Preliminary sonic boom correlation of predicted and measured levels for STS-1 entry

A preliminary analysis correlating peaks from sonic boom pressure signatures recorded during the descent trajectory of the Orbiter Columbia, which landed in the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB), California, with measured wind tunnel signatures extrapolated from flight altitudes to the ground has been made for Mach numbers ranging from 1.3 to 6. The flight pressure signatures were recorded by microphones positioned at ground level near the groundtrack, whereas the wind tunnel signatures were measured during a test of a 0.0041-scale model Orbiter. The agreement between overpressure estimates based on wind tunnel data using preliminary flight trajectory data and oscillograph traces from ground measurements appears reasonable at this time for the range of Mach numbers considered. More detailed studies using final flight trajectory data and digitized ground measured data will be performed

Soliton-dynamical approach to a noisy Ginzburg-Landau model

We present a dynamical description and analysis of non-equilibrium transitions in the noisy Ginzburg-Landau equation based on a canonical phase space formulation. The transition pathways are characterized by nucleation and subsequent propagation of domain walls or solitons. We also evaluate the Arrhenius factor in terms of an associated action and find good agreement with recent numerical optimization studies.Comment: 4 pages (revtex4), 3 figures (eps

Cosmological Effects of Nonlinear Electrodynamics

It will be shown that a given realization of nonlinear electrodynamics, used as source of Einstein's equations, generates a cosmological model with interesting features, namely a phase of current cosmic acceleration, and the absence of an initial singularity, thus pointing to a way to solve two important problems in cosmology