Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to harbor life. According to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago. Earth's gravity interacts with other objects in space the Sun and the Moon, Earth's only natural satellite. Earth revolves around the Sun in a period known as an Earth year. During this time, Earth rotates about its axis about 366.26 times. Earth's axis of rotation is tilted with respect to its orbital plane; the gravitational interaction between Earth and the Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes Earth's orientation on its axis, slows its rotation. Earth is the largest of the four terrestrial planets. Earth's lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earth's surface is covered with water by oceans; the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere.
The majority of Earth's polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet and the sea ice of the Arctic ice pack. Earth's interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earth's magnetic field, a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earth's history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earth's atmosphere and surface, leading to the proliferation of aerobic and anaerobic organisms; some geological evidence indicates. Since the combination of Earth's distance from the Sun, physical properties, geological history have allowed life to evolve and thrive. In the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely. Over 7.6 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and natural resources for their survival.
Humans have developed diverse cultures. The modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most spelled eorðe, it has cognates in every Germanic language, their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō. In its earliest appearances, eorðe was being used to translate the many senses of Latin terra and Greek γῆ: the ground, its soil, dry land, the human world, the surface of the world, the globe itself; as with Terra and Gaia, Earth was a personified goddess in Germanic paganism: the Angles were listed by Tacitus as among the devotees of Nerthus, Norse mythology included Jörð, a giantess given as the mother of Thor. Earth was written in lowercase, from early Middle English, its definite sense as "the globe" was expressed as the earth. By Early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, the earth became the Earth when referenced along with other heavenly bodies. More the name is sometimes given as Earth, by analogy with the names of the other planets.
House styles now vary: Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, with the capitalized form an acceptable variant. Another convention capitalizes "Earth" when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the, it always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as "what on earth are you doing?" The oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4.5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4.54±0.04 Bya the primordial Earth had formed. The bodies in the Solar System evolved with the Sun. In theory, a solar nebula partitions a volume out of a molecular cloud by gravitational collapse, which begins to spin and flatten into a circumstellar disk, the planets grow out of that disk with the Sun. A nebula contains gas, ice grains, dust. According to nebular theory, planetesimals formed by accretion, with the primordial Earth taking 10–20 million years to form. A subject of research is the formation of some 4.53 Bya. A leading hypothesis is that it was formed by accretion from material loosed from Earth after a Mars-sized object, named Theia, hit Earth.
In this view, the mass of Theia was 10 percent of Earth, it hit Earth with a glancing blow and some of its mass merged with Earth. Between 4.1 and 3.8 Bya, numerous asteroid impacts during the Late Heavy Bombardment caused significant changes to the greater surface environment of the Moon and, by inference, to that of Earth. Earth's atmosphere and oceans were formed by volcanic outgassing. Water vapor from these sources condensed into the oceans, augmented by water and ice from asteroids and comets. In this model, atmospheric "greenhouse gases" kept the oceans from freezing when the newly forming Sun had only 70% of its current luminosity. By 3.5 Bya, Earth's magnetic field was established, which helped prevent the atmosphere from being stripped away by the solar wind. A crust formed; the two models that explain land mass propose either a steady growth to the present-day forms or, more a rapid growth early in Earth history followed by a long-term steady continental area. Continents formed by plate tectonics
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a giant planet with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants. Jupiter has been known to astronomers since antiquity, it is named after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can reach an apparent magnitude of −2.94, bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, making it on average the third-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus. Jupiter is composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium, though helium comprises only about a tenth of the number of molecules, it may have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet's shape is that of an oblate spheroid; the outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries.
A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm, known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a powerful magnetosphere. Jupiter has 79 known moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury. Jupiter has been explored on several occasions by robotic spacecraft, most notably during the early Pioneer and Voyager flyby missions and by the Galileo orbiter. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the New Horizons probe, which used Jupiter's gravity to increase its speed and bend its trajectory en route to Pluto; the latest probe to visit the planet is Juno, which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa. Astronomers have discovered nearly 500 planetary systems with multiple planets.
These systems include a few planets with masses several times greater than Earth's, orbiting closer to their star than Mercury is to the Sun, sometimes Jupiter-mass gas giants close to their star. Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun; as Jupiter came toward the inner Solar System, in what theorists call the grand tack hypothesis, gravitational tugs and pulls occurred causing a series of collisions between the super-Earths as their orbits began to overlap. Researchers from Lund University found that Jupiter's migration went on for around 700,000 years, in a period 2-3 million years after the celestial body started its life as an ice asteroid far from the sun; the journey inwards in the solar system followed a spiraling course in which Jupiter continued to circle around the sun, albeit in an tight path. The reason behind the actual migration relates to gravitational forces from the surrounding gases in the solar system.
Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth. Jupiter is composed of gaseous and liquid matter, it is the largest of hence its largest planet. It has a diameter of 142,984 km at its equator; the average density of Jupiter, 1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets. Jupiter's upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules. A helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiter's atmosphere is 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, with the remaining one percent of the mass consisting of other elements; the atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor and silicon-based compounds. There are traces of carbon, hydrogen sulfide, oxygen and sulfur; the outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia.
The interior contains denser materials—by mass it is 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, 5% other elements. Through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have been found; the atmospheric proportions of hydrogen and helium are close to the theoretical composition of the primordial solar nebula. Neon in the upper atmosphere only consists of 20 parts per million by mass, about a tenth as abundant as in the Sun. Helium is depleted to about 80% of the Sun's helium composition; this depletion is a result of precipitation of these elements into the interior of the planet. Based on spectroscopy, Saturn is thought to be similar in composition to Jupiter, but the other giant planets Uranus and Neptune have less hydrogen and helium and more ices and are thus now termed ice giants. Jupiter's mass is 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined—this is so massive that its barycenter with the Sun lies above the Sun's surface at 1.068 solar radii from the Sun's center.
Jupiter is much larger than Earth and less dense: its volume is that of about 1,321 Earths, but it is only 318 times as massive. Jupiter's radius is about 1/10 the radius of the Sun, its mass is 0.001 times the mass of the Sun, so the densities of the two bodies are similar. A "Jupiter mass" is used as a u
Donato Creti
Donato Creti was an Italian painter of the Rococo period, active in Bologna. Born in Cremona, he moved to Bologna, he is described by Wittkower as the "Bolognese Marco Benefial", in that his style was less decorative and edged into a more formal neoclassical style. It is an academicized grand style, that crystallizes into a manneristic neoclassicism, with crisp and frigid modeling of the figures. Among his followers were Aureliano Milani, Francesco Monti, Ercole Graziani the Younger. Two other pupils were Giuseppe Peroni. One memorable conceit in Creti's output is a series of small canvases depicting celestial bodies, disproportionately sized and illuminated, above nocturnal landscapes; the paintings, commissioned in 1711 by the Bolognese count Luigi Marsili and intended as a gift to Pope Clement XI, were meant to accentuate the need for the Papal States to sponsor an astronomical observatory. With the support of Clement XI, the first public astronomical observatory in Italy was opened in Bologna a short time later.
The eight small canvases display the sun, moon, a comet, the then-known five planets: Mercury, Mars, Saturn. His Jupiter depicts the Great Red Spot and at least two moons. Cleopatra at Blanton Museum, Texas Alexander Threatened by his Father at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C. Artemisia Drinking the Ashes of Mausolus at the National Gallery, London Achilles Handed over to Chiron at Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna Education of Achilles at Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna Mercury and Paris at Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna Charity at Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna Allegorical Tomb of Boyle and Sydenham at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna Allegorical Tomb of the Duke of Marlborough at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna Landscape with Female Figures at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna Visitation of the Virgin to Saint Elizabeth at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna Achilles Dipped in the Styx at Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna Francesco Fontana Wittkower, Rudolf. Pelican History of Art, ed. Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750.
1980. Penguin Books Ltd. pp. 471–2. Catholic Encyclopedia article Gallery including images of the astronomical canvases
Goddard Space Flight Center
The Goddard Space Flight Center is a major NASA space research laboratory located 6.5 miles northeast of Washington, D. C. in unincorporated Prince George's County, United States. Established on May 1, 1959 as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC employs 10,000 civil servants and contractors, it is one of ten major NASA field centers, named in recognition of American rocket propulsion pioneer Dr. Robert H. Goddard. GSFC is within the former Goddard census-designated place. GSFC is the largest combined organization of scientists and engineers in the United States dedicated to increasing knowledge of the Earth, the Solar System, the Universe via observations from space. GSFC is a major US laboratory for operating unmanned scientific spacecraft. GSFC conducts scientific investigation and operation of space systems, development of related technologies. Goddard scientists can develop and support a mission, Goddard engineers and technicians can design and build the spacecraft for that mission. Goddard scientist John C.
Mather shared the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on COBE. GSFC operates two spaceflight tracking and data acquisition networks and maintains advanced space and Earth science data information systems, develops satellite systems for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. GSFC manages operations for many NASA and international missions including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Explorers Program, the Discovery Program, the Earth Observing System, INTEGRAL, MAVEN, OSIRIS-REx, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, Swift. Past missions managed by GSFC include the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, SMM, COBE, IUE, ROSAT. Unmanned earth observation missions and observatories in Earth orbit are managed by GSFC, while unmanned planetary missions are managed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Goddard is NASA's first, oldest, space center, its original charter was to perform five major functions on behalf of NASA: technology development and fabrication, scientific research, technical operations, project management.
The center is organized into several directorates, each charged with one of these key functions. Until May 1, 1959, NASA's presence in Greenbelt, Maryland was known as the Beltsville Space Center, it was renamed the Goddard Space Flight Center, after Dr. Robert H. Goddard, its first 157 employees transferred from the United States Navy's Project Vanguard missile program, but continued their work at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C. while the center was under construction. Goddard Space Flight Center contributed to Project Mercury, America's first manned space flight program; the Center assumed a lead role for the project in its early days and managed the first 250 employees involved in the effort, who were stationed at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. However, the size and scope of Project Mercury soon prompted NASA to build a new Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas. Project Mercury's personnel and activities were transferred there in 1961.
Goddard Space Flight Center remained involved in the manned space flight program, providing computer support and radar tracking of flights through a worldwide network of ground stations called the Spacecraft Tracking and Data Acquisition Network. However, the Center focused on designing unmanned satellites and spacecraft for scientific research missions. Goddard pioneered several fields of spacecraft development, including modular spacecraft design, which reduced costs and made it possible to repair satellites in orbit. Goddard's Solar Max satellite, launched in 1980, was repaired by astronauts on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1984; the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, remains in service and continues to grow in capability thanks to its modular design and multiple servicing missions by the Space Shuttle. Today, the center remains involved in each of NASA's key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other organization, among them scientific instruments sent to every planet in the Solar System.
The Center's contribution to the Earth Science Enterprise includes several spacecraft in the Earth Observing System fleet as well as EOSDIS, a science data collection and distribution system. For the manned space flight program, Goddard develops tools for use by astronauts during extra-vehicular activity, operates the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft designed to study the Moon in preparation for future manned exploration. Goddard's wooded campus is a few miles northeast of Washington, D. C. in Prince George's County. The center is on Greenbelt Road, Maryland Route 193. Baltimore, NASA Headquarters in Washington are 30–45 minutes away by highway. Greenbelt has a train station with access to the Washington Metro system and the MARC commuter train's Camden line; the High Bay Cleanroom located in building 29 is the world's largest ISO 7 cleanroom with 1.3 million cubic feet of space. Vacuum chambers in adjacent buildings 10 and 7 can be chilled or heated to +/- 200 °C. Adjacent building 15 houses the High Capacity Centrifuge, capable of generating 30 G on up to a 2.5 tons load.
Parsons Corporation assisted in the construction of the Class 10,000 cleanroom to support Hubble Space Telescope as well as other Goddard missions. The High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center is NASA's designated center for the archiving and
Hydrogen
Hydrogen is a chemical element with symbol H and atomic number 1. With a standard atomic weight of 1.008, hydrogen is the lightest element in the periodic table. Hydrogen is the most abundant chemical substance in the Universe, constituting 75% of all baryonic mass. Non-remnant stars are composed of hydrogen in the plasma state; the most common isotope of hydrogen, termed protium, has no neutrons. The universal emergence of atomic hydrogen first occurred during the recombination epoch. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen is a colorless, tasteless, non-toxic, nonmetallic combustible diatomic gas with the molecular formula H2. Since hydrogen forms covalent compounds with most nonmetallic elements, most of the hydrogen on Earth exists in molecular forms such as water or organic compounds. Hydrogen plays a important role in acid–base reactions because most acid-base reactions involve the exchange of protons between soluble molecules. In ionic compounds, hydrogen can take the form of a negative charge when it is known as a hydride, or as a positively charged species denoted by the symbol H+.
The hydrogen cation is written as though composed of a bare proton, but in reality, hydrogen cations in ionic compounds are always more complex. As the only neutral atom for which the Schrödinger equation can be solved analytically, study of the energetics and bonding of the hydrogen atom has played a key role in the development of quantum mechanics. Hydrogen gas was first artificially produced in the early 16th century by the reaction of acids on metals. In 1766–81, Henry Cavendish was the first to recognize that hydrogen gas was a discrete substance, that it produces water when burned, the property for which it was named: in Greek, hydrogen means "water-former". Industrial production is from steam reforming natural gas, less from more energy-intensive methods such as the electrolysis of water. Most hydrogen is used near the site of its production, the two largest uses being fossil fuel processing and ammonia production for the fertilizer market. Hydrogen is a concern in metallurgy as it can embrittle many metals, complicating the design of pipelines and storage tanks.
Hydrogen gas is flammable and will burn in air at a wide range of concentrations between 4% and 75% by volume. The enthalpy of combustion is −286 kJ/mol: 2 H2 + O2 → 2 H2O + 572 kJ Hydrogen gas forms explosive mixtures with air in concentrations from 4–74% and with chlorine at 5–95%; the explosive reactions may be triggered by heat, or sunlight. The hydrogen autoignition temperature, the temperature of spontaneous ignition in air, is 500 °C. Pure hydrogen-oxygen flames emit ultraviolet light and with high oxygen mix are nearly invisible to the naked eye, as illustrated by the faint plume of the Space Shuttle Main Engine, compared to the visible plume of a Space Shuttle Solid Rocket Booster, which uses an ammonium perchlorate composite; the detection of a burning hydrogen leak may require a flame detector. Hydrogen flames in other conditions are blue; the destruction of the Hindenburg airship was a notorious example of hydrogen combustion and the cause is still debated. The visible orange flames in that incident were the result of a rich mixture of hydrogen to oxygen combined with carbon compounds from the airship skin.
H2 reacts with every oxidizing element. Hydrogen can react spontaneously and violently at room temperature with chlorine and fluorine to form the corresponding hydrogen halides, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride, which are potentially dangerous acids; the ground state energy level of the electron in a hydrogen atom is −13.6 eV, equivalent to an ultraviolet photon of 91 nm wavelength. The energy levels of hydrogen can be calculated accurately using the Bohr model of the atom, which conceptualizes the electron as "orbiting" the proton in analogy to the Earth's orbit of the Sun. However, the atomic electron and proton are held together by electromagnetic force, while planets and celestial objects are held by gravity; because of the discretization of angular momentum postulated in early quantum mechanics by Bohr, the electron in the Bohr model can only occupy certain allowed distances from the proton, therefore only certain allowed energies. A more accurate description of the hydrogen atom comes from a purely quantum mechanical treatment that uses the Schrödinger equation, Dirac equation or the Feynman path integral formulation to calculate the probability density of the electron around the proton.
The most complicated treatments allow for the small effects of special relativity and vacuum polarization. In the quantum mechanical treatment, the electron in a ground state hydrogen atom has no angular momentum at all—illustrating how the "planetary orbit" differs from electron motion. There exist two different spin isomers of hydrogen diatomic molecules that differ by the relative spin of their nuclei. In the orthohydrogen form, the spins of the two protons are parallel and form a triplet state with a molecular spin quantum number of 1. At standard temperature and pressure, hydrogen gas contains about 25% of the para form and 75% of the ortho form known as the "normal form"; the equilibrium ratio of orthohydrogen to parahydrogen depends on temperature, but because the ortho form is an excited state and has a higher energy
Acetylene
Acetylene is the chemical compound with the formula C2H2. It is the simplest alkyne; this colorless gas is used as a fuel and a chemical building block. It is unstable in its pure form and thus is handled as a solution. Pure acetylene is odorless, but commercial grades have a marked odor due to impurities; as an alkyne, acetylene is unsaturated because its two carbon atoms are bonded together in a triple bond. The carbon–carbon triple bond places all four atoms in the same straight line, with CCH bond angles of 180°. Acetylene was discovered in 1836 by Edmund Davy, who identified it as a "new carburet of hydrogen", it was an accidental discovery while attempting to isolate potassium metal. By heating potassium carbonate with carbon at high temperatures, he produced a residue of what is now known as potassium carbide, which reacted with water to release the new gas, it was rediscovered in 1860 by French chemist Marcellin Berthelot. Berthelot's empirical formula for acetylene, as well as the alternative name "quadricarbure d'hydrogène", were incorrect because chemists at that time used the wrong atomic mass for carbon.
Berthelot was able to prepare this gas by passing vapours of organic compounds through a red-hot tube and collecting the effluent. He found that acetylene was formed by sparking electricity through mixed cyanogen and hydrogen gases. Berthelot obtained acetylene directly by passing hydrogen between the poles of a carbon arc. Commercially available acetylene gas could smell foul due to the impurities divinyl sulfide and phosphine. Since the 1950s, acetylene has been manufactured by the partial combustion of methane, it is a recovered side product in production of ethylene by cracking of hydrocarbons. 400,000 tonnes were produced by this method in 1983. Its presence in ethylene is undesirable because of its explosive character and its ability to poison Ziegler–Natta catalysts, it is selectively hydrogenated into ethylene using Pd–Ag catalysts. Until the 1950s, when oil supplanted coal as the chief source of reduced carbon, acetylene was the main source of organic chemicals in the chemical industry.
It was prepared by the hydrolysis of calcium carbide, a reaction discovered by Friedrich Wöhler in 1862 and still familiar to students: CaC2 + 2H2O → Ca2 + C2H2Calcium carbide production requires high temperatures, ~2000 °C, necessitating the use of an electric arc furnace. In the US, this process was an important part of the late-19th century revolution in chemistry enabled by the massive hydroelectric power project at Niagara Falls. In terms of valence bond theory, in each carbon atom the 2s orbital hybridizes with one 2p orbital thus forming an sp hybrid; the other two 2p orbitals remain unhybridized. The two ends of the two sp hybrid orbital overlap to form a strong σ valence bond between the carbons, while on each of the other two ends hydrogen atoms attach by σ bonds; the two unchanged 2p orbitals form a pair of weaker π bonds. Since acetylene is a linear symmetrical molecule, it possesses the D∞h point group. At atmospheric pressure, acetylene does not have a melting point; the triple point on the phase diagram corresponds to the melting point at the minimal pressure at which liquid acetylene can exist.
At temperatures below the triple point, solid acetylene can change directly to the vapour by sublimation. The sublimation point at atmospheric pressure is −84.0 °C. At room temperature, the solubility of acetylene in acetone is 27.9 g per kg. For the same amount of DMF, the solubility is 51 g. At 20.26 bar, the solubility increases to 689.0 and 628.0 g for DMF, respectively. These solvents are used in pressurized gas cylinders. 20% of acetylene is supplied by the industrial gases industry for oxyacetylene gas welding and cutting due to the high temperature of the flame. Combustion of acetylene with oxygen produces a flame of over 3,600 K. Oxyacetylene is the hottest burning common fuel gas. Acetylene is the third-hottest natural chemical flame after dicyanoacetylene's 5,260 K and cyanogen at 4,798 K. Oxy-acetylene welding was a popular welding process in previous decades; the development and advantages of arc-based welding processes have made oxy-fuel welding nearly extinct for many applications.
Acetylene usage for welding has dropped significantly. On the other hand, oxy-acetylene welding equipment is quite versatile – not only because the torch is preferred for some sorts of iron or steel welding, but because it lends itself to brazing, braze-welding, metal heating, the loosening of corroded nuts and bolts, other applications. Bell Canada cable-repair technicians still use portable acetylene-fuelled torch kits as a soldering tool for sealing lead sleeve splices in manholes and in some aerial locations. Oxyacetylene welding may be used in areas where electricity is not accessible; as well, oxy-fuel cutting is still popular, oxy-acetylene cutting is used in many metal fabrication shops. For use in welding and cutting, the working pressures must be controlled by a regulator, since above 15 psi, if subjected to a shockwave, acetylene decomposes explosively into hydrogen and carbon. Calcium carbide was used to generate acetylene used in the lamps for portable or remote applications, it was used for miners and cavers before the widespread use of incandescent
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet designates a band of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelength from 10 nm to 400 nm, shorter than that of visible light but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight, contributes about 10% of the total light output of the Sun, it is produced by electric arcs and specialized lights, such as mercury-vapor lamps, tanning lamps, black lights. Although long-wavelength ultraviolet is not considered an ionizing radiation because its photons lack the energy to ionize atoms, it can cause chemical reactions and causes many substances to glow or fluoresce; the chemical and biological effects of UV are greater than simple heating effects, many practical applications of UV radiation derive from its interactions with organic molecules. Suntan and sunburn are familiar effects of over-exposure of the skin to UV, along with higher risk of skin cancer. Living things on dry land would be damaged by ultraviolet radiation from the Sun if most of it were not filtered out by the Earth's atmosphere.
More energetic, shorter-wavelength "extreme" UV below 121 nm ionizes air so that it is absorbed before it reaches the ground. Ultraviolet is responsible for the formation of bone-strengthening vitamin D in most land vertebrates, including humans; the UV spectrum thus has effects both harmful to human health. The lower wavelength limit of human vision is conventionally taken as 400 nm, so ultraviolet rays are invisible to humans, although some people can perceive light at shorter wavelengths than this. Insects and some mammals can see near-UV. Ultraviolet rays are invisible to most humans; the lens of the human eye blocks most radiation in the wavelength range of 300–400 nm. Humans lack color receptor adaptations for ultraviolet rays; the photoreceptors of the retina are sensitive to near-UV, people lacking a lens perceive near-UV as whitish-blue or whitish-violet. Under some conditions and young adults can see ultraviolet down to wavelengths of about 310 nm. Near-UV radiation is visible to insects, some mammals, birds.
Small birds have a fourth color receptor for ultraviolet rays. "Ultraviolet" means "beyond violet", violet being the color of the highest frequencies of visible light. Ultraviolet has a higher frequency than violet light. UV radiation was discovered in 1801 when the German physicist Johann Wilhelm Ritter observed that invisible rays just beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum darkened silver chloride-soaked paper more than violet light itself, he called them "oxidizing rays" to emphasize chemical reactivity and to distinguish them from "heat rays", discovered the previous year at the other end of the visible spectrum. The simpler term "chemical rays" was adopted soon afterwards, remained popular throughout the 19th century, although some said that this radiation was different from light; the terms "chemical rays" and "heat rays" were dropped in favor of ultraviolet and infrared radiation, respectively. In 1878 the sterilizing effect of short-wavelength light by killing bacteria was discovered.
By 1903 it was known. In 1960, the effect of ultraviolet radiation on DNA was established; the discovery of the ultraviolet radiation with wavelengths below 200 nm, named "vacuum ultraviolet" because it is absorbed by the oxygen in air, was made in 1893 by the German physicist Victor Schumann. The electromagnetic spectrum of ultraviolet radiation, defined most broadly as 10–400 nanometers, can be subdivided into a number of ranges recommended by the ISO standard ISO-21348: A variety of solid-state and vacuum devices have been explored for use in different parts of the UV spectrum. Many approaches seek to adapt visible light-sensing devices, but these can suffer from unwanted response to visible light and various instabilities. Ultraviolet can be detected by suitable photodiodes and photocathodes, which can be tailored to be sensitive to different parts of the UV spectrum. Sensitive ultraviolet photomultipliers are available. Spectrometers and radiometers are made for measurement of UV radiation.
Silicon detectors are used across the spectrum. Vacuum UV, or VUV, wavelengths are absorbed by molecular oxygen in the air, though the longer wavelengths of about 150–200 nm can propagate through nitrogen. Scientific instruments can therefore utilize this spectral range by operating in an oxygen-free atmosphere, without the need for costly vacuum chambers. Significant examples include 193 nm photolithography equipment and circular dichroism spectrometers. Technology for VUV instrumentation was driven by solar astronomy for many decades. While optics can be used to remove unwanted visible light that contaminates the VUV, in general, detectors can be limited by their response to non-VUV radiation, the development of "solar-blind" devices has been an important area of research. Wide-gap solid-state devices or vacuum devices with high-cutoff photocathodes can be attractive compared to silicon diodes. Extreme UV is characterized by a transition in the physics of interaction with matter. Wavelengths longer than about 30 nm interact with the outer valence electrons of atoms, while wavelengths shorter than that interact with inner-shell electrons and nuclei.
The long end of the EUV spectrum is set by a prominent He+ spectr
