Discussions of Topics Related to Science and Science Fiction
Just a brief update today, this really isn’t a post but I wanted to announce that as of today Science and Science Fiction now has over 500 registered subscribers! Not bad for a blog site that’s only a little over six months old.
I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank you all for visiting my blog and especially to those of you who have registered or written comments. I can’t tell you how amazed I’ve been by all the response and again, THANK YOU!
Bob L
What is Science Fiction, boy now there’s a tough question to answer. We all have a feeling about what makes a story Science Fiction or not. The technology is more advanced than in our present day world; lasers replace firearms, rockets replace airplanes and automobiles and etc. Also, Science Fiction stories are often set in places no human has yet visited whether it be the planets or stars or perhaps the future. Then of course there’s the alien forms of life, creatures whose nature and motives are completely unknown to us, at least in chapter one. It seems then that Science Fiction takes what we know, science is the Latin word for knowledge after all, and proceeds from there to speculate on what we don’t know.
But at the same time isn’t Science Fiction more than that, doesn’t Science Fiction allow us to ask in story form the big questions, doesn’t it enable us to think about the very nature and purpose of reality and mankind’s place in it. With Science Fiction we can look out at the Universe and then turn around and look back at ourselves.
I’m going to take a few posts over the next couple of weeks to talk about just what I think Science Fiction is. The posts may not be one after the other but hopefully I’ll keep them close together.
I’m thinking of doing this in four or five parts. Today will be just a basic introduction of Science Fiction along with a brief history. Next time I’d like to discuss what I’ll call the great themes of Science Fiction, which will be followed by an analysis of some of the most famous Science Fiction novels and stories using those themes. In the final part I’ll talk about the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy as I see it.
Now right up front I admit that this is going to be pretty much just my opinion. Oh, I’ll do my best to get the authors’ names and the titles correct, but really I don’t expect anyone to agree with me completely. Indeed, feel free to dispute everything I say.
If I just prompt you to think a little about Science Fiction. Or if you are inspired to find and read one of the novels I mention for the first time, then I will have done my job.
As a literary form Science Fiction has a much older history than you might think. What is generally regarded as the first Science Fiction romance was “True History” by the second century CE poet Lucian of Samosata. (By the way the term romance simply means a story composed in the Roman fashion, today we would call it a novel or novella)
The idea of writing a story that you don’t want anyone to believe was so unusual at that time that Lucian felt the need to tell his readers at the end that the things in his tales “do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all”.
The story in “True History” concerns a group of travelers who are swept up to the Moon on a whirlwind where they witness a war between the armies of the Moon and the Sun over which would colonize the morning star. The story therefore contains two of the elements we mentioned earlier. Travel to a place no one had ever traveled to before and while there encountering strange and alien creatures.
Over the next 1500 years or so a rare story would be written that today we would call science fiction. Cyrano de Bergerac (yes he really lived, big nose and everything) wrote another story about a trip to the Moon but he used a balloon and, get this, rockets.
It wasn’t until the late 19th century however that we get authors who wrote several Science Fiction stories thereby establishing Science Fiction as a genre. I’m speaking of course about Jules Verne and H. G. Wells and this is where I’m going to stop for today. Next time I’m going to use the novels of these two pioneers in Science Fiction to discuss what I call the ‘Great Themes of Science Fiction.” Till then.
In one sense of course, Human Machine Interface has been around since the invention of the wheel. Over the last twenty years however progress has been particularly rapid and Human Machine Interface has become both very advanced and quite intimate.
Much of the progress has taken place in the design and development of prosthetic devices to replace body parts lost by disease, injury or congenital condition. Modern materials along with engineering design and miniature electronics have produced artificial limbs that can function nearly as well as a limb of flesh and blood.
Some of the best available technology today employs the residual nerve signals or muscle contractions that would have controlled the missing limb to now control the movements of a myoelectric prosthesis. These devices have enabled thousands of people to regain the better part of the functioning of their lost limb. The picture below shoes a basic layout of a myoelectric artificial arm and hand.
Some of the most advanced work is now being accomplished by John Hopkins Medicine and involves a direct control of a prosthetic limb by the mind itself. To read the brain’s signals a sensor pad with 128 electrodes is surgically implanted on the region of the brain that controls arm and hand movement. The sensory data is then analyzed by a computer which then controls a robotic hand. The team that is conducting the research claim that they can reproduce 88% of the functioning of a normal hand with the test subject being able to individually move the robotic thumb and fingers. The picture below shows the sensor pad and where it was implanted on the brain.
If you’d like to read more about the research being conducted at John Hopkins click on the link below.
Another project taking place at MIT involves actual mind control of a robot. The picture below shows the experimental setup.
In the experiment a human subject places a skullcap over their head which measures their brainwaves. The brainwaves are then analyzed by a computer which uses them to control a robot. In the experiment the robot is carrying out a simple task of sorting objects into one of two bins. So far the researchers are successful in commanding the robot into which bin to place the object with only their brains 70% of the time so we have a way to go before we can make robots dance just by thinking them to do so but it is a start. If you’d like to read more about the research at MIT click on the link below.
http://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2017/03/08/mit-mind-controlled-robots
In some respects human control of what machines are capable of doing is almost a definition of technology. We’ve been getting better at it for thousands of years but progress is accelerating and what we may be capable of in just a few decades is staggering.
The past couple of weeks have seen several interesting news items related to manned space flight so I thought today would be a good day to catch up on Space News.
First off last week both Space X corp and the Russians succeeded in launching resupply missions to the International Space Station (ISS) with Space X also successfully landing the first stage of their Falcon rocket after it had placed the Dragon capsule into orbit. These resupply missions are becoming routine and that’s a good thing! It means we are finally building the infrastructure the space which will enable us to concentrate on new missions going further into space.
Speaking of going further into space, Space X announced last week that they are preparing a mission to take two paying customers out to, but not landing on, the Moon. This mission has tentatively scheduled for late next year (2018). Along with NASA’s announcement last month that the first mission of their Space Launch System / Orion spacecraft might now be manned (see my post of 22Feb for that news) this means that there could be two independent missions to Lunar orbit next year (actually I bet they’ll both end up in 2019 but still that’s progress!) If you’d like to read Space X’s official announcement click on the link below.
Now, for the fashion conscious among us (certainly not me) there was a press release for a company called StemRad based in Israel. StemRad already has a reputation for designing and manufacturing radiation protective gear for workers in nuclear power plants now they’re working on gear for astronauts. StemRad called the press release to show off the new radiation vest that they had developed and which they called the AstroRad. The vest is intended to protect human tissue from the effects of the radiation encountered on deep space missions such as to the Moon or Mars. NASA will be testing the vest on their planned Lunar missions.
The vests are form fitting and tailor made for each astronaut. The picture below shows the vests being worn by two of StemRad’s employees.
If you’d like to read more about the AstroRad vest click on the link below.
Finally the space company Blue Origen released an animation of how their soon to be completed Glenn rocket will be recovered after launching a payload into orbit. The critics are all saying that it looks awfully familiar and that Space X doesn’t need animations since they have actual footage of them landing one of their rockets! Still, more companies competing against each other should help bring down the cost of space travel. If you’d like to see the animation click on the link below.
Before I go I have an announcement of my own to make! If you look over at the right hand side of the page you’ll see that I have now started a bookmarks section where I will be providing links to other web sites devoted to Science and Science Fiction. Even better you’ll see that this blog has been chosen by Feedspot Blog Directory as one of their Top 100 science blogs. In fact Science and Science Fiction debuted at #73 on their list which includes such well known sites as Scientific American, Discover Magazine, National Geographic and Popular Science. O’k they’re all in the single digits while I’m 73 but still it’s cool just being on the same list! And remember, this blog is only 6 months old!
Back in High School you probably learned that the atoms that make up everything around us are themselves made up of three types of particles, Protons and Neutron sit at the center of the atom in the nucleus while electrons go spinning around the nucleus. What you might not have learned in High School is that the Protons and Neutrons are made up of particles called quarks and that sometimes Neutrons can ‘decay’ into a Proton, electron and an anti-Neutrino!
Two days ago I attended a physics seminar at my old Alma Matter Drexel University entitled “The Life and Death of the Free Neutron’ given by Doctor Nadia Fomin, Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee and a researcher at Oak Ridge Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
For those of you who have never had the pleasure of attending a science seminar let me take a brief moment to give you an idea of what it’s like. A visiting scientist is invited to come and give a talk by a member of the local faculty whose own research is in the same general field. First there is an introduction by the local faculty member mentioning where the visitor is currently working, where they received their degrees and a short description of their research.
Then we get the meat! For the next 45 minutes or so you get to listen to a lecture on the latest research being conducted, the cutting edge of science in action. If the visitor is an experimentalist as Doctor Fomin was you get to hear about the development of their instruments as well as their results but if the visitor is a theoretician you could be treated to 45 minutes of solid math, what could be better than that! After presenting their results the lecturer will then take about 5 minutes to relate what they think their results mean, how they effect what we know about the Universe. Finally there’s about ten minutes given to questions from the audience.
The question period can be the most interesting. I have attended several seminars where a member of the audience was well known to disagreed with everything the visiting speaker was saying and everybody else was just waiting for the clash when the two scientists argued their case. Now there’s no yelling or cursing, everything is calm and deliberate but this is the cutting edge of science in action. Two opposing models of how the Universe behaves, each side has some evidence and a lot of theories as support but neither side has enough to convince the other.
So that’s what attending a scientific seminar is like. Let’s get back to Professor Fomin and her measurements of the decay half life of a free Neutron. Ever since the Neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932 scientists have know that a free Neutron, one that was not confined to the nucleus of an atom, would after some time decay into a Proton and an electron and it was some missing energy in this decay that led Wolfgang Pauli to predict the existence of the Neutrino (although in Neutron decay it’s actually an anti-Neutrino that gets produced). To understand the reaction take a look at the Feynman diagram below.
The Neutron and Proton are both composed of three quarks, two Ups and a Down for the Proton and two Downs and an Up for the Neutron. Now the decay of the Neutron takes place via the ‘Weak Nuclear Interaction’ and it’s half life was first measured after world war 2 to be something around 15 minutes. That doesn’t sound very scientific does it, well Neutrons are very hard to measure, they’re much smaller than an atom, they have to electric charge so it takes a lot effort to learn almost anything about them.
We have made progress since the 1940s, and Doctor Formin and her colleagues are a part of that progress. The best current estimate of the free Neutron half life is between 870 and 880 seconds and the hope is that with new instruments before long that range will be reduced to 0.3 seconds.
Why should we care? What difference does it make whether the Neutron’s half life is 874 or 875 seconds? Well, it does matter because the half life of the Neutron plays an important role in models of the early development of our Universe. Shortly after the Big Bang the universe was a foaming sea of elementary particles that quickly became atoms of hydrogen and helium along with a bit of lithium. Right now the biggest unknown in just how that process took place is the Neutron half life! Also, numerous theories uniting gravity to quantum mechanics, the so called ‘Theories of Everything’ make predictions about the half life of the Neutron and with a better measurement of the half life we can eliminate some of the wrong theories.
Physics began some four hundred years age with Galileo making measurements of falling objects. Measurement is central to what physics is and how it works. I look forward to hearing about Doctor Formin’s results when she gets her new instruments.
First Published back in 2015 the Novel ‘Luna: New Moon’ is an exciting, fast paced tale of five powerful families fighting for control of the industries that keep humanity’s lunar colony alive. The author Ian McDonald has himself described Luna as ‘Game of Domes’ and ‘Dallas in Space’, I think I’ll call it a space opera.
The plot revolves around the Corta family who control the He3 production on the Moon that powers the fusion reactors back on Earth. Rich and powerful, the Cortas are involved in a large number of rivalries and struggles both between themselves and with the other four families that basically run the Moon.
Although there is technology aplenty this story could just as easily have been set in the Italy of the Borgia’s or among the Frankish Merovingians. In other words it’s a story of human passions and mostly bad ones at that. The technology is basically used as scenery or to facilitate the human interactions rather than driving the story.
I do have one little criticism to mention. In the novel there are a number of individuals who were born on Earth along with many who were born on the Moon itself. Now the Moon born are stuck on the Moon, their bones and muscles are too weak to be capable of surviving Earth’s gravity. Now, that may very well turn out to be true but in ‘Luna: New Moon’ the people from Earth also can never return to Earth after they’ve been on the Moon more than two years.
That is almost certainly not true! In my post back on 15Feb17 I mentioned the medical studies being carried out right now on the Astronaut Scott Kelly who had spent an entire year in zero gravity! While astronaut Kelly did require several days to adjust back to Earth gravity and scientists studying him have found some minor changes in his physiology he is well, healthy and back to living a full life. If returning to Earth after one year in zero ‘g’ is not a problem at all can two years on in Lunar gravity be so debilitating.
Based on Astronaut Kelly’s example, and others, I have no doubt that a person can return to survive returning to Earth after more than two years on the Moon or Mars.
Aside from that minor point I did quite enjoy Luna: New Moon and do recommend it but with a warning. There’s quite a lot of pretty graphic sex in the novel so if you’re the type who doesn’t want to read about ‘dried semen stains’, well you decide for yourself.
One more thing; Luna: New Moon is actually the first part of a two novel story. The second novel, Luna: Wolf Moon is supposed to be published this month. So if you do read Luna: New Moon don’t expect any conclusion, in fact the ending is very much a cliffhanger, and don’t buy Luna: Wolf Moon until you’ve read Luna: New Moon.
Now the big question. If Luna: New Moon reminded me of ‘I Claudius’ as much as anything else, if the science is just scenery then is Luna really a science fiction novel? I’m not the first person to ask this question but I’ve thought a lot about it and I’m planning on a future post, or more likely a series of posts discussing just what is science fiction, what are the GREAT THEMES OF SCIENCE FICTION and where is the crossover between science fiction and other literary genres, Fantasy in particular. It won’t be too long, I’m working on it so keep watching for it.
One of the most mysterious of all known fossils is an ancient animal known as the Tully monster. Named for it’s discoverer Francis Tully who first found the enigmatic creature in 1958 at the Mazon Creek fossil site in Illinois. The Mazon Creek site is world famous because it is one of the very few places on Earth where the remains of the soft parts of animals were well preserved.
Think about it, when you go to a museum to look at their dinosaur collection what you really see are the dinosaur bones, the hard parts of the animals. Whenever paleontologists find even a tiny fragment of the soft anatomy of an animal it is a rare and very valuable find.
The Tully Monster had no hard parts, and it is only known from the specimens of it that have been found at Mazon Creek. Worse, whatever relatives Tully may have had also had no hard parts because we have only guesses as to what kind of animal it is. Take a look at the picture below to see just how strange this ‘monster’ was.
The long pincer out front, we’re not quite sure if that’s where the mouth is, and the eyes on a bar across the back are certainly weird if not monstrous. What kind of animal Tully is has been debated for years.
Last year, a paper in the journal Nature by Victoria E. McCoy of Yale University and others announced that the Tully monster was a vertebrate, that it had a backbone along with a gill sack and liver and was distantly related to us. This week however another paper by Lauren Sallan of the University of Pennsylvania pushed back, declaring that the ‘gill sack’ and ‘liver’ were misinterpreted and that the eyes of Tully monster were ‘cup eyes’ similar to those possessed by a snail not a vertebrate. It seems we still have no idea just what Tully is. As it happens I live in Philadelphia and attended Drexel University across the street from the U. of P. so obviously I think Professor Sallan is right! In fact it looks as if the Tully Monster is going to remain a mystery for some time to come and isn’t that the way a monster should be!
I myself have a sizeable fossil collection and hope one day to do some collecting at Mazon Creek. If you’d like to learn more about the Tully Monster and the Mazon Creek fossils (there are a lot of other interesting creatures found there) I recommend ‘The Mazon Creek Fossil Fauna’ by Jack Wittry and available at amazon.
Another fossil related bit of news also deals with the problems of identifying long extinct animals know only from a few specimens. In this case it’s the discovery of an ancient “bristle” worm which was not only very large but came equipped with a set of equally large snapping jaws. A member of the phyla annelid, segmented worms, this worm was approximately a meter in length with jaws about half a centimeter (So the jaws weren’t really that big but for animals of this kind they were huge). In a marine environment bristle worms often live in tubes which they have constructed out of sediment and a chemical they secrete. The fossil was found in rocks over 400 million years old and may have been an active predator, using its jaws to seize and chew its prey.
The history of life on this planet is both long and complex. With several million different kinds of creature alive today and many times that number that are now extinct there’s always new and fascinating discoveries to be made!
Over the last four presidential administrations NASA’s long term goals for human spaceflight have been pulled back and forth so drastically it almost appears as if we’ve been going backward rather than forward. While Bush#1 wanted to go to Mars, Bill Clinton said let’s build the Space Station that Ronald Reagan called for (at least that actually got done). Then Bush#2 said let’s go back to the Moon while Obama only suggested going to a near Earth asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.
Now we have a new administration, one who seems to have even less of a plan for space than the ones I’ve just mentioned, so I’m gonna give’em one.
Of course my heart says Mars. I was fourteen years old when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon and I can’t accept that we haven’t already gotten to Mars. I desperately hope that we will reach Mars during my lifetime so my heart says Mars!
My head says back to the Moon and here are my reasons why. Next year NASA will launch it’s first Space-Launch-System/Orion capsule mission and there is now talk of making that first mission a manned mission. Now the SLS launch vehicle is really just a modified version of the Ares V rocket that was conceived as a part of Bush#2’s ‘Constellation Program’ for going back to the Moon, and the Orion capsule isn’t even modified as far as I know. So, late next year we could very likely have two of the three major systems for a Moon landing. All we’d need is the lander and if NASA were given the direction and funding that could be accomplished in six years or so. The pictures below show the original Constellation Program ‘Parts’ and the, almost completed SLS-Orion for comparison.
The resemblance is obvious. Again all we need to get back to the Moon is the Altair lander shown below or a similar lander.
To go to Mars however, we would be starting from scratch. The idea of the Orion capsule taking anybody all the way to Mars is ludicrous. Not only doesn’t the combined SLS-Orion have the delta vee necessary for a Hohmann orbit to Mars (that’s the lowest energy required transfer orbit), but there’s no way for three or four astronauts to be stuck inside the small Orion capsule for the more than a year long journey to Mars.
To go to Mars we need a Spaceship, a real one. Maybe not as fancy as the Hermes in the Martian or Discovery in 2001 but still an actual spaceship! And then when we get into Mars orbit we’re going to need a lander to get down to the surface, and even before we send that spaceship everybody always assumes that there will be supplies ‘pre-positioned’ on the surface of Mars awaiting the astronauts. None of this equipment is anywhere past the drawing board, there is absolutely no hardware existing or in the process of construction or even funded. Nothing.
I have a few more reasons for recommending the Moon. As I mentioned above, NASA is studying the concept of pre-positioning equipment and supplies before astronauts land on a planet or satellite. Well we could practice that technique on the Moon a lot more cheaply than trying it on Mars. Indeed, the Moon could be a practice range for landing a big rover, a habitat module, working out regular resupply missions and lot of the techniques needed for a Mars mission could be learned on the Moon.
It’s often been said that the Moon can serve as a stepping stone to Mars and since we’re almost equipped to do that let’s just do it.
The chaotic politics of the last 30 years has resulted in a complete lack of direct in NASA’s goals for human spaceflight. If the current administration were to authorize NASA to build a lander, and provide adequate funding, we could actually accomplish something in just a few years. We could at least get back to where we were when I was a teenager.
I’m not holding my breath!
Over the past week there have been two different news stories announcing the discovery of “Lost Continents”. Spoiler alert, neither is Atlantis and neither is in the Atlantic Ocean.
The first announcement comes from a team of geologists led by Lewis Ashwal of the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. Professor Ashwal has named his lost continent Mauritia and it lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean. See the picture below.
Professor Ashwal bases his discovery on his analysis of Zircon crystals that he obtained on the volcanic Island of Mauritius, from which the continent gets it’s mane. Now the island itself is rather young, having been formed by volcanic activity approximately 8 million years ago. Despite the island’s geologic youth however, when Professor Ashwal measured the age of the zircons he had found there were many as old as 2 Billion Years Old. How could an 8 million year old island have 2 billion year old crystals on it?
First let me say a little bit about zircons or more formally zirconium silicate ZrSiO4. Now zirconium crystals always contain small amounts of the radioactive elements Uranium and Thorium. Once the zircon crystal is formed these unstable atoms begin to decay and by a measurement of the amount of the decay product, mainly Helium, in the crystal geologists can calculate the age of the crystal. Another key property is the hardness of the crystal which allows it to survive harsh environmental conditions like erosion and even metamorphism. Because of these properties, zircon crystals have become one of geology’s most useful tools.
Professor Ashwal also used the most recent studies of the seafloor in the area around Mauritius to outline the extent of his “Lost Continent. According to the professor, 200 million years ago Mauritia was a part of the Super Continent Gondwanaland, which also included South America, Africa, Australia, Antarctica and India. Breaking off about the same time as India some 60 Million years ago Mauritia is now mostly submerged. Only a few small islands remain of what was once a very large landmass.
The second, completely independent announcement of a “Lost Continent came only a few days after the story on Mauritia. This discovery is based upon work by Nick Mortimer a geologist with GNS Science in Dunedin New Zealand. In fact what Mr. Mortimer discovered is that what geologists thought was a single continent encompassing Australia and New Zealand was in fact two continents, Australia being one and New Zealand, with the islands going north up to New Caledonia, making up the “new” continent of Zealandia. The picture below shows how close these two continents are.
As with Mauritia, most of Zealandia is presently submerged and also like Mauritia 200 million years ago Zealandia was a part of the super continent Gondwanaland. To me the interesting thing about Zealandia is that it is so close to the Australian continent. Could we be looking at the breakup of one continent into two? If that is so this new discovery could tell us a lot about the breakup of continents in general.
I can still remember back when the idea of “Continental Drift” was just a crazy idea and over the last fifty years we have learned so much about the dynamics of our planet. I don’t know if schoolchildren are going to have to learn the names of Mauritia and Zealandia along with the other seven continents but I do know that there is much more to be learned about our home planet and I look forward to telling you all about it.
Several times now I’ve written a post concerning recent news items dealing with what’s going on in humanity’s exploration of space. I’ve usually titled them ‘This Week in Space’ but I haven’t been doing them every week so what I’m gonna do is make it an official MONTHLY thing.
You may have heard about the first item I’d like to cover. It concerns the ongoing medical examination of NASA astronaut Scott Kelly after his one year assignment to the International Space Station and the comparison to his twin brother astronaut Mark Kelly. Ever since his return to Earth last March Scott has been subjected to perhaps the most extensive set of physical, mental and genetic testing ever conducted on a person.
A similar set of tests are also being carried out on Mark, who flew four shuttle missions but is now retired and who remained here on Earth during Scott’s year long mission. The comparison between the two sets of tests will give scientists their best ever look into the long term effects of living in a zero ‘g’ environment.
While the results are still coming in and being analyzed, some interesting differences have been noted. Perhaps the most troubling for the future of human spaceflight is the detection of reduced bone growth in Scott during the second half of his mission. His loss of bone strength has been noted before in other astronauts but the comparison between Scott and Mark’s bone tissue gives scientists their best measurement of just how much of a difference living in space makes.
Shortly after Scott returned to Earth one group of researchers noted a slight reduction in cognitive ability, the ability to think quickly and clearly. The scientists noted that the change was insignificant and should not effect a journey to Mars or another long duration mission.
Meanwhile genetic testing of the twin astronauts revealed that hundreds of genetic mutations had developed in their respective RNA sequences. The question is whether the increased number of mutations is due to different genes being activated in a space environment, a ‘Space Gene’ NASA officials called it, or are the differences due to the increased amount of radiation Scott received during his year in space.
NASA’s twin study of Scott and Mark Kelly is ongoing and we’re certain to learn more about the effects of weightlessness on the human body. I’m hoping that in another 10-15 years there will be another study of the medical effects of a low, that is lunar, gravity environment.
Another bit of NASA news concerns the initial design study for a possible lander probe mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa. As I sure you know, astronomers are rather certain that beneath Europa’s icy surface is an ocean of liquid water and liquid water means a good chance for life.
NASA is already in the process of developing an Europa flyby spacecraft that is intended to orbit Jupiter in such a fashion that it swings by Europa 45 or more times. Well an Europa lander would then be the next step logical in our search for life on that icy world. Below is an artists idea of what the Europa lander could look like.
And if you’d like to read more about the Europa lander from Space.com click on the link below.
http://www.space.com/35655-nasa-lander-jupiter-moon-europa.html
Finally a bit of fun. Astronaut Andreas Mogensen of the European Space Agency (ESA) recently spent six months on the International Space Station (ISS) studying Red Sprites and Blue Jets. These phenomenon are basically forms of lightning produced in thunderstorms that go up into space rather than down to the Earth. Doctor Mogensen has produced a little video describing and showing some of his results and rather than trying to explain further I think I’ll just insert a link to the YOUTUBE video and let him talk. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r50Un4LPTM4&t=70s
I hope that works!