For more than 400 years, astronomers have studied the sun from afar. Now NASA has decided to go there.
“We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time,” says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. “This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts.”
The name of the mission is Solar Probe+ (pronounced “Solar Probe plus”). It’s a heat-resistant spacecraft designed to plunge deep into the sun’s atmosphere where it can sample solar wind and magnetism first hand. Launch could happen as early as 2015. By the time the mission ends 7 years later, planners believe Solar Probe+ will solve two great mysteries of astrophysics and make many new discoveries along the way.
The two mysteries prompting this mission are the high temperature of the sun’s corona and the puzzling acceleration of the solar wind:
If you stuck a thermometer in the surface of the sun, it would read about 6000o C. Intuition says the temperature should drop as you back away; instead, it rises. The sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, registers more than a million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than the star below. This high temperature remains a mystery more than 60 years after it was first measured. The solar wind: The sun spews a hot, million mph wind of charged particles throughout the solar system. Planets, comets, asteroids—they all feel it. Curiously, there is no organized wind close to the sun’s surface, yet out among the planets there blows a veritable gale. Somewhere in between, some unknown agent gives the solar wind its great velocity. The question is, what? “To solve these mysteries, Solar Probe+ will actually enter the corona,” says Guhathakurta. “That’s where the action is.”
1989 was a big year. The Berlin Wall fell. The Exxon Valdez spilled its guts. And there were protests in China's Tiananmen Square. But those were just side attractions to the year's most memorable moment—the debut of Nike's "Air McFly" sneakers in "Back to the Future 2."
The film, which largely took place in the year 2015, introduced viewers to many a futuristic wonder, but none were so iconic as the light blue high-tops worn by Michael J. Fox. Ever since the film premiered, folks have been begging Nike to produce the shoes for the masses. Now, Nike has finally obliged... sort of.
The shoes were recently reveled at an event headlined by Kobe Bryant. Ever the showman, the hoopster even arrived in a DeLorean. Fans lined up way in advance, but according to Wired, many went home disappointed. Nike only made 350 pairs of the specially designed kicks, not nearly enough to satisfy the fans.
The shoes were released in a very limited quality, but for hardcore fans who were shut out, there's always the capitalist slaughterhouse that is eBay. Pairs are currently going for up to $1,000 (power laces not included). As Doc Brown would say, "Great Scott!"
Air McFly
