My Science School

The Peekskill meteorite is a meteorite that crashed into a car on October 9, 1992. One of the best viewed and recorded meteorite events, both the meteorite and the car it crashed into are now famous.

Have you always been confused between the words meteor and meteorite? To understand them better, we should bring another word, meteoroid, as these are all related to the flashes of light that can at times be seen as streaks across the sky-fondly referred to as "shooting stars". Based on where the object is, we use the appropriate term.

Meteoroids are space rocks that could be pieces of asteroids and other debris that are made of rock, iron, and nickel. Orbiting in space for billions of years, these can range in size from tiny dust particles to even small asteroids that are miles across.

When these meteoroids enter a planet's atmosphere, like that of our Earth, at high speed, it burns up in the atmosphere. The shooting star or fireball in this stage is referred to as a meteor.

If a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it is called a meteorite.

44,000 kg every day!

With that out of the way, we can move over to meteorite events. According to scientific estimates, about 44,000 kg of meteoritic material falls on our Earth every day. Most of it, however, is vaporised in the atmosphere to leave a bright trail or shooting stars.

Astronomers and people who pay attention to the night sky can regularly see meteors on any given day. Many of these meteors do survive the trip and hit the ground as well. This means that meteorites too are fairly common.

A meteorite hitting a car, however, is not. The vast majority of meteorites fall unnoticed and a lot of them in uninhabited areas as well. In such a scenario, a car is a rather small target for a meteorite on a very large planet. There have been just a handful of occasions when a meteorite has struck a car. As a result, the Peekskill meteorite of 1992 is among the most historic meteor events in recent history.

Hole in the Malibu

On October 9, 1992, a teenaged Michelle Knapp was watching television in Peekskill, New York. On hearing a sound that she described as a "three car crash", she ran outside to investigate. What she saw, literally, was other-worldly: her 1980 Chevy Malibu had a sizable hole and there was a matching hole in the driveway underneath. In it was a stone, extremely heavy for its size, still warm to touch, and smelling of rotten eggs - the smell of sulphur.

On its way to the Chevy Malibu, the meteor had lit up the sky over the east coast of the U.S. Moving in a north-northeast direction, the meteor had broken over Kentucky before moving over West Virginia and Pennsylvania. It had slowed down in the atmosphere from a speed of 8.8 miles per second to 164 miles per hour when it hit the car. That, however, was still too fast and hence the impact created the damage that it did.

Even though the car, which Knapp had purchased for a few hundred dollars, was damaged, she was able to sell it for thousands of dollars to Lang's Fossils and Meteorites in Cranford, New Jersey. It has since been on display in a number of cities such as New York, Paris, Munich, and Tokyo, and also in museums throughout the world.

The meteorite itself, which weighed over 12kg, was far pricier and it ended up in the hands of collectors. Some portions of the meteorite too are housed in different museums. With a unique texture, it is composed of fragments cemented together in a fine-grained matrix.

Prime time on Friday As the meteor event took place on a Earth is from the sun. From there, it came all the way to strike one car and make it famous.

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A 400-million Euro, 500-MW project to generate heat for the Finnish capital will use seawater from the Baltic even when the sea surface is frozen.

Seawater will be carried to the heat exchangers via a 17-km tunnel being bored from the Baltic seabed - where the temperature is a constant 2 degree C year round. Heat exchangers will transfer and concentrate the heat from the seawater-which is returned to the sea through a nine-km tunnel-to the district heating system where it will reach around 88 degree C.

Already home to the world's largest heat pump, Helsinki is aiming to become carbon neutral by 2050, and the new pump alone is expected to provide up to 40% of the city's heating requirements when it goes online in around 2029. A utility company currently provides around 8% of Helsinki's heating through recovering heat from waste water and the excess from data centres and other buildings.

Frequency converter technology plays an essential role in heat pump product development. ABB’s frequency converters increase the efficiency of Oilon’s heat pumps in almost all of its sites in Helsinki. Frequency converter control can be used for the variable rotational speed control of a heat pump compressor.

“A heat pump must be able to handle different load and temperature conditions. Frequency converter control enables precise control and a large partial capacity range,” Martti Kukkola explains.

Frequency converter technology has Finnish roots – the first frequency converter developed by the engineers of Strömberg controlled the speed of metro trains in Helsinki. In ABB’s hands, the technology has evolved into an extensive frequency converter range, and ABB Finland is responsible for the technology’s global product development.

“Our reasons for choosing ABB are reliability, an extensive range, and equipment that is functional from a techno-economic perspective,” Kukkola says.

Using Oilon’s and ABB’s technologies, Helen has been able to provide its customers with more energy-efficient solutions to cover heating and cooling needs. Valuable heat is produced in a climate-friendly way as a by-product of cooling.

“As a technology leader, we want to be the trailblazer for energy efficiency, and by cooperating with partners, we can do more and have a greater influence in this area. It is valuable to be able to build a more sustainable future with Oilon and Helen by combining Finnish innovation expertise,” says Mika Männistö, Sales Director, ABB Motion Finland.

Energy-efficient frequency converters and motors offer substantial potential for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. ABB encourages all stakeholders to cooperate within the framework of the Energy Efficiency Movement to bring about a comprehensive reduction in energy consumption.

Credit : Energyefficiencymovement.com

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Scientists study meteorites for clues about the origin of Earth and the solar system because most meteorites are bits of asteroids that have fallen to Earth, and asteroids are believed to be leftover material from the time the solar system formed.

In 2005, for the first time ever, scientists scooped up rock samples directly from an asteroid using a spacecraft built especially for that purpose. The name of the spacecraft was Hayabusa. It was a robotic spacecraft developed by the Japan Space Exploration Agency (JAXA).

Hayabusa (Japanese for falcon') was launched on May 9, 2003, and arrived in the vicinity of the asteroid Itokawa in mid-September 2005. In November 2005, it landed on the asteroid and collected samples in the form of tiny grains of rock which it brought back to Earth on June 13, 2010. Hayabusa was the first spacecraft to land and take off from an asteroid.

In December 2014, Japan launched another spacecraft Hayabusa 2 to study the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu and to bring back samples of rock not only from its surface but also from deeper below the surface. Hayabusa 2 reached Ryugu in June 2018.

In September 2018, the spacecraft landed two rovers on the asteroid. They were the first rovers ever to move on an asteroid. They moved with a hopping movement instead of rolling around on wheels. The rovers are designed to take pictures of the landscape and measure the temperatures on the asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 left the asteroid in November-December 2019 and delivered a small capsule that contained the rock and dust samples when it was 220,000 km from the Earth's atmosphere. The capsule safely landed in the South Australian outback in December 2020.

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The Einstein-Rosen bridges or wormhole tunnels use the theory of general relativity. But do they exist beyond the realm of imagination?

Imagine this magic door you can open and that lets you travel from one place to another in less time. This is a wormhole. A hypothetical bridge through space and time, wormholes are shortcuts in the universe.

They are of course hypothetical. These are theoretical passages through space and time. Also called Einstein-Rosen bridges, these are bridges that were proposed by Einstein and physicist Nathan Rosen using the theory of general relativity.

It is the tunnel between two black holes or points in space-time. These are bridges that connect two different points in space-time that create a shortcut and thereby reduce the travel time.

While the existence of wormholes has been predicted mathematically through Einstein's theory of general relativity, no wormholes have been discovered.

Wormholes act as tunnels or theoretical bridges connecting points in space and time in such a manner that the journey between two points is less when compared to that through normal space.

Why called a wormhole?

 It was American theoretical physicist John Wheeler who came up with the word wormhole. The Einstein-Rosen Bridges were compared by him to the movement of a worm through the middle of an apple, eating from one side to another. Were it to travel through the circumference of the apple, it would take a longer time whilst it can travel directly through the apple.

This particular space-time conduit is shorter. This term came into being through this analogy. And thus was born the wormhole.

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On November 6, 1980, Voyager 1 snapped a picture of Saturn while still 8 million km away from it. Scientists discovered a 15th moon orbiting Saturn from the photo the following day. In a year in which it has completed 45 years of operation,

You must be aware that the twin Voyager probes are now travelling in interstellar space, 45 years since their launch. Before they got there, however, they visited the gas giants in our solar system, gleaning a wealth of information from the flybys. While Voyager 2 flew by all four gas giants - Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, - Voyager 1 focussed on Jupiter and Saturn.

Even though Voyager 1 is the first spacecraft to travel beyond the solar system and reach interstellar space, it wasn't the first of the probes to be launched. Launched on September 5, 1977-two weeks after Voyager 2 - Voyager 1, however, was the first to race to Jupiter and Saturn.

Gravitational slingshots

The Voyager missions were planned in such a way that they could maximise a special alignment of the outer planets that happens only once in 176 years. This alignment aided the spacecraft to efficiently use their limited fuel as they moved like a slingshot from one planet to another using gravitational assist.

All the successes that Voyager 1 has achieved might have come to nothing right on the day of the launch. Its rocket came within 3.5 seconds of running out of fuel, meaning Voyager 1 wouldn't have even got off the ground.

Jupiter flyby

Once it did, however, it raced past its twin, going beyond the asteroid belt before Voyager 2 did. And in April 1978, Voyager 1 beamed back the first pictures of Jupiter back to Earth. By March 1979, it had spotted a thin ring around the giant planet. Apart from sending back detailed photographs of Jupiters Galilean moons (lo, Europa, Ganymede, and Castillo), Voyager 1 also found two new moons - Thebe and Metis.

Voyager 1 collected plenty of data and also made some interesting discoveries about Jupiter's satellites. Following its closest approach to Jupiter on March 5, 1979, when it came within 2,80,000 km, it headed over to Saturn, a journey that took it just a little over a year.

Just like how its visit to Jupiter had a lot of findings, so it was with Saturn as the ringed planet revealed many of its secrets. As it flew ever closer to Saturn in October-November 1980, Voyager 1 spotted a number of moons, observed its rings and already known moons, and collected data that had scientists digging for decades.

Programmed searches

One of the moons that Voyager 1 spotted was Atlas, the 15th moon orbiting Saturn. In a photograph taken by the spacecraft on November 6 when it was still 8 million km away, the moon was visible near the bottom of the picture.

The first of several programmed searches for new satellites of Saturn thus had success right away as the Voyager imaging team scientists discovered the moon on November 7. An inner moon of Saturn, orbiting around the outer edge of Saturn's A ring, Atlas takes 14.4 hours to complete its trip around the planet.

Unique perspective

Following its closest approach of Saturn on November 12, Voyager 1 looked back on Saturn four days later on November 16, to observe Saturn and its rings from its unique vantage point. With its primary mission concluded following the Saturn encounter, the focus moved to tracking the spacecraft as it headed to interstellar space.

Having recognised that the Voyagers would eventually make it to interstellar space, NASA had placed Golden Records on board the spacecraft. Designed to carry images, music, and voices from Earth out into the cosmos, the Golden Records have spoken greetings in over 50 languages.

Voyager 1 became the first spacecraft to go beyond the solar system and reach interstellar space on August 25, 2012. At that point, Voyager 1 was over 18 billion km away from the sun. Over a decade later, it has travelled even farther and is now over 23 billion km away from the sun. Voyager 1 has enough fuel to supply power to its instruments until at least 2025, after which it will likely stop collecting scientific data.

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Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez, (born Jan. 29, 1942, Guantánamo, Cuba), Cuban pilot and cosmonaut, the first Latin American, the first person of African descent, and the first Cuban to fly in space. After the revolution of 1959, Tamayo Méndez joined the Cuban air force as a pilot.

Born in 1942, Mendez makes no mention of his father in his book Un cubano en el cosmos (A Cuban in the cosmos). As he lost his mother to tuberculosis while just eight months old, he grew up as a poor orphan in Guantanamo.

Limited schooling

He worked as a shoeshine boy, sold vegetables, delivered milk and worked as an apprentice carpenter by the time he reached his teenage years. Even though he had limited opportunities for schooling, he excelled at it in whatever little chance he got.

After joining the Association of Young Rebels during the Cuban Revolution, Mendez made his way to a technical institute. Here, he saw a chance to pursue his dream of flying and he readily enrolled himself into a course for aviation technicians, passing it with flying colours in 1961.

His success at this course gave him the confidence to become a pilot and make his dream a reality. He was then selected to travel to the Soviet Union to further his studies and learn to fly the Soviet MiG – 15 fighter jet. Mandez rose through the ranks in the next 15 years, becoming a captain in the Cuban Air Force by 1978.

Interkosmos programme

 During the time Mendez was making his way up the Cuban Air Force, the Soviet Union had designed and formed the Interkosmos space programme (1967) and had the first flight of this programme in 1978. The objective of Interkosmos was to help the Soviet Union's allies with crewed and unscrewed missions to space.

The search for the first Cuban Cosmonaut began in 1976 and a long list of 600 was shortlisted to two by 1978: Mendez and the other being Jose Lopez Falcon. It could have been purely based on merit, or it might have been an act of propaganda with political motivations, but what we do know is that Mendez was selected to fly aboard the Soyuz 38 mission.

On September 18, 1980, Mendez created history as he flew aboard Soyuz 38 along with Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Romanenko. On that same day, they docked at the Salyut 6 space station, and Mendez met Soviet cosmonauts Leonid Popov and Valery Ryumin as the hatch opened and was sealed.

Over the next seven days, Mendez completed 124 orbits around the Earth, conducting a number of experiments on science and health. There were a total of nine experiments, including those that studied stress, blood circulation, immunity, balance, and the growth of a single crystal of sucrose in weightlessness.

Instant fame

Mendez and Romanenko landed back on Earth on September 26 and the former was lauded by both the Cubans and the Soviets Mendez became an instant national hero and was honoured with the Hero of the Republic of Cuba medal, and received The Order of Lenin from the Soviets, among many other recognitions.

Mendez, who is now an 80-year-old, rose to the position of brigadier general following his space flight. He spent many years leading the education efforts of the Cuban army. Cuba's Museum of the Revolution in Havana is home to the space suit that Mendez used for his historic Voyage.

The Interkosmos programme successfully flew many non-Soviets, including India's Rakesh Sharma and astronauts from Britain, Japan, France, and Vietnam, among many other countries. Mendez's flight not only made him the first Cuban cosmonaut, but also the first with African heritage to make it to space.

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Self-driving cars are loaded with advanced technology that can sense their environment.

The concept of a driverless car has leapt out of the pages of science fiction with major auto-makers working to make them a reality. So far, driverless cars have logged millions of kilometres in test runs and are steadily becoming a reality despite the many hurdles still to be overcome.

Self-driving cars are loaded with advanced technology like radar, lidar, GPS, cameras, and laser scanners that can sense their environment. The control systems in the car evaluate the sensory information about obstacles, road signs, traffic signals and other cars on the road to chart out a navigable path to the destination. The car's computers accelerate, cruise at 120 kph, slow down, brake and pass without the human driver even touching the steering wheel or gear shift.

In December 2020, Waymo (formerly known as the Google self-driving car project) became the first service provider to offer driver-less taxi rides to the general public, in a part of Phoenix, Arizona, USA. While Honda has launched its self-driving car in Japan, Mercedes-Benz is in the process of doing so.

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3D printing upends the standard manufacturing process. There is no doubt that 3D printing is the future and that we may be able to ‘create’ everything, including organs.

The wheel is one of the earliest inventions of mankind. It revolutionised our life. Going forward, we have made many strides in varied sectors to change life as we know it. Enter 3D Printing, And now, we are in the throes of changing the way matter is being looked at and processed.

With 3D printing, life has become easy and different. You can now print what you want. From hobbyists to businesses everyone is using 3D printing. 3D printing upends the standard manufacturing process

What's 3D Printing

3D printing is three-dimensional printing and manufacturing of products, and it is an additive manufacturing process.

Additive manufacturing is the process of creating an object by building layers. This is in contravention to subtractive manufacturing where the end product is created by removing or cutting away matter from a solid block of material.

Since 3D printing is done by adding material and building layers, the layering goes on for n number of times until the end product is realised.

Application of 3D printing

 There is no doubt that 3D printing is the future and that we may be able to 'create' everything, including organs. While the manufacturing and construction industry has been seeing a lot of applications of 3D printing, other areas such as the medical industry, food, packaging, and arms industry are also being revolutionised by 3D printing technology.

 The cost-effectiveness, ease of manufacturing, ability to make complicated parts, and less waste generation are just some of the aspects in favour of 3D printing. From plastic models to steel parts and surgical implants are manufactured through 3D printing.

3D bioprinting is the process of applying 3D printing to produce tissues and organs. So imagine this scenario. Instead of waiting for a donor, what if we can just print the organs using the cells? We are still tiptoeing on bioprinting. Recently, a woman had her external ear reconstructed using a 3D-printed living tissue implant. The transplant was used on a woman from Mexico and was carried out in March in the US. The woman was born with a small right ear.

Over the years the construction industry has seen a lot of strides. Commercial buildings and houses have been created using 3D printing. The first 3D-printed bridge came up in Castilla-La Mancha Park in Alcobendas, Madrid.

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Young Chester Carlson worked as a patent analyser for a manufacturer of electrical components. This required laborious paperwork - he had to submit multiple copies when registering his company's inventions and ideas at the patent office. Each duplicate had to be written by hand. Carlson suffered from arthritis. He knew there had to be another way of doing his job.

Working in his kitchen during his free time, Carlson discovered that some materials changed their electrical properties when exposed to light called photo-conductivity. After years of research, he came up with a patent in 1942 for a reproduction technique based on this, which he named 'electric photography. Another 20 years went by before he found a company interested enough to manufacture the machine. He was turned away by the likes of IBM, GE and RCA, until in 1960, the Haloid company finally thought his idea marketable.

The company was later named Xerox. The process became so popular all over the world that the word ‘xeroxing’ (a trademark) is used instead of the correct term-‘photocopying’!

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From fighter aircraft and missiles to cars, there are many examples of products made by reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is the process by which a product is dismantled to find out how it works so that a duplicate can be made or it can be improved upon. It is done for commercial purposes. It tries to deduce details of product design and manufacture in the absence of complete documentation. It is also used in military or commercial espionage. The rival's or the enemy's prototype is stolen and disassembled to collect sensitive data so that a similar product can be made or countermeasures taken. During World War II, British and American forces found that German cans were sturdy and had an excellent design. They used reverse engineering to copy the design and produce similar cans. They came to be known as Jerry cans. From fighter aircraft and missiles to cars, there are many examples of products made by reverse engineering.

Reverse engineering is also used for software analysis. It is done to study the source code of a program if it is lost, or with a view to improving the program. It is also done to fix a bug or a virus.

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