Victor Grippi – The Atomic Writer

Nasa’s GLAST mission has been renamed to the Femi mission in honor of Enrico Femi. (see the below biography)

NASA has also released the “first light” image taken from only 95 hours of data from this new instrument. This is only the beginning of great images this satellite will produce. The image is comparable to the EGRET instrument, on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, that took years to produce – instead of hours.

This is a flattened map of the entire sky:

To recap: the FEMI satellite will detect high energy signals like gamma ray bursts that originate from supernova, quasars, and potentially from evaporating black holes, or even the white hole end of wormholes. (for our time traveling friends) If you look at the above image, you can see a red shifted band across the middle of the image. This is from high energy signals, including gamma ray bursts.

Renaming the project to Fermi is a great tribute to an outstanding scientist who was instrumental in breaking new ground in quantum physics. He worked and pursued knowledge without any trace of a selfish motive or intent. This is crucial as we break new ground into technologies that may affect man or environment.

With the CERN LHC coming on-line this week, I want to underscore the importance of proceeding with caution. Most of the work the LHC will do is benign and will have little or no risk. However, one experiment planned is accelerating two particle beams, in opposite directions, and then smashing them together at 0.99999 the speed of light. This will create energies man has never seen before, and the resulting collision may reveal new exotic particles also never seen before. Now, this is a classic example of the need for science to proceed with wisdom and extreme caution as to the possible effects this line of experimentation may do to our environment. In my opinion, NASA should already be on Mars, and this my friends is the place to build a Large Hadron Collider. In the event a catastrophic black hole is produced, well there goes Mars, we’ll all say from a safe distance. Do we really need to find the elusive Higgs particle? Let’s just say it exists and leave it at that…

Perhaps I’m overreacting a bit. I mean heck, back during the Manhattan project scientists were concerned an atomic detonation would ignite hydrogen in the upper atmosphere and scorch the entire planet. Their worries were of course laid to rest when at the Trinity site on July 16, 1945, the upper atmosphere did not burn, the planet was saved. So atomic bombs were deemed safe and not too bad, since they did not destroy the planet. (at least not yet)

Biography of Enrico Fermi

Enrico Fermi (1901-1954) was an Italian physicist who immigrated to the United States. He was the first to suggest a viable mechanism for astrophysical particle acceleration. This work is the foundation for our understanding of many types of sources to be studied by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly known as GLAST.

Fermi is most noted for his work on the development of the first nuclear reactor and for his major contributions to the development of quantum theory, nuclear and particle physics, and statistical mechanics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 for his work on induced radioactivity and is today regarded as one of the top scientists of the 20th century.

In addition to his direct connection to the science, Fermi holds special significance to the U.S. Department of Energy, the Italian Space Agency, and the Italian Particle Physics Agency.

Until next time…

Victor Grippi
The Atomic Writer