Adventure Ausrama Blog

Australia continues to make great strides in new developments thus helping the world move forward. For such a small country in population terms it is in the big league. CSIRO as always is at the forefront, leading the research team. Recently in Western Australia the SKA Pathfinder radio telescope (ASKAP) took a photo of the sky with much improved clarity and over a larger area than ever before. It is much faster as well. Professor Brian Boyle said a new era for astronomy has arrived. ASKAP is part of the International Square Kilometer Array (SKA) with South Africa. Scientists are so impressed they are touring Europe explaining their results. The aperture-synthesis telescope is the first of its type to be used. CSIRO's phased array has perfected the system. Performance is much better than current telescopes. Photos are created from radio waves. A massive area of 10 square degrees is covered, which is 50 times bigger than the a full moon. The "snap" is j

CSIRO has made a new chip for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA). A decision on where the SKA will be located, Australia or South Africa, has yet to be made. The new telescope array will analyse data from small radio dishes spread over a 3,000 kilometer area. Silana is working with CSIRO on the chip made of silicon-on-sapphire (SOS). It is designed for the mid-band range (500MHz - 2GHz). The unit is a one piece integrated circuit board replacing the multi-unit board previously used for this process. The new SKA "telescope" will be the largest ever built and it will give high resolution images of distant parts of the universe. Though the array will evaluate a wide range of frequencies, the mid-range is important as it is the emission line for hydrogen which gives the distribution of galaxies and stars. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/ http://

Dark energy is no longer theory it is fact. Evidence from 200,000 galaxies confirms the hypothesis that dark energy is pulling the universe apart. It is a constant in that it pushes uniformally causing steady expansion of the universe. Einstein was correct after all. He said there was a force pushing out stopping the universe from collapsing. This was known as "Einstein's biggest blunder'. He had to enter something into an equation which stopped the universe from collapsing. Though he didn't use the term "dark energy", this was the force he was talking about. He was wrong about the universe being static but he quickly revised his ideas when Edwin Hubble found that the universe was expanding. Gravity is no longer accepted as the force driving the universe apart. Gravity cannot push and pull at the same time. Calculations show that dark energy makes up 74 per cent of the universe. Dark energy is not he same as dark matter. There is 22 per cent of dark

Something is happening - out there! Yes, something mysterious has occurred in space. Astronomers are aghast at the total disappearance of a broad ring around Jupiter. This is a shock and totally unexpected. Things in space are supposed to be quite stable. The ring was not on a picture taken on May 8. The band was very large, twice as broad as the diameter of Earth. A view with binoculars clearly shows that the "bottom" half of the planet is now all white. The twin banded planet is now "held together" by a single band - quite disconcerting. Have no fear. The disappearance could be only temporary. Jupiter's second belt could be covered by cloud higher in the planet's atmosphere. Ammonia can cause ice crystals to form which develops into cirrus clouds. Wind patterns have probably changed on the planet. This has led to a climate change. Just why the bands are brown is a mystery anyway. Only a few probes have been sent to Jupiter so knowledge about it is limited.