NASA Video! of Themis lift-off (Quick Time Player)
February 16, 2007 6:08 PM EST
NASA's Themis Mission Lift Off - Hi Resolution Pictures
Mapping The Bow Wave Of Planet Earth
(to get us hover cars)
Lauch Photo: NASAThe bands of iridescent light we see as the Northern(or Southern) Lights are the collision of the solar wind and the earths magnetosphere. The Themis Mission will deploy five satellites equipped with ultraviolet sensors that will study this phenomena in more detail than ever before.
Once the satellites are in their proper orbits, they will line up above the north polar region every four days for 2 years. The Thimes mission will thoroughly map the northern lights; from the light we can see here on earth to the distant wave nodes they create beyond the orbit of the moon. NASA will gather data that could be used to create a four dimensional map of solar wind deflecting off the earths magnetosphere(x,y and z axis plus time).
Up until recently(1970s) space was thought to be mostly empty; now scientists are finding all kinds of stuff up there. The Themis Mission is one of several first steps humans are taking to map the medium of space. The European Space Agency has several mapping expeditions under way using different elemental particles as media.
Like a boat through the water, scientists theorize that the planet, the solar system and even the milky way galaxy create 'bow waves' in front of them as they move through space.(see image at the bottom of this story)
As the earth orbits the sun it creates a bow wave in front of it as it swings through space. The earths bow wave creates electrical storms above the north and south polar regions we see as 'Arora borealis'.
An understanding of how large masses effect the medium of space will help illuminate what Space is made up of.
A better map of the invisible matter in the universe will help cosmologists with their modeling. If they can't find all the 'dark matter' that their models predict is out there, we'll have to throw out Newtons law of Inertia and much of Einsteins Relativity. That would set us back a hundred years in our search for the Grand Unified Theory.
The Grand Unified Theory (G.U.T.) is a model that can describe both massive events like the the rotation of the solar system; and nano events like how molecules change.
If solved, the GUT will get us those 'Hover Cars' Sci/Fi has been predicting since the genre was invented.
That's what this is really all about you know, Hover Cars.
We want Hover Cars!
Image courtesy NASA
Themis gets a pay load, Feburary 10,2007
May 27, 2007
New link at NASA just came to my attention -- with event/time data.
NASA Video! of Themis lift-off (Quick Time Player)
NASA Heliophysics Division (Missions)
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