Science magazine

Space

Featuring spacey fun games!!!!!!

15 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE & THE UNIVERSE

NEIL ARMSTRONG Biography of the first man on the moon

LIFE CYCLE OF A STAR Birth & Death of a star SCIENCE IN EGYPT

Astronauts

Dr. Farouk El Baz & Dr. Ahmed Zewail

HOW DO THEY TRAIN??? BLACK HOLES!!!!!!

Infographic description of Black holes -Hana M. El Sayed & Zeinab Maged El Nefely

Astronauts Who are astronauts?

An astronaut is person who is trained to travel in a spacecraft, they’re also known as Cosmonaut. Astronauts are usually trained by human spaceflight programs by governments or by civilian space agencies to command, pilot or even serve as a crew member of the spacecraft. The word “Astronaut” is derived from Greek words meaning “space sailor”, space sailors are all those who are launched by NASA as crew members. However, NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency used the term “spaceflight participant” to distinguish between space travelers and professional astronauts.

In 1959 the first US astronaut was selected, but have you ever wondered on what basis are astronauts chosen? It is a very selective process, where NASA gets to select astronauts from a very wide variety of applicants from different backgrounds. The selection process is usually divided into rounds, where the number of applicants gets filtered in each round. Here is a general description of the rounds according to Mars One experts: Round 1: Applicants get to fill an online application which is basically general information about the applicant, they’re also asked to write a motivational letter and a resume. They also submit a oneminute video where they are answering some questions and explain how eligible they are to be the first human to go on Mars.

Round 2: The number of the remaining applicants gets narrowed down by Mars One experts to only two candidates. At this stage, they’re required to submit a medical statement proving that they’ve met all the requirements. In addition, they’re also asked to study some materials for one to one interviews, where they’ll be asked questions about what they studied and what motivates them the most to be astronauts.

Round 3: In round 3, the candidates that make it to this round are asked to participate in group challenges that prove that they’re suitable enough to be the first humans on Mars.

Round 4: According to Mars One selection committee, an international group of four candidates is chosen, where the candidates are expected to reveal their ability to live and survive very harsh conditions and also work under different situations. After passing all these challenges, six groups of four will become full time employees, after which they will train for the mission.

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Future Crew Expansion: A group of four astronauts land on Mars every 2 years in order to increase the settlement’s size.

How do astronauts train?

Astronauts can take up to two years of training to become fully qualified. They get to learn many things apart from science, for instance, public speaking, survival training, language classes and medical procedures. Moreover, the Space Vehicle Mock-up facility is where astronauts they get to practice life sized models known as “mock-ups”. They use the KC 135 plane, a four engine, turbojet, which has been modified to train astronauts and conduct microgravity research according to NASA’s requirements. In addition to the KC 135 plane, they also use precision Air-bearing floor which allows astronauts to move large objects as they might in space. Moreover, astronauts float in the water during practicing full sized models of space, the water they practice in is a huge swimming pool known as they Neutral Buoyancy Lab, which is 62m long, 31m wide and 12m deep. Astronauts may spend up to 7 hours at a time under water.

What do astronauts eat?

Each astronaut requires 0.83 kilograms of food packaging per meal every day. The menus are selected five months prior to the flight. Food is tested whether it will react in a reduced gravity environment or not and caloric requirements are also determined in advance.

Are there any health risks for astronauts?

Yes, definitely like any other job, astronauts are susceptible to some health risks, for example, decompression sickness, barotrauma, immunodeficiencies, loss of bone and muscle, loss of eyesight, orthostatic intolerance, sleep disturbances, and radiation injury. A study supported by NASA, on December 31 2012, reported that manned spaceflight may harm the brain and lead to early Alzheimer’s disease.

The first human to go on Space Russian soviet pilot and astronaut, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, was the first human to journey into outer space. He then became an international celebrity and was awarded many medals and titles including, Hero of the Soviet Union. He then became an astronaut trainer in the Cosmonaut Training Centre outside Moscow.

-Hana M. El Sayed

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Science in Egypt Ahmed Zewail Ahmed Zewail, a truwon the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1999.

Ahmed Zewail was born on February 26th, 1946 in Damanhour, Egypt. He grew up in Alexandria with his parents, his father was a mechanic and his mother was a house wife. He got his e living legacy of science, technology, and innovation, is an Egyptian scientist who bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alexandria in Egypt, he then got married and moved to the united states where he got his Doctorate (PhD) degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1976 after finishing his Doctorate (PhD), Ahmed Zewail was granted a position in the University of California, Berkeley as a faculty at Caltech. In 1990 he was awarded the first Linus Pauling chair professor in chemical physics. And in 1982 he became a naturalized resident of the United States.

Ahmed Zewail’s main work was on femtochemistry, an area in physical chemistry that studies the chemical reactions happening in just a matter of femtoseconds. His work was based on a question, how rapid can the energy inside a large molecule such as the naphthalene, restructure among the entire atomic motions?. In order to answer this question, they had to create an apparatus containing a vacuum chamber for molecules exuding from the collimated beam source at a supersonic speed.

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The outcome of Zewail’s experiment proved the importance of consistency and its existence in multifaceted molecular systems.

In 1999 Ahmed Zewail won the Nobel prize, he was the third Egyptian to win the Nobel prize, but the first to win it in the field of science. He received many different awards from his works and experiments, he even received the Grand Collar Of The Nile, Egypt’s highest honor.

-Zeinab Maged El Nefely

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Science in Egypt Dr. Farouk El Baz Biography Dr. Farouk El Baz was born on January 2, 1938 in Egypt. At the age of 20 he received a bachelor of science in Chemistry & Geology and also received a Master of Science in Geology. At the age of 26 he received a Doctor Philosophy in Geology and got appointed as science advisor for President Anwar El Sadat. He also earned Honorary Doctor of Science in 1989 from New England College. In addition, he also received Honorary Doctor of Philosophy from Mansoura University in 2003 and earned Doctor of Laws from the American University in Cairo in 2004, in the same year he also received Honorary Doctor of Engineering from Missouri University of Science & Technology. Moreover, El Baz also taught Geology at Assiut University and Heidelberg University in Germany.

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The NASA Period El Baz was the scientist who assisted NASA in planning and identifying the moon landing location from Apollo. He took part in the Apollo program from 1967 to 1972 as a supervisor of Lunar Science Planning at Bellcomm Inc. Moreover, he was secretary of the landing site chairman of the astronaut training group. El Baz also helped NASA decide on the ideal moon landing site in 1969, for the Apollo II mission. In 1972, he also served on the Apollo 15 rover mission. Besides choosing the ideal landing sites, he also trained Apollo astronauts on the important skills of visual observation and space photography and instructed the crew members which rocks to collect.

-Hana M. El Sayed

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-Hana M. El Sayed 8

15 INTERSTING FACTS ABOUT SPACE AND UNIVERSE 1. The Olympus Mons, is the highest mountain known to man, it is located on Mars and it is three times higher than Mt. Everest.

2. You can fit one million earths into the sun.

3. You get taller in space.

4. Our moon is moving away from our planet Earth 4cm every year.

5. 21 years is the duration of a single night on Uranus.

6. We know more about space than we do about the deep oceans.

7. A day on Pluto is six days and nine hours.

8. If two metals of the same type touch in space they will bond and stick together forever.

9. 380kg of moon rock were brought back to Earth by the Apollo 11 mission.

10. A mirror was left on the surface of the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission, to reflect a laser beam that measured the distance between earth and the moon.

11. When you are looking into the night sky you are actually looking back in time.

12. On Venus a year is shorter than a day.

13. A space suit costs twelve million dollars.

14. A signal from deep space was received in 1977, it lasted for 72 seconds, we still don’t know how or where it came from.

15. The most expensive object ever built is the international space station, it costs 150 billion dollars.

-Zeinab Maged El Nefely

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Neil Armstrong Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the surface of the moon. He was born on August 15th 1930 in Ohio, he had two siblings a brother and a sister. He attended Blume high school in Ohio. He went to college at Purdue university, he served in the US Navy during the Korean war. He became an astronaut in 1962. In 1962 he also became commander of Gemini 8.

The Apollo 11 mission in 1969 was Neil Armstrong’s second mission and he was the mission commander. Armstrong wasn’t alone on this mission, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were with him on the mission. Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the surface on the moon and they were the first two men to land on the surface of the moon, while Collins didn’t land as he circled the moon in the Apollo capsule. Armstrong and Aldrin landed together on the moon but Armstrong took the first step on the surface of the moon. At the moment he took his first step on the moon he quoted “That’s one small step for a man; One giant leap for mankind.” . Armstrong and Aldrin spent almost a day on the surface of the moon studying the surface and collecting rocks, then they reunited with Collins in orbit around the moon and they all flew back to earth.

Neil Armstrong retired from NASA after the Apollo 11 mission and he became a collage professor in 1971. He stopped working as a professor in 1979 and he later became a businessman, but he stayed active in all groups that studied space and aeronautics. Neil Armstrong died on August 25th, 2012 at the age of 82.

-Zeinab Maged El Nefely

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Important information you should know The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy that rotates once every 200 million years and it has a distance of 100000 light years. It contains billions of stars each star with its planets orbiting it.

The most important star to us is our star, the center of our solar system, and our only source for heat and light, the Sun. the sun is 1.4 million kilometers wide, with a very large mass, and with extremely high temperature. The Sun lies around 150 million kilometers away from planet Earth and it takes sun light eight minutes to reach earth.

Every star has planets that orbit it, the sun has eight planets orbiting it Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Of course our home planet is the most important one to us, Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, it consists of four layers the crust, the mantle, the outer core, and the inner core, and 70% of it is covered in water. Earth is the only planet known to support life, it’s atmosphere is made of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases. A day on earth lasts for 24 hours and a year lasts for 365 days.

-Zeinab Maged El Nefely

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Life Cycle Of A Star What is a star?

They’re basically hot bodies of glowing gas and they start their life in Nebulae.

Stars differ in size, masses, temperature and diameters that could range from 450x smaller to 1000x larger than the Sun’s diameter. Color of a star is determined by its temperature, hottest stars are blue in color and the coolest ones are red. The energy produced by a star is due to the nuclear fusion in the star’s core. A star’s brightness is measured in magnitude, the brighter the star the lower the magnitude.

Stages of Star formation: 1. Nebula is a gas cloud and dust in space that acts as birth place of stars. There are different types of Nebula; dark nebulas for example absorb light from stars behind them. The outer layer of stars is basically planetary nebulas that are lost when the star changes from red giant to a white dwarf.

2. Stars are born from nebulae and consist mainly of hydrogen and helium gas.

Brightest stars live from less than million years before exploding as supernovae.

3. Red dwarfs are very cool and small stars that are one tenth the mass and diameter of the sun. Red dwarfs burn very slowly and live for approximately 100 billion years.

4. White dwarfs are very small hot stars; they’re the last stage in the life cycle of a star. They have a similar mass like that of the sun, but are only 1% of the sun’s diameter and approximately the same diameter as the Earth. White dwarfs are basically shrunken remains of normal stars whose energy supply have been used up.

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5.Super Nova is the death of a star due to an explosion. There are two types of Supernova: Type I: A gas from one star falls onto a white dwarf causing it to explode.

Type II: It leaves behind neutron stars and black holes when it explodes.

6. Neutron Stars are mainly composed of neutrons and are produced due to a super nova explosion which forces protons and electrons to bond producing a neutron star.

7.Black holes are formed when a massive dies.

The Stages of a star’s lifecycle is divided into two types depending on its size: Life cycle of small stars: Stage 1 – Stars are born in a Nebula of high density.

Stage 2 – Conducting matter heats up forming protostars.

Stages 3- If a protostar centigrade, nuclear reactions take place in which hydrogen fuses to form helium.

Stage 4 –Star begins to release energy causing it to shine. (Main sequence) Stage 5 – A star remains in sequence for about 10 million years until hydrogen fuses to form helium Stage 6- Helium shell contracts and reactions begin to occur around the core.

Stage 7- Core is hot enough for helium to form carbon. Outer layers expand which is now called the Red Giant.

Stage 8- Planetary Nebula is formed when helium surrounds the core.

Stage 9 – The core becomes a white dwarf and when it stops shining it’s called a black dwarf.

Life cycle of Massive stars: Stage 1- They evolve in the same way as small stars until the main sequence stage.

Stage 2- Massive stars then become a Red supergiant and starts off with a core of helium.

Stage 3- Nuclear reactions occur in the next million years forming elements around the core.

Stage 4- The core collapses and a super nova explosion take place.

Stage 5- If the surviving core is between 1.5 to 3 solar masses it contracts to become Neutron star. If the core is greater than 3 solar masses it forms black holes.

-Hana M. El Sayed

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GAMES Let’s see if you can discover the secret message . A saying by Plato, Philosopher

- Zeinab Maged El Nefely 14

Challenge your abilities to search for words

M A R S A Q R M Q B M D Y S H             

A B H K B S F E Q E U D G E O

S D U O L C T J T A A J Y I C

D N W E A N I R P I K M S X Z

Z E M A C W A O O A P P H A S

B D H R K I L S V N A U L L E

G P R T H L A O A C A F J A Y

A O Y H O U N Q E R B U C G P

S K V Q L R V C N A Y R T N J

A L U B E N R A L L E T S S U

A O N P S A Z C Z X H S R Q S

H D U A F D D Y B N V Y S H U

Q S C T T J I F R Z O X O D S

D P S D E V U U V B P Y P Q H

T E L E S C O P E F D I V N V

APOLLO ASTRONAUTS BLACKHOLES CLOUDS EARTH GALAXIES JUPITER MARS NASA SPACECRAFTS STELLARNEBULA SUPERNOVA TELESCOPE

- Hana M. El Sayed

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References 

http://www.mars-one.com/mission/mars-one-astronauts

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http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/F_Astronauts_in_Training.html

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http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/black-holes/

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http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/workx/starlife/StarpageS_26M.html

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http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/who-was-neil-armstrong-k4.html

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http://www.thefactsite.com/2012/01/100-random-facts-about-space.html

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http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/20-extraordinary-and-inspiring-facts-about-the-universe.html

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http://www.indiatimes.com/culture/who-we-are/14-most-amazing-facts-about-the-universe-230844.html

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http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/code/BuildCryptogram.asp

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https://www.esa.int/esaKIDSen/Starsandgalaxies.html

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https://www.esa.int/esaKIDSen/Starsandgalaxies.html

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http://www.famousscientists.org/ahmed-zewail/

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