Solar sailing - mission opportunities and innovative technology demonstration

Solar sailing is a unique and elegant form of propulsion that transcends reliance on reaction mass. Rather than carrying propellant, solar sails acquire momentum from photons, the quantum packets of energy from which sunlight is composed. In addition, since solar sails are not limited by reaction mass, they can provide continual acceleration, limited only by the lifetime of the sail film in the space environment. Therefore, solar sails can expand the envelope of possible missions, enabling new high-energy mission concepts that are essentially impossible with conventional reaction propulsion, and enhancing current mission concepts by lowering launch mass and reducing trip times

Baryonic Signatures in Large-Scale Structure

We investigate the consequences of a non-negligible baryon fraction for models of structure formation in Cold Dark Matter dominated cosmologies, emphasizing in particular the existence of oscillations in the present-day matter power spectrum. These oscillations are the remnants of acoustic oscillations in the photon-baryon fluid before last scattering. For acceptable values of the cosmological and baryon densities, the oscillations modulate the power by up to 10%, with a `period' in spatial wavenumber which is close to Delta k approximately 0.05/ Mpc. We study the effects of nonlinear evolution on these features, and show that they are erased for k > 0.2 h/ Mpc. At larger scales, the features evolve as expected from second-order perturbation theory: the visibility of the oscillations is affected only weakly by nonlinear evolution. No realistic CDM parameter combination is able to account for the claimed feature near k = 0.1 h/ Mpc in the APM power spectrum, or the excess power at 100 Mpc/h wavelengths quoted by several recent surveys. Thus baryonic oscillations are not predicted to dominate existing measurements of clustering. We examine several effects which may mask the features which are predicted, and conclude that future galaxy surveys may be able to detect the oscillatory features in the power spectrum provided baryons comprise more than 15% of the total density, but that it will be a technically challenging achievement.Comment: 16 pages, 13 Figures, to be published in MNRA

Old Galaxies at High Redshift and the Cosmological Constant

In a recent striking discovery, Dunlop {\bf \it et al} observed a galaxy at redshift z=1.55 with an estimated age of 3.5 Gyr. This is incompatible with age estimates for a flat matter dominated universe unless the Hubble constant is less than $45 kms^{-1}Mpc^{-1}$. While both an open universe, and a universe with a cosmological constant alleviate this problem, I argue here that this result favors a non-zero cosmological constant, especially when considered in light of other cosmological constraints. In the first place, for the favored range of matter densities, this constraint is more stringent than the globular cluster age constraint, which already favors a non-zero cosmological constant. Moreover, the age-redshift relation for redshifts of order unity implies that the ratio between the age associated with redshift 1.55 and the present age is also generally larger for a cosmological constant dominated universe than for an open universe. In addition, structure formation is generally suppressed in low density cosmologies, arguing against early galaxy formation. The additional constraints imposed by the new observation on the parameter space of $h$ vs $\Omega_{matter}$ (where $H= 100 h kms^{-1}Mpc^{-1}$) are derived for both cosmologies. For a cosmological constant dominated universe this constraint is consistent with the range allowed by other cosmological constraints, which also favor a non-zero value.Comment: latex, 10 pages, including two embedded postscript figure

Is space really expanding? A counterexample

In all Friedman models, the cosmological redshift is widely interpreted as a consequence of the general-relativistic phenomenon of EXPANSION OF SPACE. Other commonly believed consequences of this phenomenon are superluminal recession velocities of distant galaxies and the distance to the particle horizon greater than c*t (where t is the age of the Universe), in apparent conflict with special relativity. Here, we study a particular Friedman model: empty universe. This model exhibits both cosmological redshift, superluminal velocities and infinite distance to the horizon. However, we show that the cosmological redshift is there simply a relativistic Doppler shift. Moreover, apparently superluminal velocities and `acausal' distance to the horizon are in fact a direct consequence of special-relativistic phenomenon of time dilation, as well as of the adopted definition of distance in cosmology. There is no conflict with special relativity, whatsoever. In particular, INERTIAL recession velocities are subluminal. Since in the real Universe, sufficiently distant galaxies recede with relativistic velocities, these special-relativistic effects must be at least partly responsible for the cosmological redshift and the aforementioned `superluminalities', commonly attributed to the expansion of space. Let us finish with a question resembling a Buddhism-Zen `koan': in an empty universe, what is expanding?Comment: 12 pages, no figures; added Appendix with a calculation of the cosmological redshift in `private space

Radio Galaxy Clustering at z~0.3

Radio galaxies are uniquely useful as probes of large-scale structure as their uniform identification with giant elliptical galaxies out to high redshift means that the evolution of their bias factor can be predicted. As the initial stage in a project to study large-scale structure with radio galaxies we have performed a small redshift survey, selecting 29 radio galaxies in the range 0.19<z<0.45 from a contiguous 40 square degree area of sky. We detect significant clustering within this sample. The amplitude of the two-point correlation function we measure is consistent with no evolution from the local (z<0.1) value. This is as expected in a model in which radio galaxy hosts form at high redshift and thereafter obey a continuity equation, although the signal:noise of the detection is too low to rule out other models. Larger surveys out to z~1 should reveal the structures of superclusters at intermediate redshifts and strongly constrain models for the evolution of large-scale structure.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, accepted by ApJ Letter

The Evolution of Radio Galaxies at Intermediate Redshift

We describe a new estimate of the radio galaxy 1.4 GHz luminosity function and its evolution at intermediate redshifts (z~0.4). Photometric redshifts and color selection have been used to select Bj<23.5 early-type galaxies from the Panoramic Deep Fields, a multicolor survey of two 25 sq deg fields. Approximately 230 radio galaxies have then been selected by matching early-type galaxies with NVSS radio sources brighter than 5 mJy. Estimates of the 1.4 GHz luminosity function of radio galaxies measure significant evolution over the observed redshift range. For an Omega_M=1 cosmology the evolution of the radio power is consistent with luminosity evolution where P(z)=P(0)(1+z)^{k_L} and 3<k_L<5. The observed evolution is similar to that observed for UVX and X-ray selected AGN and is consistent with the same physical process being responsible for the optical and radio luminosity evolution of AGN.Comment: 26 pages, 9 Figures, Accepted for Publication in A