Word: doppler
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...News. And I was interviewed about the discovery of the first planet outside of our own solar system. So, they came to the planetarium. I'm an easy date for them because I'm just up the street. I give them my best professorial reply. I talk about the Doppler shift and the measurement and the spectra, and I say, There's not really a wobble - which is how it was commonly described - it was more like a jiggle; and I do a little jiggle with my hips. I rush home, watch the interview on TV, and hardly anything...
Original estimates of the solar system's speed were based on what Reid calls "one-dimensional velocity" obtained solely from Doppler shifts. "Now," he says, "we have three-dimensional velocity and more exact measurements" - a huge advancement in the field. The findings debunk the notion that the Milky Way is a little-sister galaxy to her neighbor Andromeda. "They're more like fraternal twins," Reid says. And the fact that they are of equal size increases the likelihood that the two will someday collide. (See the Top 50 space moments since Sputnik...
Pilots know that weather causes about 40% of aircraft accidents and about 65% of air-traffic delays longer than 15 minutes. Thankfully, technology can defuse the threat. Doppler radar can predict and pinpoint rapid, dramatic shifts in wind by bouncing beacons off different air masses...
Today most people think that Doppler radar wind-shear-detection systems have been installed in every airport. In fact, only 16 are installed and working. Some $350 million worth of parts for Doppler wind-shear-warning radar (promised after a horrible 1985 crash in Dallas) moldered away when truckloads of equipment went to dusty warehouses instead of to the airports most in need. Other systems are installed but haven't been switched on. Seven of the remaining 47 scheduled for production haven't even been delivered...
...years since the Dallas crash, other wind-shear accidents have cost passenger lives. Two unsolved crashes in Pennsylvania and North Carolina have been tentatively attributed to wind shear that might have been avoided with Doppler radar. After a USAir flight crashed in Charlotte, North Carolina, in July 1994, the NTSB said the delay in installing the radar had cost the lives of 37 onboard. Charlotte was supposed to get the radar system in early 1993. As an airport in the South (where wind shear is particularly common), it was No. 5 on the FAA list. But the inevitable delays...