How Does Gravity Work In The Vacuum Of Space? | The New Frontier | Spark

foreign yet we notice it when it's not there gravity is the all-encompassing force keeping us on the ground and the planets in their orbits space we are merely cheating gravity falling just as fast but missing the ground on orbit and so-called condition of microgravity now this fundamental Universal force is slowly giving up its Secret [Music] [Music] foreign s live in a gravity field so what happens when they spend extended time in the 0g and how can we utilize what we learn to help human beings [Music] this A310 0g aircraft is being used by the European Space Agency for research and conditions of gravity to obtain zero g a Rebels [Music] it's almost 2 [Music] they inject the plane into the parabola [Music] microgravity [Music] now called out the angle it's 40 degrees at 50. injection that is weightlessness ah here I go the scientists have 20 seconds of weightlessness to do their experiments behind me but there will be 30 of these parabolas so they have plenty of time 10 minutes in fact to do [Music] their experiments time to get down now because there'll be a nasty thud there we go there are 12 experiments on this flight including six by students as part of Esau's flying thesis program the experiments cover everything from fundamental physics and Neuroscience to psychology looking at body image and perception experiment is examining the effect of microgravity on the brain that's important for astronauts doing long duration stays on the ISS but there are also wider applications [Music] we are also interested in people with diseases for example Alzheimer's disease or dementia if we know the mechanisms which are linked of a reduction of cognitive performance and brain activity and where that comes from we might be able to better design strategies to then help these people inside here is a pulsating heat pipe potentially a new way of managing the thermal conditions of satellites or components on board the ISS the copper pipe seen here showing the flow of a condensed vapor also has a section made of sapphire that is transparent to visible and infrared radiation in this experiment we use the infrared camera of the European Space Agency is a new camera high-speed the infrared camera that will be used also on the International Space Station for the next experiment Parabola there is another 20 seconds of 2G 2 geoplane pulls out to level flight few minutes later the next Parabola begins I think that's an interesting thing this one piece will make 52 layers watch on mobile devices or the big screen all for free no subscription required in between each one scientists must quickly reset their experiments and prepare for the next bout of microgravity this is the only microgravity platform where the scientists get to interact with their own experiment while it is in zero gravity rather than doing it by remote on a robotic capsule or sounding rocket or on the ISS it's humans of course but then it's astronauts doing it and they can't possibly be as in tune with the scientific needs as the scientists themselves so this is the only platform that really allows that kind of access and as such it's it's Unique a few parabolas everyone works hard to finish their signs for the German Mars Society experiment however there's only one shot to get this right as it involves testing the initial deployment of a densely packed balloon that we hope one day will carry instruments for studying Mars's atmosphere whether it's preparing for Mars or helping life on board the space station and on air the zero g plane offers a unique environment for research and the closest conditions possible to being in space [Music] of course the ISS is the ideal place to experiment with gravity or the lack of it many experiments are conducted by the crew every day with new experiments being sent up to the cruise in cargo and crew cab service you are free to set it as you want this is just [Music] fundamental questions are still to be explained most fundamental of all what is gravity how can such a weak Force dominate the entire universe [Music] how does it keep moons and planets in orbit it affects everything no matter what its mass may be a leaf will fall as fast as a handful of nuts and bolts in vacuum as tested on the lunar surface many years earlier by Apollo Astronauts it was this man who explained the force of gravity in the space-time Continuum early in the 20th century he theorized that gravitational waves were oscillations in the fabric of space-time moving at the speed of light and caused by the acceleration of massive objects gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein almost 100 years ago boy gravitational wave was a ripple in the fabric of space and time it's produced somewhere in the distant universe and travels Across the Universe when any massive object moves it's changing the nature of space-time that's what Einstein told us ocean that stretches space in One Direction and press this space in the other direction nobody really believed at the time of the prediction that you could ever detect them because the size of the effect is so small it would take multiple massive detectors around the world to send such a small effect passing through the air [Music] question how do you detect gravitational waves answer with a Michelson interferometer Geo 600 in Germany laser-lighted split and sent along different paths in a vacuum the longer the better then reflected back on mirrors suspended on glass threads completely isolated from any Earthly vibrations the laser light is then brought back together and the interference patterns of the two beams compared that he requires founding [Music] we literally look for changes in the space-time distance in our instruments as the gravitational wave goes by and the gravitational wave pushes them together and apart by one one thousandth the diameter of the nucleus of an atom no wonder it's taken so long to pull this off the first detection was made by ligo to detectors a continent apart we have observed gravitational waves from two black holes forming a larger black hole they're moving at the velocity of light damn near that velocity 30 solar mass is moving that fast I mean they're putting out incredible amounts of energy and when they collide with one another they produce a bigger black hole but they also produce gravitational waves in that process about three solar masses just disappears and goes into gravitational [Music] September 2015 confirmed Einstein's vision of the waves and allowed a fascinating and unique view into the dark side of the cosmos creating a new science gravitational wave astronomy gravitational waves carry obtain any other way massive events like a supernova or two neutron stars colliding even the universe creating Big Bang itself of all produced gravitational waves these can now be detected adding pieces to the jigsaw picture of Nature and the forces that define space-time early two years later another scientific Milestone was reached astronomers using a fleet of esotelloscopes have observed a visible counterpart to gravitational waves for the first time a kilo Nova from merging neutron star [Music] all right August 2017 the ligo facilities in collaboration with their European counterparts adopted Virgo together detected gravitational waves Rippling through the fabric of space-time just two seconds later two space telescopes from gisa and NASA detected a short gamma-ray burst coming from the same general area of the sky astronomers hoped this was not just a coincidence but another indicator of this cataclysmic event two neutron stars combining in an explosive merger if scientists were right then a visible light counterpart known as a killer Nova would be expected to perform exact location and source of gravitational and gamma rays the hunt was on [Music] ESO and ESO partner telescopes in Chile joined other observatories to search for a new light source they were looking for a needle in a haystack a faint new glimmer amid millions of stars but amazingly they found it just a few hours later in the Galaxy ngc4993 one 130 million light years from Air [Music] neutron star imagines other furnaces where most of the chemical elements heavier than iron are foreign over and event one thousand times brighter than a typical Nova spreads the newly formed elements including gold platinum and geranium into the surrounding space [Music] [Music] such an explosion had never been confirmed before but here was one that could be studied in great detail the eso observations revealed an extraordinary and rapidly changing event closely mirroring fearing [Music] heavy radioactive elements were shot into space and one-fifth the speed of light in just a matter of days the kilanova's color changed rapidly from Blue to Red faster than any other observed Stellar explosion bent marks the start of a new era of multi-messenger astronomy [Music] for the first time in history we can now combine light signals with gravitational waves providing a totally new way to probe the universe the advancement of gravitational wave detection didn't stop there talented engineers and scientists set about developing even more sensitive detectors that could be mounted in space limitations [Music] space antenna or VISA Pathfinder was launched to test the feasibility of a space-based gravity detector foreign [Music] Pathfinder was launched from Google French Guyana aboard a Vega launcher into a slightly elliptical parking orbit foreign [Music] using its own propulsion module it progressively expanded itself repeat before the cruise faced its operational orbit with the first Sun aired like orange Point L1 one and a half million kilometers from Earth towards the Sun the science package was built around two identical gold and platinum cubes each floating free in a vacuum they act both as mirrors for the interferometer and as inertial references for the drag free control system [Music] a disturbance reduction system or DRS was supplied by NASA and consisted of two clusters of colloidal micro propulsion thrusters and an electronic unit containing a computer with Associated drag free Control software so to me the highlight of laser Pathfinder is the very first day which on the run because we didn't expect the performance to be as good we thought we would be close to what we had to do and then we would improve it we would think about what we have to do we'd fix things and it'll get better on day number one it made requirements what it showed us is that this is a very complex type of instrument but it's doable and Industry now have experience in how to make a mission like Lisa and this Pathfinder these signals are very very tiny indeed and we've been able to show with these test masses in inside the laser Pathfinder satellite that we would be able to see gravitational waves in the frequency band where we're interested in I think Lisa Pathfinder is already demonstrated that it's possible actually to place two test machines free fall in space with a residual relative acceleration at a level that the level required for the future gravitational wave detector [Music] Lisa Pathfinder confirmed the technology for a space-based gravitational wave detector even before the science operations began [Music] so a space-based detector like Lisa is looking for low frequency gravitational waves and by low frequency really we're talking about very big objects which are in motion so we're looking at the centers of galaxies the super massive black holes at the center for Galaxy and when two galaxies merge the two black holes eventually form one big entity and it's in that merging of the two black holes is what we're picking up through Lisa proving this type of technology in situ is a big leap forward in detectives it has worked flawlessly and our performance is better than we could ever have dreamed even on the very first day we had met our requirements and since then we've just made it better and it's just wonderful to see how well this instrument is performing the successive laser Pathfinder demonstrates that we now know how to build a mission like Lisa and over the next months and years that mission will now start to be in the design phase leading to a launch in the late 2020s or 2030s [Music] gravity is the fundamental force of the universe at the the larger scales of talking about stars galaxies the universe they're dominated by gravity however gravity does not absorb very well by matter we're sitting here in a building we're not floating off in space we've got a building between us and the Earth so gravity penetrates all matter so for that reason the gravity is passing through our detector and it doesn't really dump any energy in the detector the way an electromagnetic telescope would pick up light so we have to actually look at the ripples in space-time we have to look at the effect of gravity over all the space [Music] other waves propagating through space gravity waves 2 lens or free or frequent we need Lisa because it's looking at a whole new part of the spectrum of gravitational waves it's a whole new type of science we're doing so with the ligo detections they're looking at objects or rougher size of a sun so anywhere from one to one hundred times the mass of the Sun and in their case it was about 30 solar mass black holes which are orbiting each other whereas with Lisa we're looking at Galaxy's meritable it's no longer Stellar like objects no Galactic objects so things which are maybe a million times the mass of the Sun the big black hole that's into the galaxies and galaxies merge together a bunch of these black holes Collide and when that happens it rips a universal part and we're looking for that Universe vibrating from these mirrors of these big big events something you can never ever do that on the ground so ligo will never be able to see the events that we see with Lisa [Music] the Lisa Mission will consist of three satellites precisely positioned to each other in an earth trailing orbit there they will connect to each other via laser beams forming a single detector so the big difference between Lisa and Lisa Pathfinder is the length of the arm so at least a Pathfinder we are two gold Platinum cubes in our spacecraft and we're separated by about 40 centimeters whereas in Lisa the little cubes are separated by two and a half million kilometers so fit on perspective I suppose six times the distance to the Moon so let's say it's a long long way [Music] work has begun on the Lisa project it will take over a decade to plan design and build and test the three spacecraft when Lisa launches in 2034 it will be able to detect gravitational waves from objects up to 100 times the mass of our sun the engineering challenges alone are daunting so the challenges of a mission like Lisa hardly the Pathfinder is a fact that it's built with I think we had 40 different companies from 14 different countries building aspects and unlike some of the plan information that some of those Australian missions where you have a camera and a telescope our whole satellite is one instrument and if we go to Lisa all three satellites form one instrument so everything has to come together it has to work uh and that's what happened you know with a very great collaboration within Europe and when it all came together it worked as an instrument on day one [Music] but none of that would have been possible without Albert Einstein ligo and the Lisa Pathfinder its success has paved the way for a whole new window into the mysteries of our universe [Music] gravitational weaves allow us to see the dark side of the universe so the things which are not shining light for example black holes so no we can actually go out there and we can really observe these things which we've got no other way to see and also their gravitationals were predicted by Einstein and this is one of the main pillars of general relativity and with ligo and even better with Lisa we can really start to probe general relativity and say that is actually feeling which governs the gravity of the universe [Music] the interface between Earth and space is the ionosphere a region of rarefied gas and charged particles it is very important for radio communications radar satellite signals and global positioning yet we know so little about it especially when it disrupts all these signals in a regular fashion too high for planes or balloons it's up to satellites to study this rarefied region foreign [Music] we have become so reliant on radio signals bouncing off the upper atmosphere and beating down from the satellite that the ionosphere has become a critical part of our technology from aircraft Communications and radar to managing navigation of the world's shipping lanes and global positioning for fishing trawlers to locate their catch PS for the military on the ground and in the air yet we know very little about this region of Earth's atmosphere critically there are times when global positioning signals become unreliable the satellite and radio signals twinkle in much the same way as bright stars appear to do at Optical wavelengths irregularities in the ionosphere referred to as ionospheric depletions or bubbles span the hemispheres at the equator and are a major element of the low latitude geospace region it's very important for us to understand the ionized portion of the atmosphere the ionosphere as well as the upper atmosphere because that's where satellites are low Earth orbiting satellites are orbiting in that region astronauts are exploring that region as well as the communication and navigation signals travel through that region and so when you have disruptions in the ionosphere and variability in the ionosphere that can affect our navigation and communication systems the ions CLI some 40 to 600 miles above Earth's surface the upper atmosphere and ionosphere change constantly in response to forces from above and below including explosions on the sun intense upper atmosphere winds and dynamic electric field changes these irregularities form huge horseshoe arcs between hemispheres with their apices centered on the magnetic equator to learn more on NASA conducted a mission called Cindy the coupled ion neutral Dynamics investigation Cindy was designed to measure ionization of the upper atmosphere including the behavior of the irregularities responsible for the GPS twinkling which turned out to be quite surprising the ionosphere becomes unstable shortly after the sun sets as Darkness Falls ionized atoms and molecules begin to recombine into a neutral state during this transition period after Sunset irregularities are quite strong as the night wears on however these irregularities were thought to fade and eventually vanish around midnight Cindy found many irregularities around Sunset but they did not vanish around midnight on the contrary there was another peak in irregularities during the middle of the night the second Peak has appeared most pronounced from June through August scientists aren't sure yet why are the second Peak occurs or why it varies by season [Music] and the mission ended with the re-entry of the spacecraft into Earth's atmosphere researchers still had much to learn about the ionosphere and how it can affect GPS and other satellite systems to understand the tug of war between Earth's atmosphere and the space environment NASA created the icon satellite [Music] foreign so if the Icom Mission we're looking at the very upper levels of the Earth's atmosphere and the charged plasma environment that surrounds the Earth that we usually consider as the inner edge of space so that region is called the ionosphere and that's what gave us the name for the atmospheric connection Explorer but really a lot of what is happening there is being driven by the the winds and the composition of the Earth's atmosphere so these altitudes thermospheric altitudes that the icon mission is investigating are typically too low for satellites to fly in high for weather balloons to get to for example so we need to use remote sensing techniques to get the information at the right altitudes and the atmosphere actually helps us do it because there is something called an air glow the the atmosphere naturally just glows at those altitudes more during the day less during the night but it's always there the Sierra glow is always there and by just looking at the color of this air glow we can find out about the wind and the temperature actually so it's the atmosphere in a way it's helping us to to understand how it is behaving by sending out this airflow and uh we build the right instruments to look at particular aspects of the color of the air glow we can get the information that we want so what icon is trying to do is observe these two systems at the same time from from one satellite so it does that with four instruments and broadly speaking three of those are kind of camera instruments that look out at the Earth off on the horizon and one of them measures the temperature and wind of that atmosphere one of them measures the composition of the atmosphere one of them is getting the the plasma environment this this charged particle environment and then this fourth instrument that measures the charge particles and the Emulsion and things at the location of the spacecraft high altitude wind shear is thought to be one of the factors for GPS twinkle it's it's just the movement of the atmosphere same thing as we experience as wind down here except for the winds are generally much faster up there and there's there's very little atmosphere so the pressure is very very low so those are the two major differences between what we think of when we say the word wind here and what we experience up there was what the instrument sees up there icon was placed aboard a pegasus rocket and flown into the stratosphere under the belly of an orbital ATK aircraft once it is at the right altitude under heading the rocket drops away then ignites its main engine carrying the spacecraft into orbit [Music] once in orbit the spacecraft is commanded by scientists at Mission operations center at the space Sciences laboratory at UC Berkeley [Music] Nikon then began its study of the frontier of space the dynamic Zone where terrestrial weather from below meets space weather from above in this region the tenuous gases are anything but quiet as a mix of neutral and charged particles travels through in giant winds these winds can change on a wide variety of time scales due to Earth's seasons the day's Heating and Cooling and incoming bursts of radiation from the Sun to understand what drives the variability in the ionosphere is very complicated A system that is driven by both terrestrial and space weather [Music] a second satellite mission was needed another Suite of instruments in a higher orbit named gold [Music] the first for NASA gold was piggybacked on a commercial satellite [Music] the gold Mission stands for Global observations of lemon disk and it's a very important mission for us to understand the upper atmosphere of the Earth the thermosphere and ionosphere of the Earth [Music] it is our first hosted science payload that NASA is flying on a commercial spacecraft and so that that open is a new Innovative way for us to do science that that maximizes our private sector partnership as well gold will be sitting 22 000 miles above Earth which means that it can see a whole half of the Earth all of the Western Hemisphere and it will be hovering over one particular point on Earth Watching The dynamics of the atmosphere Play Out Below from geosynchronous orbit gold can scan half the planet at a time [Music] this Mission because gold will be getting information about the upper atmosphere much faster than ever before and we'll be able to look at effects that are more like the weather that we experience down here on Earth [Music] [Music] thank you the two influences on the ionosphere are space weather and weather below closer to the ground space weather is the realm of the sun coronal mass ejections affecting our magnetic field and showering us with energetic particles the sun's energy starts in its core a giant Fusion engine where hydrogen atoms are turned into helium atoms the energy produced there moves up through the convection Zone to the sun's surface the Photosphere moving magnetic fields contribute extra energy along the way bursting from the surface emitting light and heat that is channeled by the sun's magnetic field generating the turbulent surface including provinces flares and coronal mass ejections that spread out into the solar system space weather is the field that studies how what's going on on the sun affects us here on the Earth in our near space environment and on the space environment on other planets [Music] these powerful bursts of energy travel outward toward the planets space weather consisting of light and thermal radiation includes high-speed solar wind and energetic particles which Collide into planets orbiting the Sun Earth has some defense its magnetic field deflects and absorbs much of the energy distorting the magnetic field some energy is captured and follows the magnetic lines to the pole generating auroras [Music] NASA hopes to achieve with the golden icon missions a better understanding of of the near-earth space that's so important for our Global infrastructure [Music] to help predict space weather many Sentinel satellites watch the sun closely iris is one of them it watches our star in ultraviolet wavelengths and is able to give us warnings of extreme space weather events approaching Earth [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] space weather has a direct influence on our ionosphere [Music] [Music] another tool to watch both the solar weather and Earth's weather together is about to go into operation replacing its aging predecessor [Music] goes R is a Next Generation weather satellite with the latest in technology foreign [Music] it will be five times faster Advanced resolution cameras giving greater coverage for hurricane tracking real-time mapping of lightning and improved solar flare monitoring [Music] my x-ray telescope in Earth's orbit discovered another source of gamma-ray particles coming from Earth foreign [Music] conditions lightning storms fire off some of the highest energy light naturally found on air terrestrial gamma-ray flashes or tgfs rising and falling snow and ice particles repeatedly Collide filling the cloud with electrical charge once the electric fuel is strong enough a current flows and a lightning flash occurs The Flash produces an Abrupt reconfiguration of the electric field [Music] in some cases a surge of electrons rushes towards the upper part of the Storm at speeds nearly as fast as light when deflected by air molecules these accelerated electrons give off gamma rays producing a TGF data from NASA's Fermi gamma ray Space Telescope suggesting more than a thousand tgfs occur each day all over the globe tropical storms far from Land tend to generate less frequent lightning nevertheless observations show they are surprisingly prolific producers of tgfs [Music] tropical storm Manuel made landfall just shy of hurricane strength as it rapidly weakened It produced two TGs within 24 hours more typically TGs are associated with the strengthening phase of a storm as typhoon bolavin rapidly developed in 2012 thunderstorms nearly 500 miles from its Center launched a TGF with four distinct pulses [Music] so far the record holder for TGs is the rapidly strengthening tropical wave that later gave birth to hurricane Julio It produced four TGs within 100 minutes a fifth followed the next day with nothing further thank you for stronger storms like hurricanes and typhoons tgfs are more common in the outer rain bands which host the highest lightning flash rates in these storms [Music] the findings provide new insights into the relationship between storm intensity lightning frequency and TGs [Music] this adds another important piece to the puzzle of our understanding of TGs and how they are created in thunderstorms the most powerful natural particle accelerators on planet Earth [Music] ultimately the science that we learn from Golden icon will help us be able to predict the near-earth environment that affects the effects are our communication and navigation signals and and capability but also how space weather affects the upper atmosphere which can translate to effects on the ground in terms of our Power Systems and and our our navigation systems down below the march of Technology must go on he signed the European Union can see the future of global positioning and it is a growing Market with more and more technology requiring their services the Galileo program is near in completion with a total of 26 satellites orbiting at 22 000 kilometers the penultimate launch of four Galileo satellites aboard an Ariane 5 will occur soon as with all other Galileo satellites these newest additions will fly in a medium earth orbit the last launch of four satellites will occur in the near future although the constellation is not yet complete it has been in operation for almost a year since the European commission announced initial services on the 15th of December 2016. the completion of the constellation will take place in the summer of 2018 where we launched the last Ariane 5 with four satellites which will bring the total up to 26 headlines so we have at that moment two satellites in reserve and we will then after that start putting some extra reserves in space in order to be prepared just in case Services were the first step towards full operational capability and the first opportunity for the Galileo system to prove its worth independent measurements have since shown that in terms of performance Galileo is the best operating positioning system in the world on the 15th of December 2016 the commission announced initial services this was an important moment because this was the first time that we formally announced that there was a certain service available with a certain quality for a certain time of the day since then we have been building out the constellation and it has been improving every every day we now have independent measurements of the performance of the Galileo system and it is actually to be honest and we are very proud of it the best in class we are having a better performance than our three competitors from the US which is the well-known GPS system the Russian glona system and the Chinese Baidu system so of course in Isa we are excessively proud of this and it is now important that we keep building on this performance and hopefully keep at the Forefront of the developments put the work on Galileo is far from done the European commission and Esa are already working on the next generation of Galileo satellites and infrastructure they aim to continuously improve the system and explore the boundaries of technological possibilities while trying to meet market demand with potential new applications or services when they go continuous improvements obviously the market is asking for that the technology is is ready for it every couple of years there are new possibilities and the combination between what a technology can offer and what the market is demanding leads then two decisions on how to improve the system so that we can provide further and more services a number of areas for example which are coming is the so-called internet of things which will require positioning in sensors and these sensors have have very little power and very little battery capacity so we need special signals for that probably and in addition another area which is of interest is autonomous driving where satellite navigation is going to be a very important component but where it needs to be integrated with all sorts of other sensors in cars in order to make sure that autonomous driving becomes a reality with more launches to complete the constellation and set up redundancies Galileo's performance and availability worldwide will continue to improve gradually keeping Galileo at The Cutting Edge of satellite positioning technology today the only publicly owned satellite system has also proven to be the best [Music] foreign

Channel: Spark

Views: 21,845

Keywords: Atmospheric studies, Data collection, Engineering videos, GPS accuracy, GPS technologies, Gravity research, Gravity's secrets, Ionospheric interactions, Ionospheric properties, Natural forces, Radio communications, Satellite technology, Science, Space, Space documentaries, Space missions, Space research, Space science, Spark, Technology exploration, Understanding gravity

Id: IWgb8iby6xQ

Length: 47min 1sec (2821 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 30 2023