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The Phenomenon of Coffee Rings, can they be used to identify different brands of Whiskey?

With the coronavirus dominating all of the news going on in the world today I thought it might be a good idea today to have a more lighthearted post for a change.

We’re all familiar with coffee rings, the way a bit of spilled coffee or wine will dry to produce a hard, dark line around it’s edge while the center is relatively much paler. See images below.

A typical coffee ring. Notice how the edges form nice dark lines outlining the original area of the stain. (Credit: Inspiration Hut Marketplace)
Not all coffee ‘rings’ have to have a nice circular shape however. Again the dark edges clearly enclose a much lighter interior of the stain. (Credit: Wikipedia)

The cause for this phenomenon is a combination of two factors. The first factor is that evaporation of the spilled liquid occurs more rapidly at the edges simply because there is more surface area exposed to the air. Because the edges evaporate faster you would think that the area of a spill would get smaller as it dries but it doesn’t and that’s because of the second factor, capillary action.

A droplet of clear water on a surface. The roundness of the drop along its edges gives it a greater surface area there leading to greater evaporation. (Credit: Buggy and Buddy)
Instead of the evaporation around the edges causing the area of the droplet to shrink in size water flows from the center to the edges. (Credit: Robert D. Deegan et al)

Remember back in your High School Chemistry class when your teacher showed you the way water in a thin glass tube seems to try to climb up the sides of the tube, that was capillary action. Capillary action happens because of the fact that water molecules are more strongly attracted to molecules of other substances than they are to other water molecules. In the case of the glass tube the water molecules are attracted to the glass walls of the tube rather than other water molecules so they literally climb up the walls, forming what is known as a meniscus. See images below.

In a glass tube water molecules are more strongly attracted to the glass molecules than to each other. This generates capillary action as the water seems to try to climb the walls of the tube. (Credit: USGS.gov)

In a spill, the water molecules are more strongly attracted to the surface they are resting on than other water molecules so even though the edges are evaporating faster the area of the spill remains the same. In order to keep the area the same water flows from the center of the spill to the edges and any larger, darker molecules, like coffee, that are dissolved in the water are carried toward the edges by that flow. As the spill continues to evaporate more and more of the larger molecules are pushed toward the edges to be deposited and left there as the familiar ring once the water is completely gone.

The coffee ring effect can be a problem in some technologies that require an even deposition of a chemical across a surface, such as in printed electronics. Chemists studying the phenomenon have found that adding chemicals known as surfactants, that’s soap to you and me, can reduce the effect.

In an interesting twist on the subject, Stuart Williams, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Louisville in Kentucky has been studying the patterns left behind after the evaporation of one of his state’s best known products, Bourbon Whiskey. What Professor Williams has found is that under controlled labouratory conditions instead of forming rings at their edges American whiskeys, and only American Whiskeys, form spider web type patterns. Not only that but each brand of American whiskey has its own unique pattern, a pattern so distinctive that it might be possible to use the technique to identify counterfeit whiskeys. See images below.

A sample of the spidery webs formed by different brands of whiskey. (Credit: Ars Technica)

Now I said that Professor Williams studied the phenomenon under labouratory conditions and that requires a little explanation because you see alcohol is another chemical that inhibits the formation of coffee rings. Too much alcohol, more than 30% and you’ll only get a uniform coating, no pattern of any kind. At the other end of the scale, too little alcohol and you only get the normal coffee ring effect at the edges. Only when the alcohol content was between 20-25%, or 40 to 50 proof, did Professor Williams obtain his spidery patterns. That means the doctor had to dilute his whiskey samples a bit, a horrible thought but remember this was all in the interest of science!

Doctor Williams in his labouratory. To his left you can see some of his test subjects. Nice work if you can get it! (Credit: Ars Technica)

  In his lab Williams tested 66 different brands of American whiskey, 56 bourbons and 10 from outside Kentucky along with 13 foreign whiskeys ( I don’t know how many were from Scotland or Ireland). To date only one of the American brands has failed to produce a web like pattern while none of the foreign brands has formed a web.

As for what could be causing the difference between the American and foreign whiskeys Williams says, “We believe that the increased solids extracted from American whiskeys is responsible for these patterns. The chemicals originate in the fermentation and distillation, but really undergo dramatic changes during maturation.”

Once again each different brand of American forms its own unique spidery pattern. With this in mind Professor Williams is taking numerous samples of each brand and averaging the results in an effort to build up a library of brand patterns. Williams hopes that the whiskey industry will be able to use this library both for quality control as well as spotting counterfeit products.

To be considered a true bourbon a whiskey must be distilled in Bourbon County Kentucky. That’s what makes counterfeiting profitable. (Credit: World Map)

It’s amusing to think that something as familiar and innocuous as coffee rings may wind up as a way to identify top shelf bourbons. At least I hope it got your mind off of covid-19 for a few minutes!

Robot Report for Mar 2020.

There have been some very interesting engineering developments in both robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) recently. These new designs clearly show what I consider to be the main theme of these subjects, a convergence of the artificial and organic as engineers learn how to copy the abilities of living creatures, taking advantage of the strengths of biological systems in order to improve the functioning of their designs.

Learning how to use the abilities of organic life in mechanical systems is about more than just making a robotic copy of ourselves. (Credit: YouTube)

We are all aware of how awkward and clumsy the movements of robots appear when compared to the grace and dexterity of living creatures. The mechanical walk of a robot as depicted in SF movies of the 50s and 60s may be a cliché, but nevertheless it’s still pretty much true. Because of this inflexibility robots are usually designed for a single, repetitive task. Multi-tasking for robots is usually just out of the question.

A Robot from the 1039 World’s Fair in New York City. He looks like he could hardly move! (Credit:History.com)

With that in mind I’ll start today’s post by describing some of the work of Doctor Fumiya Iida of the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Throughout his 20-year career Dr. Iida has studied the anatomy of living creatures in an effort to improve the agility of his own robotic creations.

Doctor Fumiya Iida with some of his work. (Credit: Phil Mynott)
Doctor Lida’s robotic hand for playing the piano. (Credit: Linked In)

Dr. Iida has found inspiration from a wide range of different anatomical structures. Everything from the prehensile tail of a monkey to the sucker mouth of a leech can become for him a new way for a robot to move and manipulate objects. Dr. Iida and his colleagues refer to this program as ‘Bio Inspired Robotics’. Dr. Iida’s latest success has been the demonstration of a robot that can perform a labourious and backbreaking job that before now could only be accomplished by humans, picking lettuce.

Picking lettuce is extremely labour intensive. Automating this, and other vegetable harvesting would eliminate a great deal of low paid, hard labour. (Credit: Flickr)

Now at first you might think that picking lettuce would be an easy job to design a robot to handle. After all lettuce heads are all planted evenly spaced in straight rows. All a robotic picker has to do is go along the rows and grab the lettuce heads.

It’s not that simple, first of all a lettuce head is fairly soft and every individual head of lettuce is a somewhat different size and shape. This makes picking the lettuce heads difficult for most robots, resulting in a considerable amount of damage to the lettuce. Also, the outermost leafs of a lettuce head are generally so dirty or damaged that they have to be removed, a task that hitherto no robot has been able to carry out reliably.

Putting all that he’s learned into the problem Dr. Iida utilized a combination of visual sensors, soft grippers and a pneumatically activated knife for his robot picker. First the robot uses its cameras to locate a lettuce head before positioning itself directly above it. Then lowering itself onto the lettuce the robot pushes the unwanted leaves down and out of the way before cutting the head at its base. The robot’s soft grippers then lift the head up and place it in a basket.

Procedure used by Doctor Iida’s robot lettuce picker. (Credit: Wiley Online Library)
The lettuce picking robot in action. (Credit: The Robot Report)

So far Dr. Iida’s robot has been able to achieve an 88% harvest success rate, good but it still needs improvement before it can replace human pickers. Nevertheless when perfected this technology could be adapted to other types of produce, finally automating what has remained one of the hardest and lowest paying of all jobs.

So, if engineers are starting to construct robots to harvest our vegetables for us, what other boring repetitive jobs can they be built to take off our hands? Well researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are actually developing robots that can learn to do common household chores like setting the table by watching us do it!

The technology has been given the name ‘Planning with Uncertain Specifications’ or PUnS and the idea is to enable robots to perform human like planning based on observations rather than simply carrying out a list of instructions. By watching humans completing a task, like setting a table, the robot learns the goal of the task and a general idea of how to accomplish that goal. Known as ‘Linear Temporal Logic’ or LTL these computer generated formulas serve as templates for the robot to follow in order to accomplish its goal.

Robotic Vacuum clears are a simple example of PUnS. Whenever they bump up against an obstacle they just make a turn and head off in a different direction. Eventually they will clean the entire floor! (Credit: The New York Times)

In the study the PUnS robot observed 40 humans carry out the task of setting a table and from those observations generated 25 LTL formulas for how to complete the task. At the same time the computer assigned to each formula a different confidence of success value. Starting with the highest value formula the robot was then ordered to attempt to complete the task and based on its performance it is either rewarded or punished.

A Robotic arm that has learned, not be programmed to set a table! (Credit: YouTube)

In a series of 20,000 tests starting with different initial conditions the robot only made a mistake 6 times. In one test for example, the fork is hidden at the start of a test. Despite not having all of the items required to completely set the table the robot went ahead and set the rest of the dinnerware correctly. Then, when the fork was reveled the robot picked it up and placed it in the correct position, completing the task. This degree of flexibility in an automated system is unprecedented and points the way to robots learning how to accomplish different jobs not by mindlessly following a long list of instructions, in other words a program, but rather the same way humans do, by watching someone else do it. So, robots are now being designed to move more like a living creature does, and computers are being programmed to learn more like a human does. It took evolution billions of years to give living creatures those abilities but by observing and copying biological systems our robots and computers are quickly catching up. Who knows where they’ll be in another few decades.

The Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and its Lessons for Covid-19.

With the Covid-19 virus spreading around the world it’s critical that we study the lessons learned from past pandemics if we are to have any hope of minimizing the loss of life than now threatens our society. Since this is as much history as medical science I decided that for this post I would ask my brother Tom, a history teacher at Mastbaum High School here in Philadelphia for his help in telling the story of the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918.  

At the beginning of the year 1918 the world was fully engulfed in the First World War. After three years of conflict the continent of Europe had become nothing more than a single large battlefield. Then, in January of that year a new player entered the war, Influenza. Ironically, the influenza pandemic of 1918 has since become known historically as the Spanish flu because, since Spain was a neutral in the World War, they were the only country that would honestly report the large numbers of the sick and dead that were caused by the disease.

The horrible conditions in the trenches that millions of soldiers lived in during World War 1 were perfect breeding grounds for many diseases. (Credit: Britannica)

To this day scientists are still not precisely certain where the outbreak started. There is evidence that it may have started at a field hospital outside the French lines. Or it could have begun in an US Army training camp in Kansas. No matter where it began by the end of the pandemic an estimated 17 to 50 million people had died worldwide. Now influenza is of course the flu, a disease that we are all familiar with. This particular strain of the flu however was a flu like no other however as it struck down the strong and youthful as well as the old and the very young who are the usual victims of the flu. 

The French field hospital that is considered by many to be the original source of the disease was overcrowded and plagued by sanitation problems. Food for the hospital’s patients came from livestock that were kept behind the hospital, much too close to the large number sick and injured soldiers. Many scientists are of the opinion that the disease began in a flock of chickens that were being kept for food behind the hospital. The bird’s droppings passed the infection to some pigs that were also being kept as food before leaping into human hosts.

A French Field Hospital early in the war, caption says 1914. I doubt it stayed this nice a clean for very long! (Credit: Flickr)
One of the greatest success stories in human history is our domestication of other animals. This carries a downside with it however as animal diseases can more easily pass into human populations. (Credit: Center for Disease Control)

Those soldiers who recovered at the field hospital then carried the flu with them back to the trenches when they returned to their units, passing the illness on to their comrades. Before long a few of the sick French soldiers were captured by the Germans, in the process passing the disease on to them. Soldiers on both sides who were given leave then took the infection back to the cities and towns of their countries spreading the disease ever further.

In the United States the first recognized case of the flu was Albert Gitchell, an Army cook at Ft. Riley, Kansas. As a cook Gitchell’s job was to feed the recruits and as he did so he unknowingly passed the disease on to hundreds. Those recruits who completed their training were shipped to Queens New York to wait for a ship to transport them to the battlefields in France. City officials in New York were slow to recognize the danger of so many sick soldiers in their midst and soon the infection was spreading throughout the city and on to the other cities of America.

Some of the sick soldiers at Fort Riley in Kansas. All of this started with one infected man! (Credit: Wikipedia)

In fact politicians and civil servants throughout the world were slow to react to the pandemic. Partly this was due to their preoccupation with the requirements of conducting the war, especially the need for secrecy. In addition however governments throughout history just never seem to be able to recognize the dangers of a health or environmental crisis until they have grown into a huge disaster.

The politicians in 1918 treated this new flu as if it were hardly different from the flu of other years. They considered it to be no more than a temporary nuisance and felt little urgency in either treating the victims or stopping the spread of the disease. More than anything else governments are concerned about a panic starting amongst their people so they always tend to try to hide really bad news.

Eventually however the growing number of the sick and dead became so large that even the politicians had to take action. In many cities activities that involved large crowds were limited in size or even called off. For a short time church services were held in the outdoors in an attempt to reduce the spread of the virus but it wasn’t long before such gatherings were being cancelled entirely. As the crisis worsened Police began to wear surgical masks in an effort to protect themselves, schools were closed and cities like New York and Boston began to resemble ghost towns as people remained in their homes.

Eventually the public health services in many cities did react, as here in Evanston Illinois. (Credit: Evanston Now)
A public service announce of the time. Much as today our public leaders considered the flu to be an interference to the issues they considered important! (Credit: History of Vaccines)

Philadelphia was one city that seemed to have escaped the worse of the epidemic. In the early part of September 1918 there had been a small number of cases of the flu at local hospitals but few deaths.

As a part of the Victory Loan Program to benefit the war effort the city fathers of Philadelphia were planning what they knew would be the biggest parade in the city’s history. The city’s health commissioner had been advised by the health commissioners of New York and Washington to cancel the parade but he owed his job to the local party bosses and so under pressure from the politicians he allowed the parade to go on as scheduled on the 28th of September 1918.

On that day the citizens of Philadelphia lined Broad Street in the thousands, creating an enormous crowd that pressed against each other, the perfect breeding ground for any infectious disease. Within days the flu had spread throughout the city and the death rate soon rose beyond that other the those of Boston or New York.

Philadelphia’s Liberty Bond Victory parade in 1918. What you can’t see here is the Spanish Flu virus spreading from one person to another! (Credit: Smithsonian Magazine)

In contrast the city officials in St. Louis listened to the warnings of their health officials and cancelled their Victory Bond parade. Thanks to the wisdom of their leaders the city of St. Louis escaped the worst of the plague. The chart below dramatically illustrates the consequences of each city’s leaders response to the threat posed by the flu.

Comparison of the Death Rates caused by the Spanish Flu in Philadelphia (Solid Line) and St. Louis (Dotted Line). The benefit of St. Louis canceling its parade is easy to see. (Credit: Quartz)

The influenza pandemic of 1918 affected every corner of the world and remained a deadly problem until it finally died out around December of 1920. The precise death toll caused by the Spanish Flu will never be known for certain but many scientists believe that it was greater than the number of those who perished in the actual war. In many cities throughout the world the dead were so numerous that they were buried in mass graves.

In the hundred years since 1918 the United States has not witnessed a health emergency anywhere near the scale of the Spanish flu, until now. If we are to fight the Covid-19 pandemic then we are going to have to learn the lessons of the past, a task that so far we are not accomplishing very well. The policies of our governments must be solidly based on medical science, not on hunches or wishful thinking. We must demand that our leaders act with the sole goal of saving as many lives as possible, ignoring all considerations of winning elections or protecting the economy. Covid-19 is going to be a test of not only of how much we’ve learned about fighting infectious diseases, but also about whether or not we have the wisdom to act on the lessons we’ve learned.

Scientists use information gained from a fossil clamshell to prove a century old theory about the Moon and the tides.

Regular readers of this blog will know that there are two subjects that I find very interesting, astronomy and paleontology. Well here’s a post that connects those very different studies, showing how everything in the Universe is linked in ways that we can hardly imagine.

We’re all familiar with the tides, that rising and lowering of the waters of the oceans that happens about twice a day. And we all know that somehow those tides are connected with the Moon, that the highest tides occur during the time of the full Moon and that it’s the Moon’s gravity that somehow causes the tides.

At low tide in many places you can go out on the exposed rocks and observe all of the different types of sea life! (Credit: Visit Santa Cruz County)

All of that is true, not only does the Earth’s gravity pull on the Moon, causing it to orbit our planet but the Moon also pulls on the Earth. Because of this what actually happens is that both bodies orbit around the center of gravity of the Earth-Moon system but because the Earth is much more massive than the Moon that center of gravity is much, much closer to the Earth than it is to the Moon, in fact it is inside the Earth!

The center of Gravity of the Earth-Moon system is inside the Earth but not at our planet’s center! (Credit: Quora)

Most people also know that an orbit between two astronomical objects represents a balance between the pull of gravity and the push of centripetal force. The fact is however that only the center of the two objects exactly follows the path of the orbit. For that portion of the Earth that is closer to the Moon than the center is, gravity is stronger than centripetal force so that portion is pulled toward the Moon. On the opposite side of the Earth, that part further from the Moon than the center, centripetal force is stronger so that it is pulled away from the Moon. This is the reason why there are two tides every day, the one pulled toward the Moon by gravity and the one pushed away by centripetal force.

There are two tides every day. One towards the Moon and one away from her. (Credit: The Conversation)

These tidal forces are also the reason why the Moon only shows one face toward the Earth. Over billions of years the effect of tides is to slow the rotational motion of an astronomical object until finally it keeps the same face towards the other object it orbits. Since the Moon is much smaller and less massive than the Earth it began with a much smaller angular momentum, all of which is now gone leaving our Moon eternally showing us the same face.

The Moon does rotate once every orbit! That way it always keeps the same face towards us! (Credit: PBS)

You might wonder if the same thing could happen to the Earth, is the crashing of the tides against the land masses of the Earth twice a day slowing down our planet’s rotation? Will our planet at some time in the future stop rotating so that it will always keeps the same face towards the Moon? Yes, it point of fact it will. Astronomers have actually measured the slowing down of the Earth’s rotation, the lengthening of the day.

And if you think about it that means that in the distant past the length of a day must have been shorter than it is now. That would also mean that there would have been more days in a year than the 365 & 1/4 that we have today. Trying to prove this is where paleontology comes into play because fossil hunters have 200 years of experience in studying the evidence of the past.

For example, we all know how tree rings record the annual growth of a tree. Not only can scientists determine the age that a tree was when it died by counting the number of a tree’s rings but they can also tell during which years the tree grew well and in which it grew poorly by comparing the width of the different rings. And it doesn’t matter whether the tree has been freshly cut down, or died millions of years ago. If well preserved petrified wood still has its tree rings.

We all know about tree rings but did you know that tree rings can still be preserved after millions of years? These rings can tell paleontologists a lot about the environment millions of years ago! (Credit: The American Southwest)

Other types of living creature are also known to have regular, visible growth rings, some of which record the passing of each day rather than each year. One such type of animal is the familiar clam whose shell grows a little bit every day. More than that however, like most creatures clams usually grow less during the winter, making those daily rings narrower and even a little bit darker during the winter months. This allows paleontologists to count the number of days in a year simply by examining the growth rings of an ancient clamshell.

The growth rings in this modern clam record the daily environmental conditions in the location where it lived! (Credit: 4.files.edl.io)

Of course you need an exquisitely preserved fossil and paleontologist Niels de Winter of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels Belgium has one that fits the bill. The 70 million year specimen of Torreites sanchezi is a member of a group of bivalves known as rudists that went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs.

Two (?) specimens of T sanchezi. (Credit: Curiosmos)

T sanchezi also grew large, making it that much easier to count each individual ring, and Doctor de Winter’s specimen lived a full seven years giving him plenty of data to work with. What de Winter found was that 70 million years ago there were 372 days in a year and therefore each day was about a half an hour shorter. Back then there were only 23.5 hours in a day, just as the astronomers predicted.

Growth rings from T sanchezi measured by Doctor de Winter. (Credit: Civilsdaily)

Finally, if the Earth’s rotation is slowing down that spin has to go somewhere, conservation of angular momentum is one of the most thoroughly tested of all physical laws. In fact Earth’s spin isn’t disappearing, it’s going to the Moon. That’s right the slowing down of the Earth’s rotation is causing the distance to our Moon to slowly increase.

We know that is happening because we have measured it. Back during the Apollo Moon program our astronauts set up science packages on the Moon and one of the pieces of equipment they left behind were laser reflectors. Ever since 1969 astronomers have used telescopes to send laser pulses to the Moon and detect the returns off of those reflectors. In this way astronomers can measure the distance to the Moon with fantastic accuracy and over the last 50 years they have measured a steady 3.82 centimeter increase in the Earth-Moon separation every year.

The Laser Reflector left on the Moon by Apollo 11. Five such reflectors were left by the astronauts! (Credit: SpaceRef)
There are astronomers who regularly use those reflectors to measure the distance to the Moon with fantastic precision! If you think about it, what better evidence could you have that the Moon landings actually took place!!!!! (Credit:Aviation Stack Exchange)

It all ties together, Newton’s theory of gravity explained where the tides came from. Those same laws indicated that the tides would cause the Earth’s rotation to slow, something that paleontology has confirmed. That slowing causes the Moon to slowly move away from our planet, something our space program has confirmed! That’s the beauty of science, it all connects up, it all fits together and supports itself.

Two New Studies bring some excitement back to the tired old world of ‘Classical Physics’.

Between the years 1650 and 1900 the science of Physics made tremendous progress in understanding how the world and the things in it worked. Building on the mathematical framework provided by Galileo and Newton the phenomenon of kinematics, celestial mechanics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism were studied and described. It seemed to many as if there was no problem that Newtonian Physics could not conquer. Indeed there were actually some physicists in the late 1800s who believed that they were within reach of a complete understanding of the Universe.

Newton’s famous quote concerning the debt he felt he owed to Galileo and Kepler. Together these three established the rules and formulation of what became ‘Classical Physics’. (Credit: Pinterest)

That comfortable idea blew up between 1900 and 1930 as the twin revolutions of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics completely changed our view of reality forever. These new ways of looking at the universe were so exciting that they made the old, ‘classical physics’ of Sir Isaac seem more than a little tired. I must admit that when I started college in the 1970s classical physics was thought of as something you learned so you could understand the ‘good stuff’.

Classical Physics still works very well for large objects moving at slow speeds. The world of the small or the fast belongs to Quantum Mechanics and Relativity. (Credit: PPT)

That attitude has changed somewhat over the last 20-30 years as new instruments and new mathematical techniques have allowed physicists to take a look back at some old problems that 19th century physicists had ‘kinda, sorta figured out’ but never precisely understood. In general these problems dealt with systems of a large numbers of objects interacting in such complex manners that precise observations were nearly impossible while theoretical calculations involved so much ‘number crunching’ that no human being could ever perform them.

The latest supercomputer are allowing today’s physicists to analyze problems so complex that no human could ever do all of the arithmetic. (Credit: One Zero Medium)

Two of the new tools that are helping to overcome these difficulties are the development of computers and supercomputers along with high speed, high definition cameras. The computers have allowed physicists to perform calculations of extremely complex problems with thousands or even millions of variables, problems where simply the number of calculations to be performed are beyond human ability. The high speed cameras meanwhile allow the scientists to check, with ever greater precision, exactly what is happening in an experiment instant by instant, seeing things that the human eye could never catch.

Ultra High Speed Cameras are allowing scientists to see the details in phenomenon that happen too quickly for the human eye to observe. (Credit: CN Rood)

One phenomenon that in classical physics was understood in general terms but not in its details is turbulence. We are all familiar with turbulence, whether it be strong winds whipping around chaotically or white water in a fast, rocky stream and while it may seem as if it is nothing more than a slight annoyance, turbulence is actually a big problem affecting the design of ships and aircraft as well as forecasting the weather.

Turbulence is a problem of great concern in the aviation industry. (Credit: YouTube)

Strictly speaking turbulence is when the flow of a fluid is caused to break up into swirling vortexes, then those vortexes interact with each other forming an ever growing number of smaller vortexes until the result is just a chaotic maelstrom. This sort of behavior makes turbulence a perfect subject for the ‘new’ classical physics.

Scientists at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science have constructed an especially designed chamber for the study of Turbulence. Contained within a water filled 75 gallon aquarium are two vortex ‘guns’ facing each other. The guns each fire a vortex ring, similar to a smoke ring, which collide in the aquarium’s center generating turbulence. See gif animation below.

Check this out. Even aside from the physics involved it’s just cool to watch! (Credit: Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering)

The water from each of the ‘guns’ is dyed a different colour and each collision is filmed with a high speed, HD camera taking thousands of images per second. What the researchers have observed is a Russian-doll like effect starting with the two main vortexes forming antisymmetric waves at their edges as they collide. At the crests of these waves a number of finger-like filaments develop that counter rotate from their adjacent filament and form new, smaller vortexes. These new vortexes then interact with each other to begin the entire process all over on a much smaller but more numerous scale. With their equipment the scientists have been able to observe three complete sequences before the entire process disappears into chaos. These observations are then compared to the computer simulations developed by the theorists. See gif animation below.

Computer simulation of turbulence. Again it’s just beautiful to watch! (Credit: Harvard University, John A. Paulson School of Engineering)

This back and forth checking between observation and mathematical model is slowly teaching us more and more about the incredibly complex but still familiar phenomenon of turbulence.  

Another familiar phenomenon that is nevertheless still mysterious in many ways is the behavior of a water droplet as it collides with a flat surface. Such a collision has for many years been known to produce three entirely different results. Sometimes the droplet will simply spread out, smoothly covering the surface in a nice circular pattern. More often the droplet splats, that is spreads out explosively resulting in a very uneven pattern. Rarest of all is where the droplet can literally bounce back from the surface as if it where a ball of some kind.

High Speed images of a water droplet literally bouncing off of a surface. Time is in milliseconds ms. (Credit: Telegraph)

Scientists at the University of Warwick are studying the process of water droplets striking a surface and in a recent paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters they have announced what they think is the underlying cause of the three types of collision. After numerous computer simulations, which they’ve compared to high-speed videos the researchers have concluded that the critical factor is the speed of the water droplet.

Consider a water droplet that is slowly approaching a surface. The collision causes the droplet to deform and spread out. As the droplet spreads out intermolecular attractions known as van der Waals forces cause the water molecules to adhere to the surface. As the droplet spreads further the area of contact increases and the van der Waals forces cause the droplet to evenly coat the surface. At higher speed however some of the droplet will spread out but more will bounce back causing the droplet to break up, ejecting smaller droplets that then also strike the surface and generating the familiar splat pattern.

The familiar splat pattern that a water drop makes when it strikes a surface. (credit: Wikiwand)

If the speed of the droplet is just right however a tiny layer of air forms between the droplet and the surface. This layer will be no more than a few nanometers (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter) in thickness but it can act as a trampoline causing the entire droplet bounce off of the surface without ever actually ever touching it. Only at the correct speed is the effect possible, too slow and the van der Waals forces can grab the droplet while too fast and the droplet pushes through the cushion of air striking the surface violently.

While the mechanics of water droplets might seem like an interesting subject with no real importance it’s worth noting that the behavior of droplets is very important in several technologies, everything from ink-drop printing to spray painting. Like turbulence, the behavior of water droplets is just one of the ways that classical physics is still being employed to better understand the world around us.

A new technique has been developed for the manufacture of artificial diamonds and are diamonds really all that valuable anyway?

We all know about diamonds, those sparkly gemstones that are most familiar to us in engagement rings, necklaces and other forms of personal adornment. I’ve actually known someone, a man who had a diamond inserted into a false canine tooth. While rubies, emeralds and sapphires may be valuable its always a diamond that we think of whenever someone mentions a ‘precious gem’.

Looks beautiful doesn’t it, all clear and sparkly. Remember however, it’s just carbon! (Credit:Science News)

Another well-known fact about diamonds is that the chemical element that they are made of is ordinary carbon, just like charcoal and graphite. A diamond however can only form naturally when carbon is exposed to the enormous pressure and temperatures that are found deep below the surface of the Earth. Diamond therefore carry with them information about the conditions that exist within our planet’s interior, making them of great importance to geologists.

Diamond mines are never as attractive as the gems that come from them! (Credit: Mining Global)

The difference between a diamond and other types of carbon is due to nothing more than the way the carbon atoms arrange themselves in space. In graphite, the most common form of naturally occurring carbon, the atoms arrange themselves in rings that then form into broad flat sheets. Although the bonds between the atoms in the rings and even between the rings are stronger than the bonds in a diamond the bonds between the sheets are extremely weak. This makes graphite a very soft material.

Arrangement of carbon atoms in a diamond (l) and graphite (r). (Credit: IGCSE Chemistry)

In a diamond however, the carbon atoms arrange themselves in a basic 3-D shape known as a tetrahedron. Each tetrahedron is then connected to adjacent tetrahedrons so that the entire structure repeats itself over and over again in every direction. Because of this 3-D arrangement a diamond is equally strong in all directions. 

And we all know that diamonds are the hardest naturally occurring material, a quality that makes them as valuable for industry as they are for jewelry. In fact diamonds are so valuable that material scientists have for the last sixty years been developing techniques with which to manufacture diamonds artificially. Unfortunately, despite all of the heat and pressure modern industry can provide diamond production still requires the addition of a metal catalyst into the carbon that leave the diamonds appearing cloudy, usable in industry but nowhere near gem quality. 

They may not be as pretty as gem quality diamonds but these diamonds are every bit as hard. (Credit: Science Photo Library)
A Diamond Saw. Because they are so hard industrial diamonds are useful for cutting or grinding. (Credit: A&M Instruments Inc. )

Now a new technique for the production of artificial diamonds has been developed at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Labouratory (SLAC), a technique that requires far less energy and which produces diamonds of gem quality. The key to this new process is in the raw material, a white powdery residue that is left behind in empty containers of crude oil. The researchers, led by senior author Yu Lin, recognized that the grains of the powder were in fact 1-cage to 3-cage carbon ‘diamondoids’, small fragments of diamond with atoms of the element hydrogen filling in around the edges.

SLAC Scientist Yu Lin recognized that diamondiods, common in raw petroleum products, could be used as building blocks for artificial diamonds. (Credit: Quirky Science)

The researchers took the fine grains of ‘diamondoid’ and placed them in a pressure chamber; actual diamonds are used as the chamber’s inner walls. At a pressure of 20 gigapascals, similar to that deep within the Earth’s interior, the ‘diamondoids’ are zapped with a laser to a temperature of 900 Kelvin, just a fraction of the 5000 Kelvin required for natural diamonds. The ‘diamondoids’ fuse together, eliminating the hydrogen in the process and the result is a tiny pure diamond, gem quality although much too small to be used in jewelry.

Presently the process developed at Stanford is impractical to be employed on an industrial basis, but remember it’s brand new. Who knows what improvements could be made over the next decade or so. Also the Stanford technique has taught Doctor Lin and her colleagues a great deal about how diamonds form, knowledge that could spur those improvements and lead to a better understanding of these precious gems.

Before I close I’d like to take a few minutes to discuss the diamond industry itself. First of all diamonds really aren’t all that rare, certainly not rare enough to justify the high cost of diamond jewelry. In order to keep prices high however the diamond merchants employ a great deal of advertising to convince people that a diamond is some sort of a visible, material symbol of love.

Advertisers tell us that a diamond is a symbol of our love. Does that means that love is cold and hard? (Credit: Isbell Jewelers)

Another trick played by the diamond industry is that fully half of the gem quality diamonds that are brought out of the ground are simply locked away in storage vaults. In this way, by deliberately restricting the supply the price of diamonds in jewelry is kept artificially inflated and consumers are convinced they are buying something much more rare and valuable than it really is.

Additionally of course there is the problem of conflict diamonds. It’s true that many of the gem producing areas of the world are also war zones and both dictators and rebel leaders have used the sale of diamonds and other gems to help finance their murderous careers.

Treated almost like slaves, thousands of people around the world work to provide the diamonds that adorn our fingers! (Credit: Gem Rock Auctions)

All the more reason therefore to hope that the researchers at Stanford will succeed in developing a method to manufacture gem quality diamonds on an industrial scale in order to reduce the value of diamonds. Maybe then diamonds will no longer be used as weapons of war or con-games to bilk innocent consumers.

As hard as it is to believe there are already some people who are trying to make a dishonest buck off of the Coronavirus.

I told myself that I wasn’t going to write a post about the Coronavirus, formally known as Covid-19. I’m certainly not qualified to do a proper job of telling people how to protect themselves from this new infectious disease. Besides, even if I tried to learn everything I could about the Covid-19 you would still be better served by visiting the websites of the Center for Disease Control (CDC) or the National Institute for Health (NIH) or the World Health Organization (WHO). For anyone who is looking for some reliable information on this pandemic you can follow the links below to be taken to the websites of these institutes, something I highly recommend.

CDC:https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/index.html

NIHhttps://www.nih.gov/health-information/coronavirus#!/detail/403327

WHOhttps://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

However, while its true that I’m not the right person to listen to in order to get the most accurate information about Covid-19 I decided that perhaps I could do some good but pointing out some of the lies, falsehoods and even fake cures that are spreading almost as fast as the disease itself. Even more despicable are those who are seeking to use Covid-19 to make a quick buck off of the fears of others.

Electron Microscope false colour Image of a Coronavirus. The tack shaped proteins in red that surround the central sphere form the ‘corona’ that gives this class of viruses its name. (Credit CDC)

Epidemics have always seemed to bring out the very worst in human beings. Old friends and good neighbors can become deadly enemies if we think they might be infected while the disease can also become an excuse for indulging in our usual racial bigotries. Psychologically the disease frightens us, stimulating our fight or flee mechanism. We can’t fight a microscopic virus however, and since we can’t see it, how can we run away from it. So instead we turn on each other making a bad situation much, much worse.

During the ‘Black Death’ of the 14th century rumors went around claiming that Jews were poisoning wells! Killing all the Jews did nothing to stop the spread of the disease. (Credit: Wikipedia)

That’s already happening with the Covid-19. Within weeks of the start of the outbreak, while the disease was still confined to China a conspiracy theory began to be spread across the Internet that the disease wasn’t natural, it had escaped from a Chinese biological warfare labouratory. The evidence for this accusation, well there simply isn’t any; and besides even if the lie were true it how would that help us in fighting Covid-19.

Covid-19 may have started in China but conspiracy theories that the Chinese ‘invented’ it are just modern versions of the well poisoning by Jews lie! (Credit: Business Insider)

Falsely blaming the Chinese is a harmless rumor when compared to some of the misinformation now spreading across social media. Everything from a complete denial of the situation, ‘It’s all a democratic hoax!’, to useless cures like eating raw garlic, taking huge doses of vitamin C or even drinking bleach. (Do not drink bleach, not only won’t it cure Covid-19 it could possibly kill you.)

Eating garlic is probably the least harmful of the fake remedies for Covid-19, but it doesn’t work. (Credit: BBC)

One thing that will help to protect you from Covid-19 is simply washing your hands often or using a hand sanitizer. Because of this however, some people are starting to hoard hand sanitizers and other disinfectants leaving many supermarkets and drug stores with empty shelves. Such panic buying only prevents other customers from obtaining these helpful products, which could actually help to spread the virus.

Of course some of those people who are buying those large quantities of hand sanitizer aren’t doing so to protect themselves. Instead they are buying in order to resell those products at hugely inflated prices.

Just one example of someone trying to get rich off of other people’s fears of Covid-19. $300 dollars for 2 bottle of hand sanitizer! (Credit: News Break)

This practice is known as price gouging and is one of the time honoured if completely illegal techniques for making a quick buck off of your neighbor’s fears and desperation. The new Internet market places of E-bay, Facebook and even Amazon have become innocent vehicles for this trade. While all of these companies are cracking down on websites that are engaging in the illicit business nevertheless it is impossible to keep up with all of the websites being created just to sell over priced disinfectants and cleaning products.

But at least those websites are selling products that are actually helpful in preventing Covid-19. There are also websites, thousands of them now, which are selling fake ‘cures’, snake oil, and otherwise useless products to people who are afraid that they will get Covid-19, at inflated prices of course. One of the more popular ‘cures’ is known as MMS. Depending on the crook selling it MMS can stand for either Miracle Mineral Solution, Miracle Mineral Supplement or Master Mineral Solution.

No matter what name it may be sold under MMS is just house bleach, a very dangerous thing to drink! (Credit FDA)

No matter what the name is MMS comes as a packet of sodium chlorite (NaClO2) along with an ‘activator’ such as citric acid (C6H8O7). Mixed together the chemicals produce Chlorine dioxide (ClO2), bleach, just as I talked about earlier. Dozens of people have been hospitalized after drinking MMS and some of the frauds peddling MMS actually tell their customers that severe vomiting and diarrhea only shows that the ‘cure’ is working. MMS has actually been around for many years being sold as a cure for everything from autism to malaria and especially AIDS.

Another fraudulent ‘cure’ is actually being peddled on cable TV, on ‘The Jim Bakker Show’ to be precise. If the name Jim Bakker rings a bell with your memory that’s because back in the 1990s televangelist Jim Bakker build a money making empire out of his ‘Praise The Lord’ or PTL ministries. Turned out that much of Bakker’s financial shenanigans were illegal so the right reverend spent five years in jail for fraud. Just the sort of person you want to trust your healthcare to!

Anyway, Bakker is back on the air, still selling god and quack cures and on the February 12th episode of his program he and his guest Sherill Sellman (Yes, an actual snake oil salesman named Sellman!) discussed the virtues of Sellman’s product Silver Solution, which is nothing more than particles of silver suspended in a fluid. Purchased from Bakker’s website Silver Solution costs $40 for a 16oz. bottle.

The right reverend Jim Bakker has been using god to defraud people for decades. Silver solution is his latest scam! (Credit: Patheos)

According to Sellman, “Well let’s say it hasn’t been tested on the strain of coronavirus (covid-19 that is) but it’s been tested on other strains of the coronavirus and has been able to eliminate it within 12 hours, totally eliminate it, kills it, deactivates it.” That statement is so inaccurate that not only have the FCC and Federal Trade Commission taken action to prevent Bakker from repeating his false claims but the Attorney General’s of New York and Missouri have issued cease and desist orders against the show. 

This is much closer to God’s truth!!! (Credit: Patheos)

   I could go on but there’s just too much misinformation, outright lies, profiteering, and fake cures for me to cover in a single post. It’s true, this is a dangerous situation, we all need to keep our heads and, most importantly, listen to the doctors and scientists who are studying Covid-19. Again, real information you can trust is available at the websites I listed above, go to them, go to your doctor if you start to feel sick. Before I go I would like to point out one thing. If I stay healthy there is less chance of Covid-19 spreading to you and vice versa. That means that we really are all in this together.

New Research may soon bring relief to million of Allergy Sufferers.

I think I’ll start today with a bit of personal information. For most of my life I suffered greatly from allergies. Every year starting in late May and going through most of June I’d be absolutely miserable while late September was also pretty bad. Like most victims of allergy I’m not quite certain of everything that I’m allergic to but I know I’m allergic to dogwood pollen and, worst of all grass!

Spring is such a wonderful time of year, unless like me you have allergies! (Credit: New York Post)

The absolute worse thing about an allergy is that it’s really all just a mistake! An allergic reaction occurs when your immune system mistakes the presence of a harmless substance as an attack by a lethal pathogen. That’s true, a few grains of grass pollen in my nostrils aren’t going to do me any harm but my body will react as if I’ve contacted the latest coronavirus.

When you have an allergy your body will react to a harmless Allergen exactly the same way it reacts to a disease pathogen! (Credit: McGraw-Hill)

I’ll get all of the typical symptoms, runny nose, sneezing, stuffed sinuses, sometimes even a fever just as if I had a cold or the flu but I’m not sick at all, my body just thinks I am. And I tried all of the remedies, antihistamines, steroids, decongestants but nothing did much good. At least my allergies didn’t worsen into asthma, an allergic reaction that causes a swelling of the esophagus that can be life threatening.

Typical Symptoms of an allergic reaction. (Credit: Colorado Allergy and Asthma)

Funny thing is, now as I’m older my allergies are slowly going away. Over the last decade or so I may have one or two bad days every year. My symptoms now however are nothing like the misery I went through back in High School and College. Still, even today the smell of fresh cut grass can send chills down my spine.

Even today I shudder whenever I see or hear a lawn mower in action! (Credit:The Ground Guys)

Besides allergies to plant pollens like mine there are also people who have food allergies, some of which can be very severe, even lethal on occasions. Cow’s milk, egg whites, tree nuts, fish and wheat are all known to cause allergies but the two most common food allergies are to shellfish and peanuts.

Food allergies can be very nasty because you have to be careful about ALL of the ingredients in everything you eat! (Credit: AIRE Medical Group)

Reactions to insect bites and stings are also common and these can be the deadliest form of an allergy. For some people a single bee’s sting may cause their esophagus to swell so much that they can literally suffocate without immediate treatment. For individuals with such severe allergies a shot of the medication epinephrine may be the difference between life and death and many carry a device known as an epinephrine autoinjector for just such emergencies.

An allergic reaction to a Wasp Sting typically starts as a rash as shown here. (Credit: Healthline)
For people with really severe allergies Epinephrine can be a life saver! (Credit: Baby Center)

The leading theory as to why we suffer from allergies is known as the hygiene hypothesis. Simply put the hygiene hypothesis states that thousands of years ago our ancestors living in the wild were constantly being bombarded with bacteria and viruses along with innocuous organic material like tree pollen. Our immune systems therefore evolved to not only fight this barrage but to expect it.

Our ancestors thousands of years ago lived much less hygienic lives than we do but their bodies learned to accept the common allergens around them. (Credit: Medium)

Today however we live in an artificial environment, the homes we live in possess both central heating and air conditioning so that we almost never open any windows. This means that we are rarely exposed to natural organic particles in the air, like pollen grains.

Today we keep our homes clean to protect us from real diseases but it also makes our bodies more sensitive to harmless allergens. (Credit: Space-O Technologies)

We also bathe or shower daily and wash our hands before meals and after going to the bathroom, again removing organic substances from our skin. We practice these hygienic habits because we know that they help to prevent the spread of diseases but those same habits also leave our immune systems without an enemy to fight causing them to become hyper-sensitive.

This theory also explains the fact that people in developed countries are more likely to acquire allergies than those in under developed countries and city dwellers more likely to suffer than farmers. It also explains why some people can lose their allergies over time. Take me for example, after 45-50 years of overreacting to grass pollen my body seems to have finally realized that it’s not harmful.

Armed with the hygiene hypothesis physicians have developed techniques, known as immunotherapy, where repeated applications of small doses of an allergy causing agent can enable the patient to build up resistance to their allergy. This technique has been found to provide considerable benefit to patients with environment allergens such as pollen and insect bites but only occasional success for people with food allergies.

One problem with using immunotherapy to treat allergies is that it only works for one specific allergy at a time! (Credit: Science Mission)

A corollary to the hygiene theory is the farm factor, basically the idea that children who grow up on farms are so exposed to potential allergens that they acquire all of the immunities that our ancient ancestors once possessed. Exposure to one substance in particular seems to provide a strong protective effect, cow urine.

That’s right cow urine. Proteins called lipocalins that are found in cow urine are currently being studied at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna by Doctor Erika Jensen Jarolim. Doctor Jarolim has been able to show that lipocalins are able to treat allergic reactions in labouratory mice, who if you think about it live a much more hygienic life than we do and should therefore be more susceptible to allergies.

Doctor Erika Jensen Jarolim of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna. (Credit: Researchgate)
Cow urine, that’s right cow urine may be the secret to controlling allergic reactions. After all if you can lose your sensitivity to it you’ve pretty much lost your sensitivity to everything! (Credit: Waterqualitynz.info)

The same proteins are also present in a cow’s milk but unfortunately the process of pasteurization to kill bacteria also destroys the lipocalins. Instead of milk Doctor Jarolim is currently working on a pill form of the lipocalins which unlike anti-histamines would actually provide an immunity to allergies rather than simply relieving their symptoms. Whether or not Doctor Jarolim succeeds in developing a treatment that will completely eliminate the scourge of allergies there is no doubt that progress is definitely being made. The more we understand the causes of the hypersensitivities that plague our immune systems the better able we will be to eliminating them. 

Book Review: ‘The Io Encounter’ by Brandon Q. Morris

The ‘Io Encounter’ is the third in a series of novels by science fiction author Brandon Q. Morris concerning the voyage of the spaceship ‘International Life Search Expedition’ or ILSE. In ‘The Enceladus Mission’ (Reviewed in my post of 16 October 2019) a robotic space probe on Enceladus sends back data confirming the existence of life on that distant moon of Saturn. In response the world’s space agencies organize the ILSE mission to discover what kind of life inhabits that icy world. In ‘The Enceladus Mission’ the mission is successful but not without loss to the crew of ILSE.

Cover of ‘The Io Encounter’ by Brandon Q. Morris. (Credit: Amazon)
Author Brandon Q. Morris. (Credit: Facebook)

‘The Titan Probe’, the second book in the series (Also reviewed in my post of 16 October 2019) begins while ILSE is still in orbit around Enceladus. Another probe on the surface of Saturn’s larger moon Titan is also sending back data indicating that something is going on there so ILSE is ordered to go and investigate. Again the mission is successful thanks to the ingenuity of the ILSE crew.

Covers of ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’ by Brandon Q. Morris (Credit: Amazon)

I liked both ‘The Enceladus Mission’ and ‘The Titan Probe’; both are hard science fiction based on well established science. In both novels the crew use their training and knowledge to overcome the obstacles that author Morris throws at them. I also liked the extraterrestrials in both books, they were really alien while at the same time being understandable.

Which only makes ‘The Io Encounter’ that much more of a letdown. The novel starts with ILSE having left Saturn and on its way back to Earth. On the return trip the ship will make a flyby of Jupiter in order to get a boost from the giant planet’s gravity.

As they are approaching Jupiter however the crew discover that something is happening on the moon Io so they decide to stop and take a look! After all how hard can that be!

The Pimply face of Jupiter’s Moon Io. Io is the most volcanic place in the Solar System. Bombarded with radiation from Jupiter’s version of the van Allen belts Io is hardly the sort of place you just stop at while you’re passing by! (Credit: Space.com)

Well space missions are usually designed with very little margin for detours of any kind. That side trip to Titan when the crew where at Enceladus would have required a delta vee of no more than about 3 kilometers per second. A space journey to Saturn would probably have that kind of spare fuel so in ‘The Titan Probe’ I was more than willing to go along for the sake of the story.

Going from a Jupiter flyby to orbit around Io however would require a delta vee of at least 7 km/sec, about as much as getting into Earth orbit. And then you would need another 7 km/sec when you leave Io to continue on to Earth. But it gets worse because, without giving away any of the plot elements, midway through the novel the ILSE turns around and starts back to Saturn! And then later on the ship stops midway between the two giant planets to once again head back to Io. After being so detailed and logical about how everything works in the first two novels Mr. Morris seems to have just given up on reality and simply has the ship do whatever he wants in order to keep the plot moving.

Remember in the Movie ‘Apollo 13’ where the engineers at Mission Control have to figure out how the Lunar Module can use an air filter designed for the Command Module. Space missions are VERY HARD to redesign in progress!!! (Credit: MSN.com)

Not that the plot of ‘The Io Encounter’ is really worth it. Morris simply brings out the tired old cliché of ‘military elements’ in the US and Chinese governments who want to kill the creature that the ILSE crew discovered back on Enceladus. All in all it’s not a good finish for what had been an interesting series of stories.

Back in the 1950s any alien that landed on Earth was immediately attacked by our Military (Credit: IMDB)

Reading ‘The Io Encounter’ I couldn’t help but wonder if Brandon Q. Morris hadn’t been rushed to complete the novel. It seems to me that a lot of times an author will take 2, 3 or even more years to complete a first novel that turns out to be popular. Then their publisher hounds them to finish another story while they’re hot with the result that the follow up is nowhere near as good as the first story where they took their time to do it right.

I guess what I’m saying is that ‘The Io Encounter’ isn’t a bad story, it just seems like a really rushed story.

Space News for March 2020.

Last month’s Space News was all about the race between Space x and Boeing to see which of these two aerospace corporations would be the first to launch a privately owned spacecraft carrying live astronauts. That is the stated goal of NASA’s ‘Commercial Crew Program’, a program that is now two years behind schedule. See my post of 25Jan2020. There’s been a bit more news about Space X and Boeing since then so I think I’ll begin with an update.

The bad news comes from Boeing. You may recall that back on the 20th of December Boeing launched its Starliner capsule on an unmanned final test flight to the International Space Station (ISS). The launch itself went well but while the spacecraft was adjusting its orbit a software glitch caused the maneuvering rockets to fire for so long that the spacecraft no longer had enough fuel to reach the ISS and complete the mission. The capsule was brought down from orbit and successfully recovered with what appeared to be only that single, software problem.

Launch of the Boeing Starliner Capsule on its Orbital Test Flight. Turns out the spacecraft had several software related problems during the test. (Credit: CNN.Com)

Not so fast. Turns out that there was another, potentially much more dangerous software problem that was caught just a few hours before it could have badly damaged the spacecraft. Just before re-entry the crew capsule has to discard its service module in order to expose the heatshield that will project it from the heat generated by fiction in the atmosphere. Once detached the service module then uses its maneuvering rockets to get out the capsule’s way so it can begin re-entry.

Before Re-entry of the Starliner the Crew Module must separate from the Service Module which then needs to get out of the Crew Module’s way! (Credit: Yahoo Movies UK)

That’s where the second software glitch comes in because the service module’s rockets were being told to fire in exactly the wrong direction. This could have resulted in a collision of the two modules, potentially damaging the capsule’ heatshield and making re-entry impossible.

There may even be more issues that haven’t been identified yet; the NASA investigation isn’t completed. Regardless, this second issue will almost certainly require Boeing to carry out another, more successful unmanned test flight of Starliner before NASA will allow a manned flight.

Boeing’s troubles with its Starliner capsule come on top of the company’s continuing troubles with its 737 Max 800 Jet! (Credit: New York Post)

Which makes it a safe bet that Space X will be the first private company to launch human beings into space. Having aced their final In-Flight-Abort test in January all that remains before astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken climb aboard Space X’s Dragon capsule for a trip to the ISS is paperwork, a lot of paperwork. Informed sources have stated that both NASA and Space X are working toward a target launch date of May 7th but realistically the mission could take place anytime between late April or early June. And just to make certain that the tees are crossed and the eyes dotted on all of that paperwork Space X has announced that they have hired former NASA Associate Director for Human Exploration and Operations William Gerstenmaier to oversee the final details. With his background in NASA’s shuttle and ISS programs Gerstenmaier will see to it that when Dragon does launch it will be as ready to go as humanly possible.

Space X’s Dragon Capsule has completed all of its tests and its first manned mission could come as early as April! (Credit: Space X)
William Gerstenmaier is a long time manager of NASA manned missions. His expertise will be of great value to Space X. (Credit: Space News)

One question still to be resolved is just how long Hurley and Behnken will stay at the ISS. The original plan was for the Dragon capsule to only remain docked to the station for a week but at the moment Chris Cassidy is the only American aboard the ISS. To increase their presence on the ISS NASA is considering extending Hurley and Behnken’s mission to as much as three months. If that option is chosen then Hurley and Behnken may need to undergo some additional ISS training. Whichever option is chosen the countdown has begun, in just a matter of months the U.S. will be back in the business of human space flight.

Space X Astronauts Doug Hurley (r) and Bob Behnken are ready, even anxious to go! (Credit: Space X)

Now of course NASA is also in the unmanned space exploration business as well, and there’s news from the furthest parts of our Solar system and beyond.

NASA is still downloading data from its New Horizons spacecraft that the probe gathered during its flyby of the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth, formerly Ultima Thule, back on New Year’s Day in 2019. Even from the first images that were sent back of the peanut shaped object however planetary scientists became convinced that Arrokoth was actually two objects that were fully formed before they joined softly together. See image below.

The data sent back by New Horizons clearly shows that Arrokoth is two distinct objects that gently came together. (Credit: NASA)

Now the New Horizons team thinks that their models of how Arrokoth formed may have a profound effect on theories of how our entire Solar system came into being. Current ideas about planet formation are rather violent, with orbiting boulders smashing into each other while proto-planets were bombarded by a constant rain of meteoroids.

Was the formation of the Earth this violent? The data from Arrokoth seems to say no! (Credit: Quora)

The data from New Horizons suggests that the early Solar system may not have been quite so violent however. Perhaps the pieces that made up the planets came together more gently and as the proto-planet grew the force of gravity just squeezed everything together into the familiar ball shape that the planets have today. How much influence the work of the New Horizons scientists will have on our theories of the early solar system remains to be seen, after all other scientists still get their chance to examine and criticize it. Also it’s worth remembering that things are a lot colder and quieter in the outer Solar system anyway, after all Pluto’s velocity around the Sun is just about one tenth that of Mercury’s. With that in mind you would expect events in the outer Solar System to happen less violently.

I’d like to conclude this briefing by discussing the problem that NASA recently successfully fixed on the Voyager 2 space probe. First launched over forty years ago Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited four planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The Voyager 2 spacecraft has had a rather distinguished career! (Credit: JPL-NASA)

Voyage 2 is still working; it’s left the Solar System now, joining its sister Voyager 1 in interstellar space. With only a tiny amount of energy still being provided by its Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) NASA has shut off all of the probe’s instruments except its magnetometer and cosmic ray detector to save power.

Then on January 25 Voyager 2 failed to perform a routine calibration of its magnetometer. Telemetry from the spacecraft indicated that a fault protection circuit had been activated to prevent a power overload. Since Voyager 2 is now so far away from Earth, 18.5 billion kilometers, it takes 17 hours for an instruction to reach the probe, and another 17 for the spacecraft’s response to reach Earth, even trying to understand the problem took a considerable amount of time. In fact it took a full three days of back and forth messages to sort out the power budget.

Still they did it; they managed to fix a 42-year-old spacecraft that’s now speeding through the space between the stars. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Labouratory are confident that both Voyager probes could continue their missions for as much as another 10 years. Imagine that, fifty years of exploring both the Solar System as well as interstellar space.