Gamma Ray Astronomy
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Gamma Ray Astronomy
Gamma-ray astronomy is the astronomical observation of gamma rays,Astronomical literature generally hyphenates "gamma-ray" when used as an adjective, but uses "gamma ray" without a hyphen for the noun. the most energetic form of electromagnetic radiation, with photon energies above 100  keV. Radiation below 100 keV is classified as X-rays and is the subject of X-ray astronomy. In most known cases, gamma rays from solar flares and Earth's atmosphere are generated in the MeV range, but it is now known that gamma rays in the GeV range can also be generated by solar flares. It had been believed that gamma rays in the GeV range do not originate in the Solar System. As GeV gamma rays are important in the study of extra-solar, and especially extra-galactic, astronomy, new observations may complicate some prior models and findings. The mechanisms emitting gamma rays are diverse, mostly identical with those emitting X-rays but at higher energies, including electron–posit ...
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Fermi 5 Year 11000x6189
Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics. Fermi's first major contribution involved the field of statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli formulated his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he app ...
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Cobalt-56
Naturally occurring cobalt (Co) consists of a single stable isotope, Co. Twenty-eight radioisotopes have been characterized; the most stable are Co with a half-life of 5.2714 years, Co (271.8 days), Co (77.27 days), and Co (70.86 days). All other isotopes have half-lives less than 18 hours and most of these have half-lives less than 1 second. This element also has 11 meta states, all of which have half-lives less than 15 minutes. The isotopes of cobalt range in atomic weight from Co to Co. The main decay mode for isotopes with atomic mass less than that of the stable isotope, Co, is electron capture and the main mode of decay for those of greater than 59 atomic mass units is beta decay. The main decay products before Co are iron isotopes and the main products after are nickel isotopes. Radioactive isotopes can be produced by various nuclear reactions. For example, Co is produced by cyclotron irradiation of iron. The main reaction is the (d,n) reaction Fe + H → n + Co. List o ...
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Magnetic Field
A magnetic field is a vector field that describes the magnetic influence on moving electric charges, electric currents, and magnetic materials. A moving charge in a magnetic field experiences a force perpendicular to its own velocity and to the magnetic field. A permanent magnet's magnetic field pulls on ferromagnetic materials such as iron, and attracts or repels other magnets. In addition, a nonuniform magnetic field exerts minuscule forces on "nonmagnetic" materials by three other magnetic effects: paramagnetism, diamagnetism, and antiferromagnetism, although these forces are usually so small they can only be detected by laboratory equipment. Magnetic fields surround magnetized materials, and are created by electric currents such as those used in electromagnets, and by electric fields varying in time. Since both strength and direction of a magnetic field may vary with location, it is described mathematically by a function assigning a vector to each point of space ...
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Electron
The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no known components or substructure. The electron's mass is approximately 1/1836 that of the proton. Quantum mechanical properties of the electron include an intrinsic angular momentum ( spin) of a half-integer value, expressed in units of the reduced Planck constant, . Being fermions, no two electrons can occupy the same quantum state, in accordance with the Pauli exclusion principle. Like all elementary particles, electrons exhibit properties of both particles and waves: They can collide with other particles and can be diffracted like light. The wave properties of electrons are easier to observe with experiments than those of other particles like neutrons and protons because electrons have a lower mass and hence a longer de Broglie ...
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Interstellar Gas
In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstellar space and blends smoothly into the surrounding intergalactic space. The energy that occupies the same volume, in the form of electromagnetic radiation, is the interstellar radiation field. The interstellar medium is composed of multiple phases distinguished by whether matter is ionic, atomic, or molecular, and the temperature and density of the matter. The interstellar medium is composed, primarily, of hydrogen, followed by helium with trace amounts of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. The thermal pressures of these phases are in rough equilibrium with one another. Magnetic fields and turbulent motions also provide pressure in the ISM, and are typically more important, dynamically, than the thermal pressure is. In the interstellar medium, ...
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Cosmic Ray
Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own galaxy, and from distant galaxies. Upon impact with Earth's atmosphere, cosmic rays produce showers of secondary particles, some of which reach the surface, although the bulk is deflected off into space by the magnetosphere or the heliosphere. Cosmic rays were discovered by Victor Hess in 1912 in balloon experiments, for which he was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics. Direct measurement of cosmic rays, especially at lower energies, has been possible since the launch of the first satellites in the late 1950s. Particle detectors similar to those used in nuclear and high-energy physics are used on satellites and space probes for research into cosmic rays. Data from the Fermi Space Telescope (2013) have been interpreted as evidence ...
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Philip Morrison
Philip Morrison (November 7, 1915 – April 22, 2005) was a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is known for his work on the Manhattan Project during World War II, and for his later work in quantum physics, nuclear physics high energy astrophysics, and SETI. A graduate of Carnegie Tech, Morrison became interested in physics, which he studied at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of J. Robert Oppenheimer. He also joined the Communist Party. During World War II he joined the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, where he worked with Eugene Wigner on the design of nuclear reactors. In 1944 he moved to the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico, where he worked with George Kistiakowsky on the development of explosive lenses required to detonate the implosion-type nuclear weapon. Morrison transported the core of the Trinity test device to the test site in the ...
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Sachio Hayakawa
Sachio (written: 祥雄, 幸生, 幸夫, 倖生 or 左千夫) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, pen-name of Itō Kōjirō, Japanese poet and writer *, Japanese baseball player *, Japanese architect *, Japanese businessman *, Japanese footballer {{given name Japanese masculine given names ...
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Henry Primakoff
Henry Primakoff (* February 12, 1914 in Odessa, Russian Empire, now Ukraine; † July 25, 1983 in Philadelphia, United States) was a theoretical physicist who is famous for his discovery of the Primakoff effect. Primakoff contributed to the understanding of weak interactions, double beta decay, spin waves in ferromagnetism, and the interaction between neutrinos and the atomic nucleus. He also developed the Holstein–Primakoff transformation which is designed to treat spin waves as bosonic excitations. In 1940 he worked at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, subsequently at the Queens College, and then at Washington University in St. Louis starting in 1946. Primakoff was the first Donner Professor of Physics in the University of Pennsylvania. He was married to Mildred Cohn from 1938 until his death in 1983. In 1968 he was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. In 2011 the American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for- ...
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Eugene Feenberg
Eugene Feenberg (October 6, 1906 in Fort Smith, Arkansas – November 7, 1977) was an American physicist who made contributions to quantum mechanics and nuclear physics. Education In 1929, Feenberg graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in three years, first in his class; he majored in physics and mathematics. Upon the urging of one of his professors, C. P. Boner, Feenberg then went to Harvard University to study with Edwin C. Kemble for a doctorate in physics. While at Harvard, during 1930 and 1931, he also worked part-time at a Raytheon laboratory, as the Great Depression was in full swing. In 1931, Harvard awarded him a Parker Traveling Fellowship; he left for Europe in the fall of that year. During his stay in Europe, he studied with Arnold Sommerfeld at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Wolfgang Pauli at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, and Enrico Fermi at the University of Rome.
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Blazar
A blazar is an active galactic nucleus (AGN) with a relativistic jet (a jet composed of ionized matter traveling at nearly the speed of light) directed very nearly towards an observer. Relativistic beaming of electromagnetic radiation from the jet makes blazars appear much brighter than they would be if the jet were pointed in a direction away from Earth. Blazars are powerful sources of emission across the electromagnetic spectrum and are observed to be sources of high-energy gamma ray photons. Blazars are highly variable sources, often undergoing rapid and dramatic fluctuations in brightness on short timescales (hours to days). Some blazar jets exhibit apparent superluminal motion, another consequence of material in the jet traveling toward the observer at nearly the speed of light. The blazar category includes BL Lac objects and optically violently variable (OVV) quasars. The generally accepted theory is that BL Lac objects are intrinsically low-power radio galaxies while ...
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Pulsar
A pulsar (from ''pulsating radio source'') is a highly magnetized rotating neutron star that emits beams of electromagnetic radiation out of its magnetic poles. This radiation can be observed only when a beam of emission is pointing toward Earth (similar to the way a lighthouse can be seen only when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer), and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that ranges from milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar. Pulsars are one of the candidates for the source of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. (See also centrifugal mechanism of acceleration.) The periods of pulsars make them very useful tools for astronomers. Observations of a pulsar in a binary neutron star system were used to indirectly confirm the existence of gravitational radiation. The first extrasolar planets were discovered aroun ...
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