Profiles of spectral lines of an accretion ring around a Kerr black hole

Profiles of spectral lines emitted from an accretion ring around an object with strong gravitational field should be affected by Doppler shift, gravitational redshift, and deflection of light. Taking these effects into account, precise line profile of a Keplerian ring around a Kerr black hole for a distant observer is obtained by solving the kinetic equation of photons.     

Roughness of the lunar soil

In situ measurements at the lunar surface at millimeter resolution by the Apollo astronauts have been analyzed. Several statistical parameters have been determined for the landing site. The surface roughness has been found to be very nearly gaussian. The root-mean-square slopes have been obtained over scales between 0.5 mm and 5 cm. They steadily decrease with increasing scale length from 58° to 2° and are in reasonable agreement with radar-measured values. The autocorrelation coefficient of the height distribution has also been obtained. It has a scale-length of 0.7 mm.Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts.Visiting Scholar at the University of Massachusetts.     

A new class of periodic solutions in the Kovalevskaya case of a rigid body in rotation about a fixed point

The equation of motion of a rigid body in Kovaleveskaya case is reduced to a plane motion. By using the method of small parameters introduced by Poincaré, the existence of a periodic solution is established.     

A 2000-YEAR CONTEXT FOR MODERN CLIMATE CHANGE

ABSTRACT. Although considerable attention has been paid to the record of temperature change over the last few centuries, the range and rate of change of atmospheric circulation and hydrology remain elusive. Here, eight latitudinally well-distributed (pole-equator-pole), highly resolved (annual to decadal) climate proxy records are presented that demonstrate major changes in these variables over the last 2000 years. A comparison between atmospheric ¹⁴C and these changes in climate demonstrates a first-order relationship between a variable Sun and climate. The relationship is seen on a global scale.     

Coulometric TCO2 analyses for marine studies; an introduction

Progress in the introduction of coulometry for the analysis of total carbon dioxide (TCO₂) in marine waters is described. An extractor—stripper removes CO₂ that is measured coulometrically by the quantity of electricity (coulombs) used to electrogenerate OH^? ions for the titration of the acid formed by the reaction of CO₂ and ethanolamine. The equivalence point is detected photometrically with thymolphthalein as the indicator, and Faraday's Law relates coulombs to equivalents of titrant generated and CO₂ determined so that there are no standard curves needed or titrants to standardize or store. Accuracy was determined by adding gelatin capsules containing 100–1500 μg C of pure CaCO₃ into the stripper, and accuracies of better than ± 1 μg C were achieved. The best precision for natural seawater (± 1 standard error) of ± 0.5 μmol l^?1 was found for 17 samples of Bermuda coastal waters having a mean TCO₂ of 2007.2 μmol l^?1 (0.05% CV). Sources of error and precautions are discussed. This method, which has been used successfully at sea, can be used to study a variety of marine phenomena involving TCO₂.     

Spatial and temporal variations of solar coronal loops

Skylab EUV observations of an active region near the solar limb were analyzed. Both cool (T < 10⁶ K) and hot (T > 10⁶ K) loops were observed in this region. For the hot loops the observed intensity variations were small, typically a few percent over a period of 30 min. The cool loops exhibited stronger variations, sometimes appearing and disappearing in 5 to 10 min. Most of the cool material observed in the loops appeared to be caused by the downward flow of coronal rain and by the upward ejection of chromospheric material in surges. The frequent EUV brightenings observed near the loop footpoints appear to have been produced by both in situ transient energy releases (e.g. subflares) and the infall/impact of coronal rain. The physical conditions in the loops (temperatures, densities, radiative and conducting cooling rates, cooling times) were determined. The mean energy required to balance the radiative and conductive cooling of the hot loops is approximately 3 × 10^–3 erg cm^–3 s^–1. One coronal heating mechanism that can account for the observed behavior of the EUV emission from McMath region 12634 is heating by the dissipation of fast mode MHD waves.     

A focal plane detector design for a wide-band Laue-lens telescope

The energy range above 60 keV is important for the study of many open problems in high energy astrophysics such as the role of Inverse Compton with respect to synchrotron or thermal processes in GRBs, non thermal mechanisms in SNR, the study of the high energy cut-offs in AGN spectra, and the detection of nuclear and annihilation lines. Recently the development of high energy Laue lenses with broad energy bandpasses from 60 to 600keV have been proposed for a Hard X ray focusing Telescope (HAXTEL) in order to study the X-ray continuum of celestial sources. The required focal plane detector should have high detection efficiency over the entire operative range, a spatial resolution of about 1mm, an energy resolution of a few keV at 500keV and a sensitivity to linear polarization. We describe a possible configuration of the focal plane detector based on several CdTe/CZT pixelated layers stacked together to achieve the required detection efficiency at high energy. Each layer can operate both as a separate position sensitive detector and polarimeter or work with other layers to increase the overall photopeak efficiency. Each layer has a hexagonal shape in order to minimize the detector surface required to cover the lens field of view. The pixels would have the same geometry so as to provide the best coupling with the lens point spread function and to increase the symmetry for polarimetric studies.     

Magnetic stratigraphy observed in ferromanganese crust

Summary. A sample of ferromanganese crust deposit (SCHW-1D) was cut into two sets of 1 mm slices for palaeomagnetic study. Alternating field and thermal demagnetization, and isothermal remanent magnetization analyses were performed on each thin slice. The results reveal the presence of a stable magnetism and both normal and reversed polarity intervals in the specimens. The observed polarity intervals cannot be confidently correlated with the geomagnetic polarity time-scale of the last 10 Myr due to the polarity overlap inherent in the sampling technique. But the results confirm the slow accretion rate of ferromanganese deposit determined by ¹⁰Be method and suggest potential use of ferromanganese deposits in palaeomagnetic and tectonic studies.