An Up-Close Look At the Parker Solar Probe -- the Spacecraft That Will Skim the Sun's Surface (arstechnica.com) 121
schwit1 shares a report from Ars Technica, offering an up-close look at the Parker Solar Probe: This summer, NASA will launch the Parker Solar Probe, an impressively heat-resistant spacecraft destined to glide closer to the surface of the Sun than any spacecraft before it. It will fly within about 6 million kilometers of the searing surface, more than seven times closer than earlier craft. If all goes to plan, the craft will be hurtling at 724,205 km per hour and have its one-of-a-kind heat shield perfectly facing the surface as it makes those closest approaches. In about seven years, it will complete 24 orbits around the Sun and pass by Venus seven times. All the while, the Parker probe will collect a constellation of data to help answer scientists' burning questions -- and solve some sizzling mysteries -- about the orb of hot plasma that lights up our Solar System. Namely, it will try to help us finally understand why the Sun's atmosphere is 300 times hotter than its surface, which itself is a balmy 5,727C. This fact defies basic physics and to this day is unexplained. One of the leading hypotheses to account for the heat shift comes from famed physicist Eugene Parker, after whom the probe is named. In the mid-1950s, Parker theorized that the Sun's super-heated corona could be explained by a complex system of plasma, magnetic fields, and energetic particles that spark solar explosions called "nanoflares." Scientists are thirsty for close-up data on those potential explosions as well as the cascade of energy called solar wind. With that data, they can put their hypotheses to the test. And in addition to helping us understand coronal heat, data on these sunny phenomena could help clear up poorly understood space weather, which can wreak havoc on satellites and power lines here on Earth.
The sun doesn't really have a "surface" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The sun doesn't really have a "surface" (Score:5, Informative)
True, and insightful. The sun has a visible surface, where the plasma becomes opaque. But the visible surface isn't a "surface" in any sense other than being visible-- it is a place where the density is actually far far less than the Earth's surface atmospheric density.
Cool to see the mission get some publicity --I was involved in the design (power system).
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How do you mod True and Insightful?
The most common way? +1 Troll :-)
But Vanilla is nice [Re:The sun doesn't really...] (Score:2)
Cool, so you have a web page that dates back to 1996, and it shows. Dude, update it; It's an embarrassment!
It's on my to-do list. Somewhere around item number seventy or eighty, I have other things to do. Besides, the nice thing about vanilla html is that it works even if you have an old browser that doesn't support the latest doodads and geegaws.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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What kind of materials are used that can take that kind of heat, even a fraction of the heat destroys most electrical component.
Honestly, it is people like you that keep me coming back to /. , I have yet to find a single site to replace it.(sure there is hacknews and reddit...)
Re:The sun doesn't really have a "surface" (Score:5, Informative)
You send the spacecraft at night. I'm only kind of joking: you make a heat shield that creates an artificial "night" behind the shield. The only way for heat to transfer in space is radiation, so you just have to make sure that a) the more delicate components can't see the sun (so the sun can't heat them up directly), b) the shield doesn't transfer heat very well to the rest of the craft (it does have to be physically attached, but you can use very good insulators), and c) the shield poorly absorbs heat through radiation. a is easy, c is relatively easy (literally, you just paint it white), and b is tricky but very much possible. If the craft was an ideal black body, this wouldn't be possible, but fortunately it isn't.
Hide behind carbon [Re:The sun doesn't rea...] (Score:5, Informative)
What kind of materials are used that can take that kind of heat, even a fraction of the heat destroys most electrical component.
Carbon. Sublimates around 3825C or so.
Most of the spacecraft hides behind the carbon shadow shield-- almost all the instruments don't need to look toward the sun (the main interest is plasma and fields). The exception is the solar array (my part of the project!)-- this doesn't work unless it is in the sunlight :). But the sunlight is intense enough that we only need a tiny bit of the array to be illuminated, so we retract most of it into the shadow, tilt the part that does see the sun, and use concentrator solar cells that are actively cooled to keep temperatures reasonable.
Honestly, it is people like you that keep me coming back to /. , I have yet to find a single site to replace it.(sure there is hacknews and reddit...)
Thanks.
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Laser heat rejection - doesn't work [Re:Hide b...] (Score:2)
Is the David Brin's "Sundiver" design (with lasers dissipating the heat away from the ship) any realistic?
Unfortunately not. In oversimplified terms, waste heat radiators "really" get rid of excess entropy. Laser beams are low entropy, so they don't radiate waste heat, they radiate usable energy. Waste heat is defined as everything that is not useable energy. If lasers could radiate waste heat, you could make a perpetual motion machine of the second kind. [futurelearn.com]
In less technical terms: the laser would need a waste-heat radiator.https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11923383&cid=56369001#
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Technology [Re: The sun doesn't really have a...] (Score:2)
What about the power system? Do you use the heat gradient with peltier elements, photovoltaics or is there a separate power source on board?
We looked at using a thermoelectric, but turned out a better solution was using concentrator photovoltaics, hiding most of the photovoltaics behind the shadow shield at closest approach, and then cooling the photovoltaics.
How do you make the power electronics work? Is everything including logic silicone carbide? What kind of core materials for inductors? Must be super fun to work on such a project :)
In fact we do a lot of silicon carbide electronic device research for high temperature applications at Glenn, but for this particular application, most of the electronics were hidden behind the shadow shield, and don't operate at high temperature.
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It's a Parker Square of a title.
Re: The sun doesn't really have a "surface" (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only person to get that joke. Lol
Skim the Sun's surface?! (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they plan on only going there at night!
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I hope they plan on only going there at night!
Comments like this are why they let us post anonymously.
Every time I give a lecture about Solar Probe I can count on somebody saying that.
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That's a pretty low barrier you set. Let's at least drop it to something like account with a UID above 1500000.
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Let's drop to to anything over 9000!!!
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They who? It's an unmanned probe.
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You should pitch this to Trump... (Score:2)
nt.
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You meant Dalek, right?
Very punny (Score:4, Funny)
All the while, the Parker probe will collect a constellation of data to help answer scientists' burning questions....
Pun intended I hope
Children of the Sun (Score:2)
What," said Trillian in a small quiet voice, "does 'sundive' mean?"
"It means," said Marvin, "that the ship is going to dive into the sun. Sun. Dive. It's very simple to understand."
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We might already have a working theory... (Score:1)
The mystery is a lot simpler, just read up on https://www.thunderbolts.info/... [thunderbolts.info] and other Electric Universe research. Our sun is basically a gigantic electric arc lamp.
IMarv
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Nah, it's much simpler than that. The core doesn't burn so hot because there's less oxygen in the center than on the exposed surface.
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I thought the Sun was a mass of incandescent gas (or maybe a miasma of incandescent plasma).
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Re:We might already have a working theory... (Score:4, Funny)
....our Sun is not the brightest.
Neither are any of the mentally challenged that kneel before the genitalia of the cult of EU.
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....our Sun is not the brightest.
Neither are any of the mentally challenged that kneel before the genitalia of the cult of EU.
Finally, a simple explanation for Brexit.
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shudders, remembering how often parents said that
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It's a sign of weakness when somebody has to resort to misstating or understating an argument. This [slashdot.org] is what the actual argument looks like.
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It "doesn't have any math behind it"? [ptep-online.com]
Re: "and it requires Relativity to be completely wrong"
All you've done here is to ignore the disconnect between Relativity and quantum mechanics. The two ideas cannot be made to work with one another, so simple logic suggests that at least one of them must be in error.
Also: the failure to observe dark matter, even as instrumentation for observing it has become a million times more sensitive over the past 15 years, is further reason to suspect -- as has been stated by
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1) Magnetic forces, Plasma, and high electrical systems are in a great position to cause nuclear fusion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
2) The spectral readings of the elements are a result of the atoms emitting light due to being excited and releasing that energy. It is the electrical grid of the galaxy that lights up the star's matter. There is nothing to explain away, just a different way of explaining why what you see is happening. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
IMarv
Re: We might already have a working theory... (Score:4)
Adding to IMarv's comments, the sun's neutrino output has at times varied inversely with the sun's surface sunspot count. Were the neutrinos produced in the sun's nuclear core, this relationship would be inconceivable, since solar physicists calculate that it takes about 200,000 years for the energy of internal fusion to affect the sun's surface. The observations seem to raise the possibility that fusion is occurring near the sun's surface, and it only took one non-correlated half-cycle for theorists to completely stop paying attention.
The graph which shows this anti-correlation has been deeply buried in academic papers, so I've published a copy of it here [controvers...cience.com].
One thing to consider, when contemplating the situation of an anti-correlation which apparently switches between on and off states is that the Sun clearly exhibits these different states through its cycle. To observe switching behavior, and immediately use that as reason to discount the existence of an anti-correlation is honestly a rush to judgment. You know, this is why we build models.
North Korean Scientists (Score:1)
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They should have named it the Parkour Solar Probe.
FYI (Score:2)
724,000 KPH!!! (Score:2)
Thats a feat in itself as the fastest we ever launched was roughly Juno with a gravity assist got to 265,000 KPH, and these guys are gonna go almost 3 times as fast, is this correct?! Anyone?
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No. To escape the solar system you have to go sqrt(2) x orbital velocity where you start. At earth's orbit, that would be ~30km/s, or ~42km/sec, a deltav of 12km/s.
To crash into the sun, you have to kill all orbital speed for a deltav of 30km/s.
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Errr, by not hitting anything? Seriously - despite the visible impact of the corona when you see a total solar eclipse, and the perfectly accurate talk of "coronal mass ejections" and solar wind, it's still a pretty good vacuum out there, by terrestrial laboratory standards.
"Yes, milady." (Score:4, Funny)
Unfortunately Parker didn't appear in the Sun Probe episode.
I hope something startling is found! (Score:1)
It's always fun whenever physics gets a good shake-up.
I'll just leave this excerpt from Robitaille's 2007 paper [ptep-online.com] here.
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... except that for some people who have refused to question the worldview which was taught to them in school, for whom disrupting modern science theories is interpreted as an attack upon their own personal worldview. These people can be identified by their emotional rants and general failure to cite technical arguments, and they seem unaware of the fact that their "defense of science" is also a defense against innovation in the sciences.
The Wrong Person Got Mod Points (Score:2)
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Yeah, how dare people discuss the idea that electricity flows through space in a tech forum? And no less, in regards to a mission whose purpose is to resolve "burning questions -- and some sizzling mysteries -- about the orb of hot plasma that lights up our Solar System". Nevermind the fact that the inverse corona temperature enigma is a mystery for the vey reason that it's power source is claimed to come from its core; I mean, we should leave it up to the scientists to come up with "a complex system of p
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In a shocking discovery today, scientists have confirmed that the sun is flat and simply rotates to face Earth.
Local Flat-Sun advocate commented "Of course it's flat, anyone can see that plain as day" before attempting to thrash our reporter with his white cane.
Information on the Software (Score:2)
There have been multiple public presentations about the software on this mission.
http://flightsoftware.jhuapl.e... [jhuapl.edu]
http://flightsoftware.jhuapl.e... [jhuapl.edu]
Goddard also has the interesting framework Core Flight System (cFE/cFS) which is available as open source. Again multiple presentations on it but a nice presentation by Dave McComas on it is here:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/... [nasa.gov]
Comment (Score:2)
Hm, I have reservations about this probe-- sounds familiar [wikia.com]
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Can't help but think of this.... (Score:2)
Sun Probe [wikia.com]
I loved that show when I was a kid.
Send Your Name to the Sun - There's still time! (Score:2)
Submit your name and it will be included in a memory card that will fly aboard Parker Solar Probe spacecraft.
Submissions will be accepted through April 27, 2018.
http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl... [jhuapl.edu]
Prior hypothesised ... (Score:1)
Not your conventional sound waves, yet a likeness caused by the roiling surface creating audio frequency waves through the plasma.
Also, how can anything survive millions of degrees of heat?!
I cannot think of anything that doen't melt at even the 5000C surface temperature of the Sun.
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Seriously.. what the fuck is wrong with you EU cultists?
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Re: "Either Relativity is right, or EU is right.. can't be both... and EVERY experiment done has shown Relativity is correct"
You could swap out "EU" with "quantum mechanics", and we'd be in the same exact situation.
Re: "EU doesn't explain anything experimentally"
Just to give an example, it can explain why the ionosphere is layered. There is a very simple experiment which involves charge-loading a metal sphere in a vacuum. This very simple experiment produces a layering of charge, and experimentally, that
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EU === Electric Universe, but also EU == electrical cosmology. Its central thesis is that cosmic plasmas behave as laboratory plasmas -- an important claim in light of the realization, since 1958, that most of the matter that we can see with telescopes is matter in the plasma state (>99%).
One thing to know is that in the EU, there is no dark matter problem: Since we clearly observe plasma to conduct in the laboratory, what is being claimed is that the cosmic plasma is conducting across vast distances of
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Re: "Uh, the vast majority of models I've seen are at least resistive, and often gyrokinetic or flat out kinetic instead of fluid. PIC is really popular for astrophysical plasmas, and a lot of the work on relativistic plasmas can't be fluid model at all."
There's an overt disconnect between what you are saying and the relentless onslaught of fluids concepts that appears within the analysis of astronomical plasmas. Whether or not the models in use are technically referred to as "fluids models", what is happe
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Relativity -
* Einstein saw a problem with the existing science (he wasn't alone in that)
* he formed his hypothesis (with actual math, apparently it's a thing in physics to use real math)
* a bunch of predictions are made using his hypothesis
* from 1919 to present day, every experiment done to verified those predictions has a positive outcome.
Electric Universe - wow, i mean just wow (talk about crackpot dipshtis on this list)
* was it Velikovsky thinking Earth was a moon
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Setting aside the fact that the existence of mathematics does not somehow make it correct, it is absolutely misleading to assert that there is no mathematics associated with either electrical cosmology (for example here) [google.com] or the Electric Universe (for example here) [thunderbolts.info]. In fact, understanding both require a deep appreciation for the Lorentz Force and Maxwell's Equations. Mathematics has been a part of electrical cosmology from its inception (for example here) [google.com].
Math is crucial for understanding the critical ioni
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Stands for Electric Universe [rationalwiki.org].
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Sorry, I meant ELECTRIC UNIVERSE®, of course....
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Carl Sagan [youtube.com]:
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* Einstein's postulates are wrong.
* General relativity (GR) is wrong.
* The Universe is not expanding.
* The electric force travels faster than the speed of light with near-infinite velocity.
* Gravity has two poles like a bar magnet; dipole gravity.
* A plenum of neutrinos forms an all-pervasive aether.
* Planets give birth to comets.
* Stars do not shine because of internal nuclear fusion caused by gravitational collapse. Rather, they are anodes for gal
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Koberlein admits 4 years later that he was wrong to claim that the Electric Universe predicts no neutrinos [briankoberlein.com], but take a look at the link you posted: He has left the claim there in his personal blog, without any mention of the mistake. Not only does he refuse to have his critiques reviewed, but when he is informed of obvious mistakes, he also refuses to retract those mistaken claims. This is the process which you are supporting by passing along his links. I'm always amused that people who claim to believe
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Relativity works. There has been no experiment where it has had a negative outcome. Until you can explain why we need to throw
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Re: "The few predictions it can make have been shown to be wrong"
As I've stated in another thread here [slashdot.org], you are blocking the best explanation we currently have for the observed layering of cosmic plasmas. A person need only go to the first nearest plasma to Earth -- its ionosphere -- and you will immediately run into the unavoidable problem of explaining how it can be that the different regions exist as layers which do not recombine or mix. In other words, why do plasmas exhibit structure with well-define
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None of these people are adherents of the Electric Universe, yet they are all saying the same thing.
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The Thunderbolts Project has decided to cover Slashdot readers' rejection of the mainstream astrophysical acknowledgement of electricity in space [youtube.com] in their ongoing Space News Youtube series.
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Re: "There is a lot of talk about scientists and very little talk about physical theory. As far as I can tell, EU is some conspiracy theory about scientists as opposed to a science theory. Maybe it would be more attractive and approachable if they drop the antisocial, whiny cruft and stuck to business."
It's probably unfair to judge an entire cosmology through Internet comments. Since a lot of the efforts here are focused upon correcting misconceptions, these efforts may come off to some as "whiny". For a
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What have you got against the European Union???