The Sun is the primary responsibility of which came to life on Earth. Its heat and radiation feed most terrestrial ecosystems, and when he dies, is believed to swell and that will destroy the planet that has allowed to flourish. Only he accumulated 99.9 percent of the mass of the solar system. Every second, making four million tons of matter into energy. Sometimes stomach from his ardent heated to 15 million degrees Celsius, the latest solar coatings emit powerful jolts of matter and energy that hit Earth and cause blackouts and satellite problems changes in Earth’s magnetic field. To make matters worse, it appears that the cycles of solar activity influence Earth’s climate and may even trigger periods of glaciation.
Much of what is known today about this’ creator “We owe much to the” Solar and Heliospheric Observatory “SOHO, one very old probe this December 2 has completed 20 years since its launch. In all this time, he has been watching the sun permanently and allowed to evolve a branch of science, solar physics, which previously had grown from ground-based observatories. Thanks to him, today known better how the Sun works and can influence the Earth, as it has allowed to answer crucial questions about the solar interior, the origin of the solar wind (flow of matter ejected from the star) or dynamics of the outermost layers of the star.
“SOHO ended the idea that the Sun was a static and stable object, and the vision changed the dynamics beast is actually” said Bernhard Fleck, head of the SOHO mission by the European Space Agency. (Two decades of discoveries, according to the ESA).
For example, until it began to send their data, not much was known about the “space weather” that set of phenomena that affect the environment in which ships operate. Neither knew much about coronal mass ejections (CMEs, in English) these violent flares the Sun ejected into space. But that’s not all.
A tireless vigilant
“The SOHO has been very important for solar physics and has contributed to many areas. Everyone working in the sun have exploited it for something, “explains Hector Socas, a solar physicist at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Canary Islands. “It takes a very comprehensive set of tools that allows you to get very different data, by observing light from different wavelengths (which is and that which corresponds to the X or ultraviolet rays).” Moreover, as said, the probe is observing the Sun continuously, which allows obtaining useful data for scientists.
To do this, NASA placed the SOHO in the Lagrangian point L1, one position in which the gravitational influence of the sun and Earth are offset. In addition, it synchronized orbit SOHO with Earth, so they are always aligned and probe can “look” towards the sun. This could also be said otherwise, and that the scientists created an “artificial world” to monitor the Sun
Apart from the solar surface to see how it behaves, SOHO has enabled solar seismology study to understand how inside (on Earth something similar happens. Thanks to earthquakes can be guess what he’s done inside). To make matters worse, the SOHO has also become a unique lookout for “hunt” comets.
“SOHO is one of the main discoverers of comets. This occurs because comets are very visible when they are near the sun, when developing the tail (the solar wind and radiation interact with the rock surface of the object and generate long luminous halo). “
The probe was also a key ingredient in understanding the solar neutrino problem, particles coming to Earth and “challenged” to physical, since coming to the planet to a lesser amount than was expected according to the workings of the sun. However, the scientists found that neutrinos were transformed into other neutrinos on their way from the Sun to the Earth, and therefore not detected. So important was this finding, who received the Nobel Prize in Physics this year.
If the SOHO allowed to understand that the sun is a huge ball of plasma and energy constantly changing and evolving, and has effects on the neighborhood of the Earth and all the ships that the man wants to launch into space, was due to chance. In 1998, a computer error caused lost contact with him and began to spin on itself, with the result that its solar panels failed to supply power to the batteries. Though an international campaign was busy with radio telescopes look, which in the vast space is like looking for a needle in a haystack, SOHO was lost duranet four months. By a twist of fate, it was possible to find time before the panels return to recharge their batteries and the ship could restart their systems.
However, a mission that would last five years is two decades watching .. the sun and for 5 years, the company makes with the SDO probe, in order to unravel the mysteries of our star
Source: ABC.es
YR
No comments:
Post a Comment