Just 20 years ago, no one knew for sure if our solar system was the only one with planets. In “Solving the mystery of cosmic rays,” Angela Olinto describes the latest in ray research - what’s known, what’s not, and what’s to come. Even before they cross our planet’s boundary, they can slam into satellites and inhabited missions like the International Space Station. They come from all over, nearby and far away, and when they hit Earth’s atmosphere, they create showers of lower-energy particles that can be damaging to both humans and electronics. The most powerful particles in the universe - cosmic rays - are also some of the most mysterious. Senior Editor Michael Bakich gives the details - and some comments and insights from Sagan’s widow, Ann Druyan - in “ Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey.” Neil deGrasse Tyson hosts the new version, which will debut March 9 on FOX.
#CANCAM MAGAZINE APRIL 2014 SERIES#
Whether you watched Carl Sagan’s original Cosmos series in its heyday, streamed it online last year, or have never even heard of it, get excited about this year’s resurrection of that iconic television show. To find out more about which idea holds more weight, pick up the April issue of Astronomy, on newsstands March 4, and read Bob Berman’s article “The missing universe.” Or does it? The idea has some detractors, who say that the problem is not “missing mass” but a misunderstanding of gravity itself: Scientists need to modify Newton’s original ideas, and then the mathematical need to understand the universe via mysterious, elusive dark matter will disappear.
But it makes up 85 percent of the cosmos’ mass. They deemed their conundrum the “missing mass problem” and came up with a partial solution: dark matter.ĭark matter, an invisible substance of unknown quality, character, and origin that permeates the universe, neither emits nor reflects light. They saw extra gravity pulling material around galactic centers, but they found no extra mass to account for that force. Eighty-one years ago, astronomers discovered that much of the cosmos’ contents was invisible. When you look up at the night sky, do you feel that something is missing? If you don’t, you should.