Mayank Chhaya Daily

NASA's astonishing OSIRIS-REx concludes in splendid success after 6.2 billion kms

The sample return capsule from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission is seen shortly after touching down in the desert, Sunday, Sept. 24, 2023, at the Department of Defense's Utah Test and Training Range. The sample was collected from the asteroid Bennu in October 2020 by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft.

Credits: NASA/Keegan Barber

On September 8, 2016, NASA's planetary mission OSIRIS-REx, an acronym for "Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer, took off from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It returned to Earth yesterday in the Utah desert after a little over seven years. 

In those seven years the spacecraft traveled over 4 billion miles  or 6.2 billion kilometers to reach an asteroid named Bennu which at that point was some 200 million miles from us.  On Oct. 20, 2020, it unfurled its robotic arm, briefly touched down on the asteroid and collected dust and pebbles. The asteroid sample weighing about 250 grams was packed in a capsule for its return journey. That sample is now safely home with NASA scientists for a months-long, if not a years-long investigation, into its composition and through it look for answers to some profound questions, including about the origin on life. 

The sample represents over 4 billion plus years of history about our solar system. It is pristine and untouched by human hands. 

Whichever way you look at this, it is an astonishing mission by NASA. Imagine the variables since the mission was first proposed in 2004 and twice rejected for various reasons. Imagine the confluence of technologies and human intelligence that went into mounting it and executing it first to takeoff, then to swing around Earth, then to reach Bennu, then to observe the asteroid closely for over a year to look for a safe spot to rendezvous, then to rapidly drill its surface for a sample, then to take off at 1000 kilometers an hour to thrust away from the asteroid and then on to a journey back home and then finally calculate its return precisely so that it lands safely. If your mind does not boggle at the splendid feat, get it examined.

But after all that OSIRIS has no rest. It has already been renamed as OSIRIS-APEX (OSIRIS-APophis EXplorer) to explore Apophis, an asteroid roughly 1,200 feet (roughly 370 meters) in diameter that will come within 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers) of Earth in 2029. The spacecraft was here after traveling a total of 6.2 billion miles only to drop off this sample before embarking on another sample collection duty. We should be grateful to machines.

To think that such brilliant scientists have to share this planet with thousands of politicians across the world indulging in assholery and bigotry and skullduggery on a daily basis. 

Take a moment from your lives and read a bit about such missions.

 

 

Humans as quantum particles forever in superposition until measured

Treating humans as quantum particles has been one of my longstanding favorite fantasies. I first began thinking about this in my late teens but did not quite develop it beyond just an idea. Decades later it still remains an idea with some flesh around it. I wrote a piece on November 25, 2016, which I am republishing it today. 

November 25, 2016

For as long as I remember I have considered humans as quantum particles in relation to the universe. Just consider this one fact. If the sun was hollow, it could fit 1.3 million earths inside. Now imagine an average human’s size in relation to earth within those 1.3 million earths inside the sun which is but a mediocre star as stars in our Milky Way galaxy go. You begin to get some measure of how minuscule an average human is. We are quantum particles in relation to our own galaxy, let alone our galactic neighborhood and eventually the entire universe.

Having established that scale, now on to a theory I have long nurtured. If humans are quantum particles, they ought to display quantum characteristics, a fundamental one of which is quantum superposition. We all live in the human version of quantum superposition. I define human superposition as living in all possible emotional or unemotional states at all times until such time as an external stimulation triggers a response. Then we assume a specific state the way quantum particles do.

When we are measured (interacted with) in a manner of speaking, we reveal a specifically identifiable state which collapses into superposition as soon as that act of measurement or interaction stops. Until such time as I am interacting with a particular individual I can never tell what state that person is in. That means the person is in all possible states, including dead, without my interacting (measuring) them. It is only when specific information related to that specific person is accessed by an act of measurement or interaction, do we get to access one particular state. The idea that from one’s extremely limited knowledge, the rest of the universe is a mere speculation can be an unsettling one.

In a strange way I am reminded of my theory when someone famous or accomplished passes away; someone whose existence I was not aware of to begin with. It is only because I came to measure or interact or to be revealed to of that person’s death, do I know that that person existed. I say famous or accomplished because those deaths are publicly reported. Millions of people die every year whose lives or deaths we are not aware of and hence their existence remains speculative for us for all practical purposes.

Coming back to my idea of human superposition, once you apply that theory to humans you can explain a lot of what goes on in the world. Some human particles jiggle much more than the others and therefore reveal their existence more assertively. Most lead an existence of low energy and therefore tend to fade away without making much impact beyond their immediate neighborhood.

There is some comfort—at least for me—in thinking of ourselves as quantum particles in relation to the universe. In some sense, the state of being human quantum particles liberates oneself from being tethered to value judgment. If I reveal something of my existence or a particular state, it is only because someone, somewhere measured it.

I must clarify I use measure not in a literal sense of measuring something the way physicists measure the quantum world but as an act of human interaction.

As useful ideas go, what I have just written about is rather useless in so much as it affects one’s daily life. On the other hand though, the moment you look at fellow human beings as fellow quantum particles forever in all possible states they can be until such time they are measured, life becomes easier.

Reflected glories

For a fleeting few seconds at the sunrise the windows of the building to the west of mine reflect the striking mauve glow on things on my coffee table. This picture was taken about ten minutes ago in the resplendent sunlight.

Speaking of light, it is not the purpose of the Sun to create light. Light is just an incidental product of all that goes on at its core where hydrogen is being converted into helium via nuclear fusion.

This constant conversion of hydrogen to helium under a temperature of 15 million Kelvins a pressure 200 billion times what there is on Earth's surface releases a great deal of energy, including light. This energy in the form of light bounces around the Sun's core for a very long time--likely between 10,000 years and 170,000 years. What I saw this morning or see any morning could have been generated any time during that time frame. Add to that eight minutes it takes to travel from its surface to us. The point is the Sun is not creating its light for you and I. It is a byproduct of its thermonuclear fusion.

You may find it weird but these are always the thoughts when I see the Sun every morning. A particular photon that hit my face was created at the very least 10,000 years before I was born. The least I could do is to acknowledge its harrowing journey from the Sun's core to me on any given morning. Not doing it makes me feels ingrate.

On a tangent Buddh's profound idea about Kshanika or momentariness, which holds that everything in the universe is from moment to moment to moment and what lies between those moments is emptiness, came to my mind while taking this picture. Photons are moments to moments to moments that to us seem seamlessly stitched. Think about that.

Life and its silly joys

All my life I have looked for silly joys and found them. This morning was no exception. While on my daily walk, after I crossed a street on a somewhat blustery morning, I noticed a soda can on the other side. It was revving up courtesy of the breeze and soon enough it started rolling towards my side of the street.

Roads have minor inclines on either side so as to help rain water flow down towards the drains. What it meant was that the can had gather enough pace to go up that incline up to the middle of the road. Fortunately for it, there was enough propellent provided by the breeze. As soon as I noticed the can rolling up, I stopped to see how far it would manage. Going by the intensity of the breeze, it was clear that the can will cross the street rather easily. Then I started rooting for it as if it were an athlete. The only potential obstacle would have been a passing vehicle which may have crushed it. Being early morning there was no car on the road. 

In about 40 seconds or so the soda can rolled across the street and came to a stop on the curbside where I was standing. I actually smiled and applauded as if the can was sentient. Playing in my earphones was, by some coincidence, "Wahan kaun hai tera musafir jayega kahan" (वहाँ कौन है तेरा, मुसाफिर, जायेगा कहाँ ) from the movie 'Guide' (1965) written by Shailendra, sung and composed by Sachin Dev Burman. 

If the can were a traveler, it had found its destination.; not that it was looking for one. 

People tend not to look for silly joys in life. I do and would argue that they make life worth living. 

In this age of filming everything, I chose not to make a phone video. Call it my selfish little joy because there will never be another person who also watched it.

Hans Bethe and marveling at the Sun every morning

Hans Bethe (Photo from the Nobel Foundation archive.)

I tend to say either "Hi" or "What's burning you up?" to the Sun on my morning walk. It is, of course, a rhetorical question. It is not an attempt to anthromorphize the Sun. That would be silly.

Speaking of what is burning up the Sun, Hans Bethe. The great German American physicist revealed how the Sun is like a giant nuclear reactor that produces light and heat directly responsible for life on Earth. Hence me and my morning walks and my rhetorical greetings to the Sun.

It was in 1938/39 that Bethe wrote two papers showing how stars use two kinds of nuclear reactions to power themselves up. One is where stars up to and including the size of the Sun squeeze four hydrogen nuclei together to form one helium nucleus. That produces energy. The other that is  is applicable to stars bigger than Sun where temperatures and pressures are more extreme. In those cases too hydrogen is transformed into helium "but this involves a more complex cycle of nuclear reactions in which carbon acts as a catalyst", as explained the description that accompanied Bethe's 1967 Nobel Prize.

It is because of these nuclear reactions that the Sun and other stars are able to shine for billions of years. It has been my decades-long observation that most humans do not reflect on deeper realities such as the fact that we and everything else in our solar system exists because of the Sun. And within the Sun everything emanates at such elemental levels before mind boggling processes over billions of years lead to a complex life form like us. It is depressing that so much is invested in creating often something so subpar as we find across the world among humans. 

It is such an astounding ability to focus one's mind on something so elemental as hydrogen and helium in the Sun the way Bethe did. Equally though the credit also goes to the British astronomer Arthur Eddington. As the Nobel Prize website explains, "Bethe’s breakthrough work stems from the British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington’s hypothesis in the 1920s that the intense temperatures and pressures within the Sun can force the nuclei of atoms to fuse and create heavier atoms, releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process. Drawing upon his series of articles that provided a comprehensive account of the central components of atoms and the manner in which these atomic nuclei interact with each other, Bethe applied this knowledge to understanding the stars."

So next time you happen to catch a glimpse of the Sun, remember this.