Advances in Astrophysics

3

Authors: Idan Ginsburg, Manasvi Lingam, Merrill Butler III

The cosmic web exhibits some striking similarities to that of an animal brain. Despite its tremendous size the cosmos is many orders of magnitude less efficient at computation than the brains residing in Earth’s biosphere. This shows just how information-rich life truly is.

10

Authors: H.D.S. Amaradasa, G.D.K. Mahanama, S.S. Abeywickrama, A.G.P.D. Alahakoon, K.P.S.C. Jayarathna, N.C. Wickramasinghe

The systematic detection and tracking of meteor streams and global fireball events potentially provide a dataset of immense importance to our understanding of passing objects. To this end hemispherical and wide field of view cameras are used in meteor observations with a synchronized network of cameras to record intricate details about meteor activities. In this research a hemispherical robotic camera unit named AWITC was designed to monitor meteors entering earth’s atmosphere near Sri Lanka. The unit consists of an astronomy camera with a Complementary Metal Oxide Sensor (CMOS), a fish eye lens, a single board computer, a storage device, internet connectivity and other sensors allowing it to function with minimum human supervision. The images are saved with record of time, date and temperature. The time of the computer can be updated from both internet and GPS connections. The unit has two enclosures for protecting the electronics from solar radiation and rain and all the main devices reside in the internal enclosure. Temperature and humidity sensors are included to monitor the ventilation in the enclosure. A five element YAGI Wi- Fi antenna was designed to extend the wireless connectivity of the unit. The obtained images are saved in the internal storage and a copy is sent to a sever computer. All the software used, are uniquely developed for the unit and the cohesion of hardware and software were tested. The camera unit functioned for eleven months continuously and captured a large number of meteor activities.

14

Authors: L.Barbieri, F. Talamucci

The calculus of apsidal precession frequencies of the planets is developed by means of a perturbation technique. A model of concentric rings (ring model), suitable for improving calculations, is introduced. Conclusive remarks concerning a comparison between the theoretical, the calculated and the observed data of the precession frequencies are performed.

10

Authors: A. Santhosh Kumar, N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Godfrey Louis

Despite various proposals, no conclusive identification exists for the carriers of diffuse interstellar absorption bands DIBs and the UV extinction bump at 217.5 nm. The red rain cells of Kerala show strong absorption features near 216.5 nm and several weak absorption features in the wavelength region 400 to 900 nm which are superimposed on a broader blue-UV absorption peak. The red pigment extracted from the cells show strong peaks at 334 nm and 440 nm along with multitude of weak peaks. The measured absorption peaks are compared with that of DIBs and the UV bump. The higher peak widths for red cells in comparison with DIBs is attributed to the temperature difference between space environment and laboratory. Our results of the absorption spectra of red rain cells show significant correlation with the reported wavelengths of numerous DIBs and the UV extinction bump of the interstellar medium, thus showing that the red rain cells, which are of suspected extraterrestrial origin, is a plausible carrier of DIBs and the UV extinction bump.

14

Authors: Amy L. Potrzeba-Macrina, Igor G. Zurbenko

Solar activity has a well-known periodicity of approximately 10-11 years, an oscillation that was first observed in China several thousand years ago. The purpose of this paper is to explain the driving force behind this periodicity and to explain other periodicities inherent to solar activities. In science, spectral analysis is an essential tool used for the identification of periodicities that are natural to a given dataset. In this paper the authors use spectral analysis to investigate planetary gravitational periods to explain periodicities of sunspot numbers and to make conclusions about the driving force of the sunspot numbers and solar activity. Precise analysis of inherent periodicities provides the capability to predict future fluctuations in solar activities. The authors show clear evidence of long periodicities within sunspot numbers. The combination of several periodic components, while complex, remains perfectly predictable. The authors show that the long-term component of sunspot fluctuations is perfectly proportional to the total solar irradiation near Earth measured by satellites. While satellite measurements of the total solar irradiance cover a short time interval, sunspot numbers have been recorded for a long time and essentially have more value on the prediction of solar influence on Earth’s climate. This allows for the numerical evaluation of solar energy delivered to Earth. Numerical evaluations of fluctuations in solar energies delivered to Earth are an essential achievement for any climate change analysis. The removal of solar influences from long-term temperature data provides the opportunity to numerically identify the human impact on Earth’s climate. A better understanding and prediction of the Sun’s long oscillations may influence important predictions of climatic events and impact emergency preparedness.

5

Authors: Yuriy Zayko

The article gives the metric of the Schwarzschild black hole, consistent with the fact that the electromagnetic vacuum is unstable under its horizon. A similar metric was previously obtained in the author's work when studying the dynamics of a vortex. This metric is characterized by the absence of many familiar concepts intrinsic to hyperbolic space-time: light-like geodesics, light cone, etc. The thermodynamic aspect of this black hole model is also considered.

34

Authors: B. V. Alexeev

The existence in a bounded region of a self-consistent plasma object is established by the methods of non-local physics as a result of the solution of the Cauchy problem. The non-local theory is created for mathematical modeling of plasmoids and ball lightnings. The solitons have the character of the stable quantum objects in the self consistent electric field. Particularly these effects can be considered as explanation of the existence of lightning balls. The delivered theory demonstrates the great possibilities of the generalized quantum hydrodynamics in investigation of the quantum solitons. The theory leads to solitons as typical formations in the generalized quantum hydrodynamics. It is proved that all ball lightnings theories based on local description are wrong in principle.