Название: Radio Astronomy: Observing the Invisible Universe
Автор: Felix J. Lockman
Издательство: The Great Courses
Год: 2017
Формат: PDF
Страниц: 281
Размер: 81,78 МБ
Язык: English

For a few hundred thousand years, we used our eyes as our primary astronomical tool. But it all changed in the 1930s when a young engineer named Karl Jansky detected radiation below the visible part of the spectrum emanating from an astronomical object - and radio astronomy was born. Radio Astronomy: Observing the Invisible Universe takes you on a thrilling journey through astounding discoveries with Felix J. Lockman, Ph.D., of the Green Bank Observatory as your guide. You’ll learn how astronomers used radio energy, some emitted from hydrogen and other atoms, to discover Jupiter’s radiation belts, Sagittarius A and the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, dark matter, neutron stars, pulsars, giant molecular clouds, and complex organic molecules in interstellar space. Learn about the principles of radio telescopes - collecting, focusing, amplifying, and analyzing radio waves - and take a virtual tour of the world’s most enormous radio telescopes. That includes the technique of Very Long Baseline Interferometry, with multiple telescopes located thousands of miles apart, all functioning together as one single radio telescope the size of the Earth. Perhaps the most astounding of all radio astronomy discoveries is this: The dominant molecular structures in interstellar space are based on carbon. That is not what scientists had expected. We have always labeled these molecules “organic” because life on Earth is carbon based. Now we know the chemistry of the entire Milky Way is organic, like that of our home planet, and it is likely that any extraterrestrial life would be related to us on the molecular level. Are other organic lifeforms out there? Radio astronomers don’t know. But they’re certainly working on it.