We discuss how the Penrose process, taking place in singular rotating Kerr black holes as well as in their smooth, horizonless fuzz-ball counterparts in string theory, may provide an efficient ...mechanism for the acceleration of Ultra High Energy Cosmic Rays, including strangelets, a form of Strange Quark Matter that is under active experimental investigation with Mini-EUSO. We focus on non-BPS solutions of the JMaRT kind that present an ergo-region. We study geodetic motion and the (non-collisional) Penrose process in this context. In particular we compute its efficiency that turns out not to be bounded unlike for Kerr BH's and briefly comment on possible implications for near-future observations.
In this work we develop a series of techniques and tools to determine and quantify the presence of bias and censorship in newspapers. These algorithms are tested analyzing the occurrence of keywords ...‘killed’ and ‘suicide’ (‘
morti’
’, ‘
suicidio
’ in Italian) and their changes over time, gender and reported location on the complete online archives (42 million records) of the major US newspaper (
The New York Times
) and the three major Italian ones (
Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, La Stampa
). Using these tools, since the Italian language distinguishes between the female and male cases, we find the presence of gender bias in all Italian newspapers, with reported single female deaths to be about one-third of those involving single men. Analyzing the historical trends, we show evidence of censorship in Italian newspapers both during World War 1 and during the Italian Fascist regime. Censorship in all countries during World Wars and in Italy during the Fascist period is a historically ascertained fact, but so far there was no estimate on the amount on censorship in newspaper reporting: in this work we estimate that about 75% of domestic deaths and suicides were not reported. This is also confirmed by statistical analysis of the distribution of the least significant digit of the number of reported deaths. We also find that the distribution function of the number of articles vs. the number of deaths reported in articles follows a power law, which is broken (with fewer articles being written) when reporting on few deaths occurring in foreign countries. The lack of articles is found to grow with geographical distance from the nation where the newspaper is being printed. Whereas the assessment of the truth of a single article or the debunking of what are now called ‘fake news’ requires specific fact-checking and becomes more difficult as time goes by, these methods can be used in historical analysis and to evaluate quantitatively the amount of bias and censorship present in other printed or online publication and can thus contribute to quantitatively assess the freedom of the press in a given country. Furthermore, they can be applied in wider contexts such as the evaluation of bias toward specific ethnic groups or specific accidents.
The Mini-EUSO instrument is a UV telescope to be placed inside the International Space Station (ISS), looking down on the Earth from a nadir-facing window in the Russian Zvezda module. Mini-EUSO will ...map the earth in the UV range (300–400nm) with a spatial resolution of 6.11km and a temporal resolution of 2.5μs, offering the opportunity to study a variety of atmospheric events such as transient luminous events (TLEs) and meteors, as well as searching for strange quark matter and bioluminescence. Furthermore, Mini-EUSO will be used to detect space debris to verify the possibility of using a EUSO-class telescope in combination with a high energy laser for space debris remediation. The high-resolution mapping of the UV emissions from Earth orbit allows Mini-EUSO to serve as a pathfinder for the study of Extreme Energy Cosmic Rays (EECRs) from space by the JEM-EUSO collaboration.
The data acquisition and handling system of JEM-EUSO experiment Casolino, Marco
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
11/2010, Letnik:
623, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In this work we discuss the Data Handling electronics of the JEM-EUSO experiment, devoted to the study of UHE Cosmic Rays from space. The detector is composed of about 6000 multianode ...photomultipliers for a total of ≃2×105 channels. A multi-layer parallel architecture has been devised to handle the data flow and select valid triggers, reducing it to a rate compatible with downlink constraints. Each processing level filters the event with increasingly complex algorithms using ASIC, FPGAs and DSPs in this order to reject spurious events and reduce the data rate. The main CPU monitors the general acquisition of the experiment, handles the slow control and the interfaces to the Space Station. In this work are discussed the hardware solutions adopted to cope with the various constraints posed by this space borne detector.
Passive radiation shielding is a mandatory element in the design of an integrated solution to mitigate the effects of radiation during long deep space voyages for human exploration. Understanding and ...exploiting the characteristics of materials suitable for radiation shielding in space flights is, therefore, of primary importance. We present here the results of the first space-test on Kevlar and Polyethylene radiation shielding capabilities including direct measurements of the background baseline (no shield). Measurements are performed on-board of the International Space Station (Columbus modulus) during the ALTEA-shield ESA sponsored program. For the first time the shielding capability of such materials has been tested in a radiation environment similar to the deep-space one, thanks to the feature of the ALTEA system, which allows to select only high latitude orbital tracts of the International Space Station. Polyethylene is widely used for radiation shielding in space and therefore it is an excellent benchmark material to be used in comparative investigations. In this work we show that Kevlar has radiation shielding performances comparable to the Polyethylene ones, reaching a dose rate reduction of 32 ± 2% and a dose equivalent rate reduction of 55 ± 4% (for a shield of 10 g/cm
).
K-EUSO (KLYPVE-EUSO) is a planned orbital mission aimed at studying ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) by detecting fluorescence and Cherenkov light emitted by extensive air showers in the ...nocturnal atmosphere of Earth in the ultraviolet (UV) range. The observatory is being developed within the JEM-EUSO collaboration and is planned to be deployed on the International Space Station after 2025 and operated for at least two years. The telescope, consisting of ∼105 independent pixels, will allow a spatial resolution of ∼0.6 km on the ground, and, from a 400 km altitude, it will achieve a large and full sky exposure to sample the highest energy range of the UHECR spectrum. We provide a comprehensive review of the current status of the development of the K-EUSO experiment, paying special attention to its hardware parts and expected performance. We demonstrate how results of the K-EUSO mission can complement the achievements of the existing ground-based experiments and push forward the intriguing studies of ultra-high energy cosmic rays, as well as bring new knowledge about other phenomena manifesting themselves in the atmosphere in the UV range.
Mini-EUSO is a wide-angle fluorescence telescope that registers ultraviolet (UV) radiation in the nocturnal atmosphere of Earth from the International Space Station. Meteors are among multiple ...phenomena that manifest themselves not only in the visible range but also in the UV. We present two simple artificial neural networks that allow for recognizing meteor signals in the Mini-EUSO data with high accuracy in terms of a binary classification problem. We expect that similar architectures can be effectively used for signal recognition in other fluorescence telescopes, regardless of the nature of the signal. Due to their simplicity, the networks can be implemented in onboard electronics of future orbital or balloon experiments.
On-line and off-line data analysis for the EUSO-TA experiment Piotrowski, Lech Wiktor; Casolino, Marco; Conti, Livio ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
02/2015, Letnik:
773
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We show the principles of the communication protocol, on-line calibration, off-line data format as well as basic visualisation and data analysis software implemented for the EUSO-TA on-ground ...experiment, being the first step towards implementation in a future space based mission. EUSO-TA is an on-ground detector for measuring UV (290–430nm) light from extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays. It is a prototype experiment for the JEM-EUSO space-borne mission, built according to the same constraints of low mass, low power consumption and thus low computing power. Nevertheless, it needs to process a huge amount of data in short time, taking 2.5μs exposures for 2304 channels.
The low processing power and high time resolution require an efficient communication protocol and simple yet powerful algorithms for on-line analysis. The off-line data format is designed for storing a huge amount of data, at the same time allowing easy access, analysis and sharing. Its structure is scalable and adjustable to different experimental designs. It is independent of the data origin, whether it is hardware or a Monte-Carlo simulator. Use of object-oriented techniques and the ROOT framework allows rapid development of dedicated analysis software, such as a Python based quick-view program described herein. Basic capabilities of the software, such as display of the focal surface, light curves and calibration data are shown in this paper.
PDF
