Monday, February 07, 2011

Around and around

My most recent poem/song "Forged in the Stars", contains the lines:
flung into space, alone in the dark,
around and around in the night.

I was thinking of the atoms going around the sun. It's neat to see it can also refer to them spinning around.


http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19955-spinning-cosmic-dust-motes-set-speed-record.html

12 January 2011 by David Shiga

Some dust grains out in deep space are spinning at mind-boggling rates. According to data from the European Space Agency's Planck space telescope, these interstellar particles are turning on their axis tens of billions of times every second.

The measurements, which set a record for spinning objects, could lead to a more accurate map of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, by allowing scientists to better account for distortions caused by microwaves emitted by the grains.

The smallest grains, only 100 atoms or so wide, are so light that they can be set spinning by collisions with photons and fast-moving atoms. "Atoms or photons that come along knock the hell out of them," says Charles Lawrence of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a member of the Planck science team.

----- (skipping)

..

No comments:

Post a Comment