More Weekend Fun Facts (via The Moderate Voice)‘Biggest dinosaur ever’ discovered Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus…
Weekend Fun Facts -The Kennewick Man (via The Moderate Voice)I attended University from 1964 through 1968. I took classes in geology – plate tectonics was considered ti be a crazy fringe theory, it’s now accepted fact. I took physics classes, mostly Newtonian with lots a math a formulas – modern physics…
Mt Saint Helens (via The Moderate Voice)It has been 34 years since Mt St Helens erupted . I don’t have much to add to the post I did on the 25th anniversary but it did bring me in contact with Bob Kasewater’s sister who helped me through my caregiver responsibilities when my mother…
Meteor strike in Russia hurts almost 1,000 (via AFP)
The next great Cascadia subduction-zone earthquake will kill thousands in Oregon and cause at least $32 billion in economic losses unless preparations are radically overhauled, a state panel says.It's been 300 years since the last one and they occur on average every 300 to 600 years. Northern California and Washington State would also be impacted.
When, not if, the magnitude-9.0 quake strikes -- let alone an accompanying tsunami -- Oregon will face the greatest challenge in its history, the state earthquake commission said in a 290-page draft report released Monday to The Oregonian.
Buildings will be so severely damaged that restoring full utility service will take three months to a year in western valleys and far longer on the coast, the commission found. Businesses tend to move or fail if utilities aren't up in a month.
"So Oregon faces a very real threat of permanent population loss and long-term economic decline," said the report, which recommends 50 years of seismic upgrades and other investments -- price tag incalculable.
Voyager discovers 'magnetic highway' (via AFP)
The specific sample for CheMin's first analysis was soil Curiosity scooped up at a patch of dust and sand that the team named Rocknest. The sample was processed through a sieve to exclude particles larger than 0.006 inch (150 micrometers), roughly the width of a human hair. The sample has at least two components: dust distributed globally in dust storms and fine sand originating more locally. Unlike conglomerate rocks Curiosity investigated a few weeks ago, which are several billion years old and indicative of flowing water, the soil material CheMin has analyzed is more representative of modern processes on Mars.
"Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy," said David Bish, CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University in Bloomington. "We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass. "
Bish said, "So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water."
A set of instruments aboard the rover has ingested and analyzed samples of the atmosphere collected near the "Rocknest" site in Gale Crater where the rover is stopped for research. Findings from the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instruments suggest that loss of a fraction of the atmosphere, resulting from a physical process favoring retention of heavier isotopes of certain elements, has been a significant factor in the evolution of the planet. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights.
Initial SAM results show an increase of five percent in heavier isotopes of carbon in the atmospheric carbon dioxide compared to estimates of the isotopic ratios present when Mars formed. These enriched ratios of heavier isotopes to lighter ones suggest the top of the atmosphere may have been lost to interplanetary space. Losses at the top of the atmosphere would deplete lighter isotopes. Isotopes of argon also show enrichment of the heavy isotope, matching previous estimates of atmosphere composition derived from studies of Martian meteorites on Earth.
Scientists theorize that in Mars' distant past its environment may have been quite different, with persistent water and a thicker atmosphere. NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, mission will investigate possible losses from the upper atmosphere when it arrives at Mars in 2014.
Austrian breaks sound barrier in record space jump (via AFP)
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars, but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed gravels -- is the first of its kind.
Scientists are studying the images of stones cemented into a layer of conglomerate rock. The sizes and shapes of stones offer clues to the speed and distance of a long-ago stream's flow.
"From the size of gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3 feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep," said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from speculation about the size of streambed material to direct observation of it."
The finding site lies between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a mountain inside the crater. Earlier imaging of the region from Mars orbit allows for additional interpretation of the gravel-bearing conglomerate. The imagery shows an alluvial fan of material washed down from the rim, streaked by many apparent channels, sitting uphill of the new finds.
September 14, 2012
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's long-lived rover Opportunity has returned an image of the Martian surface that is puzzling researchers.
Spherical objects concentrated at an outcrop Opportunity reached last week differ in several ways from iron-rich spherules nicknamed "blueberries" the rover found at its landing site in early 2004 and at many other locations to date.
Opportunity is investigating an outcrop called Kirkwood in the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The spheres measure as much as one-eighth of an inch (3 millimeters) in diameter. The analysis is still preliminary, but it indicates that these spheres do not have the high iron content of Martian blueberries.
"This is one of the most extraordinary pictures from the whole mission," said Opportunity's principal investigator, Steve Squyres of Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. "Kirkwood is chock full of a dense accumulation of these small spherical objects. Of course, we immediately thought of the blueberries, but this is something different. We never have seen such a dense accumulation of spherules in a rock outcrop on Mars."
The Martian blueberries found elsewhere by Opportunity are concretions formed by action of mineral-laden water inside rocks, evidence of a wet environment on early Mars. Concretions result when minerals precipitate out of water to become hard masses inside sedimentary rocks. Many of the Kirkwood spheres are broken and eroded by the wind. Where wind has partially etched them away, a concentric structure is evident.
Opportunity used the microscopic imagern its arm to look closely at Kirkwood. Researchers checked the spheres' composition by using an instrument called the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer on Opportunity's arm.
"They seem to be crunchy on the outside, and softer in the middle," Squyres said. "They are different in concentration. They are different in structure. They are different in composition. They are different in distribution. So, we have a wonderful geological puzzle in front of us. We have multiple working hypotheses, and we have no favorite hypothesis at this time. It's going to take a while to work this out, so the thing to do now is keep an open mind and let the rocks do the talking."
Just past Kirkwood lies another science target area for Opportunity. The location is an extensive pale-toned outcrop in an area of Cape York where observations from orbit have detected signs of clay minerals. That may be the rover's next study site after Kirkwood. Four years ago, Opportunity departed Victoria Crater, which it had investigated for two years, to reach different types of geological evidence at the rim of the much larger Endeavour Crater.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cosmic rays are so dangerous and so poorly understood that people are unlikely to get to Mars or even back to the moon until better ways are found to protect astronauts, experts said on Monday.A few science fiction writers like physicist Charles Sheffield have acknowledged the problem but simply assumed an answer had been found. We are protected from these high energy particles by the Earth's magnetic field. In his Mars Trilogy Kim Stanely Robinson writes about the terra forming of Mars but leaves out one thing that would make such a project impossible - the inability to create a magnetic field in a dead planet. Our understanding of space and time today would indicate we can't go too far and it would appear there are no option close at hand. A good reason to take care of Mother Earth.
And NASA is not properly funding the right experiments to find out how, the National Research Council committee said.
"One of the big issues is they have really cut funding for biology issues," retired space shuttle astronaut James van Hoften, who chaired the committee, said in a telephone interview.
"It is tough on them when they don't have any new money coming in. They are using old data," he added -- including research done on survivors of the nuclear bombings of Japan during World War Two.
"Given today's knowledge and today's understanding of radiation protection, to put someone out in that type of environment would violate the current requirements that NASA has."
The committee of experts agreed that NASA'S existing radiation safety standards can protect astronauts and they urged the U.S. space agency to keep them in place.
The Earth's bulk, atmosphere and magnetic field protect life from the solar radiation and the cosmic rays that travel through space. Astronauts have just a thin layer of shielding.
This non political post was inspired by Jazz's post below and an article I will get into later.Moons like the Earth's - which are formed in catastrophic collisions - are extremely rare in the Universe, a study by US astronomers suggests.We all know about the tides the moon causes in the sea. I heard today that on this full moon day the difference between high and low tide on the Oregon coast will be 13 feet. But there are earth tides as well - millimeters instead of feet but related to earthquakes and volcanoes. Is the moon partly responsible for the conditions that made life on earth and humans possible?
The Moon was created when an object as big as the planet Mars smacked into the Earth billions of years ago.
The impact hurled debris into orbit, some of which eventually consolidated to form our Moon.
The Astrophysical Journal reports that just 5-10% of planetary systems in the Universe have moons created this way.
"When a moon forms from a violent collision, dust should be blasted everywhere," said lead author Nadya Gorlova of the University of Florida in Gainesville, US.
"If there were lots of moons forming, we would have seen dust around lots of stars - but we didn't."
Vicious dinosaur Velociraptor was feathered fiend The vicious little dinosaur Velociraptor was a feathered fiend, according to scientists who found evidence of quills on this well-known meat-eater's forearm.I have spent time rehabilitating predatory birds - hawks and owls. If you have ever seen a coopers hawk kill and devour a small bird or a red-tail hawk kill and eat a small mammal you can believe they are related to the vicious Velociraptor.
In research published on Thursday, paleontologists said a forearm bone of Velociraptor found in Mongolia's desolate Gobi desert retained structures, or quill knobs, where a series of feathers were anchored to the bone with ligaments.
No actual fossils of the feathers were found, but the researchers said quill knobs would not exist without feathers. They are present in many bird species alive today.
The researchers said the discovery is a further indication that many carnivorous dinosaurs, and not just the very smallest, possessed feathers. They added that the presence of feathers, which among other qualities provide insulation, was another sign that these may have been warm-blooded animals.
OK, it's a huge chunk of the earth's crust. LONDON (Reuters) - A team of British scientists has set sail on a voyage to examine why a huge chunk of the earth's crust is missing, deep under the Atlantic Ocean -- a phenomenon that challenges conventional ideas about how the earth works.There is a lot more information at the project's web site.
The 20-strong team aims to survey an area some 3,000 to 4,000 metres deep where the mantle -- the deep interior of the earth normally covered by a crust kilometres thick -- is exposed on the sea floor.
Experts describe the hole along the mid-Atlantic ridge as an "open wound" on the ocean floor that has puzzled scientists for the five or so years that its existence has been known because it defies existing tectonic plate theories of evolution.
Mid-ocean ridges are a fascinating component of our planet's armour plating. Mid-ocean ridges are the place where new oceanic crust is born, with red-hot lava spewing out along the spreading axis as seafloor spreading progresses. However, the mechanisms by which this occurs are still not well understood by scientists - hardly suprising when you consider that mid-ocean ridges are located thousands of metres below the surface of the ocean.Until about 130 million years ago South America and Africa were part of the super continent Gondwana. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that the east side of South America and the west side of Africa fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. The mid Atlantic ridge shown on the map is where the two broke apart. The study area is in that break away zone.
Scientists have discovered a large area thousands of square kilometres in extent in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the Earth's crust seems to be missing entirely. Instead, the mantle - the deep interior of the Earth, normally covered by crust many kilometres thick - is exposed on the seafloor, 3000m below the surface. It has been described as being like an open wound on the surface of the Earth. What scientists don't know is whether the ocean crust was first developed, and then ripped away by huge geological faults, or whether it never even developed in the first place.
In March-April 2007, a team of scientists from Durham University, Cardiff University and NOCS will board the RRS James Cook to visit this special area of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is called the Fifteen-Twenty Fracture Zone (FTFZ for short - the map on the left shows where this is located).
