chromium.
Diopside
Diopside is a monoclinic pyroxene mineral with composition MgCaSi2O6. It forms complete solid solution series with hedenbergite (FeCaSi2O6) and augite, and partial solid solutions with orthopyroxene and pigeonite. It forms variably colored, but typically dull green crystals in the monoclinic prismatic class. It has two distinct prismatic cleavages at 87 and 93° typical of the pyroxene series. It has a Mohs hardness of six, a Vickers hardness of 7.7 GPa at a load of 0.98 N,and a specific gravity of 3.25 to 3.55. It is transparent to translucent with indices of refraction of nα=1.663–1.699, nβ=1.671–1.705, and nγ=1.693–1.728. The optic angle is 58° to 63°.
materials science
The interdisciplinary field of materials science, also commonly known as materials science and engineering, involves the discovery and design of new materials, with an emphasis on solids. The intellectual origins of materials science stem from the Enlightenment, when researchers began to use analytical thinking from chemistry, physics, and engineering to understand ancient, phenomenological observations in metallurgy and mineralogy. Materials science still incorporates elements of physics, chemistry, and engineering. As such, the field was long thought of as a sub-field of these related fields. In recent years, materials science has become more widely recognized as a specific and distinct field of science and engineering. Many of the most pressing scientific problems humans currently face are due to the limitations of the materials that are available and, as a result, breakthroughs in materials science are likely to have a significant impact on the future of technology.
Materials scientists emphasize understanding how the history of a material (its processing) influences its structure, and thus the material's properties and performance. The understanding of processing-structure-properties relationships is called the § materials paradigm. This paradigm is used to advance understanding in a variety of research areas, including nanotechnology, biomaterials, and metallurgy. Materials science is also an important part of forensic engineering and failure analysis - investigating materials, products, structures or components which fail or which do not operate or function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property. Such investigations are key to understanding, for example, the causes of various aviation accidents.
"Atomic engineering"
The term "Atomic engineering" appears to be first coined by Theodore von Kármán, where he wrote
"And now it seems we are at the threshold of the new atomic age. I do not know whether or not this is true, but certainly we shall have "atomic engineering" in the fields of power and transportation. Are we prepared for the problems involved?"
So atomic power (and what may generally be considered to be in the discipline of nuclear engineering today) are examples of what he had in mind, but perhaps not exclusively. Atomic clock, potential applications of ultracold atom, etc., for instance, should reasonably belong to "Atomic engineering". Atomic engineering may need to be a superset of nuclear engineering, due to historical usage of terms like Atoms for Peace, International Atomic Energy Agency, atomic engineer, etc.
An inclusive definition could be "exploiting the atomic characters of matter for engineering applications". The atomic character could be the atomic spin (e.g. in Nuclear magnetic resonance and quantum computing applications), atomic position (e.g. Optical lattice), atomic mass (e.g. atomic power), etc.
Richard Feynman, in his famous 1959 lecture "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" on the trend of miniaturization, envisioned
"But I am not afraid to consider the final question as to whether, ultimately – in the great future – we can arrange the atoms the way we want; the very atoms, all the way down! What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them
When we get to the very, very small world – say circuits of seven atoms – we have a lot of new things that would happen that represent completely new opportunities for design. Atoms on a small scale behave like nothing on a large scale, for they satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics. So, as we go down and fiddle around with the atoms down there, we are working with different laws, and we can expect to do different things. We can manufacture in different ways. We can use, not just circuits, but some system involving the quantized energy levels, or the interactions of quantized spins, etc."
Most practices of nanotechnology and materials science today have foci distinct from Feynman's ultimate vision of manipulating individual atomic position and spin, which may be better described by "Atomic engineering", that addresses characteristic length scales from 1 femtometer (the atomic nucleus size) to 1 nanometer (about 5 atoms across in linear dimension). Coherent quantum control of individual atomic defect like the Nitrogen-vacancy center, and the eventual "3D atom printing" ("2D atom printing" was realized in 1990 by IBM using scanning tunnelling microscope), fit Feynman's ultimate vision.
Quantum dots (QD)
Quantum dots (QD) are nanoscale semiconductor devices that tightly confine either electrons or electron holes in all three spatial dimensions. They can be made via several possible routes including colloidal synthesis, plasma synthesis, or mechanical fabrication. The term “quantum dot” was coined by Mark Reed in 1988; however, they were first discovered in a glass matrix by Alexey Ekimov in 1981 and in colloidal solutions by Louis E. Brus in 1985. The electronic properties of the quantum dots fall between those of bulk semiconductors and those of discrete molecules of comparable size, and optoelectronic properties such as band gap, can be tuned as a function of particle size and shape for a given composition. For example, the photoluminescence of a QD can be manipulated to specific wavelengths by controlling particle diameter.Larger QDs (radius of 5-6 nm, for example) emit longer wavelengths resulting in emission colors such as orange or red. Smaller QDs (radius of 2-3 nm, for example) emit shorter wavelengths resulting in colors like blue and green, although the specific colors and sizes vary depending on the exact composition of the QD.
Because of the high tunability of properties, QDs are of interest in many research applications such as transistors, solar cells, LEDs, and diode lasers. For example, the ability of QDs to precisely convert and tune a spectrum makes them ideal for LCD displays. Previous LCD displays can waste energy converting red-green poor, blue-yellow rich white light into a more balanced lighting. By using QDs, only the necessary colors for ideal images are contained in the screen. The result is a screen that is brighter, clearer, and more energy-efficient. The first commercial application of quantum dots was the Sony XBR X900A series of flat panel televisions released in 2013. QDs are also being researched as possible qubits for quantum computing. Beyond electronic applications, QDs are also being investigated in the medical field for medical imaging. Additionally, their small size allows for QDs to be suspended in solution which leads to possible uses in inkjet printing and spin-coating. These processing techniques result in less-expensive and less time consuming methods of semiconductor fabrication
The plum pudding model
The plum pudding model is an obsolete scientific model of the atom proposed by J. J. Thomson in 1904. It was devised shortly after the discovery of the electron but before the discovery of the atomic nucleus.
In this model, the atom is composed of electrons (which Thomson still called "corpuscles", though G. J. Stoney had proposed that atoms of electricity be called "electrons", in 1894) surrounded by a soup of positive charge to balance the electrons' negative charges, like negatively charged "plums" surrounded by positively charged "pudding". The electrons (as we know them today) were thought to be positioned throughout the atom, but with many structures possible for positioning multiple electrons, particularly rotating rings of electrons (see below). Instead of a soup, the atom was also sometimes said to have had a "cloud" of positive charge. With this model, Thomson abandoned his earlier "nebular atom" hypothesis in which the atom was composed of immaterial vortices. Now, at least part of the atom was to be composed of Thomson's particulate negative "corpuscles", although the rest of the positively charged part of the atom remained somewhat nebulous and ill-defined.
The 1904 Thomson model was disproved by the 1909 gold foil experiment of Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden. This was interpreted by Ernest Rutherford in 1911 to imply a very small nucleus of the atom containing a very high positive charge (in the case of gold, enough to balance about 100 electrons), thus leading to the Rutherford model of the atom. Although gold has an atomic number of 79, immediately after Rutherford's paper appeared in 1911 Antonius Van den Broek made the intuitive suggestion that atomic number is nuclear charge. The matter required experiment to decide. Henry Moseley's work showed experimentally in 1913 (see Moseley's law) that the effective nuclear charge was very close to the atomic number (Moseley found only one unit difference), and Moseley referenced only the papers of Van den Broek and Rutherford. This work culminated in the solar-system-like (but quantum-limited) Bohr model of the atom in the same year, in which a nucleus containing an atomic number of positive charge is surrounded by an equal number of electrons in orbital shells. Bohr had also inspired Moseley's work.
Thomson's model was compared (though not by Thomson) to a British dessert called plum pudding, hence the name. Thomson's paper was published in the March 1904 edition of the Philosophical Magazine, the leading British science journal of the day. In Thomson's view:
the atoms of the elements consist of a number of negatively electrified corpuscles enclosed in a sphere of uniform positive electrification,
In this model, the electrons were free to rotate within the blob or cloud of positive substance. These orbits were stabilized in the model by the fact that when an electron moved farther from the centre of the positive cloud, it felt a larger net positive inward force, because there was more material of opposite charge, inside its orbit (see Gauss's law). In Thomson's model, electrons were free to rotate in rings which were further stabilized by interactions between the electrons, and spectra were to be accounted for by energy differences of different ring orbits. Thomson attempted to make his model account for some of the major spectral lines known for some elements, but was not notably successful at this. Still, Thomson's model (along with a similar Saturnian ring model for atomic electrons, also put forward in 1904 by Nagaoka after James Clerk Maxwell's model of Saturn's rings), were earlier harbingers of the later and more successful solar-system-like Bohr model of the atom.
The nucleus
The nucleus is the small, dense region consisting of protons and neutrons at the center of an atom. The atomic nucleus was discovered in 1911 by Ernest Rutherford based on the 1909 Geiger–Marsden gold foil experiment. After the discovery of the neutron in 1932, models for a nucleus composed of protons and neutrons were quickly developed by Dmitri Ivanenko and Werner Heisenberg.Almost all of the mass of an atom is located in the nucleus, with a very small contribution from the electron cloud. Protons and neutrons are bound together to form a nucleus by the nuclear force.
The diameter of the nucleus is in the range of femtometre 1.75 (1.75×10−15 m) for hydrogen (the diameter of a single proton) to about 15 fm for the heaviest atoms, such as uranium. These dimensions are much smaller than the diameter of the atom itself (nucleus + electron cloud), by a factor of about 23,000 (uranium) to about 145,000 (hydrogen)
The branch of physics concerned with the study and understanding of the atomic nucleus, including its composition and the forces which bind it together, is called nuclear physics.
Atomic physics
Atomic physics is the field of physics that studies atoms as an isolated system of electrons and an atomic nucleus. It is primarily concerned with the arrangement of electrons around the nucleus and the processes by which these arrangements change. This includes ions as well as neutral atoms and, unless otherwise stated, for the purposes of this discussion it should be assumed that the term atom includes ions.
The term atomic physics is often associated with nuclear power and nuclear weapons, due to the synonymous use of atomic and nuclear in standard English. However, physicists distinguish between atomic physics — which deals with the atom as a system consisting of a nucleus and electrons — and nuclear physics, which considers atomic nuclei alone.
As with many scientific fields, strict delineation can be highly contrived and atomic physics is often considered in the wider context of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Physics research groups are usually so classified.
The macroscopic scale
The macroscopic scale is the length scale on which objects or phenomena are large enough to be visible practically with the naked eye, without magnifying devices.
When applied to physical phenomena and bodies, the macroscopic scale describes things as a person can directly perceive them, without the aid of magnifying devices. This is in contrast to observations (microscopy) or theories (microphysics, statistical physics) of objects of geometric lengths smaller than perhaps some hundreds of micrometers.
A macroscopic view of a ball is just that: a ball. A microscopic view could reveal a thick round skin seemingly composed entirely of puckered cracks and fissures (as viewed through a microscope) or, further down in scale, a collection of molecules in a roughly spherical shape.
Classical mechanics may describe the interactions of the above-mentioned ball. It can be considered a mainly macroscopic theory. On the much smaller scale of atoms and molecules, classical mechanics may not apply, and the interactions of particles is then described by quantum mechanics. As another example, near the absolute minimum of temperature, the Bose–Einstein condensate exhibits elementary quantum effects on macroscopic scale.
The term "megascopic" is a synonym. No word exists that specifically refers to features commonly portrayed at reduced scales for better understanding, such as geographic areas or astronomical objects. "Macroscopic" may also refer to a "larger view", namely a view available only from a large perspective. A macroscopic position could be considered the "big picture".
The kinetic theory
The kinetic theory describes a gas as a large number of submicroscopic particles (atoms or molecules), all of which are in constant, random motion. The rapidly moving particles constantly collide with each other and with the walls of the container.
Kinetic theory explains macroscopic properties of gases, such as pressure, temperature, viscosity, thermal conductivity, and volume, by considering their molecular composition and motion. The theory posits that gas pressure is due to the impacts, on the walls of a container, of molecules or atoms moving at different velocities.
Kinetic theory defines temperature in its own way, not identical with the thermodynamic definition.
Under a microscope, the molecules making up a liquid are too small to be visible, but the jittery motion of pollen grains or dust particles can be seen. Known as Brownian motion, it results directly from collisions between the grains or particles and liquid molecules. As analyzed by Albert Einstein in 1905, this experimental evidence for kinetic theory is generally seen as having confirmed the concrete material existence of atoms and molecules.
Brownian motion or pedesis
Brownian motion or pedesis is the random motion of particles suspended in a fluid (a liquid or a gas) resulting from their collision with the quick atoms or molecules in the gas or liquid. Wiener Process refers to the mathematical model used to describe such Brownian Motion, which is often called a particle theory.
This transport phenomenon is named after the botanist Robert Brown. In 1827, while looking through a microscope at particles trapped in cavities inside pollen grains in water, he noted that the particles moved through the water but was not able to determine the mechanisms that caused this motion. Atoms and molecules had long been theorized as the constituents of matter, and many decades later, Albert Einstein published a paper in 1905 that explained in precise detail how the motion that Brown had observed was a result of the pollen being moved by individual water molecules. This explanation of Brownian motion served as definitive confirmation that atoms and molecules actually exist, and was further verified experimentally by Jean Perrin in 1908. Perrin was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1926 "for his work on the discontinuous structure of matter" (Einstein had received the award five years earlier "for his services to theoretical physics" with specific citation of different research). The direction of the force of atomic bombardment is constantly changing, and at different times the particle is hit more on one side than another, leading to the seemingly random nature of the motion.
The mathematical model of Brownian motion has numerous real-world applications. For instance, stock market fluctuations are often cited, although Benoit Mandelbrot rejected its applicability to stock price movements in part because these are discontinuous.
Brownian motion is among the simplest of the continuous-time stochastic (or probabilistic) processes, and it is a limit of both simpler and more complicated stochastic processes (see random walk and Donsker's theorem). This universality is closely related to the universality of the normal distribution. In both cases, it is often mathematical convenience, rather than the accuracy of the models, that motivates their use.
Planetesimals
Planetesimals are solid objects thought to exist in protoplanetary disks and in debris disks.
A widely accepted theory of planet formation, the so-called planetesimal hypotheses, the Chamberlin–Moulton planetesimal hypothesis and that of Viktor Safronov, states that planets form out of cosmic dust grains that collide and stick to form larger and larger bodies. When the bodies reach sizes of approximately one kilometer, then they can attract each other directly through their mutual gravity, enormously aiding further growth into moon-sized protoplanets. This is how planetesimals are often defined. Bodies that are smaller than planetesimals must rely on Brownian motion or turbulent motions in the gas to cause the collisions that can lead to sticking. Alternatively, planetesimals may form in a very dense layer of dust grains that undergoes a collective gravitational instability in the mid-plane of a protoplanetary disk. Many planetesimals eventually break apart during violent collisions, as may have happened to 4 Vesta and 90 Antiope,but a few of the largest planetesimals may survive such encounters and continue to grow into protoplanets and later planets.
It is generally believed that about 3.8 billion years ago, after a period known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, most of the planetesimals within the Solar System had either been ejected from the Solar System entirely, into distant eccentric orbits such as the Oort cloud, or had collided with larger objects due to the regular gravitational nudges from the giant planets (particularly Jupiter and Neptune). A few planetesimals may have been captured as moons, such as Phobos and Deimos (the moons of Mars), and many of the small high-inclination moons of the giant planets.
Planetesimals that have survived to the current day are valuable to scientists because they contain information about the formation of the Solar System. Although their exteriors are subjected to intense solar radiation that can alter their chemistry, their interiors contain pristine material essentially untouched since the planetesimal was formed. This makes each planetesimal a 'time capsule', and their composition can tell us of the conditions in the Solar Nebula from which our planetary system was formed (see also meteorites and comets).
A circumstellar disc
A circumstellar disc (or circumstellar disk) is a torus, pancake or ring-shaped accumulation of matter composed of gas, dust, planetesimals, asteroids or collision fragments in orbit around a star. Around the youngest stars, they are the reservoirs of material out of which planets may form. Around mature stars, they indicate that planetesimal formation has taken place and around white dwarfs, they indicate that planetary material survived the whole of stellar evolution. Such a disc can manifest itself in various ways
THE EARTH
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor life.
According to evidence from radiometric dating and other sources, Earth was formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earth gravitationally interacts with other objects in space, especially the Sun and the Moon. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its own axis 366.26 times, creating 365.26 solar days or one sidereal year. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted 23.4° away from the perpendicular of its orbital plane, producing seasonal variations on the planet's surface with a period of one tropical year (365.24 solar days). The Moon is Earth's only permanent natural satellite. Its gravitational interaction with Earth causes ocean tides, stabilizes the orientation of Earth's rotational axis, and gradually slows Earth's rotational rate.
Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water, with the remainder consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. Earth's polar regions are mostly covered with ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics.
Within its first billion years, life appeared in Earth's oceans and began to affect its atmosphere and surface, promoting the proliferation of aerobic as well as anaerobic organisms. Since then, the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, its physical properties and its geological history have allowed life to thrive and evolve. The earliest undisputed life on Earth arose at least 3.5 billion years ago. Earlier physical evidence of life includes biogenic graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks discovered in southwestern Greenland, as well as "remains of biotic life" found in 4.1 billion-year-old rocks in Western Australia. Earth's biodiversity has expanded continually except when interrupted by mass extinctions.Although scholars estimate that over 99% of all species of life (over five billion) that ever lived on Earth are extinct, there are still an estimated 10–14 million extant species, of which about 1.2 million have been documented and over 86% have not yet been described. Over 7.3 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Earth's human population is divided among about two hundred sovereign states which interact through diplomacy, conflict, travel, trade and communication media.
the sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System and is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. It is a nearly perfect spherical ball of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. Its diameter is about 109 times that of Earth, and it has a mass about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. About three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen; the rest is mostly helium, with much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on spectral class and it is informally referred to as a yellow dwarf. It formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became increasingly hot and dense, eventually initiating nuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that almost all stars form by this process.
The Sun is roughly middle aged and has not changed dramatically for over four billion years, and will remain fairly stable for more than another five billion years. However, after hydrogen fusion in its core has stopped, the Sun will undergo severe changes and become a red giant. It is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth.
The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, and the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity. Earth's movement around the Sun is the basis of the solar calendar, which is the predominant calendar in use today.
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