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Topic Review
Jerk
In physics, jerk or jolt is the rate at which an object's acceleration changes with respect to time. It is a vector quantity (having both magnitude and direction). Jerk is most commonly denoted by the symbol j and expressed in m/s3 (SI units) or standard gravities per second (g0/s).
  • 921
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
ADM Formalism
The ADM formalism (named for its authors Richard Arnowitt, Stanley Deser and Charles W. Misner) is a Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity that plays an important role in canonical quantum gravity and numerical relativity. It was first published in 1959. The comprehensive review of the formalism that the authors published in 1962 has been reprinted in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, while the original papers can be found in the archives of Physical Review.
  • 788
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Conjunction
In astronomy, a conjunction occurs when two astronomical objects or spacecraft have either the same right ascension or the same ecliptic longitude, usually as observed from Earth. When two objects always appear close to the ecliptic—such as two planets, the Moon and a planet, or the Sun and a planet—this fact implies an apparent close approach between the objects as seen in the sky. A related word, appulse, is the minimum apparent separation in the sky of two astronomical objects. Conjunctions involve either two objects in the Solar System or one object in the Solar System and a more distant object, such as a star. A conjunction is an apparent phenomenon caused by the observer's perspective: the two objects involved are not actually close to one another in space. Conjunctions between two bright objects close to the ecliptic, such as two bright planets, can be seen with the naked eye. The astronomical symbol for conjunction is (Unicode U+260C ☌). The conjunction symbol is not used in modern astronomy. It continues to be used in astrology.
  • 1.1K
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Venus (Planet)
Venus is the second-closest planet to the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. After Earth's Moon, it is the brightest object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6. As an inferior planet from Earth it never appears to venture far from the Sun, and its elongation reaches a maximum of 47.8°. Venus reaches its maximum brightness shortly before sunrise or shortly after sunset, and is often referred to as the Morning Star or as the Evening Star. A terrestrial planet, it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet", as the two are similar in size and bulk composition. The planet is covered with an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds and its surface cannot be seen from space in visible light, making it a subject of great speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venus has the densest atmosphere of the terrestrial planets, consisting mostly of carbon dioxide, and the atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 90 times that of the Earth. Venus' surface has been mapped in detail only in the last 20 years. It shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and some of its volcanoes may still be active today. In contrast to the constant crustal movement seen on Earth, Venus is thought to undergo periodic episodes of plate tectonics, in which the crust is subducted rapidly within a few million years separated by stable periods of a few hundred million years. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love, and most of its surface features are named after famous and mythological women. The adjective Venusian is commonly used for items related to Venus, though the Latin adjective is the rarely used Venereal; the now-archaic Cytherean is still occasionally encountered.
  • 995
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Names of the Days of the Week
The names of the days of the week in many languages are derived from the names of the classical planets in Hellenistic astrology, which were in turn named after contemporary deities, a system introduced by the Roman Empire during Late Antiquity. In some other languages, the days are named after corresponding deities of the regional culture, either beginning with Sunday or with Monday. In the international standard ISO 8601, Monday is treated as the first day of the week.
  • 32.2K
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
AIDA (Mission)
The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission is a proposed pair of space probes which will study and demonstrate the kinetic effects of crashing an impactor spacecraft into an asteroid moon. The mission is intended to test and validate impact models of whether a spacecraft could successfully deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The original plan called for a European spacecraft, the Asteroid Impact Mission (AIM), to operate in synergy with a large NASA impactor called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) and observe the immediate effects of the impact. AIM was cancelled in 2016 when Germany was unable to fund its portion, and after some backlash within ESA, AIM was replaced in 2018 with a smaller spacecraft called Hera that will launch five years after DART to orbit and study the crater on the asteroid. Hera will also deploy Europe's first CubeSats in deep space for close-up asteroid surveying: Juventas and Milani. DART is currently planned to impact in 2022 in the small moon of asteroid 65803 Didymos, while Hera will arrive at Didymos in 2027, five years after DART's impact.
  • 499
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
ΔT
In precise timekeeping, ΔT (Delta T, delta-T, deltaT, or DT) is a measure of the cumulative effect of the departure of the Earth's rotation period from the fixed-length day of atomic time. Formally it is the time difference obtained by subtracting Universal Time (UT, defined by the Earth's rotation) from Terrestrial Time (TT, independent of the Earth's rotation): ΔT = TT − UT. The value of ΔT for the start of 1902 was approximately zero; for 2002 it was about 64 seconds. So the Earth's rotations over that century took about 64 seconds longer than would be required for days of atomic time. As well as this long-term drift in the length of the day there are short-term fluctuations in the length of day (Δτ) which are dealt with separately.
  • 829
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Pulse Forming Network
A pulse forming network (PFN) is an electric circuit that accumulates electrical energy over a comparatively long time, then releases the stored energy in the form of a relatively square pulse of comparatively brief duration for various pulsed power applications. In a PFN, energy storage components such as capacitors, inductors or transmission lines are charged by means of a high voltage power source, then rapidly discharged into a load via a high voltage switch, such as a spark gap or hydrogen thyratron. Repetition rates range from single pulses to about 104 per second. PFNs are used to produce precise nanosecond-length pulses of electricity to power devices such as klystron or magnetron tube oscillators in radar sets, pulsed lasers, particle accelerators, flashtubes, and high voltage utility test equipment. Much high energy research equipment is operated in a pulsed mode, both to keep heat dissipation down and because high energy physics often occurs at short time scales, so large PFNs are widely used in high energy research. They have been used to produce nanosecond length pulses with voltages of up to 106 - 107 volts and currents up to 106 amps, with peak power in the terawatt range, similar to lightning bolts.
  • 619
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Osmium-168
Osmium (76Os) has seven naturally occurring isotopes, five of which are stable: 187Os, 188Os, 189Os, 190Os, and (most abundant) 192Os. The other natural isotopes, 184Os, and 186Os, have extremely long half-life (1.12×1013 years and 2×1015 years, respectively) and for practical purposes can be considered to be stable as well. 187Os is the daughter of 187Re (half-life 4.56×1010 years) and is most often measured in an 187Os/188Os ratio. This ratio, as well as the 187Re/188Os ratio, have been used extensively in dating terrestrial as well as meteoric rocks. It has also been used to measure the intensity of continental weathering over geologic time and to fix minimum ages for stabilization of the mantle roots of continental cratons. However, the most notable application of Os in dating has been in conjunction with iridium, to analyze the layer of shocked quartz along the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary that marks the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. There are also 30 artificial radioisotopes, the longest-lived of which is 194Os with a half-life of six years; all others have half-lives under 94 days. There are also nine known nuclear isomers, the longest-lived of which is 191mOs with a half-life of 13.10 hours. All isotopes and nuclear isomers of osmium are either radioactive or observationally stable, meaning that they are predicted to be radioactive but no actual decay has been observed.
  • 215
  • 01 Nov 2022
Topic Review
Fresnel Imager
A Fresnel imager is a proposed ultra-lightweight design for a space telescope that uses a Fresnel array as primary optics instead of a typical lens. It focuses light with a thin opaque foil sheet punched with specially shaped holes, thus focusing light on a certain point by using the phenomenon of diffraction. Such patterned sheets, called Fresnel zone plates, have long been used for focusing laser beams, but have so far not been used for astronomy. No optical material is involved in the focusing process as in traditional telescopes. Rather, the light collected by the Fresnel array is concentrated on smaller classical optics (e.g. 1/20th of the array size), to form a final image. The long focal lengths of the Fresnel imager (a few kilometers) require operation by two-vessel formation flying in space at the L2 Sun-Earth Lagrangian point. In this two spacecraft formation-flying instrument, one spacecraft holds the focussing element: the Fresnel interferometric array; the other spacecraft holds the field optics, focal instrumentation, and detectors.
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  • 01 Nov 2022
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