NASA Satellite debris has hit the Earth

A 12,500-pound decommissioned satellite that was lazily falling toward the Earth over the past two days finally came down around midnight Friday, NASA said early Saturday.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) fell back to Earth between 11:23 p.m. Friday and 1:09 a.m. Saturday, NASA said in an update on its website. The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California said the satellite penetrated the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, the agency said. It is not yet known when exactly the satellite hit Earth, and whether it ended up in water or on land, NASA said.

The satellite took longer than expected to return to Earth after 20 years in space. Unpredictable, and completely out of control, the satellite was expected to shower 26 pieces of space junk across a 500-mile linear crash zone. Most of its parts are believed to be burned up.

At 10:30 p.m. Friday, NASA said the satellite’s reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere was expected between 11:45 p.m. Friday and 12:45 a.m. Saturday, and its path was over Canada, Africa and the Atlatic, Pacific and Indian oceans. The risk to public safety is very remote.

Small variations in reentry timing means vast differences as to where UARS would come down. The satellite, designed to help scientists understand climate change, circled the planet at a 57-degree inclination to the Equator, a path that took it every hour and a half from the frozen north to the frigid seas beyond the southern coast of Australia — and back again.

“It’s dancing all over the place. It looks like the trend is to go longer than we think,” said Bill Ailor, an engineer with the Aerospace Corp., who has been monitoring the satellite.

For two days, NASA had predicted that its satellite would arrive Friday afternoon or evening. But the satellite slowed down Thursday and Friday, showing no eagerness to leave space.

“There are random forces of nature acting on the satellite that we can neither control nor predict,” NASA spokeswoman Beth Dickey said Friday evening. “Very small changes have very large consequences over time, and in this case, the change has been in the orientation of the spacecraft.”

The difficulty in predicting the satellite’s behavior was demonstrated by changing predictions even over small periods of time. At 7:30 p.m. Friday, NASA put out an update saying the satellite was on track to come down between 11 p.m. Friday and 3 a.m. Saturday.

On Friday morning, the satellite was 100 miles up, NASA said. UARS was expected to heat up, partially melt and break into pieces, NASA said this week.

The biggest piece would weigh more than 300 pounds, which would pose a hazard if it fell on a populated area. But most of the planet is open ocean.

The Aerospace forecast Friday night, based on Air Force tracking data, showed that UARS would hit the atmosphere over the southern Indian Ocean at about 1 a.m. Eastern time.

That might mean that fiery fragments could be seen in Australia about 15 minutes later.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich, where he later on began his schooling at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree.

During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work and in 1908 he was appointed Privatdozent in Berne. In 1909 he became Professor Extraordinary at Zurich, in 1911 Professor of Theoretical Physics at Prague, returning to Zurich in the following year to fill a similar post. In 1914 he was appointed Director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Physical Institute and Professor in the University of Berlin. He became a German citizen in 1914 and remained in Berlin until 1933 when he renounced his citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America to take the position of Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton*. He became a United States citizen in 1940 and retired from his post in 1945.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Einstein always appeared to have a clear view of the problems of physics and the determination to solve them. He had a strategy of his own and was able to visualize the main stages on the way to his goal. He regarded his major achievements as mere stepping-stones for the next advance.

At the start of his scientific work, Einstein realized the inadequacies of Newtonian mechanics and his special theory of relativity stemmed from an attempt to reconcile the laws of mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. He dealt with classical problems of statistical mechanics and problems in which they were merged with quantum theory: this led to an explanation of the Brownian movement of molecules. He investigated the thermal properties of light with a low radiation density and his observations laid the foundation of the photon theory of light.

In his early days in Berlin, Einstein postulated that the correct interpretation of the special theory of relativity must also furnish a theory of gravitation and in 1916 he published his paper on the general theory of relativity. During this time he also contributed to the problems of the theory of radiation and statistical mechanics.

In the 1920's, Einstein embarked on the construction of unified field theories, although he continued to work on the probabilistic interpretation of quantum theory, and he persevered with this work in America. He contributed to statistical mechanics by his development of the quantum theory of a monatomic gas and he has also accomplished valuable work in connection with atomic transition probabilities and relativistic cosmology.

After his retirement he continued to work towards the unification of the basic concepts of physics, taking the opposite approach, geometrisation, to the majority of physicists.

Einstein's researches are, of course, well chronicled and his more important works includeSpecial Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938). Among his non-scientific works, About Zionism (1930), Why War?(1933), My Philosophy (1934), and Out of My Later Years (1950) are perhaps the most important.

Albert Einstein received honorary doctorate degrees in science, medicine and philosophy from many European and American universities. During the 1920's he lectured in Europe, America and the Far East and he was awarded Fellowships or Memberships of all the leading scientific academies throughout the world. He gained numerous awards in recognition of his work, including the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London in 1925, and the Franklin Medal of the Franklin Institute in 1935.

Einstein's gifts inevitably resulted in his dwelling much in intellectual solitude and, for relaxation, music played an important part in his life. He married Mileva Maric in 1903 and they had a daughter and two sons; their marriage was dissolved in 1919 and in the same year he married his cousin, Elsa Löwenthal, who died in 1936. He died on April 18, 1955 at Princeton, New Jersey.

Will Einstein's theory of relativity be proved false?

Will Einstein's 1905 theory of relativity - one of the most fundamental pillars of physics - that underpins "nothing can travel faster than light-300,000 kms, or 186,000 miles, per second" be proved wrong? The speculations started coming after scientists at the world's largest physics lab CERN claim to have clocked sub-atomic particles or neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light.

European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN, near Geneva, says a neutrino beam shot off from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 730 km away in Italy, whooshed 60 nanoseconds faster than light, with a speed of 186,282 miles per second.

But, how could the fact be ignored that Einstein's theory has been tested thousands of times over the past 106 years? And, only recently have here been just slight hints that the behaviour of some elementary particles of matter might not fit into it.

If the findings by the CERN are correct, it would force an overhaul of the fundamental laws of nature and how the universe works. These particles are 6 km/second faster than light, which is strange because 100 years ago, Einstein suggested nothing can go faster than light. If these scientists are right and Einstein was wrong, whatever we know about our Universe will soon be turned on its head.

"The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," reported IANS.

Earlier, the Chicago team had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but then the giant margin of error undermined its scientific significance.

According to eminent cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this is an extraordinary claim."

"It is premature to comment on this," said Professor Stephen Hawking, the world's most well-known physicist. "Further experiments and clarifications are needed," he added. Till other scientists do the same experiment and make similar observations, the new results will not be accepted. And that will take a few months.

The high level of caution is normal in science where anything that could be a breakthrough discovery, especially overturning well-established thinking, is in principle always checked and rechecked by other researchers.

"Only when the dust finally settles should we dare draw any firm conclusions," said Professor Jeff Forshaw, a professor of particle physics at Britain's Manchester University.

Scientists agree that if the results derived by CERN are confirmed, it would prompt a fundamental rethink of the laws of physics.

CERN Experiment Confirms Cosmic Rays Influence Cloud Seeds

Long-anticipated results of the CLOUD experiment at CERN in Geneva appear in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Nature (25 August). The Director General of CERN stirred controversy last month, by saying that the CLOUD team’s report should be politically correct about climate change (see my 17 July post below). The implication was that they should on no account endorse the Danish heresy – Henrik Svensmark’s hypothesis that most of the global warming of the 20th Century can be explained by the reduction in cosmic rays due to livelier solar activity, resulting in less low cloud cover and warmer surface temperatures.

Willy-nilly the results speak for themselves, and it’s no wonder the Director General was fretful.

Jasper Kirkby of CERN and his 62 co-authors, from 17 institutes in Europe and the USA, announce big effects of pions from an accelerator, which simulate the cosmic rays and ionize the air in the experimental chamber. The pions strongly promote the formation of clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules – aerosols of the kind that may grow into cloud condensation nuclei on which cloud droplets form. What’s more, there’s a very important clarification of the chemistry involved.