Related papers: Relativistic Spacecraft Propelled by Directed Ener…
The precise radial velocity technique is a cornerstone of exoplanetary astronomy. Astronomers measure Doppler shifts in the star's spectral features, which track the line-of/sight gravitational accelerations of a star caused by the planets…
Relativistic jets are believed to be born magnetically dominated. Very and ultra-high energy cosmic rays can be efficiently accelerated by magnetic reconnection in these sources. We here demonstrate this directly, with no extrapolations to…
Conventionally, friction is understood as an efficient dissipation mechanism depleting a physical system of energy as an unavoidable feature of any realistic device involving moving parts, e.g., in mechanical brakes. In this work, we…
In the nearly 60 years of spaceflight we have accomplished wonderful feats of exploration that have shown the incredible spirit of the human drive to explore and understand our universe. Yet in those 60 years we have barely left our solar…
Recent x-ray and radio data from radio sources in galaxy clusters are used to show that the pdV work required to inflate the radio lobes exceeds all other energy estimates deduced from the radio emission. If the required jet energy density…
We consider a turbulent jet which is moving in a Lane--Emden ($n=5$) medium. The conserved quantity is the energy flux, which allows finding, to first order, an analytical expression for the velocity and an approximate trajectory. The…
It is a well-documented yet counterintuitive fact that wind-driven vehicles (with no onboard power source) can travel directly downwind faster than the wind itself. This effect is not paradoxical once one recognizes that the vehicle is not…
Nature succeeds in accelerating extended and massive objects to relativistic velocities. Jets in Active Galactic Nuclei and in galactic superluminal sources and gamma-ray bursts fireballs have bulk Lorentz factors from a few to several…
Lightsails using Earth-based lasers for propulsion require passive stabilization to stay within the beam. This can be achieved through the sail's scattering properties, creating optical restoring forces and torques. Undamped restoring…
Radiative transfer in a relativistic accretion disk wind is examined under the plane-parallel approximation in the fully special relativistic treatment. For an equilibrium flow, where the flow speed and the source function are constant, the…
Communications to and from a spacecraft undertaking launch-landing interstellar travel at near light speed faces significant challenges. Photon-based communication is significantly impacted by large photon propagation delay and relativistic…
Data from spacecrafts tracking exhibit many anomalies that suggest the dependence of the speed of electromagnetic radiation with the motion of its source. This dependence is different from that predicted from emission theories that long ago…
An ejection mechanism of relativistic jets from slim disks is studied. Since the radiation pressure is dominant in the slim disk, radiative energy flow arises along the pressure gradient in the vertical direction. The divergence of the…
The dependence of macroscopic radiation pressure on the velocity of the object being pushed is commonly attributed to the Doppler effect. This need not be the case, and here we highlight velocity dependent radiation pressure terms that have…
I review recent progress in the theory of relativistic jet production. The presently favored mechanism is an electrodynamic one, in which charged plasma is accelerated by electric fields that are generated by a rotating magnetic field. The…
This paper introduces an algorithm to perform optimal reorientation of a spacecraft during a high speed flyby mission that maximizes the time a certain target is kept within the field of view of scientific instruments. The method directly…
The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative is suggested to develop the concept of propelling a nano-scale spacecraft by the radiation pressure of an intense laser beam. If such a nanocraft could be accelerated to 20 percent of light speed, it…
Solar-powered electric propulsion systems can operate in multiple modes and their operation is coupled to the power generated by solar arrays. However, the power produced by the solar arrays is a function of the solar array size and…
Neutron stars are compact objects rotating at high speed, up to a substantial fraction of the speed of light (up to 20\% for millisecond pulsars) and possessing ultra-strong electromagnetic fields (close to and sometimes above the quantum…
Gravitational repulsion is an inherent aspect of the Schwarzschild solution of the Einstein-Hilbert field equations of general relativity. We show that this circumstance means that it is possible to gravitationally accelerate particles to…