Turbulence and turbulent mixing in natural fluids

Turbulence and turbulent mixing in natural fluids begins with big bang turbulence powered by spinning combustible combinations of Planck particles and Planck antiparticles. Particle prograde accretions on a spinning pair releases 42% of the particle rest mass energy to produce more fuel for turbulent combustion. Negative viscous stresses and negative turbulence stresses work against gravity, extracting mass-energy and space-time from the vacuum. Turbulence mixes cooling temperatures until strong-force viscous stresses freeze out turbulent mixing patterns as the first fossil turbulence. Cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies show big bang turbulence fossils along with fossils of weak plasma turbulence triggered as plasma photon-viscous forces permit gravitational fragmentation on supercluster to galaxy mass scales. Turbulent morphologies and viscous-turbulent lengths appear as linear gas-proto-galaxy-clusters in the Hubble ultra-deep-field at z~7. Proto-galaxies fragment into Jeans-mass-clumps of primordial-gas-planets at decoupling: the dark matter of galaxies. Shortly after the plasma to gas transition, planet-mergers produce stars that explode on overfeeding to fertilize and distribute the first life.Comment: 23 pages 12 figures, Turbulent Mixing and Beyond 2009 International Center for Theoretical Physics conference, Trieste, Italy. Revision according to Referee comments. Accepted for Physica Scripta Topical Issue to be published in 201

How Useful are High-Precision Delta ?17O Data in Defining the Asteroidal Sources of Meteorites?: Evidence from Main-Group Pallasites, Primitive and Differentiated Achondrites

High-precision oxygen isotope analysis is capable of revealing important information about the relationship between different meteorite groups. New data confirm that the main-group pallasites are from a distinct source to either the HEDs or mesosiderites

Contour surveying system Patent

Describing device for surveying contour of surface using X-Y plotter and traveling transduce

Gravitational hydrodynamics of large scale structure formation

The gravitational hydrodynamics of the primordial plasma with neutrino hot dark matter is considered as a challenge to the bottom-up cold dark matter paradigm. Viscosity and turbulence induce a top-down fragmentation scenario before and at decoupling. The first step is the creation of voids in the plasma, which expand to 37 Mpc on the average now. The remaining matter clumps turn into galaxy clusters. Turbulence produced at expanding void boundaries causes a linear morphology of 3 kpc fragmenting protogalaxies along vortex lines. At decoupling galaxies and proto-globular star clusters arise; the latter constitute the galactic dark matter halos and consist themselves of earth-mass H-He planets. Frozen planets are observed in microlensing and white-dwarf-heated ones in planetary nebulae. The approach also explains the Tully-Fisher and Faber-Jackson relations, and cosmic microwave temperature fluctuations of micro-Kelvins.Comment: 6 pages, no figure

Weighing the galactic disc using the Jeans equation: lessons from simulations

Using three-dimensional stellar kinematic data from simulated galaxies, we examine the efficacy of a Jeans equation analysis in reconstructing the total disk surface density, including the dark matter, at the ‘Solar’ radius. Our simulation data set includes galaxies formed in a cosmological context using state-of-the-art high-resolution cosmological zoom simulations, and other idealized models. The cosmologically formed galaxies have been demonstrated to lie on many of the observed scaling relations for late-type spirals, and thus offer an interesting surrogate for real galaxies with the obvious advantage that all the kinematical data are known perfectly. We show that the vertical velocity dispersion is typically the dominant kinematic quantity in the analysis, and that the traditional method of using only the vertical force is reasonably effective at low heights above the disk plane. At higher heights the inclusion of the radial force becomes increasingly important. We also show that the method is sensitive to uncertainties in the measured disk parameters, particularly the scalelengths of the assumed double exponential density distribution, and the scalelength of the radial velocity dispersion. In addition, we show that disk structure and low number statistics can lead to significant errors in the calculated surface densities. Finally, we examine the implications of our results for previous studies of this sort, suggesting that more accurate measurements of the scalelengths may help reconcile conflicting estimates of the local dark matter density in the literature

X-raying the Winds of Luminous Active Galaxies

We briefly describe some recent observational results, mainly at X-ray wavelengths, on the winds of luminous active galactic nuclei (AGNs). These winds likely play a significant role in galaxy feedback. Topics covered include (1) Relations between X-ray and UV absorption in Broad Absorption Line (BAL) and mini-BAL quasars; (2) X-ray absorption in radio-loud BAL quasars; and (3) Evidence for relativistic iron K BALs in the X-ray spectra of a few bright quasars. We also mention some key outstanding problems and prospects for future advances; e.g., with the International X-ray Observatory (IXO).Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, to appear in proceedings of the conference "The Monster's Fiery Breath: Feedback in Galaxies, Groups, and Clusters", June 2009, Madison, Wisconsi

Portable dynamic fundus instrument

A portable diagnostic image analysis instrument is disclosed for retinal funduscopy in which an eye fundus image is optically processed by a lens system to a charge coupled device (CCD) which produces recordable and viewable output data and is simultaneously viewable on an electronic view finder. The fundus image is processed to develop a representation of the vessel or vessels from the output data

Simple and accurate modelling of the gravitational potential produced by thick and thin exponential discs

We present accurate models of the gravitational potential produced by a radially exponential disc mass distribution. The models are produced by combining three separate Miyamoto–Nagai discs. Such models have been used previously to model the disc of the Milky Way, but here we extend this framework to allow its application to discs of any mass, scalelength, and a wide range of thickness from infinitely thin to near spherical (ellipticities from 0 to 0.9). The models have the advantage of simplicity of implementation, and we expect faster run speeds over a double exponential disc treatment. The potentials are fully analytical, and differentiable at all points. The mass distribution of our models deviates from the radial mass distribution of a pure exponential disc by <0.4 per cent out to 4 disc scalelengths, and <1.9 per cent out to 10 disc scalelengths. We tabulate fitting parameters which facilitate construction of exponential discs for any scalelength, and a wide range of disc thickness (a user-friendly, web-based interface is also available). Our recipe is well suited for numerical modelling of the tidal effects of a giant disc galaxy on star clusters or dwarf galaxies. We consider three worked examples; the Milky Way thin and thick disc, and a discy dwarf galaxy

Broad Absorption Line Variability in Radio-Loud Quasars

We investigate C IV broad absorption line (BAL) variability within a sample of 46 radio-loud quasars (RLQs), selected from SDSS/FIRST data to include both core-dominated (39) and lobe-dominated (7) objects. The sample consists primarily of high-ionization BAL quasars, and a substantial fraction have large BAL velocities or equivalent widths; their radio luminosities and radio-loudness values span ~2.5 orders of magnitude. We have obtained 34 new Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) spectra of 28 BAL RLQs to compare to earlier SDSS data, and we also incorporate archival coverage (primarily dual-epoch SDSS) for a total set of 78 pairs of equivalent width measurements for 46 BAL RLQs, probing rest-frame timescales of ~80-6000 d (median 500 d). In general, only modest changes in the depths of segments of absorption troughs are observed, akin to those seen in prior studies of BAL RQQs. Also similar to previous findings for RQQs, the RLQs studied here are more likely to display BAL variability on longer rest-frame timescales. However, typical values of |Delta_EW| and |Delta_EW|/ are about 40+/-20% lower for BAL RLQs when compared with those of a timescale-matched sample of BAL RQQs. Optical continuum variability is of similar amplitude in BAL RLQs and BAL RQQs; for both RLQs and RQQs, continuum variability tends to be stronger on longer timescales. BAL variability in RLQs does not obviously depend upon their radio luminosities or radio-loudness values, but we do find tentative evidence for greater fractional BAL variability within lobe-dominated RLQs. Enhanced BAL variability within more edge-on (lobe-dominated) RLQs supports some geometrical dependence to the outflow structure.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures, 6 tables, accepted to MNRAS, full Appendix A at http://www.macalester.edu/~bmille13/balrlqs.htm