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A Message from Earth (2008)
A Message from Earth (AMFE) is a high-powered digital radio signal that was sent on 9 October 2008 towards Gliese 581c, a large terrestrial extrasolar planet orbiting within the Gliese 581 system. The signal is a digital time capsule containing 501 messages that were selected through a competition on the social networking site Bebo. The message was sent using the RT-70 radar telescope. The signal will reach the planet Gliese 581c in early 2029. More than half a million people including celebrities and politicians participated in the AMFE project, which was the world's first digital time capsule where the content was selected by the public. As of 1 February 2018, the message has traveled 62.43 trillion kilometers of the total 192 trillion kilometers, which is 33.5% of the distance to the Gliese 581 system. On 13 February 2015, scientists (including David Grinspoon, Seth Shostak, and David Brin) at an annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, discussed Active SETI and whether transmitting a message to possible intelligent extraterrestrials in the Cosmos was a good idea; That same week, a statement was released, signed by many in the SETI community, that a "worldwide scientific, political and humanitarian discussion must occur before any message is sent". However neither Frank Drake, nor Seth Shostak signed this appeal. On 28 March 2015, a related essay with some different point of view was written by Seth Shostak and published in The New York Times .
  • 1.7K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Artificial Gravity in Fiction
Artificial gravity is a common theme in fiction, particularly science fiction.
  • 4.5K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
(594913) 2020 AV2
(594913) 2020 AV2, provisionally designated: 2020 AV2, is a large near-Earth asteroid discovered by the Zwicky Transient Facility on 4 January 2020. It is the first asteroid discovered to have an orbit completely within Venus's orbit, and is thus the first and only known member of the inner-Venusian provisionally-named Vatira population of Atira-class asteroids. 2020 AV2 has the smallest known aphelion and third-smallest known semi-major axis among all asteroids. With an absolute magnitude approximately 16.2, the asteroid is expected to be larger than 1 km in diameter.
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  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Proton–Proton Chain Reaction
The proton–proton chain reaction is one of two known sets of nuclear fusion reactions by which stars convert hydrogen to helium. It dominates in stars with masses less than or equal to that of the Sun, whereas the CNO cycle, the other known reaction, is suggested by theoretical models to dominate in stars with masses greater than about 1.3 times that of the Sun. In general, proton–proton fusion can occur only if the kinetic energy (i.e. temperature) of the protons is high enough to overcome their mutual electrostatic repulsion. In the Sun, deuterium-producing events are rare. Diprotons are the much more common result of proton–proton reactions within the star, and diprotons almost immediately decay back into two protons. Since the conversion of hydrogen to helium is slow, the complete conversion of the hydrogen in the core of the Sun is calculated to take more than ten billion years. Although called the "proton–proton chain reaction", it is not a chain reaction in the normal sense. In most nuclear reactions, a chain reaction designates a reaction that produces a product, such as neutrons given off during fission, that quickly induces another such reaction. The proton-proton chain is, like a decay chain, a series of reactions. The product of one reaction is the starting material of the next reaction. There are two such chains leading from Hydrogen to Helium in the Sun. One chain has five reactions, the other chain has six.
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  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Normal Strain
In physics, deformation is the continuum mechanics transformation of a body from a reference configuration to a current configuration. A configuration is a set containing the positions of all particles of the body. A deformation can occur because of external loads, intrinsic activity (e.g. muscle contraction), body forces (such as gravity or electromagnetic forces), or changes in temperature, moisture content, or chemical reactions, etc. Strain is related to deformation in terms of relative displacement of particles in the body that excludes rigid-body motions. Different equivalent choices may be made for the expression of a strain field depending on whether it is defined with respect to the initial or the final configuration of the body and on whether the metric tensor or its dual is considered. In a continuous body, a deformation field results from a stress field due to applied forces or because of some changes in the temperature field of the body. The relation between stress and strain is expressed by constitutive equations, e.g., Hooke's law for linear elastic materials. Deformations which cease to exist after the stress field is removed are termed as elastic deformation. In this case, the continuum completely recovers its original configuration. On the other hand, irreversible deformations remain. They exist even after stresses have been removed. One type of irreversible deformation is plastic deformation, which occurs in material bodies after stresses have attained a certain threshold value known as the elastic limit or yield stress, and are the result of slip, or dislocation mechanisms at the atomic level. Another type of irreversible deformation is viscous deformation, which is the irreversible part of viscoelastic deformation. In the case of elastic deformations, the response function linking strain to the deforming stress is the compliance tensor of the material.
  • 4.7K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Geiger–Marsden Experiment
The Geiger–Marsden experiments (also called the Rutherford gold foil experiment) were a landmark series of experiments by which scientists discovered that every atom has a nucleus where all of its positive charge and most of its mass is concentrated. They deduced this by measuring how an alpha particle beam is scattered when it strikes a thin metal foil. The experiments were performed between 1908 and 1913 by Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden under the direction of Ernest Rutherford at the Physical Laboratories of the University of Manchester.
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  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Unified Atomic Mass Unit
The unified atomic mass unit or dalton (symbol: u, or Da) is a standard unit of mass that quantifies mass on an atomic or molecular scale (atomic mass). One unified atomic mass unit is approximately the mass of one nucleon (either a single proton or neutron) and is numerically equivalent to 1 g/mol. It is defined as one twelfth of the mass of an unbound neutral atom of carbon-12 in its nuclear and electronic ground state and at rest, and has a value of 1.660539040(20)×10−27 kg, or approximately 1.66 yoctograms. The CIPM has categorised it as a non-SI unit accepted for use with the SI, and whose value in SI units must be obtained experimentally. The amu without the "unified" prefix is technically an obsolete unit based on oxygen, which was replaced in 1961. However, many sources still use the term amu but now define it in the same way as u (i.e., based on carbon-12). In this sense, most uses of the terms atomic mass units and amu, today, actually refer to unified atomic mass unit. For standardization, a specific atomic nucleus (carbon-12 vs. oxygen-16) had to be chosen because the average mass of a nucleon depends on the count of the nucleons in the atomic nucleus due to mass defect. This is also why the mass of a proton or neutron by itself is more than (and not equal to) 1 u. The atomic mass unit is not the unit of mass in the atomic units system, which is rather the electron rest mass (me).
  • 8.9K
  • 21 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Lieb-Robinson Bounds
The Lieb-Robinson bound is a theoretical upper limit on the speed at which information can propagate in non-relativistic quantum systems. It demonstrates that information cannot travel instantaneously in quantum theory, even when the relativity limits of the speed of light are ignored. The existence of such a finite speed was discovered mathematically by Elliott H. Lieb and Derek W. Robinson (de) in 1972. It turns the locality properties of physical systems into the existence of, and upper bound for this speed. The bound is now known as the Lieb-Robinson bound and the speed is known as the Lieb-Robinson velocity. This velocity is always finite but not universal, depending on the details of the system under consideration. For finite-range, e.g. nearest-neighbor, interactions, this velocity is a constant independent of the distance travelled. In long-range interacting systems, this velocity remains finite, but it can increase with the distance travelled. In the study of quantum systems such as quantum optics, quantum information theory, atomic physics, and condensed matter physics, it is important to know that there is a finite speed with which information can propagate. The theory of relativity shows that no information, or anything else for that matter, can travel faster than the speed of light. When non-relativistic mechanics is considered, however, (Newton's equations of motion or Schrödinger's equation of quantum mechanics) it had been thought that there is then no limitation to the speed of propagation of information. This is not so for certain kinds of quantum systems of atoms arranged in a lattice, often called quantum spin systems. This is important conceptually and practically, because it means that, for short periods of time, distant parts of a system act independently. One of the practical applications of Lieb-Robinson bounds is quantum computing. Current proposals to construct quantum computers built out of atomic-like units mostly rely on the existence of this finite speed of propagation to protect against too rapid dispersal of information. 
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  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Solar Storm of 1859
The solar storm of 1859 (also known as the Carrington Event) was a powerful geomagnetic storm during solar cycle 10 (1855–1867). A solar coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced the largest geomagnetic storm on record, September 1–2, 1859. The associated "white light flare" in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by British astronomers Richard C. Carrington (1826–1875) and Richard Hodgson (1804–1872). The storm caused strong auroral displays and wrought havoc with telegraph systems. The now-standard unique IAU identifier for this flare is SOL1859-09-01. A solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would cause widespread electrical disruptions, blackouts and damage due to extended outages of the electrical grid. The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the planet, missing by nine days.
  • 4.2K
  • 20 Oct 2022
Topic Review
Coherent States
In physics, specifically in quantum mechanics, a coherent state is the specific quantum state of the quantum harmonic oscillator, often described as a state which has dynamics most closely resembling the oscillatory behavior of a classical harmonic oscillator. It was the first example of quantum dynamics when Erwin Schrödinger derived it in 1926, while searching for solutions of the Schrödinger equation that satisfy the correspondence principle. The quantum harmonic oscillator and hence, the coherent states arise in the quantum theory of a wide range of physical systems. For instance, a coherent state describes the oscillating motion of a particle confined in a quadratic potential well (for an early reference, see e.g. Schiff's textbook). The coherent state describes a state in a system for which the ground-state wavepacket is displaced from the origin of the system. This state can be related to classical solutions by a particle oscillating with an amplitude equivalent to the displacement. These states, expressed as eigenvectors of the lowering operator and forming an overcomplete family, were introduced in the early papers of John R. Klauder, e.g. . In the quantum theory of light (quantum electrodynamics) and other bosonic quantum field theories, coherent states were introduced by the work of Roy J. Glauber in 1963. The concept of coherent states has been considerably abstracted; it has become a major topic in mathematical physics and in applied mathematics, with applications ranging from quantization to signal processing and image processing (see Coherent states in mathematical physics). For this reason, the coherent states associated to the quantum harmonic oscillator are sometimes referred to as canonical coherent states (CCS), standard coherent states, Gaussian states, or oscillator states.
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  • 20 Oct 2022
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