Astronomy is the branch of Science that deals with the cosmos, outer space and all the bodies in it. Without astronomy, there would be no proper way to measure time, predict the seasons and weather, or even pass the necessary information to help us know of any harm to the earth.
Here are a few examples of how understanding celestial bodies helps us on our planet.
Communications
Five of the Compact Array antennas of the Australia Telescope in Australia’s New South Wales area. Some astronomers who were conducting radio astronomy in Australia allegedly developed Wi-Fi.
When astronomers based in Australia were researching black holes through radio waves in the 1990s, the development of Wi-Fi was enhanced by creating a microchip to enable the wireless transmission of radio waves.
They first wanted to find miniscule exploding black holes and for this purpose, there was a need to filter out the noise and produce clear equations. Although astronomers never find these black holes, this process was developed and used to enable portable devices to access a wireless network.
Computing
Astronomers accumulate an average or even large number of data to explore the world around them. Of all the available means of treatment of information flow, it is recognized that the most effective is grid computing.
Special algorithms and superior techniques of computing will be required to coordinate with the amount of data that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to be developed in Chile will be generating.
Once in operation in 2025, it will scan the whole sky of the southern hemisphere about twice a week; it will capture about 20 terabytes of data each night or the equivalent of 60,000 compact discs.
Environmental science
Coming to know other planets that are also in the solar system can help in understanding the Earth’s changing climate. Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Michael Crichton as well as Dr James Hansen of NASA and Columbia University also established their theories and models on global warming by analyzing the climate of Venus.
In this way, the scientists analysing the transportation of radiation through the outer gaseous layers of Venus could simulate well how the gases and aerosols affect the climate of the earth.
Imaging
Almost every contemporary model of a mobile phone comes with a built-in high-definition camera. Those tiny sensors in those phones dubbed the charge-coupled devices (CCDs) were first used in the scientific development of astronomy in 1976.
The supersensitive CCDs have been fabricated for the Hubble Space Telescope as well as for many other telescopes space-borne and ground-based. These CCDs have been made more compact for astronomical uses in the recent past and hence can be adopted for use in personal cameras, laptops and mobile phones.
Medicine
Medical spinoffs of astronomical technologies may be some of the most beneficial. Interference method utilized in astronomy to analyze radio waves employed in medical imaging procedures that scan human internal organs and other soft tissues.
Some examples of imaging are Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners and Computerized Tomography (CT) scans. Over the decades astronomers have been involved in fields like the development of medical technologies of MRI scanners.
Astronomical space telescopes have instruments that are free from dust and particles new non-contamination technology and tools such as filters and clean rooms have been developed.
Timekeeping
Many civilizations had stellar clocks for millennia with notable changes coming with the advancement of modern Real Astronomy. In today’s society, the accurate determination of time is done by hundreds of highly accurate atomic clocks distributed all over the world.
The GPS satellites also have their atomic clocks, and all the measurements involved must be relative to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, as well as the Earth’s rotation on its axis.
Atomic clocks count time by using the transition frequency of atoms. These atomic transitions occur when electrons are excited and move from one energy state to another within an atom. Nuclear clocks are considered the best timekeeping devices because of their high precision regarding time measurement.
Helping the next generation of scientists
Curiosity is unique to human beings and makes people pose questions regarding the existence of the universe and their position in the whole universe. In this article, we also help the coming generation to understand what is Astronomy.
Astronomy is a formal, scientific way to search for the answers to basic questions, such as: where did everything come from? How old is the universe? Moreover, space exploration and the study of stars have a method of rekindling the dream within the next generation of astronomers, engineers scientists and leaders.
Conclusion
People do not realize that astronomy plays an essential part in their daily life even though at times, they are not fully aware of it. For example, the creation of Wi-Fi technology was pioneered by astronomy research such as the black hole study thus, there is a direct correlation between space science to communication invention.
In computing, due to the large amount of data produced by astronomical observatories, many areas were influenced by it. Thus, the knowledge of other planets’ climate also has helped to understand the changes in the Earth’s environment which in turn helps to progress climate science.
The other benefits of Astronomy are in medical technology and time-keeping. Technologies such as MRI scanners and atomic clocks, the basis of GPS and diagnoses, stem from space exploration proving how it benefits science and technology for the people.