Characterizing Exoplanets in the Visible and Infrared: A Spectrometer Concept for the EChO Space Mission

Transit-spectroscopy of exoplanets is one of the key observational techniques to characterize the extrasolar planet and its atmosphere. The observational challenges of these measurements require dedicated instrumentation and only the space environment allows an undisturbed access to earth-like atmospheric features such as water or carbon-dioxide. Therefore, several exoplanet-specific space missions are currently being studied. One of them is EChO, the Exoplanet Characterization Observatory, which is part of ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program, and which is one of four candidates for the M3 launch slot in 2024. In this paper we present the results of our assessment study of the EChO spectrometer, the only science instrument onboard this spacecraft. The instrument is a multi-channel all-reflective dispersive spectrometer, covering the wavelength range from 400 nm to 16 microns simultaneously with a moderately low spectral resolution. We illustrate how the key technical challenge of the EChO mission - the high photometric stability - influences the choice of spectrometer concept and drives fundamentally the instrument design. First performance evaluations underline the fitness of the elaborated design solution for the needs of the EChO mission.Comment: 20 pages, 8 figures, accepted for publication in the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentatio

Model-Based Edge Detector for Spectral Imagery Using Sparse Spatiospectral Masks

Two model-based algorithms for edge detection in spectral imagery are developed that specifically target capturing intrinsic features such as isoluminant edges that are characterized by a jump in color but not in intensity. Given prior knowledge of the classes of reflectance or emittance spectra associated with candidate objects in a scene, a small set of spectral-band ratios, which most profoundly identify the edge between each pair of materials, are selected to define a edge signature. The bands that form the edge signature are fed into a spatial mask, producing a sparse joint spatiospectral nonlinear operator. The first algorithm achieves edge detection for every material pair by matching the response of the operator at every pixel with the edge signature for the pair of materials. The second algorithm is a classifier-enhanced extension of the first algorithm that adaptively accentuates distinctive features before applying the spatiospectral operator. Both algorithms are extensively verified using spectral imagery from the airborne hyperspectral imager and from a dots-in-a-well midinfrared imager. In both cases, the multicolor gradient (MCG) and the hyperspectral/spatial detection of edges (HySPADE) edge detectors are used as a benchmark for comparison. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform the MCG and HySPADE edge detectors in accuracy, especially when isoluminant edges are present. By requiring only a few bands as input to the spatiospectral operator, the algorithms enable significant levels of data compression in band selection. In the presented examples, the required operations per pixel are reduced by a factor of 71 with respect to those required by the MCG edge detector

New results about microtubules as quantum systems

The latest news in quantum biology is the observation by the group led by Anirban Bandy-opadhyay about detection of quantum vibration in microtubule scale - their lengths vary up to50 m. If this observation can be replicated, one can speak about breakthrough in quantumconsciousness.The ndings reported in an earlier talk of Banduopadhyay give support for the general TGDinspired view about topological quantum computation (TQC) and allow for a rather detailedmodel in the case of microtubules. The idea is that ux tubes form a 2-D coordinate grid consistingof parallel ux tubes in two dierent directions. Crossing points would be associated with tubulinsand the conformational state of tubulin could dene a bit coding whether the braid strandsdening coordinate lines are braided or not (swap or not). In this manner any bit pattern atmicrotubule denes a particular TQC program. If also conformations are quantum superposed,one would have "quantum-quantum computation". It however seems that conformation changeis irreversible chemical reaction so that this option is not feasible.The TGD inspired modication of the proposal in terms of ux tube coordinate grids makingpossible TQC architectures with tubulin dimers dening bits dening in turn TQC program looksrather natural. Coordinate grids can be xed on basis of the experimental ndings and thereare 8 of them. The interpretation is in terms of dierent resolutions. The grids for A and Btype lattices are related by 2 twist for the second end of the basic 13-unit for microtubule. Anattractive interpretation for the resonance frequencies is in terms of phase transitions between Aand B type lattices. If A type lattices can be generated only in phase transitions induced by ACstimulus at resonance frequencies, one could understand their experimental absence, which is astrong objection against Penrose-Hamero model.TGD suggests also a generalization of the very notion of TQC to 2-braid TQC with 2-D stringworld sheets becoming knotted in 4-D space-time. Now qubits (or their generalizations) couldcorrespond to states of ux tubes dening braid strands as Penrose and Hamero seem to suggestand the emergence of MTs could be seen as an evolutionary leap due to the emergence of a newabstraction level in cognitive processing