Britannia Radio

A History of Astrophysics - 4

From the desk of Paul Belien on Thu, 2010-05-20 23:50

The American astronomer Gerald Neugebauer (born 1932), son of the great Austrian historian of science Otto Neugebauer, did valuable pioneering work in infrared astronomy. He spent his entire career at the California Institute of Technology. Together with the US experimental physicist Robert B. Leighton (1919-1997), also at Caltech, he completed the first infrared survey of the sky. Leighton is also known for discovering five-minute oscillations in local surface velocities of the Sun, which opened up research into solar seismology. The American physicist Frank James Low (1933-2009) became a leader in the emerging field of infrared astronomy after inventing the gallium-doped germanium bolometer in 1961, which allowed the extension of observations to longer wavelengths than previously possible. He and his colleagues showed that Jupiter and Saturn emit more energy than they receive from the Sun.

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A History of Astrophysics - Part 3

From the desk of Fjordman on Sun, 2010-05-16 11:20

The process of combining light elements into heavier ones – nuclear fusion – happens in the central region of stars. In their extremely hot cores, instead of individual atoms you have a mix of nuclei and free electrons, what we call plasma. The term “plasma” was first applied to ionized gas by Irving Langmuir (1881-1957), a physical chemist from the USA, in 1923. It is the fourth and by far the most common state of matter in the universe in addition to the three we are familiar with from everyday life on Earth: solid, liquid and gas. Extreme temperatures and pressure is needed to overcome the mutual electrostatic repulsion of positively charged atomic nuclei (ions), often called the Coulomb barrier after the French natural philosopher Charles de Coulomb, who formulated the laws of electrostatic attraction and repulsion.

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Only One Country Meets EU Criteria. It Is Not In EU

From the desk of George Handlery on Sat, 2010-05-15 11:00

Natural and unnatural unions. Guess who fits the €-zone’s requirements! Who and what has failed? The overcooked spaghetti and the perils of police work.

 

1. What masquerades as the Greek crisis is in reality a general solvency crisis of profligate sovereign borrowers. The dilemma presented still demands a long-term response. The situation makes one conclude that Europe’s economic union is composed of bits that do not fit. Or that the pieces fit – but only in another picture. A union – whether political or economic – can be forged out of parts that have, while still separated, developed underlying similarities. This criterion amounts to a spontaneous convergence. Lacking this pre-condition, creating by fiat an association for the purpose of cajoling incompatibles mix into a new brew, will totter at the first challenge. Economically and politically, the EU has been made to grow too fast and too far.

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