When A Porous Solid Retains Its Properties In Liquid Form

Women at work on a C-47 Douglas cargo transport, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, California, 1943.

via reddit

Zillertal Alps // Tom Klocker

“People who never met her except across the footlights did not realize how, in her private life, she had such compassion and interest in everyone. After I returned from Hong Kong I was ill with a virus and she rang me up reproachfully later to say, ‘Why didn’t you let me know? I would have come and sit with you.’ Giving flowers to sick people is easy. Giving that precious commodity time is far more expensive for someone who had such a full life. But she always found time for everyone.” -Godfrey Winn

The Beauty of Webb Telescope’s Mirrors

The James Webb Space Telescope’s gold-plated, beryllium mirrors are beautiful feats of engineering. From the 18 hexagonal primary mirror segments, to the perfectly circular secondary mirror, and even the slightly trapezoidal tertiary mirror and the intricate fine-steering mirror, each reflector went through a rigorous refinement process before it was ready to mount on the telescope. This flawless formation process was critical for Webb, which will use the mirrors to peer far back in time to capture the light from the first stars and galaxies. 

The James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb, is our upcoming infrared space observatory, which will launch in 2019. It will spy the first luminous objects that formed in the universe and shed light on how galaxies evolve, how stars and planetary systems are born, and how life could form on other planets.  

A polish and shine that would make your car jealous

All of the Webb telescope’s mirrors were polished to accuracies of approximately one millionth of an inch. The beryllium mirrors were polished at room temperature with slight imperfections, so as they change shape ever so slightly while cooling to their operating temperatures in space, they achieve their perfect shape for operations.

The Midas touch

Engineers used a process called vacuum vapor deposition to coat Webb’s mirrors with an ultra-thin layer of gold. Each mirror only required about 3 grams (about 0.11 ounces) of gold. It only took about a golf ball-sized amount of gold to paint the entire main mirror!

Before the deposition process began, engineers had to be absolutely sure the mirror surfaces were free from contaminants. 

The engineers thoroughly wiped down each mirror, then checked it in low light conditions to ensure there was no residue on the surface.

Inside the vacuum deposition chamber, the tiny amount of gold is turned into a vapor and deposited to cover the entire surface of each mirror.

Primary, secondary, and tertiary mirrors, oh my!

Each of Webb’s primary mirror segments is hexagonally shaped. The entire 6.5-meter (21.3-foot) primary mirror is slightly curved (concave), so each approximately 1.3-meter (4.3-foot) piece has a slight curve to it.

Those curves repeat themselves among the segments, so there are only three different shapes — 6 of each type. In the image below, those different shapes are labeled as A, B, and C.

Webb’s perfectly circular secondary mirror captures light from the 18 primary mirror segments and relays those images to the telescope’s tertiary mirror.

The secondary mirror is convex, so the reflective surface bulges toward a light source. It looks much like a curved mirror that you see on the wall near the exit of a parking garage that lets motorists see around a corner.

Webb’s trapezoidal tertiary mirror captures light from the secondary mirror and relays it to the fine-steering mirror and science instruments. The tertiary mirror sits at the center of the telescope’s primary mirror. The tertiary mirror is the only fixed mirror in the system — all of the other mirrors align to it.

All of the mirrors working together will provide Webb with the most advanced infrared vision of any space observatory we’ve ever launched!

Who is the fairest of them all?

The beauty of Webb’s primary mirror was apparent as it rotated past a cleanroom observation window at our Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. If you look closely in the reflection, you will see none other than James Webb Space Telescope senior project scientist and Nobel Laureate John Mather!

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Snowflakes from William Scoresby’s des Jüngern Tagebuch einer reise auf den Wallfischfang, (Hamburg: F. Perthes, 1825), the German translation of Journal of a voyage to the northern whale-fishery.

Scoresby was an Arctic explorer with interests in meteorology and navigation, who led an Arctic exploration in the early 1800s to the area around Greenland.  

Making twisted semiconductors for 3-D projection

A smartphone display that can produce 3-D images will need to be able to twist the light it emits. Now, researchers at the University of Michigan and the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have discovered a way to mass-produce spiral semiconductors that can do just that.

Back in 1962, University of Michigan engineers E. Leith and J. Upatnieks unveiled realistic 3-D images with the invention of practical holography. The first holographic images of bird on a train were made by creating standing waves of light with bright and dark spots in space, which creates an illusion of material object. It was made possible by controlling polarization and phase of light, i.e. the direction and the timing of electromagnetic wave fluctuations.

The semiconductor helices created by U-M-led team can do exactly that with photons that pass through, reflected from, and emitted by them. They can be incorporated into other semiconductor devices to vary the polarization, phase, and color of light emitted by the different pixels, each of them made from the precisely designed semiconductor helices.

Read more.

“I travel around the world, eat a lot of shit, and basically do whatever the fuck I want.”  Read our complete Profile of Anthony Bourdain here.