From the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Science nugget: Lightning signature could help reveal the solar system’s origins
Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere, about 60 miles up in the atmosphere. This electromagnetic signature, known as Schumann Resonance, had only been observed from Earth’s surface until, in 2011, scientists discovered they could also detect it using NASA’s Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force’s Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite.
In a paper published on May 1 in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers describe how this new technique could be used to study other planets in the solar system as well, and even shed light on how the solar system formed.
“The frequency of Schumann Resonance depends not only on the size of the planet but on what kinds of atoms and molecules exist in the atmosphere because they change the electrical conductivity,” says Fernando Simoes, the first author on this paper and a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “So we could use this technique remotely, say from about 600 miles above a planet’s surface, to look at how much water, methane and ammonia is there.”
Water, methane and ammonia are collectively referred to as “volatiles” and the fact that there are different amounts on different planets is a tantalizing clue to the way the planets formed. Determining the composition of a planet’s atmosphere can be done with a handful of other techniques – techniques that are quite accurate, but can only measure specific regions. By looking at the Schumann Resonance, however, one can get information about the global density of, say, water around the entire planet. Simoes and his colleagues believe that combining this technique with other instruments on a spacecraft’s visit to a planet could provide a more accurate inventory of the planet’s atmosphere.
“And if we can get a better sense of the abundance of these kinds of atoms in the outer planets,” says Simoes, “We would know more about the abundance in the original nebula from which the solar system evolved.”
Accurate descriptions of planetary atmospheres might also help shed light on how the evolution of the solar system left the outer planets with a high percentage of volatiles, but not the inner planets.
Detecting Schumann Resonance from above still requires the instruments to be fairly close to the planet, so this technique couldn’t be used to investigate from afar the atmospheres of planets outside our solar system. Instead, scientists imagine something much more dramatic. After a spacecraft is finished observing a planet, it could continue to detect Schumann resonance as it begins its death dive into the atmosphere. During the process of self-destruction, the spacecraft would still provide valuable scientific data until the very last minute of its existence.
I think we should master inner space before we ship our poorly controlled behaviors off this planet.
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
May 5, 2012 at 3:00 pm
I am always greatly amused by those who believe in Interstellar travel.
Firstly there’s the small matter of Einstein’s E = MC2…which if you shuffle it around firmly states that when propelling M….the closer you get to C, the more E you require! (Do let me know when someone disproves this)
You missed little bit, the lorentz transformation. Actual Energy is E=(1/(sqrt(1-(v/c)^2)))*m*c^2
Speaking of amused. I’m always amused that the various proposals for studies of the planets always mention that it might shed light on how the solar system was formed.
Even if FTL or some other means were developed to travel to the stars, I feel very few would be willing to go. Going from a 40hr work with all the tech ‘toys’ we to 80+hr work week farming (which is what needs to be set up first) more than likely with horses etc. with no TV, no internet, no Facebook, no phones (you get the picture). The only ones that I see going for a new world are those who already are at the very bottom of the economic pile-and they are the ones who could not afford to do so.
Take us up to Warp Factor 5 Mr Patton!
Henry Clark;
Don’t forget the Pellegino’s Pancakes: small failed stars with dust/debris disks, 10X as common as even brown dwarfs, invisible or ultra dim. Hard to see in time to dodge at relativistic speeds (or even small fractions of C). !! ;(
Henry Clark (May 5, 2012 at 4:33 pm) is exactly right: The evolution of a space-faring civilization depends entirely on developing inexpensive means of getting out of Earth’s gravity well and into orbit. He is also correct in identifying the pervasive pessimism that has overtaken Western societies as the primary impediment to such development.
Whatever happened to the ideal of Progress? It has been replaced with fear, apprehension, and retrenchment, typified by an obsession with ‘sustainability’, the most depressing word in the English language.
/Mr Lynn
Back to the present, and today’s science…
What that global 50 Hz electromagnetic Schumann Resonance might be doing remains a tantalizing side topic to this research. Perhaps this “beating pulse between the ground and the lower ionosphere” has some effect that has not been appreciated.
http://www.convertalot.com/relativistic_star_ship_calculator.html
Re checking my numbers, I see that a space ship with 1 g acceleration, if it accelerates for 23 years, then decelerates for 23 years, can voyage to the edge of the the observable universe – some 14 billion light years away, well within a human lifetime.
Due to time dilation and length contraction, midway into the voyage when we begin our deceleration, the 14 billion light year distance will appear to have shortened in the direction of travel to less than 46 light years. Without any need for warp drives or science fiction. When we arrive, we will have aged 46 years, but people on earth will have aged more than 14 billion years. As the saying goes, you can never go back home.
What has been missing since the time of the moon landing is the spirit of adventure. Human beings do best with a goal to achieve. However, for the last 30 years, we have become self-absorbed in looking inwards. The argument being we have have problems here at home, they should get priority. By that logic Columbus would have stayed home.
Mr Lynn: Very much agreed.
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
May 5, 2012 at 5:59 pm
“Henry…may ‘The Force’ remain with you!”
Thanks … I think. 😉
mr.artday says:
May 5, 2012 at 8:14 pm
“I think we should master inner space before we ship our poorly controlled behaviors off this planet.”
I don’t know exactly what you personally have in mind, as what mastery of inner space would mean to different people differs. However, while we might agree on some individual aspects being desirable, spending on space is not likely to be a major barrier to those. Next to nobody seems to say, for instance, “if we stop government spending on art and aesthetic architecture for a while or indefinitely, we can much better solve all of our other terrestrial problems first,” although the equivalent with reference to space programs is more common. Yet annual spending on space launch is only on the order of 1/10000th of world GDP, less than on cosmetics (while even current spending differently applied, let alone a few times it, would make a huge difference for progress in spaceflight).
Also, overall, what I would consider a favorable state of public psychology is helped and not harmed by a frontier, growth, and expansion. One of the best hopes for mankind would be if some get off this planet, if independent societies develop, before there is too much homogenization of societal and enviropolitical views in the direction that too many are heading (like drivers of the CAGW movement highlight). At least a lot of those who would not like people preemptively escaping from what they would consider a hypothetical future perfect closed society on Earth (e.g. built up over time by increasingly restrictive hypothetical international treaties and beyond) have in mind what to me would be more a dystopia than a perfect society.
Brian H says:
May 6, 2012 at 4:07 am
“Don’t forget the Pellegino’s Pancakes: small failed stars with dust/debris disks, 10X as common as even brown dwarfs, invisible or ultra dim. Hard to see in time to dodge at relativistic speeds (or even small fractions of C). !! ;(”
Short of greater utilization, related objects might serve as an objective for someday an unmanned scientific probe if not more. Although estimates differ by a number of orders of magnitude, a recent study even estimated as high as 100,000 times as many rogue planets as stars ( http://www.space.com/14667-nomad-alien-planets-wandering-galaxy.html ). If so and if future space telescopes advanced enough to detect some, there statistically might be some of those many times closer than Alpha Centauri.
Mr Lynn says:
May 6, 2012 at 6:49 am
Whatever happened to the ideal of Progress? It has been replaced with fear, apprehension, and retrenchment, typified by an obsession with ‘sustainability’, the most depressing word in the English language.
====
Exactly. “Sustainability” is a utopian concept. It implies a perfection that can never be achieve. As a result we overlook “good”. Perfection is the enemy of good.
Modern society has made huge strides in improving efficiency and thereby reducing waste. As a result we have achieved a standard of living never before available to so many people. Should we now throw this away because it is not perfect? Will the replacement somehow be magically better?
I found it interesting to read that the US without Kyoto or carbon trading, has achieved the exact same CO2 reduction as the EU with Kyoto and carbon trading. In other words, Kyoto and carbon trading have had no effect on CO2 production.
What has led to CO2 reduction in the US is invention. Natural gas fracking has resulted in a reduction in Co2 as power plants switch to cheap gas. A solution completely unpredicted by Climate Science and the IPCC. So much for the experts in their ivory towers, cut off from the real world.
Charles Gerard Nelson says:
May 5, 2012 at 3:00 pm
“And of course let’s not forget Newton…I wonder what ‘impact’ a rock or meteorite would have on our Ark as it boldly went at (its unobtainable) near light velocity?
Relativity tells us that there is no “zero” reference frame. No aether to determine how fast we are moving.
Once you turn the engines off, a ship moving at near light speed relative to us is standing still in its own reference frame. Everything aboard the ship including mass and acceleration and time behaves as though the ship was standing still. Once you turn the engines back on the ship will continue to see itself accelerate as though it started from rest.
Light speed is only a barrier to observation. It is not a barrier to travel due to the combined effects of time dilation and length contraction. The more you accelerate, the shorter the time it takes to travel, without limit. Thus you can travel 14 billion light years in 46 years at 1 g acceleration, while to the observer on earth, the trip will take you 14+ billion years.
A ship traveling at 1 g constant acceleration takes 1.58 ship years to travel 1.6 light years earth relative. In Star Trek terms it has achieved warp speed. A trip to Alpha Centauri, 4.3 light years distant would take 2.3 years. A trip across the observable universe, 14 billion light year would take 46 years. This is effectively 300 million times the speed of light.
Speaking of accelerating reference frames, has anyone read “Tau Zero” by the great Poul Anderson.
Ferd,
Actually, Columbus WOULD have stayed home save for the largess of the king and queen, and so like most of our modern researchers, he was conducting his investigations on someone else’s nickel.
There was talk, years ago, that these same resonances could be used to measure atmospheric temperatures:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/archive/previous_issues/vol4/v4n1/cutting.htm
DesertYote says:
May 6, 2012 at 11:32 am
Speaking of accelerating reference frames, has anyone read “Tau Zero” by the great Poul Anderson.
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A long time ago. I think I still have it.
And so a potentially interesting subject devolves into a discussion of SF. Heck, why not put thorium reactors on your space ships?
Probability says that the Earth will eventually sustain a cleansing event, be it an impact, solar flare, nearby supernova, simply drowning in its own excrement or what have you. Seems that an intelligent species would be looking into ways in which it might survive such an event. That is, if it were an intelligent species.
Gail Combs says:
May 7, 2012 at 7:53 pm
DesertYote says:
May 6, 2012 at 11:32 am
‘Speaking of accelerating reference frames, has anyone read “Tau Zero” by the great Poul Anderson.
____________________________
A long time ago. I think I still have it.”
Yes, also, and I still have it as well.
;( I loaned mine to someone in the 80s and never got it back.