About five months ago, physicists at CERN released astonishing news:  An experiment which involved firing a beam of neutrinos from the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland at a neutrino detector in Italy found that the neutrino's had travelled very slightly faster than the speed of light.  This was absolutely huge news, since one of the central tenets of Einstein's theory of special relativity is that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, and represents the absolute maximum possible speed that can exist in our universe.  Recent rumours on a CERN internal blog suggest that a faulty cable may have induced a timing error which correlates exactly with the discrepancy between the measured speed and the speed of light.  The actual announcement which followed shortly after is, naturally, a little less conclusive, merely suggesting two issues which have been identified which may have contributed to error, and that these items will be tested in the next experiment in June.

The original experimental results, if verified, would represent the first crack in Einstein's theories which had up till then survived every single test in almost one hundred years.  Science demands that any claim must be tested experimentally, and a claim as huge as this attracted a great deal of physicists ready to give it a go.  Unfortunately, neutrinos generators are hard to come by (This particular unit is part of the Large Hadron Collider), so nobody else can even attempt to repeat the experiment.  Fortunately, the physicists who announced the experiment are good scientists who are rightfully skeptical of their own results and have publically called for suggestions as to where they might have erred, and have been working through the many suggestions.  They have now identified two faults in their equipment which could have affected the readings:  A bad fibre-optic cable, which would cause small delays in signal transmission, and a bad crystal in a timing circuit.  These issues have both been dealt with, and another run is scheduled for June, which will confirm just how much of a discrepancy was introduced.

As mentioned in my previous write-up (and many other places), we have at least one prior set of data which would prove that neutrino's travel slower than light, and not faster:  The supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud of 1987 (SN1987a) released a powerful burst of neutrinos, which were detected on Earth a short period after the light from the explosion first reached Earth.  If the speeds reported by last year's experiment were accurate, then we would have expected SN1987a's neutrino burst to arrive a full four years before the light arrived (It is several hundred thousand light years distant).

Whatever June's experiment reveals, scientists will be very excited.  If the measurement was inaccurate after all, then we will have proved, yet again and with even greated certainty, that Einstein was right, and the physicists at CERN will have learned even more about the proper running of such cutting edge and massive experiments.  But if the speed discrepancy doesn't go away, and we continue to find neutrino's travelling faster than light, then an entire new chapter of science will have begun in which physics prepares to take the next great conceptual leap.

TOPIC: Space weather may invade your space! Solar flares and Radio Communications

VENUE: Auditorium, Education Centre, Sci-Bono Discovery Centre, Miriam Makeba Street between Jeppe and President, Newtown, Johannesburg

As South Africans, many of us don't even know that we have a space program, so we're especially proud of our locally built satellites.  The most recent was Sumbandilasat, an Earth Observation micro-satellite operated jointly by the CSIR, the University of Stellenbosch and SunSat (A local company which designs and builds satellites).  Sumbandilasat was launched in September 2009, on a Soyuz-2 launch vehicle from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, and was built to a budget using off-the-shelf components wherever possible.  Although this approach allowed costs to be kept extremely low (for a satellite of its class...), it left the satellite with insufficient radiation hardening, with the consequences becoming apparent shortly after launch.  A solar flare damaged the power distribution network, crippling two of the attitude control wheels and leaving the satellite in an uncorrectable tumble.  Despite this, operators were able to synchronise the ground-facing cameras to succesfully return high-resolution images of the Earth.  Even considering the fragility of the satellite, SunSat declared the mission a success since, after all, it was only ever designed as a technology demonstrator.  According to SunSpace engineer Niki Steenkamp, the satellite has been an enormous success and has survived far longer than anticipated.  Priceless information and experience has been gained through the satellite, experience that can only comes from actually building and launching a satellite.

But over time, radiation from continued solar events have damaged more and more systems until the recent announcement that Sumbandilasat was no longer able to perform its functions, and would be abandoned.  No mention has been made regarding parking the satellite in a graveyard orbit (to avoid contributing to the growing problem of orbital debris), so presumably the uncontrolled tumbling has made such maneuvres impossible.  Nevertheless, certain non-critical functions (including an repeater built for ham radio use) are still working, and might likely continue to operate for the foreseeable future.  

If you've been reading Urban Astronomer from the beginning, you'll know that I was a big fan of the Japanese Space Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa mission.  Naturally, I'm thrilled to hear that JAXA have recently announced Hayabusa 2, which will hopefully perform a little better than the first attempt.

Hayabusa (meaning 'Falcon') was a robotic spacecraft equipped with an explosive harpoon and cutting-edge ion propulsion engines, sent out to collect samples from the asteroid Itokawa and bring them home.  Unfortunately, the mission suffered an unbelievable number of malfunctions, with numerous systems (everything from the engines to the power supply to the sampling harpoon itself) failing one after the other.  Still, with a great deal of ingenuity and persistence, mission controllers managed to not only limp the stricken craft home (only three years late!) but actually found useable samples in the cannisters which were parachuted back to Earth!

Hayabusa 2 will be slightly different from its parent.  It will be visiting asteroid 1999 JU3 (a roughly spherical asteroid, a bit under a kilometer in diameter) using the same ion engines, but the guidance and navigation systems, the steering and the antennae have all be redesigned to be more reliable.  The sampler will also use a much more gentle operation than its predecessor - instead of being blasted into the target like a harpoon, it will approach gently and then detonate an explosive charge to dislodge surface material, which should scoop a much larger sample into the cannisters.

I have high hopes for this mission.  Here's to Hayabusa 2, may she complete her mission with the minimum of fuss, and bring home the maximum amount of space dirt!

To mark Global Astronomy Month this April, a special asteroid search program will be launched by astronomy outreach group International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC), in conjunction with Astronomers Without Borders.  Fifteen school will be selected from around the world to receive telescope images only hours after they have been taken by the Astronomical Research Institute on a regular basis so that students can scan them to search for new Asteroids.  The program runs from 23 March to 27 April, and interested schools must submit their applications here by 16 February 2012.  They will also obviously need access to PC's and a high speed internet connection.  If you are a teacher and would like to give your class the opportunity to do some real science, while working with a global team, I'd strongly suggest you get your application in as soon as possible!

For more information, visit the official website here: http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/gam2012-programs/all-programs/1009.html