Physics Talk

NASA/SpaceX / Public domain;  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:SpaceX_Crew_Dragon_(More_cropped).jpg Today, on the 30th of May 2020, experienced US astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Herley will be launched into orbit. Their mission to the International Space Station, known as Crew Demo-2, will make them the first astronauts to launch from American soil in almost a decade. It will also be the first manned space mission for SpaceX. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk who has previously promised to send paying customers into orbit sparking a new era of space tourism. [1] His long-term goals for the company include the colonisation of Mars. [2] Resurrection In 2011, NASA officially retired its 30-year Space Shuttle Program. Many believe that a successful SpaceX mission would ‘resurrect the US's human spaceflight capabilities and open a new era of commercial space exploration.’ [3] NASA’s decision to retire the programme was motivated by its plans to ‘devote its res...

Picture credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Naval Research Lab/Giacintucci, S.; XMM:ESA/XMM; Radio: NCRA/TIFR/GMRTN; Infrared: 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF Astronomers have detected the 'biggest explosion since the big bang' using high power telescopes: NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, the ESA's XMM-Newton, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope in India and the Murchison Widefield Array in Australia. This explosion has easily surpassed the previous record held by an eruption from a cluster named MS 0735.6+7421 in which 'a mass of about 300 million Suns was swallowed'. This latest outburst is said to be 'five times bigger than any other known explosion'. Calculations suggest that approximately 5 x 10 54  Joules of energy would be required to cause an explosion of this magnitude. The calculated amount of energy involved is around 9 x 10 33  times more than annual global energy consumption (5.8 x 10 20  Joules). The explosion was ...