Ancient multiring basins on the moon revealed by clementine laser altimetry

Analysis of laser altimetry data from Clementine has confirmed and extended our knowledge of nearly obliterated multiring basins on the moon. These basins were formed during the early bombardment phase of lunar history, have been filled to varying degrees by mare lavas and regional ejecta blankets, and have been degraded by the superposition of large impact craters. The Mendel-Rydberg Basin, a degraded three-ring feature over 600 kilometers in diameter on the lunar western limb, is about 6 kilometers deep from rim to floor, only slightly less deep than the nearby younger and much better preserved Orientale Basin (8 kilometers deep). The South Pole-Aitken Basin, the oldest discernible impact feature on the moon, is revealed as a basin 2500 kilometers in diameter with an average depth of more than 13 kilometers, rim crest to floor. This feature is the largest, deepest impact crater yet discovered in the solar system. Several additional depressions seen in the data may represent previously unmapped ancient impact basins.     

Generating optical Schrödinger kittens for quantum information processing

We present a detailed experimental analysis of a free-propagating light pulse prepared in a "Schr?dinger kitten" state, which is defined as a quantum superposition of "classical" coherent states with small amplitudes. This kitten state is generated by subtracting one photon from a squeezed vacuum beam, and it clearly presents a negative Wigner function. The predicted influence of the experimental parameters is in excellent agreement with the experimental results. The amplitude of the coherent states can be amplified to transform our "Schr?dinger kittens" into bigger Schr?dinger cats, providing an essential tool for quantum information processing.     

Al-khwarizmi: a new-found basin on the lunar far side

Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 photographs of the far side of the moon reveal a double-ringed basin 500 kilometers in diameter centered at 1 degrees N, 112 degrees E. The structure is very old and subdued; it is probably Pre-Nectarian in age and appears to have been filled and modified by younger events. The heights of the basin's rings are based on laser altimeter data from Apollo missions 15 through 17; these data suggest a third outer ring, approximately 1000 kilometers in diameter. Laser measurements also indicate that the filled basin separates the relatively low terrain on the eastern limb of the moon from the higher, more rugged highlands to the east.     

Mariner 9 celestial mechanics experiment: gravity field and pole direction of Mars

Analysis of the Mariner 9 radio-tracking data shows that the Martian gravity field is rougher than that of Earth or the moon, and that the accepted direction of Mars's rotation axis is in error by about 0.5 degrees . The new value for the pole direction for the epoch 1971.9, referred to the mean equatorial system of 1950.0, is right ascension alpha= 317.3 degrees +/- 0.3 degrees , declination delta = 52.6 degrees +/- 0.2 degrees . The values found for the coefficients of the low-order harmonics of Mars's gravity field are as follows: J(2)=(1.96+/-0.01)x10(-3), referred to an equatorial radius of 3394 kilometers; C(22) = -(5 +/- 1) x 10(-5); and S(22) = (3 +/- 1) x 10(-5). The value for J(2) is in excellent agreement with the result from, Wilkins' analysis of the observations of Phobos. The other two coefficients imply a value of (2.5 +/- 0.5) x 10(-4) for the fractional difference in the principal equatorial moments of inertia; the axis of the minimum moment passes near 105 degrees W.     

Pole and global shape of 25143 Itokawa

The locations of the pole and rotation axis of asteroid 25143 Itokawa were derived from Asteroid Multiband Imaging Camera data on the Hayabusa spacecraft. The retrograde pole orientation had a right ascension of 90.53 degrees and a declination of -66.30 degrees (52000 equinox) or equivalently 128.5 degrees and -89.66 degrees in ecliptic coordinates with a 3.9 degrees margin of error. The surface area is 0.393 square kilometers, the volume is 0.018378 cubic kilometers with a 5% margin of error, and the three axis lengths are 535 meters by 294 meters by 209 meters. The global Itokawa revealed a boomerang-shaped appearance composed of two distinct parts with partly faceted regions and a constricted ring structure.     

Circular feature among dunes of the great sand sea, egypt

A circular crater, about 4 kilometers in diameter and located at 24.2 degrees N, 26.4 degrees E, was discovered in Landsat images among the linear dunes of the Great Sand Sea, Egypt. The crater has a sharp and crenulated rim crest, a terraced wall, a discontinuous inner structure (approximately 1.6 kilometers in diameter), and a few rim blocks. Its morphological and morphometric characteristics are similar to those of meteorite impact craters and other circular structures on the moon and the terrestrial planets. Because of its interaction with windblown sand, it is particularly comparable with craters on Mars.     

Central North Atlantic Plate Motions over the Last 40 Million Years

The relative motion vector for the North American and African plates has been determined from detailed charting of the trend of the Atlantis fracture zone for over 1000 kilometers in the central North Atlantic near 30 degrees N and from identification of marine magnetic anomalies and deep-sea drilling results. The vector (pole) is located at 52.5 degrees N, 34 degrees W and has a magnitude (opening rate) of 5.7 x 10(-7) degree per year. Major changes in either the pole location or the opening rate are not evident for the last 40 million years.     

The 25-km Discontinuity: Implications for Lunar History

The lunar velocity profile and laboratory data on terrestrial and lunar rocks are constraints on models of lunar history. They show that shock-induced microcracks are absent from the rocks present in the moon today at depths of 25 to 60 kilometers. All possible causes of this observation are examined, and the most likely explanations are that either the rocks at depths of 25 to 60 kilometers formed after the major impacts ceased or the microcracks have annealed at temperatures of about 600 degrees C over geologically long times.     

Pre-mesozoic palinspastic reconstruction of the eastern great basin (Western United States)

The Great Basin of the western United States has proven important for studies of Proterozoic and Paleozoic geology [2500 to 245 million years ago (Ma)] and has been central to the development of ideas about the mechanics of crustal shortening and extension. An understanding of the deformational history of this region during Mesozoic and Cenozoic time (245 Ma to the present) is required for palinspastic reconstruction of now isolated exposures of older geology in order to place these in an appropriate regional geographic context. Considerable advances in unraveling both the crustal shortening that took place during Mesozoic to early Cenozoic time (especially from about 150 to 50 Ma) and the extension of the past 37 million years have shown that earlier reconstructions need to be revised significantly. A new reconstruction is developed for rocks of middle Proterozoic to Early Cambrian age based on evidence that total shortening by generally east-vergent thrusts and folds was at least 104 to 135 kilometers and that the Great Basin as a whole accommodated approximately 250 kilometers of extension in the direction 287 degrees +/- 12 degrees between the Colorado Plateau and the Sierra Nevada. Extension is assumed to be equivalent at all latitudes because available paleomagnetic evidence suggests that the Sierra Nevada experienced little or no rotation with respect to the extension direction since the late Mesozoic. An estimate of the uncertainty in the amount of extension obtained from geological and paleomagnetic uncertainties increases northward from +/-56 kilometers at 36 degrees 30N to (-87)(+108) kilometers at 40 degrees N. On the basis of the reconstruction, the original width of the preserved part of the late Proterozoic and Early Cambrian basin was about 150 to 300 kilometers, about 60 percent of the present width, and the basin was oriented slightly more north-south with respect to present-day coordinates.     

QUANTUM MECHANICS: Enhanced: Schrodinger's Cat Is Out of the Hat

In 1935, Erwin Schr?dinger suggested his famous gedanken experiment of the cat that is simultaneously "dead" and "alive" inside its box until the box is opened. But as Tesche explains in her Perspective, such a macroscopic manifestation of quantum mechanics has remained elusive until recently. The experiments by van der Wal et al. are an important step toward demonstrating that quantum mechanics can describe macroscopic phenomena. The approach may be exploited in quantum computing and quantum cryptography.     

Large quasi-circular features beneath frost on triton

Specially processed Voyager 2 images of Neptune's largest moon, Triton, reveal three large quasi-circular features ranging in diameter from 280 to 935 kilometers within Triton's equatorial region. The largest of these features contains a central, irregularly shaped area of comparatively low albedo about 380 kilometers in diameter, surrounded by crudely concentric annuli of higher albedo materials. None of the features exhibit significant topographic expression, and all appear to be primarily albedo markings. The features are located within a broad equatorial band of anomalously transparent frost that renders them nearly invisible at the large phase angles (alpha > 90 degrees ) at which Voyager obtained its highest resolution coverage of Triton. The features can be discerned at smaller phase angles (alpha = 66 degrees ) at which the frost only partially masks underlying albedo contrasts. The origin of the features is uncertain but may have involved regional cryovolcanic activity.     

Arcs and Clumps in the Uranian lgr Ring

Careful reprocessing of the Voyager images reveals that the Uranìan lambda ring has marked longitudinal variations in brightness comparable in magnitude to those in Saturn's F ring and Neptune's Adams ring. The ring's variations show a dominant five-cycle (72-degree) periodicity, although additional structure down to scales of about 0.5 degree is also present. The ring's shape is defined by a small overall eccentricity plus a six-cycle (60-degree) sinusoidal variation of radial amplitude around 4 kilometers. Both of these properties can be explained by the resonant perturbations of a moon at a semimajor axis of 56,479 kilometers, but no known moon orbits at this location. Unfortunately, the mass required suggests that such a body should have been imaged by Voyager.     

Moon: two new mascon basins

Lunar gravity data and orbital photography indicate that there is a mascon basin approximately 1000 kilometers in diameter on the farside of the moon and that Mare Marginis is the flooded fraction of a mascon basin approximately 900 kilometers in diameter.     

Complete photo-induced breakup of the H2 molecule as a probe of molecular electron correlation

Despite decades of progress in quantum mechanics, electron correlation effects are still only partially understood. Experiments in which both electrons are ejected from an oriented hydrogen molecule by absorption of a single photon have recently demonstrated a puzzling phenomenon: The ejection pattern of the electrons depends sensitively on the bond distance between the two nuclei as they vibrate in their ground state. Here, we report a complete numerical solution of the Schr?dinger equation for the double photoionization of H2. The results suggest that the distribution of photoelectrons emitted from aligned molecules reflects electron correlation effects that are purely molecular in origin.     

Lunar crust: structure and composition

Lunar seismic data from artificial impacts recorded at three Apollo seismometers are interpreted to determine the structure of the moon's interior to a depth of about 100 kilomneters. In the Fra Mauro region of Oceanus Procellarum, the moon has a layered crust 65 kilometers thick. The seismic velocities in the upper 25 kilometers are consistent with those in lunar basalts. Between 25 and 65 kilometers, the nearly constant velocity (6.8 kilometers per second) corresponds to velocities in gabbroic and anorthositic rocks. The apparent velocity is high (about 9 kilometers per second) in the lunar mantle immediately below the crust.     

Preliminary infrared radiometry of the night side of mercury from mariner 10

The infrared radiometer on Mariner 10 measured the thermal emission from the planet with a spatial resolution element as small as 40 kilometers in a broad wavelength band centered at 45 micrometers. The minimum brightness temperature (near local midnight) in these near-equatorial scans was 100 degrees K. Along the track observed, the temperature declined steadily from local sunset to near midnight, behaving as would be expected for a homogeneous, porous material with a thermal inertia of 0.0017 cal cm(-2) sec(-(1/2)) degrees K(-1), a value only slightly larger than that of the moon. From near midnight to dawn, however, the temperature fluctuated over a range of about 10 degrees K, implying the presence of regions having thermal inertia as high as 0.003 cal cm(-2) sec-(1/2) degrees K(-1).     

Radar mapping of mercury: full-disk images and polar anomalies

A random-code technique has been used at Arecibo to obtain delay-Doppler radar images of the full disk of Mercury. Anomalously bright features were found at the north and south poles. The north polar feature is oblong (4 degrees by 8 degrees ) and offset from the pole. The smaller south polar feature is mostly confined to the floor of the crater Chao Meng-Fu. The polar locations and radar properties of these features indicate that they may be produced by volume scattering in ice. The images also reveal a variety of more subdued reflectivity features ranging in size from hundreds to thousands of kilometers; some of these appear to have an impact origin.     

Lunar maria: structure and evolution

The lunar maria are considered to have evolved as homologous, transient, gravity-wave systems from large impact craters on a crustal layer 50 kilometers thick, fluidized from beneath by prompt, shock-induced melting inside an initially hot moon.     

Meteorite impact ejecta: dependence of mass and energy lost on planetary escape velocity

The calculated energy efficiency of mass ejection for iron and anorthosite objects striking an anorthosite planet at speeds of 5 to 45 kilometers per second decreases with increasing impact velocity at low escape velocities. At escape velocities of >10(5) and >2 x 10(4) centimeters per second, respectively, the slower impactors produce relatively less ejecta for a given impact energy. The impact velocities at which ejecta losses equal meteorite mass gains are found to be approximately 20, 35, and 45 kilometers per second for anorthosite objects and approximately 25, 35, and 40 kilometers per second for iron objects striking anorthosite surfaces for the gravity fields of the moon, Mercury, and Mars.     

An Accurate Quantum Monte Carlo Calculation of the Barrier Height for the Reaction H + H2 rarr H2 + H

An improved quantum Monte Carlo method has been used to calculate the classical barrier height for the hydrogen exchange reaction H + H(2) --> H(2) + H with accuracies greater than previously attained. The method is exact in that, except for the easily estimated Monte Carlo statistical or sampling error, it requires no mathematical approximations or physical approximations beyond those of the Schr?dinger equation. The minimum in the barrier, occurring for the collinear nuclear configuration with the protons separated by 1.757 bohrs, was found to be 9.61 +/- 0.01 kilocalories per mole above H + H(2).