Think and Radiate

Something unusual has been just achieved by a curious PhD student at Oxford's Ion Trap Quantum Computing lab. David Nadlinger, on 12 Feb. 2018, has photographed a strontium atom suspended in air by electric fields, to win 2018 Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council science photography competition. The photo “a Single Atom In An Ion Trap”, was taken using ordinary DSLR camera, at Oxford University laboratory. "The idea of being able to see a single atom with the naked eye had struck me as a wonderfully direct and visceral bridge between the minuscule quantum world and our macroscopic reality. When I set off to the lab with a camera and tripods one quiet Sunday afternoon, I was rewarded with the particular picture of a small, pale blue dot," said Nadlinger. Strontium atom trapped between electrodes. Image Credit: David Nadlinger/University of Oxford If you look closely, you will find a pale dot suspended between two electrodes. This small d

At Haleakalā High Altitude Observatory Site , Hawaii's first astronomical research observatory, Robert Werky observed an immensely small object heading away from the sun. Initially, it was believed to be a comet ( C/2017 U1 ) and later acknowledged as an asteroid ( A/2017 U1 ). However, on close observation, it was found that it had no tail similar to a comet even though it was close to the sun. Typically, a comet shows a tail (dust, gas and vapour) when it is approaching sun as it starts to gain temperature. The speed with which the 'astronomical object was moving does not correspond to the speed of a comet or an asteroid. Moreover, the path of it was hyperbolic which means it could not be a part of our solar system, as typically the path is known to be elliptical. Therefore, it was ruled out that, this particular object originated in our solar system. Taken together all the observations, it was identified as an interstellar object and named ' Oumuamua  taken f

The Solar cycle is a regular change in the activity of the sun after every 11 years. It is marked by the changes in solar radiation intensity, changes in the solar spots, changes in auroras etc.. It is a phenomenon happening since the beginning of solar system and it has been recorded regularly by humans.  There comes a phase in solar cycle when the activity of the sun in minimum and this is termed as solar minimum.  To mark this phase there is a decrease in the solar spots and solar intensity. Solar minimums have an effect on the climate of the earth. It reduces the overall temperature of the earth for a short period of time.  This solar cycle has the lowest sunspots since 1900. Image courtesy NASA/ARC Predicting changes in solar activity is difficult due to the non-linear nature of the solar cycle. It can be predicted by observing the changes in the number of solar spots. Period of the minimum solar activity is the best to carry out space-related studies as there i

The human mind is inquisitive and it wants to answer every single question that troubles it. It is not recent that humans have started contemplating the sky. We have been using the position of stars to navigate ships and vehicles. It is more recent that we started depending on GPS for navigation. When we look at the sky after the sun is set, we see a huge number of stars and few galaxies (Andromeda or The Magellanic Clouds). Whatever you may think, but the stars visible to our naked eyes are just a small bunch located locally, near to our solar system. In fact, the stars you see at night are not even 99 % of our galaxy.  Our Milky Way is about 150,000 light-years big on an average and the brightest star Sirius A is just eight light-years away, which lead us to think about the vastness of our galaxy. To put more pressure on our thought process, there are more than 100 billion galaxies in the visible universe and still, we are nowhere near to get a complete picture of the entire univer