Stories tagged Earth and Space Science
Private rocket achieves Earth orbit
SpaceX’s Falcon 1 spacecraft made history last night as the first privately developed launch vehicle to reach earth orbit from the ground. Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (Space X) was created four years ago with $120 million of private funding, 80% from Elon Musk. Elon Musk (born 28 June 1971) is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of PayPal and SpaceX. He is also chairman of Tesla Motors and SolarCity.
You can learn more about Space X by going to SpaceX.com
Source: TechCrunch.
Tags : Everything's ducky for NASA!
in Earth and Space Science, Scientific Inquiry, The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate, and Forces of Nature
Rubber ducky you're the one...
Courtesy Mark RyanBoy, times must be getting tough if NASA’s latest endeavor is any indication. Researchers from the space agency recently dropped a whole slew of rubber ducks into openings in Greenland's Jakobshaven Glacier in hopes of understanding how and where melt waters from the ice sheet ends up in Baffin Bay. They’re also trying to understand why glaciers increase their speed during the summer months. The Jakobshaven Glacier, which is suspected of calving the iceberg that sank the Titanic in 1912, is Greenland’s fastest moving glacier. The current thinking is that melt water forming on top of the ice flow during the summer months travels down narrow tubes called moulins to the glaciers base where it acts as a lubricant thus speeding up the ice sheet's movement. This isn’t exactly rocket science, is it? Anyway, each little ducky carries a label with the words "science experiment" and "reward" printed on it in three languages, along with an email address. The researchers hope that those who come across the toy quackers will contact them with information about when and where they found them. So far no one has gotten back to NASA but agency officials are confidant when they do it will add to our understanding of glaciers and their role in rising sea levels. So why has NASA has resorted to using such a low-tech approach? One source claims it's because a previous test using a metallic probe failed to return any data. Another source claims the probe is being used in conjunction with the rubber bath toys. Whatever the case it looks duck hunting season has opened.
SOURCES and LINKS
CNN story
NetworkWorld story
Discovery Channel story
Animation about Jakobshaven Glacier
China National Space Administration logo
Courtesy CNSASometime later this week, perhaps as early as tomorrow, China will launch its third manned space mission, Shenzhou-7 into space along with three astronauts – one of whom will perform China's first ever space walk.
The goal of the mission is to allow the Chinese program to develop the skills needed for the construction of a space station and eventual manned trips to the moon.
With the first manned Shenzhou mission in 2003, China joined the United States and the former Soviet Union as the only nations capable of launching astronauts into space.
This seems to be a big week for the Great Lakes, especially their restoration and preservation. The Great Lakes Legacy Act is making its way through Congress; presidential candidate Barack Obama has promised to set up a five billion dollar trust fund for protection of the 5 inland seas (in the spirit of non-partisan fairness here’s the Republicans’ response); the new Omnifilm, Mysteries of the Great Lakes just opened and is playing here at the SMM Omnitheater; and a new debate has started regarding the long-held practice of swabbing debris from the decks of Great Lake freighters once they get out on the lakes.
Great Lakes from space: Photo by NASAThe five Great Lakes, Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario contain something like 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, and are the source of drinking water for millions of Canadians and Americans who live around them. I grew up along the shores of Lake Superior (our hillside neighborhood in Duluth set on the prehistoric lake bottom of a larger Ice Age ancestor) so I’m partial to good old Gichigami and its siblings, and I’m really glad to see some serious attention is being paid to their clean-up and preservation.
Illinois landscape, 300 million years ago: Late 19th Century illustration portraying a Carboniferous rainforest
Courtesy Mark RyanLast year, news came out about the discovery of a large fossil forest dating from 300 million years ago in a coal mine located in eastern Illinois. Now, five more prehistoric forests have been identified in the same region.
Central Illinois above the coal mine: The terrain and vegetation today is a far cry from how it looked 300 million years ago.
Courtesy Illinois State Geological SurveyThe remains of the ancient tropical rainforests cover a tremendous area – 36 square miles – and have been under study by scientists from the Smithsonian, the UK, and the Illinois State Geological Survey. A presentation given at the British Association Science Festival held in Liverpool this week detailed some of the highlights of this incredible find.
"Theses are the largest fossil forests found anywhere in the world at any point in geological time,” said Dr Howard Falcon-Lang a paleobotanist at the University of Bristol.
The prehistoric landscapes existed within only a few million years of each other – a short span geologically speaking – and are found stacked one upon the other. Segments of the forest fossilized in their original vertical position. At places, scientists can trace the original ground cover in well-preserved fossils.
Donning cap lamps, battery packs, and rock hammers Falcon-Lang and his colleagues rode an armored vehicle 250 feet beneath the Herrin coal seam in the Riola and Vermillion Grove coal mine. Once underground, the scientists took an incredible hike through a long-gone prehistoric fossil forest, illuminated only by lights on their caps.
Ancient tree trunk protruding from coal mine ceiling
Courtesy Illinois State Geological Survey“We walked for miles and miles along pitch-black passages with the fossil forest just above our heads,” Falcon-Lang said. "It's kind of an odd view looking at a forest bottom-up. You can actually see upright tree stumps that are pointed vertically up above your head with the roots coming down; and adjacent to those tree stumps you see all the litter.”
Fallen fossil tree in coal mine: Howard Falcon-Lang (University of Bristol) and John Nelson (Illinois State Geological Survey) mark off the width of a large fossil tree trunk lying just above the contact of the coal bed.
Courtesy Illinois State Geological SurveyIn some cases toppled trees – complete with crowns – and over 100 feet long were measured lying stretched out in the shale across the ceiling. For paleobotanists it presents a remarkable opportunity to actually stroll through a 300 million year-old ecological system as if taking a walk in the local woods today.
The reason for this unusual preservation is thought to be due to the prehistoric rain forest growing in an estuary near the Royal Center fault in Indiana, which caused the terrain to subside below sea level making it vulnerable to incidents of flooding and abrupt drowning. Geologists suspect earthquakes along the fault are the reason for the subsidence.
The soil that once supported these rainforests was later transformed into coal. Once this coal seam was mined from underground, the base of the fossilized forest was revealed encased in a shale matrix.
These tropical rain forests originally flourished during the Pennsylvania period (known as the Upper Carboniferous in Britain), back when the US Midwest was located near the equator. Forests of giant club moss trees and tree-sized horsetails came and went over a geologically short span of time. At the same time, major shifts in climate were taking place, alternating from cooler temperatures with large planetary ice caps to periods of extreme warming.
The episodes of climatic change coincide with changes in the forest ecology. Close study of the fossil vegetation show that several times the climatic stress pushed the rain forests into extinction, making way for skimpier fern growths to replace them.
Over the next five years Dr. Falcon-Lang’s team will search for reasons why this rainforest extinction took place. Understanding how the first rainforests responded to global warming could help shed light on how climatic change may affect present day rainforests.
Additional photos of the amazing fossil forest can be found here. But if you want to see some of the real thing, visit the coal-mining exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago where an actual slab of the gray roof shale is on display.
LINKS
Illinois State Geological Survey story
University of Bristol story
BBC website story
Coal-mining info
More about the Carboniferous period
Pompeii pressure: Vesuvius may be easing up
in Earth and Space Science, Earth Structure and Processes, and Forces of Nature
Thing of the past?: New studies show that the likelihood of a major eruption of Mount Vesuvius, like this computer image of the infamous blast of 79 A.D., are decreasing.
Courtesy WikipediaAbout a year ago visitors at the Science Museum of Minnesota learned about the disaster that struck Pompeii, Italy, when Mount Vesuvius erupted, wiping out the city and a lot of its residents in the span of just about a day.
Today, about three million people are living within range of a Vesuvius eruption. But the good news from geologists is that they may be under lessened risk for a devastating eruption like the one that hit in 79 A.D.
A new study shows that the volcano’s magma reservoir has been rising up closer to the Earth’s surface over the past 20,000 years. At that higher level, the magma is likely to produce less violent eruptions.
That magma has actually moved quite a bit. Between the huge Pompeii-devastating eruption and another one in the year 472 A.D., the magma pool climbed about 2.5 miles toward Earth’s surface.
But that doesn’t mean people can sleep totally at peace in the volcano’s neighborhood, experts advise. Other factors also play into the severity of a volcano eruption, including tectonic plate shift and the deposit distribution of the magma, factors that weren’t part of this new study.
Invincible naked astronauts return to earth for sex
in Earth and Space Science, Cells, Forces of Nature, and Human Organism
Okay, hold that pose: But we're going to want to try it without... without... Forget it.
Courtesy NASAAnd they didn’t just have sex; they actually reproduced, which turns out to be important for naked astronauts. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, aren’t we?
No, we aren’t.
Tiny, naked astronauts were recently exposed to the vacuum environment, harsh temperatures, and dangerous radiation of space for a period of several days. The space travelers went into an almost entirely dormant state for the duration, slowing their metabolisms to .01% of their normal levels.
After they were brought back into the low-orbit space vessel, most of the astronauts were completely revived. (Some died. It was very sad.) Aside from enduring the vacuum of space, and the extreme temperatures outside of a space capsule, the astronauts’ ability to survive the radiation of space most surprised scientists. On the surface of earth, solar radiation (as you no doubt are aware) is strong enough to give us sunburn, and cause genetic damage to our skin cells (leading to skin cancer). The levels of radiation in space are 1,000 times higher, enough to sterilize an organism, yet the astronauts did fine with it, and were even able to successfully reproduce on their return to earth. Scientists hope to isolate whatever mechanism allowed the astronauts to repair the genetic damage they likely incurred while in space. Such research might be applied to radiation therapy techniques.
We salute you, tiny, naked challengers of the unknown.
Mammoths on display: Early engraving from the St. Petersburg museum
Courtesy Mark RyanPaleontologists have uncovered the skull of a rare mammoth species in southern France that could help fill in a gap of knowledge about mammoth evolution.
The skull belongs to a steppe mammoth (Mammuthus trogontherii), a large creature that roamed the Ice Age landscape during the Middle Pleistocene some 400,000 years ago. While alive, the steppe mammoth stood about 12 feet tall at the shoulder and spent its life grazing on grasses. Few skulls of this intermediate beast have been found so this latest discovery could help link the evolutionary path between the earlier southern mammoth (Mammuthus meridionalis) and the later woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius).
"This specimen is of extreme importance because we don't know that much about the Middle Pleistocene," said Dick Mol, an amateur paleontologist from the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, who discovered the skull with French paleontologist Frederic Lacombat. Photos of the dig can be viewed here.
Mammoth skull: American Museum of Natural History
Courtesy Mark RyanThe earlier southern mammoth lived life browsing on trees and shrubs in a savannah-type environment, much like that found today in Senegal, Africa. But the steppe mammoth, and its descendent the woolly mammoth, lived in a colder, harsher environment. Their molars show an adaptation to the tougher steppe grasses that took over the savannah as the climate got colder and the latest ice age began.
SOURCE and LINKS
BBC site story
Origin and evolution of mammaths
More mammoth facts
Mammoth museum in Russia video
Mammoth site in South Dakota
Gustav was the seventh named storm in the 2008 Hurricane season, and we quickly have four more, including three in the Atlantic.
Hanna has hit Haiti leaving at least 10 dead and could hit the East coast as early as Friday. It is currently a tropical storm, but forecasters say it could be back to hurricane strength again before making landfall on the East coast. Check out the storm track for this storm here.
Ike is headed to the area of the Bahamas and could reach the area by Sunday. The area would then have been hit by four storms in a row, Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. Check out the storm track for this storm here.
Tropical storm Josephine formed today and hurricane center said it could near hurricane force by Wednesday or Thursday. Check out the storm track for this storm here.
In the Pacific Karina is a new storm that at this point does not pose any risk to the West coast or other inhabited areas in the Pacific.
Sunspot activity reaches record low
in Earth and Space Science, The Water Cycle, Weather and Climate, and The Universe
Where, oh where, have my sunspots gone?: Sunspot activity tied a record low of zero in August, 2008.
Courtesy NASA
For the first time in almost a century, the Sun has a spotless record. There were no observed sunspots in August. None. Zero. Zip. Can't get a record any lower than that. That's the first time this has happened since 1913.
That's before commercial radio. Before talking movies. Before World War I. Why, it's almost as long as since the last time the Cubs won the World Series.
Now, that's a long time!
Plus, as we've discussed before, the Sun has been unusually quiet of late. Sunspots generally go through an 11-year cycle, and we're a couple years late for the next rise in activity.
But, you are no doubt wondering, what does this mean to me, the Average Joe? (Assuming your name is indeed "Average Joe," which would be pretty remarkable and, ironically, not average.) Well, sunspots seem to be tied to weather. Three times, since astronomers began observing suspots, has the Sun fallen silent, and each time coincides with significant drops in global temperatures. One such dip, from roughly 1600 to 1750, was so severe it is known as "The Little Ice Age."
Are we heading into another glacial period? Much too soon to tell. But if you start feeling chilly, keep your eye on the Sun. Astronomers will be doing the same.
(NOTE FOR THE METAPHORCALLY-IMPAIRED: That was meant figuratively. Do not look directly at the Sun with your naked eye. You'll burn out your retina.)
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