'Shot in the Dark' Star Explosion Stuns Astronomers

"The present state of science and technological knowledge permits the building of machines that can rise beyond the limits of the atmosphere of the Earth."

~ Hermann Oberth, foreword to By Rocket into Planetary Space~

"Pengelana Antar Bintang"

Added and Edited By:

Arip Nurahman

Department of Physics, Faculty of sciences and Mathematics
Indonesia University of Education

and

Follower Open Course Ware at MIT-Harvard University, M.A. USA

The robotic Palomar 60 inch telescope imaged the afterglow of GRB 070125 on January 26, 2007. The robotic Palomar 60-inch telescope imaged the afterglow of GRB 070125 on January 26, 2007. Right: An image taken of the same field on February 16 with the 10-meter Keck I telescope reveals no trace of an afterglow, or a host galaxy. The white cross in this zoom-in view marks the GRB’s location. The two nearest galaxies, and their distances, are marked with arrows. Credit: B. Cenko, et al. and the W. M. Keck Observatory.

When a shot is fired, one expects to see a person with a gun. In the same way, whenever a giant star explodes, astronomers expect to see a galaxy of stars surrounding the site of the blast. This comes right out of basic astronomy, since almost all stars in our universe belong to galaxies.

But a stellar explosion seen last January has shocked astronomers because when they looked for the star’s parent galaxy, they saw nothing at all. The explosion took place in the middle of nowhere, far away from any detectable galaxy. The astronomers saw no hint of a galaxy even though they looked for one with the world’s largest telescope: the giant Keck I telescope in Hawaii.

"Here we have this very bright burst, yet it's surrounded by darkness on all sides," says Brad Cenko, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. Cenko is the leader of the team that made this discovery. The team includes astronomers from both Caltech and Penn State University.

The explosion belongs to a class of events know as gamma-ray bursts, or GRBs for short. GRBs are triggered when a very heavy star can no longer produce energy. The core of the star implodes to form a black hole — a region of space where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. The black hole spins very fast, producing intense magnetic fields. As inrushing gas from the star spirals toward the black hole, the magnetic fields fling some of the material away from the black hole in two powerful jets. These jets produce the GRB.

Several spacecraft detected the explosion on January 25, 2007. Observations by NASA's Swift satellite pinpointed the explosion, named GRB 070125 for its detection date, to a region of sky in the constellation Gemini. It was one of the brightest bursts of the year, and the Caltech/Penn State team moved quickly to observe the burst’s location with large telescopes on the ground.

Using the team's robotic 60-inch telescope at Palomar Observatory in Calif., the astronomers discovered that the burst had a bright afterglow that was fading fast. They observed the afterglow in detail with two of the world's largest telescopes, the Gemini North telescope and the Keck I telescope, both near the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea.

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows the Tadpole Galaxy, also known as UGC 10214. A recent galaxy collision produced the long tail in the Tadpole Galaxy. If GRB 070125 exploded in a similar tail, only Hubble could detect the tail.

What came next was a total surprise. Contrary to experience with more than a hundred previous GRBs, The Gemini and Keck observations saw no trace of a galaxy at the burst’s location. "A Keck image could have revealed a very small, faint galaxy at that distance," says team member Derek Fox of Penn State.

So why didn’t the team see a galaxy? One possibility is that the star formed in the outskirts of two galaxies that are colliding. Hubble Space Telescope images of colliding galaxies show that many of them have long star tails that are produced by the gravity of the two galaxies. These tails are very faint, and would not show up in Keck images at the burst’s measured distance from Earth. If this idea is correct, it should be possible to detect the tail by taking a long exposure with Hubble. "That's definitely our next stop," says Cenko.

"Many Swift discoveries have left astronomers scratching their heads in befuddlement," adds Swift lead scientist Neil Gehrels of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But this discovery of a long GRB with no host galaxy is one of the most perplexing of all."



Closing;

"Banyak umat manusia yang menyangsikan akan perjalanan antar bintang-bintang, namun saya adalah salah satu orang yang yakin dengan sepenuh hati bahwa penjelajahan umat manusia ke negri antar bintang itu akan segera terwujud dalam beberapa abad mendatang" 

~Arip~

Source;
1. NASA
2. http://hubblesite.org/
3. http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/home/index.html

Bacaan Lebih Lanjut Mengenai Teori Adi Dawai

Popular books and articles

• Davies, Paul; Julian R. Brown (Eds.) (July 31 1992). Superstrings: A Theory of Everything? (Reprint edition ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 244. ISBN 0-521-43775-X.
• Gefter, Amanda (December 2005). "Is string theory in trouble?". New Scientist. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18825305.800-is-string-theory-in-trouble.html?full=true. – An interview with Leonard Susskind, the theoretical physicist who discovered that string theory is based on one-dimensional objects and now is promoting the idea of multiple universes.
• Green, Michael (September 1986). "Superstrings". Scientific American. http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/mbg15/superstrings/superstrings.html.
• Greene, Brian (October 20 2003). The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory (Reissue edition ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. pp. 464. ISBN 0-393-05858-1.
• Greene, Brian (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. pp. 569. ISBN 0-375-41288-3.
• Gribbin, John (1998). The Search for Superstrings, Symmetry, and the Theory of Everything. London: Little Brown and Company. pp. 224. ISBN 0-316-32975-4.
• Halpern, Paul (2004). The Great Beyond: Higher Dimensions, Parallel Universes, and the Extraordinary Search for a Theory of Everything. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.. pp. 326. ISBN 0-471-46595-X.
• Hooper, Dan (2006). Dark Cosmos: In Search of Our Universe's Missing Mass and Energy. New York: HarperCollins. pp. 240. ISBN 978-0-06-113032-8.
• Kaku, Michio (April 1994). Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 384. ISBN 0-19-508514-0.
• Musser, George (2008). The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Indianapolis: Alpha. pp. 368. ISBN 978-1-59-257702-6.
• Penrose, Roger (February 22 2005). The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe. Knopf. pp. 1136. ISBN 0-679-45443-8.
• Randall, Lisa (September 1 2005). Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions. New York: Ecco Press. pp. 512. ISBN 0-06-053108-8.
• Smolin, Lee (2006). The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.. pp. 392. ISBN 0-618-55105-0.
• Susskind, Leonard (December 2006). The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. New York: Hachette Book Group/Back Bay Books. pp. 403. ISBN 0-316-01333-1.
• Taubes, Gary (November 1986). "Everything's Now Tied to Strings" Discover Magazine vol 7, #11. (Popular article, probably the first ever written, on the first superstring revolution.)
• Vilenkin, Alex (2006). Many Worlds in One: The Search for Other Universes. New York: Hill and Wang. pp. 235. ISBN 0-8090-9523-8.
• Witten, Edward (June 2002). "The Universe on a String". Astronomy Magazine. http://www.sns.ias.edu/~witten/papers/string.pdf. – An easy article for everybody outside physics wanting to understand the very basics of the theory.
• Woit, Peter (2006). Not Even Wrong - The Failure of String Theory And the Search for Unity in Physical Law. London: Jonathan Cape &: New York: Basic Books. pp. 290. ISBN 0-224-07605-1 & ISBN 978-0-465-09275-8.

Textbooks

• Binétruy, Pierre (2007). Supersymmetry: Theory, Experiment, and Cosmology, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850954-7.
• Dine, Michael (2007). Supersymmetry and String Theory: Beyond the Standard Model, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-85841-0.
• Paul H. Frampton (1974). Dual Resonance Models. Frontiers in Physics. ISBN 0-805-32581-6.
• Gasperini, Maurizio (2007). Elements of String Cosmology, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86875-4.
• Michael Green, John H. Schwarz and Edward Witten (1987). Superstring theory, Cambridge University Press. The original textbook.
  • Vol. 1: Introduction. ISBN 0-521-35752-7.
  • Vol. 2: Loop amplitudes, anomalies and phenomenology. ISBN 0-521-35753-5.
• Kiritsis, Elias (2007). String Theory in a Nutshell, Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12230-4.
• Polchinski, Joseph (1998). String Theory, Cambridge University Press. A modern textbook.
  • Vol. 1: An introduction to the bosonic string. ISBN 0-521-63303-6.
  • Vol. 2: Superstring theory and beyond. ISBN 0-521-63304-4.
• Johnson, Clifford (2003). D-branes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-80912-6.
• Zwiebach, Barton (2004). A First Course in String Theory, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-83143-1. Errata are available
• Katrin Becker, Melanie Becker and John H. Schwarz (2007). String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction , Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-86069-5
• Leonard Susskind, (2006). The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory And The Illusion Of Intelligent Design, Little, Brown & Company ISBN 0-316-15579-9
• Szabo, Richard J. (Reprinted 2007). An Introduction to String Theory and D-brane Dynamics, Imperial College Press. ISBN 978-1-86094-427-7.

The Science Behind The 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics

"Nothing will stop us. The road to the stars is steep and dangerous. But we're not afraid . . . Space flights can't be stopped. This isn't the work of one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development."

— Yuri Gagarin, regards the first death in space (Vladimir Komarov), 1967.

Delve deeper into the enigma of dark energy. These sections will give you an even closer look at the importance of dark energy, theories about its existence, and the techniques and historical background that led into its discovery.



1.What Is Dark Energy? Does it give us answers — or just reveal more questions?     

2.Fate of the Universe Will dark energy eventually tear the universe's atoms apart?  



3. Type Ia Supernovae How exploding stars help measure the cosmos





4. Out of Space, Back in Time How can we see what happened in the early universe?



5. Did Einstein Predict Dark Energy? He called it his "biggest blunder." But was it?




6.  Related Links Find more topical dark energy information  



7. Credits Special thanks to these contributors  


 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011 was divided, one half awarded to Saul Perlmutter, the other half jointly to Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe through observations of distant supernovae".

 

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2011

• Summary
• Prize Announcement
• Press Release
• Popular Information
• Advanced Information

Saul Perlmutter

• Biographical
• Interview

• Photo Gallery
• Other Resources

Brian P. Schmidt

• Biographical
• Interview

• Other Resources

Adam G. Riess

• Biographical
• Interview

• Photo Gallery
• Other Resources

Photo: Roy Kaltschmidt. Courtesy: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Saul Perlmutter

Born	1959 (age 51–52) Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, U.S.
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics
Institutions	UC Berkeley/LBNL
Alma mater	Harvard (AB) / UC Berkeley (PhD)
Doctoral advisor	Richard A. Muller[1]
Known for	Accelerating universe / Dark energy
Notable awards	Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award (2002) Shaw Prize in Astronomy (2006) Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2007) Nobel Prize in Physics (2011)

Photo: Belinda Pratten, Australian National University

Brian Schmidt

Born	February 24, 1967 (1967-02-24) (age 44) Missoula, Montana, United States
Alma mater	University of Arizona (1989), Harvard University (1993)
Doctoral advisor	Robert Kirshner
Notable awards	Shaw Prize in Astronomy (2006) Nobel Prize in Physics (2011)

Photo: Homewood Photography

Adam Riess

Born	December 1969 (age 41) Washington, D.C., U.S.
Residence	United States
Nationality	American
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Johns Hopkins University / Space Telescope Science Institute
Alma mater	Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, University of California, Berkeley
Known for	Accelerating universe / Dark energy
Notable awards	Shaw Prize in Astronomy (2006) Nobel Prize in Physics (2011)

Written in the stars

(Photo by: Whisnu Trie Seno Ajie, Indonesia University of Education,
Former President at Cakrawala Asto Club)

"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice..." 
~Robert Frost, Fire and Ice, 1920~

What will be the final destiny of the Universe? 

Probably it will end in ice, if we are to believe this year's Nobel Laureates in Physics. They have studied several dozen exploding stars, called supernovae, and discovered that the Universe is expanding at an ever-accelerating rate. The discovery came as a complete surprise even to the Laureates themselves.

In 1998, cosmology was shaken at its foundations as two research teams presented their findings. Headed by Saul Perlmutter, one of the teams had set to work in 1988. Brian Schmidt headed another team, launched at the end of 1994, where Adam Riess was to play a crucial role.

The research teams raced to map the Universe by locating the most distant supernovae. More sophisticated telescopes on the ground and in space, as well as more powerful computers and new digital imaging sensors (CCD, Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009), opened the possibility in the 1990s to add more pieces to the cosmological puzzle.

The teams used a particular kind of supernova, called type Ia supernova. It is an explosion of an old compact star that is as heavy as the Sun but as small as the Earth. A single such supernova can emit as much light as a whole galaxy. All in all, the two research teams found over 50 distant supernovae whose light was weaker than expected - this was a sign that the expansion of the Universe was accelerating. The potential pitfalls had been numerous, and the scientists found reassurance in the fact that both groups had reached the same astonishing conclusion.

For almost a century, the Universe has been known to be expanding as a consequence of the Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. However, the discovery that this expansion is accelerating is astounding. If the expansion will continue to speed up the Universe will end in ice.

The acceleration is thought to be driven by dark energy, but what that dark energy is remains an enigma - perhaps the greatest in physics today. What is known is that dark energy constitutes about three quarters of the Universe. Therefore the findings of the 2011 Nobel Laureates in Physics have helped to unveil a Universe that to a large extent is unknown to science. And everything is possible again.

Read more about this year's prize

Information for the Public Pdf 4,9 MB

Scientific Background Pdf 1 MB

In order to read the text you need Acrobat Reader.

Links and Further Reading

---

1. Saul Perlmutter, U.S. citizen. Born 1959 in Champaign-Urbana, IL, USA. Ph.D. 1986 from University of California, Berkeley, USA. Head of the Supernova Cosmology Project, Professor of Astrophysics, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA.
www.physics.berkeley.edu/research/faculty/perlmutter.html

2. Brian P. Schmidt, U.S. and Australian citizen. Born 1967 in Missoula, MT, USA. Ph.D. 1993 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Head of the High-z Supernova Search Team, Distinguished Professor, Australian National University, Weston Creek, Australia.
msowww.anu.edu.au/~brian/

3. Adam G. Riess, U.S. citizen. Born 1969 in Washington, DC, USA. Ph.D. 1996 from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA. Professor of Astronomy and Physics, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
www.stsci.edu/~ariess/
Prize amount: SEK 10 million, with one half to Saul Perlmutter and the other half to be shared equally between Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess.

Contact persons: Erik Huss, Press Officer, Phone +46 8 673 95 44, mobile +46 70 673 96 50, erik.huss@kva.se
Annika Moberg, Editor, Phone +46 8 673 95 22, Mobile +46 70 673 96 90, annika.moberg@kva.se

"Aku sadar bahwa ada keindahan lain yang memukau di Alam Semesta ini selain dari 'Cinta' "

~Arip~

Sources:

1. http://hubblesite.org/
2. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/#