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January
13, 2021 Martian canyonMars' Valles Marineris Canyon is grander than Earth's
Grand Canyon. It's ten times as long and three times as deep. University of
Arizona scientists studying images from the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are
uncertain what formed this—the largest canyon in the solar system. They
conclude it was not formed by a raging river like the Grand
Canyon. It could be a rift between Martian tectonic plates, or the
result of ancient volcanic activity. (The universe's largest volcano is
nearby.) The history of Mars is locked in her canyons.
The rugged terrain of Valles Marineris
Canyon will challenge its discovery. The jagged boulder fields appear too
treacherous for landing. Visiting the canyon rim would be safer. Descending
the canyon walls from there would be difficult for human geologists in space
suits. Any drone capable of flight in thin Mars air would be cumbersome. A
robot donkey may be the best way to get to the bottom. (Current four-legged
robots are more agile than their two-legged counterparts.) |
January
6, 2021 The James Webb telescopeThe next generation space telescope should be
launched in 2021. Visible light images from its predecessor have advanced
astronomy for decades. The new James Webb telescope will probe even further
in the infrared. Using the infrared, the Webb telescope will see
deeper into the past than Hubble can. Intervening molecular clouds absorb and
scatter the shorter wavelength light that Hubble sees. Longer wavelength
light passing through is less affected. Webb infrared astronomy will take us
where we've never been before. Closer to home, the Webb telescope will support the
search for water on the planets of nearby stars. Water in the atmosphere is
invisible to the Hubble, but obvious to the Webb. (Water's intense infrared
activity makes it Earth's primary greenhouse gas, and would have the same
effect on another planet's climate.) |
December
30, 2020 The Perfect StormCoronavirus and obesity: the perfect storm. The
world is weathering two devastating epidemics—COVID-19 and obesity. The
virus is receiving a lot of publicity, but both are deadly—especially
in combination. By itself, COVID-19 is a nasty flu, but a
survivable one. It can overwhelm the defenses of a body fighting other
ailments, thus the high mortality among the ill and
infirmed. Three-fourths of Americans are
overweight—nearly half obese. By itself, excess pounds are the
harbinger of serious health problems including heart disease, high blood
pressure, diabetes, and several cancers. Obesity is among the conditions that challenge
recovery from COVID-19 infection. Overweight victims are more than twice as
likely to require hospitalization, nearly twice as likely to end up in
intensive care. They are half again as likely to succumb to the disease. Let's all remain vigilant against both epidemics.
Avoid contact with the viruses, eat healthy, and exercise. |
December
23, 2020 The Christmas Star conjunctionThis week's Christmas Star conjunction of the
planets was like two racers passing with their high beams on. In the outer
lane, Saturn orbits the sun every thirty years. Jupiter has the inside track
where it laps the field every twelve years. Every twenty years, Jupiter
overtakes Saturn like it did this week. From the right vantage point, the two
planets might look like they have merged. They haven't. They're still four
hundred million miles apart. Earth was treated to a sky spectacular when we
happened to be at the right place at the right time. Planets pass each all
the time. Adding Earth to make it three in a row was what made the Christmas
Star conjunction special. Hope you had a chance to enjoy it. |
December
16, 2020 The Sun's place in the galaxyMapping the Milky Way is like lifting yourself up by your bootstraps.
We're shooting selfies from inside a whirling dervish, and trying to make
sense of them. Our galaxy seems to be just anther galaxy like the billions in
the night sky, but local details are hard to determine. Our sun—and a billion other stars—are all swirling
around a giant black hole. How far and how fast are challenging to determine
from inside the whirlwind. Computer analysis of data from four Japanese radio telescopes
spanning almost 1500 miles has produced precise estimates of the positions of
neighboring stars. Shifts in those positions over time reveal their motion
relative to our sun's. Computer simulation of the
galaxy suggests where our sun and our neighbors must lie. The results
indicate the sun is 25,800 light-years away from the galaxy's central black
hole, and rotating around it a half million miles an hour. |
December
9,2020 The Space Launch SystemOur return to the moon is under way. The Space
Lunch System is undergoing advanced testing in Alabama. Next year, it will move
to Florida for check out and test launch. Initiated by the Bush Administration and boosted
under Trump, the Space Launch System is intended to be the workhorse system
to open the moon to exploration. Initial configurations will be more powerful
than the Saturn V of the 1960's space program. Paired with the Orion crew
module, it will transport men and women to the moon's surface for extended
stays. Advanced versions of the System will have even
greater payload capacity. That will support more complex moon missions as
well as Gateway—an International Space Station circling the moon. The
Gateway Station is an integral part of NASA's long-term plan for lunar
exploration. It is also a stepping-stone to manned missions beyond. |
December
2, 2020 Lunar eclipse from the moonThis week's lunar eclipse looked different from the
moon. There was no one home on the moon this time. There will be in the near
future—unless Biden stifles the US manned space program like his mentor
did. The lunar astronauts' sky will feature earth near a
bright sun moving against a background of stars. Occasionally, they'll watch
the sun set behind the earth. Sunlight will dim during this partial eclipse
of the sun. That's what happened there during this week's penumbral lunar
eclipse. Rarely, the earth and the sun will line up just right for a total
eclipse of the sun. The sky will turn as black as night. Back on earth, we
will see this as a total lunar eclipse. Simultaneous television coverage from
both vantage points should make the next one worth watching. |
November
25, 2020 Chinese moon missionA Chinese robot is headed for the moon. China sent
the Chang'e-5 system to acquire two kilograms (4.4 pounds) of moon rocks and
debris. This autonomous system is on its way to the moon today. Chang'e-5 is China's latest and most ambitious
lunar probe. It is designed to park in lunar orbit on arrival, and then
separate into landing and orbiting modules. Two sections will descend to the
surface. One will collect samples off the surface, and then drill two meters
(6.6 feet) into the moon. Samples collected from that depth will be added to those from the surface. The specimens
will be packaged and passed to the companion unit that will boost it to the
orbiters. The precious cargo will be transferred to an Earth return vehicle. If all goes well, Chinese laboratories will get
some valuable new specimens by year end. The Moon is
a harsh mistress, though. China's lunar exploration will advance despite any
setbacks. |
November
18, 2020 Books make great giftsEvery reader on your list will treasure a gift of
books. Young adults need to discover an alternative to video games. Cooks
welcome cookbooks. Buy books direct from the publisher and support a small American businesses. For medical mystery fans, or anyone interested in
epidemics, try The Utah Flu. For hard science fiction fans, try Stranded on Mars about the Mars One mission marooned there, or Dead Astronauts about a failed mission from Alpha Centuri. Everybody loves Fish Story,
a science fiction adventure about people abducted and kept by dolphins. The whole family will be glad when the cook in the
house gets a copy of The Champagne Taste/Beer Budget Cookbook. Explore the publisher's
whole catalog for gifts for the
other readers on your list. |
November
11, 2020 Orbiting debrisDeadly debris surrounds Earth. Orbiting refuge from
sixty-some years of humans in space pose an ever-increasing hazard to manned
and unmanned activity there. We've dumped everything from nuts and bolts to
intact rocket bodies there. All travel at orbital speeds, and pack a wallop
far in excess of their weight in dynamite or TNT. Even the smallest among
them can wreak devastating damage. A single paint fleck chipped the
windscreen of a space shuttle. Projected lifetimes of this lethal litter range
from decades to centuries. Collision avoidance is the key to success in
space. Some desirable satellite altitudes have already been abandoned as too
dangerous. The International Space Station has shifted to dodge threatening
objects. Many unmanned satellites are moved to evade debris. The Air Force
monitors more than 34 thousand objects softball-size and larger. Another 900
thousand in the golf ball to baseball range are harder for their radar to
track. The additional 128 million BB to bullet size shards are invisible, but
still potentially deadly. The problem is growing worse. Launch continues to
be a throwaway activity, and dead or dying satellites are abandoned in place.
Far worse are antisatellite weapon tests. Both India and China have shot old
satellites out of the sky. Impact blew their targets to smithereens. Swarms
of thousands of new lethal particles resulted in each case. Cloud growth exceeds the human contribution. Debris collisions are rare. But when
they do occur, two lethal particles spawn thousands. Each of them can go on
to impact other pieces. At some undetermined critical density, cloud growth
may explode—making space travel even more challenging. |
November
4, 2020 Coral reefA coral reef has been discovered near Australia. It's
an undersea mound a third of a mile high on a mile wide base. (We know more
about the geography of the moon and Mars than about the geography of our own
oceans, No feature this large would go unnoticed on one of them.) Research submarines confirm it's a living coral
reef thriving with the typical biodiversity. A quarter of all sea life lives
on coral reefs. Studies of the neighboring Great Barrier Reef have identified
at least fifteen hundred species including a few hundred kinds of coral. Rare
and unique species have been identified on the new reef. |
October
28, 2020 Water on the moonThere's water on the moon. A NASA telescope flying
above the atmosphere detected water on the surface. The moon is drier than the
Sahara Desert, but there's some water there. It will be a precious resource
if we can extract it. Water is essential to human operations, but expensive
to ship there. A lunar source could offer substantial savings. Where the moon's water is and how it gets there
will be among the early science objectives of NASA's Artemis moon missions.
Wherever it is, it shouldn't be there at all. Water evaporates in the heat of
the sun and drifts as a diffuse gas throughout the lunar day. A little of it
drifts off into space; a little of it freezes out in areas of perpetual
darkness. After forty-some billion cycles, it should be all used up. Something must be replacing the lost water.
Speculation ranges from meteor showers to the solar wind. Many meteors are
part ice. Energetic protons from the sun may turn rock oxides into
hydroxides. There are hydroxides there. They can decay into oxides and water
in the heat of the lunar day. |
October
21, 2020 Pluto's MountainsPluto is more alien than it looks. Its picture-postcard
peaks only look like Earth's. Actually they are much different. Earth's
mountains are composed of rock and covered with water snow. Pluto's mountains
are made of water ice and topped with methane frost. The 2015 New Horizons fly by provided the first and
only up-close look at the dwarf planet. Its data support on-going efforts to
understand Pluto. It's cold there. Solid water is a mineral. Methane and
nitrogen are rock solid as well. What little atmosphere there is arises from
vapors of these surface ices. The greenhouse effect keeps Pluto's air warmer than
the ground beneath it. Methane is a strong greenhouse gas—even stronger
than Earth's principle greenhouse gas, water. Warmed by the sun, methane gas
rises. It plates out as methane frost when it contacts on the cold mountain
peaks. Any resemblance to the Sierra Nevada Mountains is purely coincidental.
|
October
14, 2020 Shot windowsThere are good times to fly to the planets; there
are not so good times too. "Shot windows" are the best of times of
all. Windows happen when the planets pass closest to one another. The solar system runs like clockwork with all the
planets orbiting the sun at their own pace. When two planets line up like the
clock hands at 12:00, they are as close as they can be. By 12:30, they are a
long way off. They'll get back together at 1:05. On October 13, 2020, Mars and Earth lined up like
the clock hands at noon. NASA has been launching Mars missions lately to
capitalize on their proximity. The two planets will now drift apart, and not
come back together until December 2022. The next generation of robot
explorers will be ready for their shot window then. The planets run like a clock with eight hands. Oppositions
like the latest Mars/Earth event occur all the time. Many offer opportunities
for a stopover, or a boost to places beyond. Three or more planets line up
less often. Every eleven years, Venus, Earth and Jupiter line
up—apparently affecting weather on the surface of the sun. The major
planets queue up for a straight through tour every couple of centuries. The
last time—in the 1970s—Congress decided NASA should wait for the
next one. |
October
7, 2020 Planets beyond our galaxyWe find planets everywhere we look. We've long
known they were there. That was an article of faith for over a thousand
years—one that could get you excommunicated, even executed. Finally, we
found a freakish system where a star staggered as its giant planet orbited
it—a tail-wagging-the-dog situation. Closer inspection found other
stars subtly swaying. Suddenly, there were dozens of such exoplanets. A
star's light dimmed when a planet passed in front of it—like a bug in
your head lights. Then there were hundreds more. The
count is over four thousand, and rising. A survey of neighboring stars
shows most have one or more
planets. There is no reason to believe our region is special. The number of
planets in our Milky Way galaxy is expected to exceed the billions of known
stars. The search for additional unattached rogue planets is just beginning. The Milky Way is probably not unique. Other
galaxies should host planets of their own too. Harvard astronomers report the
first direct observation of a planet in a galaxy some 23 million light years
away. It takes special circumstances to be detectable so far away. This new
planet orbits a binary star system there. One of its stars is a black hole or
a neutron star actively consuming the other. The death throes of the material
spiraling into it emit intense x-rays. The large planet eclipses the smaller
x-ray source in passing. The resulting on/off effect is measureable from
Earth. Astronomers are revisiting x-ray data in search of more planets like
this one. |
September
30. 2020 COVID Collateral DamageGovernment overreaction to COVID-19 is killing people. Seven
thousand Americans die of natural causes every day. The Centers for Disease
Control has noted a significant increase in our daily death toll since state
governments started closing our economy down to "flatten the
curve." The coronavirus is just another severe flu—like the dozens
we've weathered before. Terminally ill people who contract COVID-19 or
another bad flu frequently succumb to their combined
effects. The extra deaths reported by the CDC are from other causes. Panicked governments focused on projected demand for coronavirus
treatment. So they shut the rest of the medical community down. Deaths from
diseases amenable to medical treatment accelerated. More than 30% of the
excess deaths were due to Alzheimer's disease and dementia, followed by 20%
too many high blood pressure deaths. Heart disease and diabetes fatalities
also increased substantially. Medical treatment could have prolonged these
lives. Medical treatment denied has killed almost a hundred thousand
Americans—so far. |
September
23, 2020 White dwarf's planetAstronomers almost never say
never. With billions of stars
among trillions of objects out there, Murphy's Law holds true. Anything that can
happen will happen; anything that can't happen still will. University of
Wisconsin scientists have discovered a super-Jupiter planet orbiting close to
an Earth-size white dwarf. White dwarfs shouldn't have planets. They are the
remains of exploded stars. Stars like our sun burn
for billions of years before running out of hydrogen fuel. Then they erupt
into red giants consuming everything for a few hundred million miles around.
No nearby planet survives. Eventually, the residue collapses under its own weight—crushing
the mass of the star and its nearby planets into an Earth-size ball. Only
wisps of dust and debris had been detected around white dwarfs until this
report. It's uncertain where this super-Jupiter that
shouldn't be there came from. This white dwarf is estimated to be around ten
billion years old. A lot can happen in ten billion years. The host dwarf is
part of a triple star system. The mystery planet might have been stripped
from one of them or from a passing star. An interstellar collision could have
knocked it out of a far out orbit. If there's one white dwarf with a planet, there may
be more. The Wisconsin discovery has awakened interest in these obscure
bodies. |
September
16, 2020 Life on Venus?Rumors of life on Venus seem like wishful thinking.
Preliminary data suggest the planet's atmosphere may contain traces of
phosphine PH3. Phosphine is an energetic molecule destroyed by the
sun's ultraviolet emissions. If confirmed, its presence in the planet's
atmosphere would require some process to replace it. That requirement
inspires the rush to judgment that that source must be a living thing. The leap from traces of phosphine to life appears
premature. Solar ultraviolet and nuclear radiation drive exotic reactions in
the planet's thick acidic atmosphere. Chemical reactions go fast at 900¡F and
90 times Earth pressure. A lot can happen in the fires of hell without magic
or a living source being involved. Any life on today's Venus would have evolved from a
time when Venus was much like Earth is today. A few billion years ago, a
younger sun was much cooler. Earth was an ice ball then, but Venus may have
had rivers and lakes. (A map of what it may have looked like was published
recently.) As the sun warmed, Earth ice melted and Venus water evaporated.
Solar-driven radiation chemistry and photochemistry transformed the planet's
atmosphere into the harsh, high-pressure oven it is today. |
September
9, 2020 Exploring TitanSaturn's moon Titan may be the most fascinating
object in the sky. If it weren't so far away, it might enjoy a lion's share
of the NASA budget. The second-largest moon in the solar system is the most
Earth-like body in the solar system. It has an atmosphere, clouds and rain.
It has rivers and lakes. It's cold there: -292¡F. Orbiting probes--and a
lander—have mapped Titan's surface, and revealed its terrain. Ice
boulders dot the surface, and its streams are filled with liquid methane.
That's the stuff of Liquefied Natural Gas here on Earth. Available data have raised questions about Titan.
Life has probably not evolved there. Chemistry moves slow at 292 below. The
precursors of life may be frozen out there. The secrets of the early universe
await discovery by future explorers. We shall return with ever more
sophisticated instruments to unravel the enigmas of our past. NASA will launch a robot helicopter to Titan is
2026. When it gets there, nuclear-powered Dragonfly will fly over lakes and dunes
landing to sample the moon's geology. On-board cameras and chemical
instruments will tell us more about this strange neighbor. Signals take an
hour-and-a-half to reach to and from Titan. Remote operation is impossible.
Dragonfly must be a smart helicopter—capable of piloting itself with
only basic input from home. Titan's seas will remain mysteries even after
Dragonfly's mission. NASA has begun preliminary studies aimed at launching a
robot nuclear submarine to explore them. No decision has been reached, but
launch in the 2030's is under consideration. |
September
2, 2020 Twin StarsMany stars are twin stars—far too many to
arise from colliding stars. Stars rarely hit one another in the vast
emptiness of space. When two stars do bump, they simply bounce off like
billiard balls and fly on. To stick together, they have to dump enough energy
that they can no longer fly apart. That requires a third star. It takes three
to tango. Three star impacts are even rarer than two
star ones. There are too many twin stars in the sky for that. Harvard University radio astronomers probing dust
clouds harboring star nurseries find new stars forming in twos there. Analysis
by Cal Berkley physicists suggests that pair formation may be the
rule—not the exception. Cosmic molecular clouds spawn binary star
systems in crowded nursery settings. Sibling impacts strip some of the pairs
during their first few million years. A mix of lone stars, twins and triplets
results. That's what we see in the night sky. If our sun was born a twin, where is its brother?
The orbits of our solar system's outer planets suggest something as big as a
star was there and perturbed them long ago. Astronomers are searching for the
culprit in that four-billion-year-old hit-and-run incident. They have yet to
identify the perpetrator they call "Nemesis." |
August
26, 2020 KrakatoaKrakatoa erupted with the force of ten thousand
atom bombs on August 27, 1883. It made the loudest noise in history. Eardrums
burst for forty miles around. The sound was heard three thousand miles away.
Its explosive shock circled the globe three and a half times. A tsunami with
waves up to a hundred feet high killed thirty-six thousand people throughout
the South Pacific. Red-hot pumice and ash rained down fifteen miles away. The volcanic plume lofted cubic miles of dirt and
debris into the stratosphere. Once it was up there, the winds spread it
across the globe. Worldwide weather was upset for five years afterwards.
Temperatures dropped a degree or so the first year. California recorded
record rainfalls. Bright red sunsets were misinterpreted as forest fires.
Fire departments were scrambled for false alarms half a world away. Krakatoa was the second biggest volcano in recent
history. The eruption of nearby Mount Tambora in
1815 may have been up to ten times as energetic. Its immediate effects killed
at least twice as many people as Krakatoa. Its environmental consequences
were even more pronounced. The resulting "Year without a Summer"
lead to widespread famine, and historic human migrations. Historians say
Extreme rain contributed to Napoleon's loss at Waterloo. Volcanoes as destructive as Krakatoa and Mount Tambora erupt sporadically along the Pacific Ring of
Fire. It's been around thirty years since the last one; the next one could
come tomorrow or in a hundred years from tomorrow. The next one could be
bigger É up to a hundred times bigger. There are twenty super volcanoes—including
one beneath Yellowstone National Park—The New York Times says could
"end human life on Earth." The eruption would be like no event in
human history. Earthquakes would precede the explosion. Then it would spew a
lava lake eighty miles wide. Three feet of ash and debris would bury
surrounding states. The lofted
plume would blacken the sky. The New York Times projects that temperatures
would plummet, crops would fail, and the infrastructure would be devastated.
A once-in-a-million-years ultra-catastrophe event comparable to the one that
wiped out the dinosaurs could result. |
August
19. 2020 Ceres seaSubterranean seas crop up in places way too cold for surface
water. The latest discovery is salt water inside the minor planet Ceres. Ceres
is a rocky body one-third the diameter of our moon orbiting in the asteroid
belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's airless, cold and dark. Water—even
seawater—could only be liquid there under extreme pressure. Ceres has long been known for its anomalous brightness. Hubble
photography and a visit from the NASA probe Dawn have identified the source
of that high reflectivity: two white spots at the bottom of a major impact
crater. Their spectroscopy identifies them as sodium salt deposits. They
appear to be residue from leaks of liquid salt water from an underground sea.
Astronomers suspect the impact that made the crater opened cracks reaching to
the ocean miles below. Traces of water in those spots suggest the seepage
continues to this day. The minor planet joins a long list of places in the solar system
with undercover lakes or seas. There's Pluto plus a half dozen moons of
Jupiter and Saturn. What's under the Martian south pole awaits further
investigation. Our planet's north and south pole both have ice over water.
Earth's polar waters host life. What will we discover in alien waters? |
August
12, 2020 Mars HoaxMars is a bright spot in the night sky. It will
never appear as big as the full moon—no matter what social media tell you.
The biennial conjunction of the two planets on the same side of the sun
inspires this misconception in the popular press. Mars's proximity provides
good telescope viewing, and convenient commuting. Mars is a mere nine months
away today, but it's still a just dot to the naked eye. |
August 5,
2020 Mars 2020Perseverance, AKA Mars 2020, is on its way. The most
sophisticated in a long line of robot explorers, Perseverance will search for
signs of ancient life on Mars. Piloted by advanced artificial intelligence,
the mission dares to land in interesting terrain. The rover is headed for a dry lakebed near what appears to be the
delta of a river that flowed into it. If the planet had hosted life, its
lakes would have been likely places for it. Remnants of that life might in
the lake bottom. If life arose elsewhere on the planet, traces of it might
have been washed into the river and been deposited in the delta formation.
Perseverance's ambitious program will survey the area's varied geology
prospecting for evidence of primitive life and more. The most promising finds
will be prepared for return to Earth on a later mission. Mars 2020 data will advance our understanding of early Mars.
Orbiters mapping the planet showed dried up rivers and lakes dotting the
surface. Optimists jumped to the conclusion that Mars had once been balmy
with liquid water flowing free. The sun was cooler then, and the planet far
from it. It could not have been that warm. A recent study from the University
of British Columbia presented an alternative interpretation. They compared
the Martian riverbeds with some formed by liquid water flowing under glaciers
on Devon Island. The match is better than to dry riverbeds from free flowing
water. The temperate Mars theory will be tested by the Perseverance
data. Cold enough for glaciers seems credible—maybe cold enough for
liquid methane. |
July 29,
2020 VenusVenus was Heaven before it was Hell. Once upon a
time, Venus was a lot like Earth is today. The younger sun was cooler than it
is now. At 70% of current solar intensity, Venus is thought to have had
rivers and lakes of liquid water. Over billions of years, the sun's fires
grew hotter, and that water evaporated.
The solar wind's ionizing radiation plus ultraviolet photochemistry
destroyed atmospheric water vapor. Sunlight transformed the once benign
atmosphere into the hot, corrosive and dense environment found there today.
The most robust Venus lander yet survived two hours on the surface. Orbiting radar has mapped the planet lying beneath
thick clouds. Geothermal models support interpretation of the three
dimensional data available. Studies from the University of Maryland and the
Swiss Institute of Geophysics suggest that Venus remains an active planet.
Thirty-seven recently active volcanoes have been identified in the data.
These are localized in a few distinct areas—probably at the
intersections of tectonic plates. It appears our big sister planet has geology
a lot like our own. Plans are afoot to return there to see what else we can
purloin from her closet. |
July 22,
2020 Health hazards in spaceThe Flight Surgeon was the unsung hero of the Mars
1 mission. Beneath all the publicity about biology and geology research, Mars
1 was really a medical experiment. Could humans survive in space? Col Buzz
Sherman MD carried the crew through nine months in space followed by six
months on the ground before they became Stranded on Mars. Everyone knew the dangers going in; no one knew the
consequences. Zero gravity was hazardous. Muscles atrophied and bones
weakened from lack of use. Bodily fluids couldn't flow "down" when
there was no "down." Eyeballs shifted shape and space travelers
became far-sighted. Pressure in
their inner ears led to disorientation. Earth-orbiting astronauts often
returned to Earth in wheelchairs. Mars 1 crewmembers would be on their own when they
got to Mars. Nothing, not even his aerospace medicine residency at
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, had prepared Sherman for their landing.
Would the planet's one-third gravity be an easier adjustment? How much would
it foster repair of the zero gravity damage? How soon? Unprecedented radiation exposure began on Day 2 of the
mission. Beyond Earth's magnetosphere, space was filled with ionizing
particles. The cumulative effects of exposure were unknown. Circulatory
system tissues suffered the first damage. Generalized organ degradation
continued throughout the mission. (Mars offered no protective shield.) He'd
seen it all back in medical school, but was he ready for what lay ahead? NASA
needed to know what happened, and when. Then there were human issues. Eight astronauts
spent nine months in an RV-size tin can going to Mars. On the planet, they
shared a Spartan habitat only twice that size. Sherman wished he hadn't
skipped that psychiatry rotation before leaving Howard Medical School. |
July 15,
2020 Lock-down SuicidesAre you
lonesome tonight? Elvis Presley
sang a dismal picture of loneliness fifty years ago. It's even worse now that
politicians have hijacked our public heath care. Loneliness may be more than
just having a bad day now and then. It has consequences. It can contribute to
clinical depression and post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Such despair ruins
victims' lives and often ends them. Since we've been closed down and locked
in, California has had more suicides than coronavirus deaths. Suicide rates
are surging all over the country. (And those virus deaths have been greatly
overstated. A recent analysis of the so-called coronavirus fatalities in San
Diego county found 97% had preexisting serious illnesses.) Loneliness like COVID-19 adds to death by natural
causes. A
list of the physical diseases thought to be exacerbated by loneliness include
AlzheimerÕs, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease,
neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer—tumors seem to metastasize
faster in lonely people. It's unlikely that loneliness causes many of these
illnesses, but it probably inhibits recovery from them. It's the placebo
effect or faith healing in reverse. Belief accentuates the ups and diminishes
the downs; the patient feels better and gets better. Loneliness masks the ups
and highlights the downs; the patient feels worse and gets worse. Attitude
cures or kills. It's time
to hand medicine back to the doctors. COVID-19 is just another
virus—like MERS, SARS, H1N1, etc. The world survived all of those.
Observe normal hygiene: wash your hands, avoid touching your face, sanitize
high-touch areas, avoid sick people, and stay home if you get sick. Forget
the wannabe dictator governors whose overkill measures are aggravating
domestic violence and increasing suicides while sabotaging the economy. Oh, and reach
out to someone who may be feeling lonely tonight. |
July 8,
2020 WaterThere's more liquid water than we thought. Once, we believed the
elixir of life made Earth unique. Then we realized other planets just the
right distance from their star might have liquid water too. The latest models have extended this
Goldilocks zone. Atmospheric dust clouds could alter alien planet weather
just as volcanic plumes have affected Earth's. Water's intense infrared spectrum
provides evidence of water on a few planets of nearby stars. The search for
more continues. Liquid water showed up in impossible places. Ice-shrouded moons
of Jupiter and Saturn hosted vast lakes and seas beneath miles of ice. There
may even be liquid water under Pluto's ice cover. Water is unusual in that
its solid form is lighter than its liquid. Ice floats on water. Liquid water
must expand to freeze. It requires energy to solidify under pressure. There's
sixteen hundred atmospheres pressure for every mile of ice. Deep water
remains liquid. It happens under Antarctica, as well as on far-away moons. There's life under South Pole ice; there may be life in the seas
of some icy moons and planets. Both NASA and the European Space Agency ESA
are planning missions to Jupiter' moons to look for it. Their targets are
dotted with jets spewing material from deep within. The space probes that
discovered these cryovolcanos flew through the spray and confirmed they
contained water plus more. Future probes will be instrumented to obtain more
detailed data—especially on possible indicators of life beneath the
ice. |
July 1,
2020 Quantum effectsQuantum weirdness may appear near absolute zero.
Electrons in select materials flow without resistance there. Electrical resistance
consumes 5% of all the energy generated. That constitutes a substantial
overhead expense to our electric economy. A practical superconductor would
avoid that cost. The search for materials that superconduct under ambient
conditions has been one of the Holy Grails of science and engineering since
1911. The current record holder is a super hydride that superconducts near
room temperature—but only under two million atmospheres pressure.
Quantum effects require under extreme conditions. At just two degrees above absolute zero, liquid
helium changes to a superfluid. Its atoms move in lock step so they flow
together with no viscosity. (Viscosity is that thickness that slows pancake
syrup pouring out of the bottle.) Superfluid sits still in a spinning bottle,
or spins forever if stirred into motion. It flows through cracks too small to
pass any other liquid. Such super leaks challenge containment of superfluid.
All liquids wet the sides of their containers; superfluid keeps right on
climbing—up the wall, over the top, and down the other side. Super
siphoning is also another problem in handling superfluid. This phenomenon is
the result of a unique aspect of quantum statistics. It occurs for the common
isotope of helium—and only that isotope. It has never been observed for
other materials of at higher temperatures. Superfluidity
remains a laboratory curiosity. |
June 24,
2020 The moon is drifting awayThe moon is drifting away from the earth. At an inch and a half
per year, the moon has retreated a tenth of a mile since the pyramids were
built. The process continues. This wouldn't happen if the earth and the moon wee immutable
objects, but they are not. The moon's gravity
distorts the earth as it passes over. The oceans respond with tides up to
several feet high. The earth's solid crust is stiffer, so it has much
shallower tides. The resulting bulge does not relax instantly, so it leads
the moon's gravity by a little. That creates a slight tug on the moon above.
This pull produces drag that slows the moon. It adjusts into a higher orbit
to compensate. (This works like an ice skater extending her arms to slow her
spin.) Earth's stronger gravity once induced similar tides in the moon's
solid crust. The resulting distortion left a slow-to-relax swelling. The tow
of earth's gravity on that bump slowed the moon's rotation until it stopped
all together. Today, the moon is tidally locked to the earth, so we see only
one side of it. |
June 17,
2020 Proxima Centuri cAstronomers have confirmed the existence of Proxima
Centuri b—the home of the aliens of Dead Astronauts.
Proxima Centuri b is an Earth-like planet orbiting our nearest neighbor star.
In my novel, it's an ocean-covered world where an aquatic population has
evolved a technically advanced civilization. Traveling at a hundred times
Apollo speeds, a visit to Earth would still take them a thousand years. A lot
can go wrong on a journey of a thousand years. Proxima Centuri b is not alone there. Careful analysis
of its star's motion reveals a Neptune-size companion, Proxima Centuri c.
Neither planet's trajectory crosses the line of sight from Earth. However,
the big one is far enough from its star to be seen as a separate point of
light with the Hubble telescope. It shines far brighter than it ought to, and
irregularities in its orbit suggest there may be yet another planet in the
Proxima Centuri system. The next generation James Webb Telescope should
obtain data that will tell us a lot about this alien planet. What makes it
shine so bright? What's out there perturbing its path around its star? |
June 10,
2020 Mayan CityTomorrow's technology is unlocking yesterday's
secrets. Airborne lasers are mapping the lost world of the ancient Americas.
Five hundred years ago, the Spanish conquered the advanced civilizations of
the New World. They burned the literature of those people and defiled their
institutions. Since that time, the verdant jungles of tropical America have
retaken the domain of a once-great society. All was lost to history until the advent of laser
radar, lidar (LIght
Detection And Ranging) technology. Today, aerial surveys use lasers to map
the terrain beneath the Central American rain forests. Reflected laser pulses
indicate the elevation of the ground they bounce off. The remains of vast
ancient cities are emerging from the data. The Mayans were more advanced than
previously expected—and much earlier. The recently discovered Mayan city Aguada FŽnix is an engineering marvel. The city was
built 3000 years ago—during the same global warming period that gave
rise to the Greek city states. Aguada
FŽnix is built around a ceremonial plateau more
than four football fields wide and almost a mile long. The surrounding
metropolitan area included buildings, plazas, and reservoirs to support a
sizeable population. The laser is proving the next best thing to a
time machine in the archeologist's bag of tricks. |
June 3,
2020 SpaceX LaunchAmerica is a space-faring nation again—at last.
Watching the launch on the small screen seemed like dŽjˆ vu all over again. There were weather delays and nervous
moments just like the early days of US rocketry. Then a feeling of pride at a
picture-perfect launch to orbit. It was like the good old days—but in
color this time. It was the first astronaut launch from US soil
since 2011. That's when President Obama grounded the Space Shuttle and
cancelled the NASA follow-up program. Since that time, we've spent nearly a
billion dollars flying US astronauts to the Space Station on Russian rockets
at $86 million/seat. Commercial space flight promises to make manned
space flight more affordable. Two US companies have won NASA support to
develop new generations of rockets. This week's SpaceX launch was the first.
Routine operation will deliver astronauts to the Space Station at a projected
cost of $55 million/seat. The Boeing program is not far behind. A few
eccentric billionaires are supporting alternative programs of their own. Soon
we'll have at least two vendors competing for transport to space. Space exploration will not be confined to low-Earth
orbit for long. SpaceX and Boeing are both preparing for the next step
outward. Bigger rockets and more advanced crew capsules will be needed to fulfill
President Trump's vision of returning people to the moon, and then on to the
planet Mars. A SpaceX heavy-lift rocket has already launched a Tesla beyond
Earth orbit. They have reportedly sold tickets for a loop around the moon.
The future may not be far away. |
May 27,
2020 The North PoleThe North Pole is moving. It wasn't until 1831 that maps and
compasses pointed at different North Poles. Long the province of Santa Claus
and a few intrepid explorers, the North Pole of globes and maps is a cartographer's
convenience. James Clark Ross found Earth's magnetic North Pole laid a
thousand miles south of geography's north. A swirling blob of molten iron at the center of the Earth creates
the planet's magnetic field. Eddies in the flow shape that field. Ross
discovered magnetic north lay in northern Canada. Further study found
magnetic north wandered around an area south of the geometric pole. For the
next 160 years, it meandered up to 9 miles a year. Around 1990, it
accelerated, making a beeline toward northern Siberia at 30 to 40 miles a
year. Rapid changes in the position of the magnetic pole are forcing frequent
recalibration of precision guidance and navigation systems. Recent polar motion is unprecedented, so the pole's future is
uncertain. It may settle in Siberia or snap back to Canada. It may also be
the onset of bigger change. The polarity of the planet's magnetic field has
flipped many times over geological time. The process appears random. There
are data indicating some inversions happened on a time scale of days; other
data suggest millennia. The planet's magnetosphere would be realigned in the
process. The protection against the radiation of the solar wind might be
reduced or lost. How much would that affect life on Earth? Éand for how long? |
May 20,
2020 Black HolesBlack holes are invisible. We know they are there
by the mischief they do. We see the x-ray death throes of stars torn asunder
and swallowed. Galaxies orbit central giants—as big as a billion suns. Their
closest neighbors swirl in unnatural orbits. A black hole's disruption shows
how big it is. Black holes range from a few solar masses to a few billion. Astronomers have found only a few black holes so
far. There must be many more. Over the life of the universe, countless stars
have been born, lived and died. Many dying stars collapsed into black holes.
A few hundred million of their black hole corpses are thought to inhabit our
Milky Way Galaxy. That's about one for every ten stars today. Only the vandals
among them can be detected. A new one has just been reported at the center of
a nearby binary star system. The dance of its two visible stars indicates a
heavy third object at their center. It's a four solar mass black hole. There's a minor black hole only a thousand light
years away—a thousand light years is less than 1% of the way across the
galaxy. If there's one phantom that close, how many more are lurking
nearby? There are an estimated
eight million stars within a thousand light years There must be a million
more black holes waiting to be discovered out there. |
May 13,
2020 Coronavirus Death TollHow many people has the coronavirus killed? That's
not as easy a question as it sounds. You can't just count the number of death
certificates listing it as the cause. That's the fad among the medical
profession this month. By that measure, cancer deaths and the like are way
low. A terminal cancer patient who contracts the coronavirus and then dies is
scored as a coronavirus death. That's not accurate. Cancer killed him. A New York Times analysis dated May 5 and updated
May 8 gave a truer count. They compared this year's total deaths with their
estimate of those expected in a normal year. They presented week-by-week
results for New York City and most of the states. They padded the statistics with deaths they knew
about that hadn't yet been incorporated into the CDC database yet. That, no
doubt, contributed to the unusual excess of New York City and New Jersey
death tolls they reported. Their mathematics was sloppy in that they glossed
over the sizeable uncertainties in their baseline model. They reported total
numbers rather than the number per hundred thousand. Nevertheless, they found
coronavirus causing "extra deaths" in New York City, New Jersey,
Illinois, and Massachusetts. The rest of the country showed little or no
significant effect. Even for giants like California and Texas, the results
were in the calculation noise. No nationwide total numbers were presented.
Inspection of the limited data provided suggests that more reliable
calculation would show little or no "extra deaths" nationwide. The
coronavirus pandemic is just the latest in a series of bad flus sweeping the
globe. Bird flu, swine flu, SARS, MERS, the list goes on and on. |
May 6,
2020 Obesity and the VirusCoronavirus makes sick people sicker. Most healthy
people who contract the virus recover with no ill effects. It complicates
unhealthy people's problems. Breathing difficulties compound the effects of whatever
else ails them. Moderate illnesses are escalated to the intensive care unit.
More severe cases require mechanical help to breathe. Terminally ill patients
may be pushed over the edge. Most of the coronavirus deaths reported are from
that group. The contribution of cancer, heart attack, and more has been
neglected in public health accounting. The coronavirus deaths reported have
shifted medical statistics more than they have added to the country's death
totals. The coronavirus is just another bad flu. Common killers like heart disease and cancer
certainly contribute to the mortality and morbidity of coronavirus. Medical
statisticians are uncovering a common disorder with a surprisingly large
effect. Obesity aggravates the severity of coronavirus infections among
otherwise healthy individuals—especially younger ones. The fatter they
are, the more likely they are to end up in intensive care—and the
longer they are likely to stay there. The Body Mass Index is a convenient
measure of obesity. In the metric system, a BMI around 25 is good; 17 is
model skinny, and 30 is obese. There are dozens of BMI calculators available
on line. You can calculate your own using a simple formula BMI
= 703 x weight (pounds) / height (inches) ** 2 Scientists in the UK and elsewhere are finding a
BMI of 30 doubles the potential trouble with coronavirus. 35 doubles it again. Fatality is not uncommon for the super
obese with BMIs of 40 and above. The correlation of coronavirus severity with
obesity is suspected to be a contributor to the severity of the pandemic in
the American black and Latin communities. Both exhibit higher than average
rates of obesity and diabetes; both are suffering disproportionately from
coronavirus. |
April 29,
2020 IsolationLocked down? Astronauts are locked down for six
months at a time. Three to six of them share the international Space Station.
With a sixty million dollar cab fare, nobody commutes to and from the ISS.
The astronauts eat, sleep and work there—almost never going outside. The Space Station is the size of a small mansion.
It boasts government-blah dŽcor, but offers the world's greatest views. Six
months is a long time. Working from "home" helps astronauts avoid
cabin fever. Scientists and engineers aboard perform experiments that could
not be run on the ground: How do plants and animals grow in zero gravity?
What about crystals? Or fires? Busy beats bored. At the same time, the ISS astronauts are part of
NASA's effort to discover how humans could travel in space. Prolonged
exposure to weightlessness saps muscle tone. Astronauts find returning to
gravity challenging. Many need wheelchairs. How will the first Mars visitors
cope? Can exercise in transit help? Space poses mental problems as well as physical
ones. How can those travelers handle the stress of extended travel in small
spaces? A one-way trip the Mars is eight months jammed in a can with fellow
astronauts. Mars explorers will spend another eight months or so on the
ground operating out of a cramped structure, before another long ride back to
Earth. NASA simulations of the ground phase suggest psychological issues in
it—without even considering the effects of extended isolation coming
and going. Could you make the trip without losing your
marbles? A lot of us couldn't. After two months staring at four walls,
overeating and drinking are rising. Domestic abuse and suicide are too. You
can do better. This is the opportunity to do that thing you never had time
for. How about polishing your resume for a better job? Volunteer: there are
lots of lonely people out there who would love a call from you right now. |
April
22,2020 COVID-19Coronavirus is a paper tiger. But for the media
hype, COVID-19 would be just another in the seemingly endless parade of cold and
flu mutations sweeping the planet. Left alone, 2020 would have been just dŽjˆ vu all over again. The same cast
of deathly-ill people would die of respiratory complications. Millions would
call in sick and miss days or weeks of work. Business would go on, and nobody
would lose a job. COVID-19 is a cousin of the common cold virus. Both
are coronaviruses. They spread the same way. Identical protective measures
work against both. Wash your hands, and keep them away from your face.
Sanitize surfaces around you. Exercise, eat, and sleep well. Avoid sick
people. Self quarantine or seek medical help if you come down with anything.
Locking the rest of the population in solitary confinement is overreaction. Normally reputable newspapers have descended to the
level of supermarket tabloids. Irresponsible reporting has created panic, and
government has overreacted to it. Neither journalists nor politicians
understand medical statistics. Hapless victims of this misinformation are
plagued with pantries of perishing perishables, and lifetime supplies of
toilet paper. Millions are out of work; their retirement funds have
evaporates. Domestic abuse and suicides are rising. Let's return to reality
before hysteria makes things even worse. |
April
15,2020 WaterWater! Water! Everywhere! We find it wherever we look. Solid
water sublimes off comets as they fly near the sun. Rocky bodies beyond the
Goldilocks zone are covered by ice. So are Earth's poles. Space probes even
find ice secreted in shady places on the moon and red-hot Mercury. As
technology advances, we've begun detecting water vapor in the atmospheres of
planets beyond our own solar system. The liquid form is special. Life probably began in the liquid
water of Earth's oceans. Chemically, living things—from protozoa to
people—are still just polluted seawater. Life as we know it requires
liquid water, so we search for it. Liquid water flows on the surface of the Earth, and no other body
of the solar system. Only planets with temperatures between the freezing and
boiling points of water can host liquid water on their surfaces. Sky surveys
have identified hundreds of planets around nearby stars that satisfy that
criterion. Liquid water flows under the icy surface of many bodies in the
solar system. Antarctica has rivers and lakes of fresh water beneath miles of
ice. Several moons of Jupiter and Saturn host lakes and seas under thick
layers of ice. New Horizons data suggest that even distant Pluto may have
deep water below its frozen exterior. Probes of Antarctic lakes find life
under that ice shelf. Could life have evolved in other ice-covered waters? |
April 8,
2020 Drugs and coronavirusDrugs and viruses don't mix. Coronavirus—the
current scourge—is a chest cold that can make healthy
people sick and sick people sicker. Coronavirus fatalities parallel existing
heath problems. Weakened lungs are especially susceptible to
coronavirus damage. The deaths in China and Italy—and even the age and
gender disparities among them—correlate with tobacco usage in those
countries. Millions of Americans quit smoking decades ago. Their lungs have
recovered to varying degrees. Some suffer from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary
Disease (COPD); others breathe free. The effect of coronavirus infection on
these reclaimed lungs remains to be seen. Other lung-damaging habits are expected to have
comparable consequences. Incapacitating and sometimes fatal consequences of vaping have been in the news in recent months.
E-cigarettes are new, and their effects not fully understood. Their damage to
the lungs should make their users as susceptible to coronavirus as tobacco
smokers. Marijuana has long been illegal, so its injury to the lungs hasn't
been as well studied as tobacco's. The two are
expected to be comparable. Marijuana users should be about as vulnerable to
coronavirus as tobacco users. Most illegal drugs damage their users' health in
general and their lungs in particular. Opioids slow breathing. Combined with
coronavirus infection, reduced levels of oxygen in the bloodstream lower the
thresholds for brain damage or death by overdose. Methamphetamines constrict
blood vessels throughout the body. Constricted blood flow taxes the heart and
reduces the efficiency of the lungs. Coronavirus infection adds insult to
that injury. Narcotics and coronaviruses are a dangerous combination. Watch
for a string of big-name entertainers' deaths blamed on the coronavirus. |
April 1,
2020 PolioPolio created a true medical crisis. Americans over seventy remember
growing up during the polio epidemic of the early fifties. Our mothers
dreaded summer. That was polio season. Every year, kids all over town came
down with the disease. Polio wasn't a bad cold that lasted a week or two.
Polio could be a life sentence. Polio killed a few thousand kids and maimed
tens of thousands more. Victims' lungs might be damaged or disabled. Many
lived out their lives with "iron lungs" breathing for them. Nerve
damage crippled many of our playmates. Every school had a couple of kids who
walked funny, a few more on crutches, plus some in wheel chairs. Polio
vaccine ended that horror. Memory faded with time. Our parents were part of "The Greatest Generation."
They had survived the Great Depression and World War II. They didn't panic or
retreat from the polio epidemic. They fought the menace with contributions to
the March of Dimes and soldiered on. They would be ashamed of their
grandchildren's wimpy overreaction to the coronavirus. |
March 25,
2020 Binary Star SystemsPlanets pop up in the strangest places. Five
hundred years ago, the Inquisition burnt heretics at the stake for suggesting
the stars in the sky might be suns with planets of their own. Thirty years
ago, astronomers finally discovered a planet outside our own solar system. A
nearby star staggered as it moved across the sky. Its massive planet was
invisible, but the star's alternating jerks and starts told its tale. Since
that discovery, starwatchers have looked at sun-like stars, then dwarfs and
giants. They have cataloged over four thousand planets around nearby stars.
Astrophysicists estimate there are at least a billion stars in our Milky Way
Galaxy alone. Advances in search technology open new frontiers in
the quest for alien planets. Roughly half of the points of light in the sky
turn out to be systems of two or more stars orbiting one another. Variations
in the light from orbiting pairs mask the subtler effects of any captive
planets. Observations spanning many cycles are necessary to distinguish a planet's
effects against the variable starlight background. Only a few fast binaries
have been assessed so far. Those proved to have planets. A new study looks at the planet-forming discs around
nineteen young binary systems. (Those vast dust clouds are easier to map than
the planets they will eventually spawn,)
The planets of binaries detected so far orbit in the plane of their
stars. Closer pairs orbiting faster had dust clouds revolving in that plane
as well. Slower, more distant, pairs were different. Their dust clouds could
be skewed as much as ninety degrees out of plane and might favor one star
over the other. If these preliminary data prove to representative, they may
offer new insight into the common phenomenon of binary formation. |
March 18,
2020 CoronavirusThe coronavirus pandemic is not Armageddon.
Contrary to media hype, you are not going to die of the coronavirus. Many
Americans will catch this nasty contagious disease. Only hypochondriacs like
being sick. It promises to be an unpleasant experience for the rest of us.
98% of coronavirus victims will recover with no lasting effects. The other 2%
will die when the coronavirus aggravates a serious pre-existing condition. We would all rather avoid this epidemic.
Fortunately, things you should already be doing can reduce your chances of
being infected. The coronavirus is a close relative of the common cold virus.
It spreads the same way, so ramp up your good health practices for this
malicious cousin. á
Wash your
hands vigorously. Use hand sanitizer if soap and water are not available.
Contaminated hands introduce the germs to your nose and mouth. á
Touch your
face with your hands as little as possible. á
Gargle. Coronavirus
is thought to incubate in the throat before attacking the lungs. The blue
stuff that used to say "Fewer Colds Milder Colds" on the label
might nip the virus invasion in the bud. á
Skip shaking
hands until the pandemic passes. Fist bumps are in these days. á
Avoid touching
possibly contaminated surfaces—especially in public places. A paper
towel is a good way to open a public bathroom door. á
Sanitize
surfaces people touch frequently. Bleaches are effective. Use hydrogen
peroxide on sensitive areas, and chlorine bleaches wherever you can. á
Stay away from
sick people. If you feel sick, keep the disease to yourself. á
Stay away from
well people. Stay home from work or school. Go out only to seek medical help
toward your recovery. á
Get plenty of
bed rest. á
Antibiotics
don't work on viruses. Eat chicken noodle soup instead. Complications like
bronchitis or pneumonia may call for antibiotics. Consult your physician
about medical measures. If you caring for an infected individual at home,
try not to catch their disease, á
Isolate the
patient—preferably in an area that is easily sanitized. á
Limit contact
with the patient. Reduce the time spent with the patient, and minimize
physical contact. Wash your hands often and thoroughly. á
Decontaminate
the patient's area with disinfectant sprays, and bleaches regularly. á
Rest. á
Ask for help. Stay calm. Don't overreact. We will get through
this year's pandemic paranoia if we just exercise common sense in our health
practices. I'm not sure what the toilet paper hysteria is all about. Probably
just some harmless prank to sell newspapers. The CDC and other government medical agencies deal
with deadly outbreaks in a calm and rational manner when they are plagued by
media hype. Read a fictionalized account of one campaign in my medical
mystery The Utah Flu. |
March 11,
2020 The Search for Alien LifeChauvinism limits our search for life. The
assumption that life anywhere must resemble life here could lead us to
overlook alternatives. Because Earth life requires liquid water, the search
for life becomes a search for water. Other candidate solvents like methane
are never considered. Because Earth life evolved on this small rocky planet,
the hunt may overlook exo-planets far different from our own. The search for life focuses on rocky planets in the
narrow Goldilocks Zone where liquid water could exist. That's
over-restrictive. Even in our own solar system, there's liquid water under
the ice on several moons far beyond that zone. Saturn's moon Titan has an
Earth-like ecosystem based on liquid methane. Life on a planet should show up in its air. The
evolution of plants shifted early Earth's from a blend of carbon dioxide and
nitrogen to a mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Astronomers are just beginning
to probe the atmospheres of the convenient exoplanets. Initial data on one or
two large planets of the nearby red giant star K2-18 hint at life may be
possible on larger planets. The planets appear to be between super-Earths and
mini-Neptunes. There's water vapor there. Computer
models of these planets suggest any oceans would be under high temperatures
and pressures. Those conditions argue against the possibility of life there.
Given the abundance of life around Earth's deep-water volcanic vents, those
conditions don't sound like deal breakers. Additional data shows less methane
and ammonia accompanying their water. That suggests some active chemistry is
occurring there. Could it be some form of life? The James Webb telescope—about to be
launched—will probe these planets' atmospheres in greater detail, and
survey hundreds of additional candidates for life—even if we don't
really know what we're looking for. |
March 4,
2020 Medical DronesLab tests STAT! The faster your doctor sees your test
results: the sooner your recovery begins. Your prognosis depends on speed.
Delay can kill more than just your good mood. Drones are going to save lives
at University of California at San Diego hospitals. Drone transport systems are being developed at the
University Health Campus. Traffic and parking are atrocious there. The
slowest step in a patient's assessment may be delivering specimens to a lab a
block away. Soon, drones will hop over bottlenecks to expedite lab work on
campus. When the bugs are worked out, the University drone
system will set a new standard for medical care. Off-campus facilities will
have to keep pace. Plans to extend to nearby sites are already in the works.
Watch for drones flying over your neighborhood soon. Once they deliver
specimens STAT, can pizza STAT be far behind? |
February
26, 2020 The smell of pedophilesDogs are sniffing out pedophiles. Deviants like
them engage in kiddie porn and other sick images on their computers, on their
cell phones, and on their tablets. Electronic searches with warrants can
uncover incriminating caches of such material, so users avoid storing them
there. Most browsers allow viewing run-of-the-mill adult entertainment from
the web without leaving a trace on their machines. (Their Internet provider
knows what they watched.) Illicit material exploiting children comes from
sources outside the regular web. The perverts who collect those things hide
them from authorities on separate dedicated devices—thumb drives, hard
drives, and more. Human investigators may miss hidden electronics,
but their canine associates don't. Electronics have an inherent odor that
dogs can sense. Thirty-one dogs have been trained to lead their handlers to
concealed devices. The program is just beginning, but it has already resulted
in arrest and conviction of some people who endanger our children. |
February
19, 2020 Weedy sea dragonsAustralian dragons are
breeding in San Diego. The land down under boasts a menagerie of exotic creatures.
The surprises don't end at the water's edge. Australian seas host their own
collection of unique creatures. The dragons lingering among the kelp forests
there are remarkable. These six-inch long cousins of sea horses masquerade as
seaweed. Their bodies look like sticks; leaf-like appendages complete the
camouflage effect. These bizarre creatures
are rare in captivity, and have almost never reproduced there. The Birch
Aquarium in San Diego announced successful breeding of weedy sea
dragons—capping a twenty-five year effort there. Curators created a
huge sea dragon-friendly tank and populated it with two species: weedy sea
dragons and leafy sea dragons. Live birth produced two one-inch-long weedy
babies. Both newborns are reportedly eating and growing. The Birch Aquarium's
success inspires hope for captive breeding programs to preserve these
endangered species. |
February
12, 2020 Hit and runA hit-and-run collision may have skewed our solar
system. There's evidence that the early solar system was deformed in at least
one grazing impact with a passing star and its planetary system. Suns and planets form in a swirling collapse of an
interstellar cloud. Solar systems like ours arise in crowded interstellar
nurseries. Models suggest star collisions are common early on. Accompanying
planets are then jostled, swapped, or ejected in those impacts. Planets form
from a disc revolving about the same axis as the star growing at the cloud's
center. The planetary systems spin around the common axis. Our solar system
is still a lot like that today. Only a major catastrophe could have perturbed the
dynamics of our solar system. Pluto's orbit is ow
far from circular and tilted out of the plane of the other planets. Neptune
and its moons spin backwards around an axis 97¡ off the planetary plane.
Neptune and Pluto must have been on the wrong side of the sun when a passing
star grazed the early solar system. |
February
5, 2020 Solar WeatherThere's more to sunshine than just sunlight. Beyond
the sun's welcome warmth and light, there are hazardous emissions.
Ultraviolet light is high-energy light. The solar wind is a shower of nuclear
radiation. Earth's atmosphere filters out most of the sun's ultraviolet.
Earth's magnetic field deflects most of the dangerous nuclear radiation
toward the planer's poles. Life evolved on Earth protected from the harmful
rays of the sun. This was all academic until humans ventured beyond
the protection of Mother Earth. People live and work in space stations today.
We've been to the moon and we're going back to stay. Orbiting electronics
have become an integral part of everyday life on Earth. People and their
computers communicate via satellite. Planes, ships, and automobiles navigate
by GPS. Eyes in the sky track hurricanes and tsunamis. We're leaving the
comforts of home behind. To venture into space, we need to protect ourselves
from the environment of space. The radiation levels of the solar wind
challenge the survival of men and machines. Protection is heavy, awkward, and
expensive. Good engineering practice aims for survival against hazard levels
up to twice normal. Storms on the surface of the sun can erupt with many
times that fury. A powerful radiation pulse can cause transient or permanent
disruptions of human assets in space. Weather on the sun can affect human life on earth
and in space. Science is working to understand solar weather well enough to
predict dangerous events there. Advanced warnings would support protective
responses. The Parker probe is dipping into the sun's atmosphere to unravel
some of its mysteries. (The surface of the sun is 11,000¡F; the atmosphere
above it is 3,000,000¡F. No one knows why.) The world's newest solar
telescope—the Inouye in Hawaii—has collected high-resolution
images of the sun's exterior. They show bubbles "as big as Texas"
appearing on the plasma surface. Continuing study by Parker and Inouye will
help us understand out host star well enough to anticipate its angry
eruptions. |
January
29, 2020 Proxima cThere's a new kid in the neighborhood. Watching the
sun's nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri, suggests she may host not one, but
two planets. The earth-size planet Proxima b has been known for some time.
Now spectral analysis indicates it may have a heavier companion Proxima c. Four thousand exoplanets have been discovered when
they passed directly between their home star and our observatories. Slight
dips in a star's intensity signals a planet's transit. How large the decrease
is and how long it lasts tells more about the planet. It is surprising that
so many planets rotate in this narrow plane. Many other planets revolve around their suns on
paths that do not block our view. Astronomers watch their stars staggering
across the sky to study these out–of-plane stars. It's a
tail-wags-the-dog effect. Precise measures of a star's light tell how fast it
is traveling. We can measure the oscillation; it tells a lot about the
planet. Proxima Centauri's planets don't lie in a
convenient plane. Initial scrutiny of the star's light revealed an earth-size
planet orbiting every eleven days. Careful examination of seventeen years of
its history suggests a second planet—six times earth's
size—orbiting with a five-year period. Should initial estimates about Proxima c be
confirmed, it may offer an unique opportunity to
study exo-planets. It's far enough removed from its star and near enough to
us that the James Watt telescope may be able to image it. |
January
22, 2020 Under Ice RoverIs there life under alien ice? The moons Europa and
Enceladus host vast oceans beneath miles-thick layers of ice. Other moons and
Pluto may as well. These waters are cold and dark, but they are the most
likely spots for other life in our solar system. The seas of Europa and Enceladus were among the
surprise discoveries from interplanetary probes. Moons with more water than
Earth exhibited strange magnetic fields. Their cryovolcanos spewing liquid
water were unexpected. Future NASA missions will return to Europa. They'll
map the surface in detail, and land on the surface. Access to the seas
beneath miles of ice is far in the future. NASA is testing a prototype for an
under ice rover when that happens. The Buoyant Rover for Under Ice
Exploration (BRUIE) is being tested in waters under ice in Alaska and in
Antarctica. The test vehicle is injected into water under the ice. It floats
up against the ice above. There, its wide saw tooth wheels drive along the
ceiling. Lights and cameras on board return pictures of the bottom of the ice
sheet. Robot prodigies of this machine may someday explore the worlds under
alien ice. |
January
15, 2020 Anti-agingThere may be a pill for that. Exercise and fasting can
delay or reverse the debilitation of aging. Medical science has long sought
ways to achieve the same results. Michigan scientists have identified a protein that
mimics the benefits of exercise in flies and mice. Means of stimulating its
production have yet to be identified. California scientists have correlated age-related
muscular degeneration with loss of mitochondria—the organelles that
provide energy to cells. Their studies of dark chocolate and other
heart-healthy foods found they stimulated mitochondria replacement. That
research identified the hormone responsible for that benefit. Development of
an exercise-in-a-bottle pill will begin shortly. |
January
8, 2020 Water on the moonWatch for black ice on the moon. Computer models
suggest there's ice we can't see at the bottoms of craters near the moon's
poles. Everywhere else on the moon, ice boils away in the monthly solar
heating. Holes near the poles have been frozen for the last couple of billion
years—ideal for ice accumulation. Lunar orbiters have looked for polar
ice there, but can't seen it. There's too little
reflected light to tell what's there. We'll need boots-on-the-ground to
verify lunar ice, and determine if there's enough there to be worth mining. Comets and meteors have bombarded the moon for four
billion years. Those cold rocks from the depths of space carried ice with
them: water ice as well as carbon dioxide ice, methane ice, and more. The
ices stayed where they landed until the sun came out. Then they evaporated
into wispy clouds. After sundown, those vapors became frost on the rocks
beneath them agaibn. The process repeated the next
month—and every month thereafter until the gases either found a safe
location or were destroyed by the sun's ultraviolet rays. Computer simulations
from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab suggest as much as 15 or 20% of
the ice comets brought may have ended up in the polar cold traps. How much
that is remains to be seen. |
January
1, 2020 VenusOnce upon a time, Venus probably had liquid water—maybe
even oceans. Our twin planet spent its first few billion years
in the Goldilocks zone. ThatÕs
the region around the sun where liquid water could exist on a planetÕs
surface. Any closer and it would be too hot. Any farther and it would be too
cold. In between, itÕs just right. Venus lived its first few billion years in the
Goldilocks zone, but then Armageddon happened. The juvenile sun matured. It glowed
hotter as its fusion fires raged. The Goldilocks zone boundary stretched
beyond Venus. Temperatures on the planet rose and its oceans evaporated.
Solar flares and the sunÕs ultraviolet radiation split water molecules in the
upper atmosphere. Oxides, hydroxides, and peroxides formed along with
molecular oxygen, ozone and hydrogen. The ultra light hydrogen molecules
diffused into space. Gradually the planetÕs hydrogen supply dwindled.
Temperatures were high and leftover oxygen reacted with carbon or sulfur to
create todayÕs Venusian atmosphere. Life as we know it requires liquid water, so thatÕs
where we look for it. Life might have evolved there during VenusÕs first few
billion years. Armageddon may have annihilated itÉand even any evidence that
it ever existed. WeÕll want to look for hard signs of it—and any
extremophile descendants—when we develop the technology to explore
Venus. Probes last hours in todayÕs hot, corrosive, crushing atmosphere. Armageddon awaits Earth. WeÕre next. Earth formed
in the heart of the young sunÕs Goldilocks zone. The warming sun extends the
habitable zone farther every day. The inner boundary is approaching. Earth
will repeat VenusÕs fate. Within two billion years, EarthÕs temperature will
exceed the boiling point of water. Long before then, our oceans will have
evaporated and our hydrogen drifted away. |
December
25, 2019 The Bad-at-Math TaxDid you pay your bad at math tax? The lottery is a tax on people who donÕt do the
math. The state pays out thirty cents on the dollar. Play ten dollars and get
three back. The mathematically challenged gambler ÒwinsÓ three dollars. Math
majors point out that the state kept the other seven—thatÕs the bad at math tax. The gambler keeps
Òwinning,Ó but his money keeps disappearing. Maybe next time, he prays: Lord, let me break even. I need the money. The payout is a little shy of the full three
dollars. The state hangs on to a bit of it for bait. The usual Powerball
hoopla is an extreme example. News of the billion-plus-dollar jackpot spreads
like the plague. People line up to pour billions more into the pot. Their
return on investment will be incredible, they think. The state rakes its
share off the top. In one recent case, three players and the Internal Revenue
Service split the $1.6 billion that was left. (The IRS got the big half.) The
rest sighed next time. To paraphrase the lottery ads: You canÕt lose it you
donÕt play. |
December
18, 2019 Some exo-planets have waterAstronomers have discovered water on some
exo-planets. In less than fifty years, technology has advanced from detecting
hot Jupiters to discovering Earth-size planets and beyond. Technology is just
beginning to examine those planets beyond our own solar system. Initial
successes have been achieved in investigating the atmospheres of a few giant
exo-planets. Only the very brightest materials can be seen so far. Water seems to be widespread throughout our solar
system and beyond. The strong infrared activity that makes it Earth's
principal greenhouse gas allows its remote detection in the atmospheres of
far off planets. Carbon dioxide's very weak infrared spectrum would not be
measureable. Methane has been nominated as an indicator of life. Its intense
infrared spectrum would render it easily detectable. None has been noted in
initial results. New telescopes and refined technology will expand
the catalog of detectable chemicals and extend to smaller planets. The European Space Agency's
"Characterizing Exoplanets Satellite" (CHEOPS) will take the
first look at exo-planets in the super-Earth to Neptune size range. We'll gain more understanding of the worlds around
us. They'll provide a mirror to better appreciate our own planet. |
December
11, 2019 Dog Years"Dog years" don't work. Humans live seven
times longer than dogs, but dogs' lives don't just parallel ours along the way.
A one-year-old dog may have puppies, but there are few seven-year-old human
mothers around. My thirteen-year-old Scotty is nowhere near as frail as my
ninety-one-year-old neighbor lady. A dog spends most of its life in the prime of its
life. A new study from the University of California at San Diego offers a
more accurate way of comparing a dog's age to a human's. Medical scientists
studying the aging process have identified DNA degeneration as a useful
marker for age. They demonstrated a progression in DNA samples from 320
humans ranging from 1 to 103. To reinforce their hypothesis that this process
was an integral part of the physiology of aging, they looked for comparable
results in dogs. A survey of more than a hundred Labrador Retrievers demonstrated
a similar aging pattern, but not at the same rate. Puppies matured rapidly,
reaching the development of a thirty-one-year-old human at age one and
forty-two at age two. Adult dog aging slowed after that, reaching the
"dog years" formula of seventy at age ten. Aging beyond that laged traditional wisdom. My thirteen-year-old is the
equivalent of a spry seventy-two-year-old human. For the mathematically inclined, the researchers
published the best fit of their aging data. They found Human
Age = 16 * ln (Dog Age) + 31 for Labrador retrievers. The results vary
significantly for other breeds. You can calculate your dog's
"human" age with the calculator on your cell phone if you turn it
sideways. Or you can just be happy knowing your dog will enjoy years of happy
and healthy life with you. |
December
4, 2019 Black hole planetsFour thousand planets are only the tip of the
iceberg. There are an estimated billion planets in our Milky Way Galaxy
alone—a billion billion within the range of
modern telescopes. Five hundred years ago, heretics were burnt at the stake
for suggesting stars might be suns with planets. Fifty years ago, there were
nine planets and suspicion there might be more out there somewhere. Today,
we've seen four thousand around nearby stars and are confident these are just
the beginning. As technology advances, we're finding planets
around every spec of light in the sky. It's not just stars like our sun that
have planets. Giant stars, dwarf stars and pulsars have stars
too—plenty of them. We've even detected a few rogue planets flying free
of any stars. Rogues are dark objects ejected from their birthplace in some
cosmic collision long past. Planets accompanying stars are born from the collapsing
interstellar cloud forming the star itself. Dust and debris not incorporated
into the nascent star swirl around it. Bits and pieces of that protoplanetary disc bump into one another from time to
time. Sometimes they stick and the chunks get bigger. After a few million
years, planet-scale pieces evolve. The known planets are believed to have
developed this way. Theoretical calculations suggest an additional
source of even more planets. Super massive black holes are shrouded in clouds
of inter stellar debris thousands of times larger than those that grow into
solar systems. Captive clouds and stars have been detected spiraling to their
death around such black holes.
Models of their clouds suggest conditions in their far reaches might
be amenable to planet formation. Thousands of super-earths could orbit
light-years from super massive black holes. The technology to look for these
postulated planets does not exist yet. |
November
27, 2019 Private submarinesImagine being immersed in the exotic world of inner
space. It's dark there—darker than the darkest night. Exotic shapes
beyond your wildest imagination glide past. Here and there, faint flashes of
light beckon. You are spying on the most alien environment in the solar
system: Earth's oceans. Few humans have ventured beyond the top hundred
feet of the ocean. Professional divers work down to two hundred feet or so in
cumbersome diving suits. Ocean scientists reach miles deep in massive metal
spheres called bathyspheres. They study the strange world down there and its
bizarre occupants through narrow windows. Once saucer-sized, windows as large
as dinner plates are now possible. Emerging materials are opening the depths. Strong
transparent plastics like polycarbonates (bullet-proof glass) and acrylics
are able to withstand deep ocean pressures. They make larger windows
possible. In fact, clear plastic spheres are providing unprecedented all
around views. An acrylic bubble with walls six-and-a-half inches thick has
taken people three quarters of a mile down. One under construction is
expected to reach twice that depth with one-foot thick walls. Greater depths
still require classical metal spheres—for now. Long the province of ocean scientists and the military,
plastic bubble submarines are opening the depths to recreational use. Richer
billionaires can flaunt personal subs for their mega yachts. Models built to
carry up to seven passengers are available for dives lasting up to twelve
hours. (Their interiors are luxurious, but don't include bathrooms. Every
bathysphere has sign posted on the entrance hatch PB4UGo.) Their guests are viewing the denizens
of the deep in their natural surroundings. |
November
20, 2019 Heart HealthInvasive heart procedures may be overrated. A major
medical study designed to display the advantages of stents and bypass surgery
disappointed its proponents. In extreme situations such as heart attack or
left coronary artery blockage, prompt surgical intervention is critical. In
less time-critical circumstances, noninvasive medical treatment options
proved as good as surgery. Over five thousand patients were selected for
long-tem monitoring. These were nonemergency heart patients diagnosed with
moderate to severe coronary blockage. The study divided them into two groups:
one half would be treated with drug therapy; the other half would receive
standard surgical treatment. The control group procedures combined
cholesterol-reducing drugs, blood pressure control drugs, and blood thinners.
Members of the other group were treated with stents or bypasses according to
standard medical practice. The two groups fared equally well over the three
and a half year duration of the test. Subsequent heart attacks and deaths
were evenly distributed among the test groups. Some 11% of these heart
patients suffered a heart attack and 4% died. No advantage for surgical
intervention was demonstrated. The drug therapy alternative seemed to offer some
advantages beyond just survival. á
It costs a whole
lot less. á
It avoids the
stress of surgery. á
It avoids
exposure to a hospital environment. á
It treats all
blockages—not just the main problem ones, á
It doesn't
preclude the surgical option if things get worse; |
November
13, 2019 SADFeeling tired, drained, trapped inside? Blame it on
the calendar. You've got SAD, Seasonal Affective Disorder. It's winter and
our bodies are missing the activity, the fresh air and the sunshine of
summer. The causes of SAD are not well understood, but the effects are. We feel
overly tired and crave sleep. We feel emotionally drained, even depressed.
Cabin fever draws the walls in around us. We mope around the
house—eating too much and doing too little. We can hang around the house waiting for spring, or
we can fight back. Follow the sun south for the winter. I hear Acapulco is
nice and Australia is balmy this time of year. There are more practical
things we can do around home. Spend more time outside when the weather
permits. Soak up all the sunshine you can get. A little physical activity
will chase away the boredom. Besides, it's the antidote for Christmas
cookies. Share what you're doing with a friend to chase away winter
loneliness. Supplement your diet with serotonin and vitamin D to get your
body back to summertime levels. Increase your garlic intake to stimulate your
nervous system. Don't wait until New Year's to make these resolutions. Spring
is just around the corner. It could be worse. You could be a Martian colonist.
Sunshine there is only 40% as intense as here. A Martian summer day is as
dreary as a winter day on Earth. Most of a colonist's day will be spent
crammed inside a NASA habitat. Simulated Mars missions have survived cabin
fever up to six months. Longer mock missions have been terminated for social
and psychological problems in less than two years. Mars colonizing is a life
sentence. |