Category: Science

Hundreds of new Species from the time of the Dinosaurs are being discovered in Burmese amber, and why that may not be a good thing!

Ever since prehistoric times amber has been treasured as a rare and beautiful gemstone that we know was used in some of the earliest pieces of jewelry ever made. Amber isn’t actually a stone however; it’s just fossilized tree sap. That is, sap that has dripped down the side of a tree, dried out and become petrified over thousands or more likely millions of years.

Sometimes that tree sap can even capture a small living creature within it before it becomes hard, insects and spiders are the most common victims. And as the sap fossilizes the animal with it can be exquisitely preserved creating some of the best specimens of ancient life known to paleontology. This preservation in amber was even the main plot device in the ‘Jurassic Park’ movies where scientists obtain dino DNA from mosquitoes that have been preserved in amber.

In the Movie ‘Jurassic Park’ the top of Richard Attenborough’s staff was a piece of amber with a mosquito trapped in it (Credit: Daily Mail)

So it’s hardly surprising that paleontologists are always searching for new sources of amber that could contain unknown species from the past. In recent years the best, most interesting fossil amber has come from mines in the province of Kachin in the northeast of the country of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. See map below.

Location of Amber Mines in Kachin Myanmar (Credit: Science)

I have already written a post about one of the most interesting finds discovered in Burmese amber, the tail of a very small dinosaur, with feathers on it. See my post of 16 December 2016 and the image below. Certainly the odds of something so rare happening must be enormous but given millions of years of past history even something that seems next to impossible will eventually occur.

Feathered Tail of a baby Dinosaur found in Burmese Amber (Credit: National Geographic)

The same could be said for a more recent find, the shell of an extinct sea creature known as an ammonite. See image below.

Ammonite shell (lower right) and a lot of other stuff found in Burmese amber (Credit: The Independent)

How could the shell of a creature of the ocean ever get trapped inside the sap from a land tree? Well one clue is that it is only the shell of the animal, all of the soft tissue had decayed before it was encased. Probably the shell was washed up on the shore, perhaps during a storm so that the waves could have could have pushed it fairly far inland, far enough to wind up at the base of a tree that was dripping sap. A one in a billion chance that; again if you wait long enough will happen.

Fossils in amber are also known from other sites around the world such as the Baltic or the Dominican Republic but the amber from Myanmar is both older and for some reason not yet understood, the sap occasionally seems to have trapped larger, stronger, more active creatures such as snakes, lizards and even a few birds. Because of these factors paleontologists are rushing to acquire as much of the Burmese amber as they can.

A few more interesting finds from Burmese amber (Credit: Science)

There is blood on the amber coming from Myanmar however, for the province of Kachin is a conflict zone and the amber mines are controlled by rebels who call themselves the Kachin Independence Army and who are fighting the central government. The situation in Myanmar is very similar to that of the blood-diamonds from Africa in the 1990s where militant insurgents would exploit natural resources in the regions they control in order to fund their rebel armies.

The mines from where Burmese amber comes are dangerous, low paying places to work (Credit: Science)

The same is now happening to the Burmese amber, which is smuggled into nearby China and sold in the markets of cities like Tengchong in Yunnan province. It’s there that paleontologists have to search in order to obtain the scientifically important specimens before they are sold to someone interested only in amber for jewelry.

Buying Burmese Amber that has been smuggled into China (Credit: Science)

In fact no paleontologist or geologist has ever been able to visit one of the amber mines in order to actually determine the precise age of the strata from which the amber comes. Present estimates of 99 million year old are based upon the study of the animals found in the amber and many scientists feel that the amber really has a range of dates.

Obviously this is not a good way to do science. A lot of information about the animal encased in the amber is lost when proper records are not kept. Paleontology is about more than just discovering and describing extinct lifeforms; it’s also about understanding the conditions in which they lived and with what other creatures. All that data is lost when a specimen is smuggled out of a war zone into another country and sold in an open market.

In the years to come I have no doubt that many more fascinating creatures from the age of the dinosaurs will be found in the Burmese amber. How much more could we learn however if scientists could obtain access to the source of the amber and do a proper job of excavation?

 

 

Space News for May 2019: Are we on our way back to the Moon?

Hopefully it’s not just because the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar landing is coming up in a few months but I’m certain that you’ve noticed there’s been a lot of talk about humans returning to the Moon recently. With that in mind I think I’ll use this month’s installment of Space news to offer my two cents worth.

Back in March NASA was officially tasked by the Trump administration with developing a plan for returning American astronauts to the Lunar surface by the year 2024, hardly enough time to prepare a robotic mission let alone a manned one. That detailed plan has now been released and the new Lunar program has a name at least, Artemis the Greek Goddess of the Moon and the twin sister of Apollo.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announces the Artemis program to take America back to the Moon (Credit: Daily Mail)

Now to be honest, this time NASA doesn’t have to start from scratch as they did back in the 1960s. With the Space Launch System (SLS) and the Orion crew vehicle the space agency has two of the three major components of an updated Apollo program almost ready to fly. Almost ready, as in both programs have encountered significant delays already and are several years behind schedule.

NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) is nearlt ready for its first test launch (Credit: NASA)
NASA’s Orion Crew vehicle is also nearly ready for its first test (Credit: Wikipedia)

Still, the SLS and Orion are expected to undertake their first missions in 2020 so really all NASA needs to put astronauts back on the Moon is a new version of the Lunar Module (LM). You would think that if they concentrate their efforts on producing a LM five years should be enough time to develop one. In fact Lockheed Martin has already prepared some initial designs for just such a Lunar lander so there would be no need to start from scratch.

Lockheed Martin’s concept for a Lunar Lander (Credit: Space News)

Problem is that NASA also wants to construct a space station in Lunar orbit called the Deep Space Gateway and building that could require several times the effort needed for just a new LM. The idea is for the Gateway to serve as a place to park a reusable LM module as well as conduct long-duration missions in deep space. See my post of 31Dec2018.

NASA’s proposed Deep Space Gateway, with an Orion Capsule docked on the left (Credit: Wikipedia)

The complete Artemis program proposed by NASA is both boldly ambitious in scope and detailed in its planning. In addition to meeting Trump’s goal of a manned landing by 2024 the plan continues beyond that with one manned landing each year and concludes in 2028 with the establishment of a semi-permanent Lunar base. The total plan requires 37 launches in all, a mixture of SLS and Commercial Launch Vehicles (CLVs) like the Space X Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy. Most of the missions will not in fact be manned but rather robotic spacecraft that will place equipment in either Lunar orbit or on the Moon’s surface.

The only thing missing now is of course the MONEY! While the full Artemis program should not cost as much as the Apollo program did, adjusting for inflation, it’s still going to require a major increase in NASA’s budget. All at a time when the Federal Government has virtually ground to a halt due to partisan bickering, a time when the yearly federal deficit is over a trillion dollars, and next year is an election year!

Recent and projected yearly Federal budget deficits (Credit: FactCheck.org)

In order to get the ball-rolling Trump has promised to add another $1.6 Billion to NASA’s 2020 budget. That could pay for perhaps one of the 37 missions but hold on, he needs congressional approval even for that small increase.

A better sign of progress was NASA’s awarding of a contract to begin construction of the first of the Gateway modules to Maxar corporation. The $375 million dollar contract is for the design and development of the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE), obviously a critical section of the planned space station.

The first section of the Deep Space Gateway to be constructed will be the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) (Credit: Daily Mail)

Still I have to admit that I don’t hold much hope for Artemis. In terms of an outline for an engineering project it’s first rate but there simply isn’t the political will in this country to get it done. We’ve been down this road before; George H. W. Bush directed NASA to go to Mars but never funded it. George W. Bush wanted to go back to the Moon but never funded it. Bill Clinton just wanted to build a Space Station but at least that got built.

Large-scale scientific project like manned exploration beyond Earth orbit require a long-term commitment by the politicians holding the purse strings. With our present political mess I see little hope of the kind of commitment needed any time soon!

What I’m most afraid of is that a year or so from now, when the hoopla and nostalgia of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 is past the current plans for a return to the Moon will all be forgotten and nothing will have been accomplished.

The Space Race part 6: The Saturn V rocket and Apollo 8

This is the sixth in a series of posts in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11 and man’s first landing on the Moon. In this post I will discuss the design and development of the Saturn V launch vehicle, still the largest and most powerful rocket ever built. I will also talk about the Apollo 8 mission, the first manned mission to launch on the Saturn V and the first time astronauts left Earth orbit and traveled to another heavenly body, orbiting the Moon ten times before returning safely our planet.

The official NASA patch for the Apollo 8 Mission (Credit: NASA)

If anyone was going to get to the Moon by President Kennedy’s deadline they were going to need a big rocket, much bigger than anything that had ever been built before. Fortunately for NASA Werner von Braun, the German rocket expert that they had rescued at the end of World War II, had been thinking about a manned mission to the Moon since before Hitler’s rise to power. The image below shows von Braun with his circa 1955 concept of a Moon Rocket from a “Tommorowland” episode of “The Wonderful World of Disney”.

Werner von Braun with a model of his proposed Moon Rocket in 1955 (Credit: Disney)

In late 1962 NASA settled that the mission profile for their Lunar program would be Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) wherein two spacecraft would enter lunar orbit, a mothership along with a smaller landing module that would carry two men to the Moon’s surface. Once the lander had returned the astronauts to lunar orbit it would dock with the mothership which would then bring the entire crew back to Earth.

NASA Engineer John Houbolt explains his Lunar Orbit Rendezvous concept of landing on the Moon (Credit: Universe Today)

With that profile settled von Braun could begin the design of the massive rocket that would be needed. Originally designated as the C-5 the Saturn V would dwarf all previous rockets consisting of three stages and standing more than 110m tall with the Apollo spacecraft on top.

A Complete Saturn V and Apollo spacecraft being rolled out to the launch pad (Credit: NASA)

Everything about the Saturn V was enormous; the thrust provided by its first stage was 33 million Newtons provided by five F-1 rocket engines for a total time of 168 seconds. The second stage’s thrust was lower at only 5 million Newtons but it burned for more than twice as long at 384 seconds.

The first stage of the Saturn V used five massive F-1 engines (Credit: Flickr)

The third S-IVB stage would fire twice, firing for a short time to nudge Apollo into Earth orbit while it’s second firing would propel the Apollo Command, Service and Lunar Modules to the Moon. In total the Saturn V was capable of lifting 140,000 kg into Low Earth Orbit (LOE) or 48,600 kg to an Earth Escape trajectory.

In late 1968 the Apollo Command and Service Modules (CSM) had already accomplished their first test mission in Earth orbit during the Apollo 7 mission and the Saturn V had completed its first unmanned launch on November 9th 1967. NASA’s schedule now called for a mission to test the Lunar Module (LM) in Earth orbit but the LM was behind schedule; it wouldn’t be ready until early in 1969. With only a year to go to meet Kennedy’s deadline the space agency had to make some progress.

It was NASA’s Apollo spacecraft manager George Low who suggested that Apollo 8 be assigned the mission of humanity’s first trip around the Moon. Such a mission Low argued, would provide a complete checkout of the full capabilities of the Apollo spacecraft and the Saturn V while at the same time testing NASA’s ability to track and communicate with Apollo all the way to the Moon and back. The fact that the CIA had information that the Soviets were preparing for just such a mission played no small role in the decision.

So it was that on December 21st of 1968 the Apollo 8 mission was launched from Cape Kennedy space center with a crew of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders. The Saturn V rocket performed flawlessly placing the CSM, along with the S-IVB third stage into LOE. This combination of modules represented the first time that a manned spacecraft had been placed into space which was capable of leaving Earth’s gravitational field and journeying into deep space.

The Crew of Apollo 8, Frank Borman (l), Jim Lovell (r) and Bill Anders (c) (Credit: NASA)

After spending two orbits checking out their spacecraft the Apollo 8 crew was given the command from mission control “Apollo 8, you are go for TLI” where TLI stood for Trans Lunar Insertion. The engine of the S-IVB stage was reignited and the crew of Apollo 8 became the first human beings to reach Earth escape velocity, they were on their way to the Moon.

During the sixty-eight hour journey to the Moon the CSM detached from the S-IVB stage, turned 180º about and ‘practiced’ removing a LM from its storage position place in the S-IVB. On the 24th of December, Christmas Eve, the spacecraft passed behind the Moon and the Apollo 8 crew became the first human beings to see the far side of the Moon with their own eyes.

Firing the Service Module engine while speeding over farside the Apollo spacecraft entered Lunar orbit, completing ten orbits in about twenty hours. With the Moon between them and Earth the Apollo 8 crew were completely out of radio contact, further from Earth than any human beings had ever been. As the CSM came out from behind the Moon the crew became the first humans to ever witness an Earthrise, see image below.

Earthrise as seen for the first time by the crew of Apollo 8 (Credit: NASA)

It was while orbiting the Moon on Christmas Eve that the Apollo 8 crew sent back to Earth a live television transmission that famously included a reading by the crew of the first chapter of the book of Genesis as translated in the King James Bible.

The riskiest stages of the mission were still to come. Would the Service Module’s engine fire again to speed Apollo 8 back to Earth and would the heat shied on the Command Module protect the crew as they reentered Earth’s atmosphere at the speed of 40,000 kph, over 11 kps!

This Apollo 8 reentry photograph was taken by a U.S. Air Force ALOTS (Airborne Lightweight Optical Tracking System) camera mounted on a KC-135A aircraft flown at 40,000 ft altitude. (Credit: NASA / USAF)

The Apollo 8 crew and equipment performed flawlessly and the crew splashed down on December 27th 1968. Human beings had now journeyed to the Moon; all that remained was to land safely and return. Apollo 8 splashed down safely in the north Pacific Ocean on 27 December of 1968.

The Apollo 8 capsule bobbing in the Pacific Ocean on 27 December 1968. (Credit: NASA)

It’s Horseshoe Crab mating season in the Delaware Bay, a ritual of the natural World that’s nearly half a billion years old.

One of the most ancient forms of life on Earth are the Horseshoe Crabs, a family of arthropods that are actually more closely related to modern spiders and scorpions than real crabs. Horseshoe crabs have been living in the oceans of the world for more than 450 million years now, so long that they are commonly referred to as ‘living fossils’.

The Fossil of a Horseshoe Crab is from the Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago and looks hardly different from those alive today (Credit: House and Home Magazine)

As befits their name Horseshoe Crabs have a hard external shell, the large front piece of which has a rough ‘horseshoe’ shape. Unlike the true crabs whose legs and claws come out of the sides of their shells however the legs of Horseshoe Crabs are underneath and completely covered by that hard shell.

The external anatomy of the Horseshoe Crab, top and bottom (Credit: University of Southern Florida)

Horseshoe Crabs are fairly common creatures; there are four species spread across the world. Here on the U.S. east coast the local species is known as Limulus polyphemus and they live in the shallow waters of the bays and inlets feeding off of small pieces of food, worms, small mollusks and whatever else they can find to eat in the sand.

The best time to observe Horseshoe Crabs is during their spring breeding season when they come ashore to mate and lay their eggs on sandy beaches. For me that means a trip down to the lower Delaware bay during late May or early June.

Horseshoe Crabs Mating. The larger female is up front with the smaller male behind (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Now you have to find the right beach, too many people will disturb the crabs and the sandier the beach is the more crabs will come to mate on it. If you find the right beach at the right time however you get to watch as literally thousands of these ancient creatures come out of the water to create another generation of their kind.

Mating for Horseshoe Crabs is a pretty simple affair. The larger females come ashore and deposit their eggs into the sand. The smaller males grab the female from behind and fertilize the eggs as the female lays them. Competition amongst the males is fierce and it is not uncommon to find two or three males all trying to grab and mate with the same female.

For the best show you also have to come at the right time. The crabs come ashore at high tide but of course that’s when the beach is covered by water so they’re not easy to see. The best time to arrive is about an hour or two after high tide and then watch as the receding water reveals them by their thousands. I timed it perfectly this year as there were some Horseshoe Crabs already on the beach as we arrived but as the tide receded it seemed as if with every minute that passed more and more of the creatures appeared out of the water.

The outgoing tide reveals thousands of Horseshoe Crabs ready to mate (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

The annual mating of the Horseshoe Crabs is an important event for other creatures besides just the crabs. You see the crab’s eggs are very nutritious and represents a vital food source for several species of migrating shorebirds, especially the Red Knots.

Red Knots are a migratory bird with one of the longest yearly journeys of any living creature. During winter in the northern hemisphere the Red Knots live at the bottom of South America but they breed in the northern parts of Canada during the northern summer, a round trip of over 30,000 kilometers.

The Red Knot shorebird, center, has one of the longest migration journeys of any living creature (Credit: E. M. Lawler)

As you might guess the Red Knots need to find some good meals along the way. In fact the Horseshoe Crab eggs are so important to the birds that they time their migration so as to arrive along the U. S. east coast just as the Crabs are breeding. This interrelationship between two such different species is one of the more interesting stories that illustrate the complexity of life here on Earth.

Today both species, crab and bird are threatened by human activity. For a long time Horseshoe Crabs were cut up and used for bait in order to trap eels but they are also harvested for their blood that is used to detect bacterial infections by the pharmaceutical industry. (By the way, the blood of Horseshoe Crabs is based on copper rather than iron as ours is so it is blue in colour.) The biggest threat to Horseshoe Crabs however is the loss of breeding territory because of shoreline development.

The shell of this Horseshoe Crab has become the home of several barnacles. You can also see how the animal has been tagged to aid scientists in their studies of the creature (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

 

Watching the Horseshoe Crabs as they came ashore to lay their eggs I knew that I was witnessing one of the oldest annual events in the history of life here on Earth. As the shorebirds walked between the crabs feeding on the freshly laid eggs I began to wonder what creatures might have eaten those eggs say 350 million years ago. That would have been the time of the earliest amphibians, the ancestors of all modern vertebrates, reptiles, birds and mammals. Is it possible that the mating of Horseshoe Crabs might have provided food for our own distant forebears?

Horseshoe crabs are very ancient creatures after all, for all of our science we probably only know a fraction of all the things that they’ve seen.

Paleontology News for May 2019: Two new interesting species of dinosaurs discovered.

Most people know that the dinosaurs dominated Earth for over 150 million years but of course it wasn’t just one species of dinosaur and not all of the dinosaurs were so dominating. Some species were smaller, more inconspicuous relatives of the better-known giants while others represented evolutionary experiments that, for one reason or another simply did not leave any descendents, in other words they were experiments that failed.

I’ll start with the recent discovery of a relative of the famous Tyrannosaurus rex discovered in New Mexico by Dr. Sterling Nesbitt of Virginia Tech College of Science’s Department of Geosciences. Named Suskityrannus hazelae the two-legged theropod likely measured about 2.7 m from the tip of its nose to the end of its tail and stood less than a meter tall at the hip. This small meat eating would have weighted between 20 and 40 kg and likely hunted smaller animals.

An Artist’s illustration of Suskityrannus hazelae (Credit: Andrey Atuchin)

According to Dr. Nesbitt, “Suskityrannus hazelae gives us a glimpse into the evolution of tyrannosaurs just before they take over the planet.” Based on the geologic strata in which it was discovered S hazelae lived some 92 million years ago near the beginning of the Cretaceous period. Because of the time it lived along with its anatomy S hazelae could prove to be a link between the older and smaller tyrannosauroids of North America and China and the much larger tyrannosaurids of which T rex is the best-known member.

Dr. Sterling Nesbitt with the bones of S hazelae (Credit: Virginia Tech)

The second new species of dinosaur to be discovered is rather a bit stranger. Ambopteryx longibrachium is a species of theropod dinosaur that flew, or perhaps only glided, with leathery bat like wings. Now I’m not talking about one of the pterosaurs, those bat like reptiles that lived at the same time as the dinosaurs but which weren’t dinosaurs.

The flying reptiles known as Pterosaurs were not dinosaurs! Their anatomy is different! (Credit: Iraber.info)

A longibrachium is a theropod, the same group of dinosaurs that includes T-rex and from which the true flying dinosaurs, better known as birds, would come. In fact A longibrachium lived approximately at the same time as the first birds, the late Jurassic period some 163 million years ago, about the same time as the famous Archaeopteryx.

Artist’s illustration of what Ambopteryx Longibrachium may have looked like (Credit: Smithsonian)

The fossils of A longibrachium are remarkably well preserved not only showing the membrane of their leathery wings but also the impressions of fuzzy feathers that were probably helped to keep the animal warm. The most critical part of the anatomy to be preserved was an enlarged, rod like wrist bone known as a styliform, an adaptation previously unknown in dinosaurs but present in pterosaurs and flying squirrels.

The actual fossil of A longibrachium. The leathery wings are quite obvious (Credit: Discovery Magazine)

The fossil remains of A longibrachium were discovered in China by scientists at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Over the last few decades there has been a lot of paleontological research underway in China with important discoveries being made in many different periods of Earth’s history. (See my post of 10 April 2019)

Ambopteryx longibrachium fits into the evolutionary tree of small theropods very closely to those who would become the birds! (Credit: Nature)

So what happened to the dinosaurs like A longibrachium? Well perhaps the bat winged dinosaurs lost out to their relatives the evolving true birds. Or perhaps there was some ecological crisis that the bat winged dinosaurs failed to survive. We can’t say at present, but you can be certain that the paleontologists will keep searching for the answers, and isn’t that what science is all about!

NASA is preparing plans for defending Earth against a collision with and asteroid and in ten years time one called Apophis will pass closer than some satellites.

The danger of an asteroid or comet striking the Earth has been used as a plot device in a number of science fiction books and movies over the last century. The threat is real however, objects as large as a house strike the Earth every few decades or so, the Tunguska meteor in 1908 is a well know example, and it is well established that a space rock approximately ten kilometers in diameter triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Tress snapped off at the ground by the Tunguska meteor event in Russia in 1908 (Credit: STSTW)

For the entire history of Earth the living things on this planet were absolutely helpless to protect themselves against this cosmic bombardment but that may be about to change. After all, we humans are space travelers now, so we ought to be able to figure out some ways to defend our planet against a collision with a mountain flying through space.

The first thing we need to do is to get an accurate idea of the scale of the problem. Just how many rocks are out there that can threaten the Earth, and what are their sizes? Such objects are known officially as Near Earth Objects or NEOs and NASA actually has the task of cataloging them well underway.

Over the last decade a team of astronomers manning medium sized telescopes have been searching the skies for every asteroid that comes close to our planet and so far over 20,000 of all sizes have been found, their size estimated and an approximate orbit calculated.

Number of NEOs discovered over the last thirty years (Credit: NASA / JPL)

O’k, so if they find an asteroid coming at us, then what do we do? Hollywood’s favourite solution is to blow the asteroid to bits, which could actually make the problem worse, now you could have a dozen or more asteroids headed towards Earth.

Hollywood’s portrayal of an Asteroid colliding with the Earth (Credit: Tumblr)

Given enough warning before a collision with an NEO, say a decade or more, a small rocket engine could be placed on the asteroid’s surface and used to alter its path so that it misses our planet by a comfortable margin. (Ten centimeters per second is a very slow speed but after ten years it amounts to more than 30,000 km!) If given even more time perhaps just nudging the asteroid by hitting it with an unmanned space probe could accomplish the same thing.

Any of these techniques might work on some asteroids, but not on others. We need to do some testing, and that is just what NASA is planning on doing in October of 2022. The mission is called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test or DART.

The DART Space Craft with its electric Ion rocket engine firing (Credit: Space.com)

The DART probe will be sent to the double asteroid Didymos which consists of two asteroids orbiting one another, didymos is Greek for twin. After a thorough study of the orbital paths of the two asteroids the DART space probe will be commanded to slam into the smaller asteroid at a velocity of nearly 6 kps.

Radar Images of the large Asteroid Didymos and its little moon Didymoon (Credit: NASA)
The DART space probe will slam into ‘Didymoon’ on 7 October 2022 (Credit: Daily Express)

By observing both the collision itself and any changes to the orbits of the two asteroids relative to each other the DART mission will provide the first real measurement of the possible changes we may be able to make to an asteroid’s path. The knowledge gained from DART and similar missions will allow NASA to begin to develop practical plans for defending Earth against any threat of an impact from space.

And speaking of NEOs NASA has also announced that on April 13, 2029 the 340 m wide asteroid Apophis will sweep past Earth close enough to be visible with the naked eye. The asteroid will come within 31,000 km of Earth’s surface, closer than our geostationary communications satellites. The video below shows the encounter as it might appear for someone on the Moon, and who knows, by then there may be someone on the Moon.

Astronomers are already planning for the observations they’d like to make and I’m certain that all the World’s space agencies will be thinking about possible missions they could make to Apophis as it flies by. As for me, I intend to see Apophis as it passes Earth but Philadelphia is usually rather cloudy during April. Maybe that’ll be a good excuse to go someplace nice and sunny for a week or so!

 

Book Review: Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan M. Metzl.

The Dangers posed by certain foods, habits and environmental conditions to our health are often uncovered by large-scale studies of a significant portion of the population. The harmful effects of smoking, the long term damage caused by even low levels of lead in drinking water, these threats to our health and many others were first detected in studies of thousands if not millions of people.

The Surgeon General’s Warning came about because of large scale studies of the effect of Smoking (Credit: Everett Herald )

The basic idea is simple: quantify the health of a large number of people who are exposed to a factor being studied, and compare it to the health of a similar sized group of people who are not exposed. The health risks of smoking, pollution, obesity or even just sitting in a chair too many hours a day can then be determined by the use of statistical analysis.

Now noted Professor Jonathan M. Metzl, director of the Center for Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University has conducted three separate studies related to the effects on health of a very unusual and highly controversial factor, being a White Person! The results of these studies are detailed in Doctor Metzl’s new book “Dying of Whiteness’.

Noted Scholar Professor Jonathan M. Metzl (Credit: Vanderbilt University)
The Cover of ‘Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan M Metzl (Credit: Basic Books)

The thesis of “Dying of Whiteness’ is that in today’s America millions of White, middle class people in this country are, in order to ‘maintain our way of life’, supporting conservative political ideologies that are actually harmful to their health and life expectancy. In support of his thesis Dr. Metzl examines three different aspects of conservatism in three distinct locations: 1.) Gun Laws in the state of Missouri. 2.) Health care in Tennessee, in particular opposition to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare. 3.) And finally the state of Kansas’ experiment in drastically cutting taxes in an effort to stimulate the economy and the resulting cutbacks in public services, everything from schools to highway upkeep.

Some proposed gun laws are now bordering on the ridiculous (Credit: Imgur)

I have written several posts previously (see my posts of 21 and 24Feburary and 19December 2018) on gun violence in this country and specially pointed out the shockingly high levels of suicide in this country. The plain fact is that in the United States twice as many people use a gun to kill themselves as to kill another person. Dr Metzl confines himself to the suicide aspect of gun violence, analyzing the situation in three ways: 1.) Examining the changes in gun legislation and policy in Missouri over the last 25 years. 2.) Relating anecdotal evidence gathered through interviews that illustrate the effects of suicide on those left behind. 3.) Comparing the actual statistical suicide rates in Missouri over the last 50 years.

Based on the evidence Dr. Metzl, who grew up in Missouri himself, forcefully concludes that the conservative political ideology, based on the desire to maintain white privilege, is actually adversely affecting the health of white people! To illustrate I’ll just quote one statistic, a white male buying a handgun to protect his home is eight times more likely to kill himself with that handgun than he is to ever kill an intruder. Instead of ‘Making America Great Again’ contemporary conservative policies are benefiting only the very rich while inflicting great harm to the majority of Americans, even white Americans.

There is a clear link between Gun Ownership and Suicide Rates (Credit: Politics that Work)

A similar story is told for the condition of health care in Tennessee, which adamantly refused to accept the ACA for purely political reasons. The effect of the decision is analyzed by comparing Tennessee’s abysmal health care to that of its neighbor Kentucky, which choose to accept both the ACA and the expansion of Medicade that accompanied it.

Again both anecdotal and statistical evidence is presented detailing how lower class citizens in Tennessee are suffering and dying for lack of proper medical attention when compared to the citizens of Kentucky. This goes even for those lower class white citizens who voted for the politicians who refused to allow the ACA in their state.

Some of the consequences of Tennessee’s refusal to accept Obamacare (Credit: Healthinsurance.org)

In one of the most heart breaking stories in the book Dr. Metzl relates the tale of Trevor, as is common in psychological studies Dr. Metzl does not use the real names of those he interviews. Trevor is slowly dying of an inflamed liver, a particularly painful way to die, brought on by a life of heavy drinking and hepatitis. If Trevor lived in Kentucky he would be eligible for drugs or even a liver transplant but in Tennessee he has no health care and cannot afford treatment. He still opposes Obamacare however, saying, “…no way I want my tax dollars paying for Mexicans and welfare queens.” Trevor is willing to die rather than support a system that would equally benefit both him and minorities.

In the final section of ‘Dying of Whiteness’ Dr Metzl discusses the State of Kansas’ recent and radical experiment in low taxes and small government. There had been a time not so long ago, when Kansas had been a model of good government, good roads, well-maintained parks and especially good schools. For decades Kansas public schools and colleges were ranked as the best in the mid-western United States.

That was before Governor Sam Brownback and the Tea-Party dominated GOP began their austerity program. State taxes were slashed in order to promote economic growth and ‘cut waste in government’.

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback began a revolution in conservative government (Credit: AP Photo/Orlin Wagner)

It wasn’t long before the state was forced to cutback drastically in public services. Ironically these cutbacks forced local governments to increase taxes so that before long it was only corporations and the very rich who were actually benefiting from the low state taxes.

The resulting effect on schools was disastrous. State wide test scores dropped while dropout rates increased. The reduction in school funding was so extreme that teachers were often forced to spend their own money to obtain necessary school supplies. Kansas’ once exemplary public services were sacrificed to a conservative ideology that had been supported by lower class whites but which did them the same harm as it did to those minorities that they had accused of abusing the public welfare system.

One Piece of good news. Kansas’ new Governor Laura Kelly is a democrat who is determined to end the radical cutback in state services (Credit: People’s World)

‘Dying of Whiteness’ is not a pleasant book to read, hard truths are rarely pleasant things to face. However it is a very important and powerfully written book on current political policies here in the United States and increasingly elsewhere in the world. With the Trump administration’s current legal attempts to eliminate the ACA completely, while at the same time having no plan for any replacement it is a fair bet that over the next few years many more people will be ‘Dying of Whiteness’!

NASA and MIT team up to develop an entirely new kind of Aircraft Wing that can change its shape while in Flight.

Very few people taking an airline flight ever stop to consider all of the different conditions under which an airplane wing has to perform. Takeoffs, cruising at altitude, maneuvering and landing are all situations that put very different demands on aircraft wings and require different wing shapes in order to perform most efficiently. Of course an aircraft can’t change its wings in the middle of a flight so current wing designs are a compromise that with the addition of airfoils and flaps succeed in doing an adequate, if not optimal job.

Now NASA’s Ames Research Center is teaming with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to develop an entirely new kind of aircraft wing that can literally morph its shape while in flight. The technology is known as MADCAT or Mission Adaptive Digital Composite Aerostructure Technologies and testing is nearing completion at Ames’ wind tunnel on a four-meter wide prototype model wing. See image below.

Scale Model of Morphing Wing undergoing testing at NASA’s Ames Research Center’s Wind Tunnel (Credit: NASA, MIT)

The new technology begins by constructing the wing in an entirely new, modular approach. As seen in the images below, each individual module in the design is an eight-sided octahedron composed of carbon fibers that can be formed by injection molding in only 17 seconds, making them very cheap to produce in quantity. The interior of the wing is then built up of a lattice of these modules.

The Octagon shape of each module of the Morphing Wing can be easily Manufactured (Credit: NASA, MIT)
Morphing Wing under construction (Credit: NASA, MIT)

The modular lattice so constructed is highly flexible and when covered with a layer of polymer material the wing can morph its shape in order to optimize its aerodynamic properties. Needless to say Computer control of every module is an essential part of the morphing process.

However a single central computer having to process the data from all the necessary sensors, which are spread over the surface of the wing, would simply take too long to make the required decisions. Therefore a distributed approach to wing control is employed so that each module can alter its shape in order for the entire wing to adapt.

Despite its complexity the MADCAT wing should actually be simpler to manufacture and repair since each module is identical. The MADCAT wing is also lighter and can be even stronger depending on the material from which it is cobstructed.

Another potential advantage to the radical new design for aircraft wings is that it may finally spur aviation companies to switch from the traditional cylindrical fuselage with wings aircraft design to an integrated body-wing design that has long been known to be more efficient. Over the last 60-70 years there have been several airplanes to have used that design, the images below are of the flying wing and B-2 stealth bomber. Aircraft manufacturers are conservative however, and rightly so given the inherent dangers of flying. In addition to safety concerns there will also be the cost of switching to an entirely new way of manufacturing airplanes.

The 1950s Version of a Flying Wing. The Northrop YB-49 (Credit: YouTube)
A B-2 Bomber also uses the flying wing approach (Credit: USAF)

The new MADCAT wing could be just the thing to change their minds. As you can see from the first image at the top, the modular wing approach is just perfect for a flying wing airplane design and the tremendous increase in efficiency the combination would provide could be more than aerospace companies can resist.

Speculative Design for a future Flying Wing that could employ the Morphing Wing Technology (Credit: CNN, Stephan Chang)

The future looks bright for MADCAT but there could be a long way to go before you will be flying anywhere on a morphing wing airplane.

Space Race part 5: The First Interplanetary Probes

Nowadays we’ve become accustomed to having unmanned, robotic space probes traversing interplanetary space and making important discoveries without there being any human within millions of kilometers. At the beginning of the space age however there were many, even respected scientists who doubted that automated mechanisms could carry out the complex maneuvers, over long periods of time, that would be required for missions to the Moon or nearby planets.

Science fiction movies of the 1920s through the 50s had always depicted the first landings on alien worlds being made by manned, piloted spaceships not robots. Robots after all could only do what they were programmed to do, they would never be able to deal with unforeseen events; they could never be adaptable enough to face the unknown.

In George Pal’s ‘Destination Moon’ the first landing on the Moon was Manned (Credit: George Pal Productions)

Nevertheless the cost of getting a man into orbit, let alone to another world was so great that manned flights to other planets were simply not possible. After all a person would require air throughout the mission, would require food and water, would have to be brought back! Robots on the other hand only needed electricity and it didn’t matter if they didn’t return to Earth, just so long as their data did!

So it was that the first man made object to leave Earth orbit, the first to completely escape from Earth’s gravity was a robotic probe. Launched on January 2nd, 1959 Luna 1 was another space first for the Soviet Union although the probe failed in its objective of crashing into the Moon. Think about that, with all of the complex maneuverings and operations that space probes carry out today the first deep space probe just had to hit the Moon, and it missed.

The Luna 1 probe was the first Man Made Object to leave Earth orbit. (Credit: Roscosmos)

So did the first American Lunar probe Pioneer 4, launched just two months later, Pioneers 1-3 all blew up on the launch pad. The first deep space probe to actually succeed was Luna 2 on September 13 of 1959.   A month later in October Luna 3 successfully passed behind the Moon, taking a picture that was radioed back to Earth giving humanity its first glimpse of the far side of the Lunar farside.

One of the Images of the Moon’s Farside sent back by Luna 3 (Credit: Roscosmos)
The Luna 3 Space Probe (Credit: Roscosmos)

Thanks to the power of their R-7 rocket the Soviet’s were also the first to attempt a mission to another planet. A pair of space probes called the U1 and U2 were launched on October 10th and 14th of 1960. The mission intended for the two probes was a fly-by of Mars but neither managed to even leave Earth orbit.

There were a lot of failures in those early days, launch failures, failures to leave Earth orbit, or failures where the probe would miss its target. And even if the spacecraft did make it to its intended destination there could be a loss of radio contact. It was beginning to look as if the nay Sayers were right, robotic space missions were simply too complicated, there were just too many unknowns for a mere machine to handle.

The US space probe Mariner 4 changed that. Launched from Cape Canaveral on November 28th of 1964 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) built space probe successfully flew past the planet Mars on the 14th of July 1965. At its closest approach of 13,000 kilometers the Mariner probe took a series of 22 images of the surface of the Red Planet. These images were transmitted back to Earth over the next few days.

A Replica of Mariner 4 (Credit: JPL-NASA)

By today’s standards the images were poor, the last three missed the planet entirely while only a dozen are really clear enough to be useful. Those images were revolutionary however showing scores of craters spread across the Martian surface. The data sent back by Mariner 4 showed a Mars that resembled Earth’s Moon a great deal more than any astronomer had imagined. All of the speculation of Martian civilizations building a system of canals vanished in an instant. With a single successful mission the scientific value to science of robotic interplanetary probes had been demonstrated.

One of the Images of Mars sent back by Mariner 4 (Credit: JPL-NASA)
Perhaps the best image sent back by Mariner 4 (Credit: JPL-NASA)
The Location of the images taken by Mariner 4 on the surface of Mars (Credit: The Planetary Society)

It also so happened that following Mariner 4 robotic probes became more reliable, more successful. The engineers were learning from their mistakes designing probes that could survive the hostile environment of deep space.

The American Surveyor 1 and Lunar Orbiter 1 Moon probes became the first man made objects to respectively land softy on, and orbit another world. Meanwhile the Soviet Venera 3 became the first to impact on the planet Venus and Zond 5 circled around the Moon and became the first interplanetary probe to return to Earth.

The Surveyor Lunar Lander Space Probes (Credit: JPL-NASA)
The Zond 5 Space Probe after completing its mission of traveling around the Moon and returning to Earth (Credit: Roscosmos)

Since Mariner 4 success for automated space probes has become the norm. There are still failures on occasion, but by now every planet in our solar system, along with moons, comets and asteroids have all been visited by unmanned, robotic probes.

Paleontologists have discovered a fossil site that actually contains the remains of animals that died in the Asteroid strike that ended the reign of the dinosaurs.

Since the idea that an asteroid collision with the Earth was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs was first proposed over forty years ago by Walter Alvarez the evidence for such a catastrophe has accumulated slowly but surely. Alvarez based his original idea on evidence collected during his own examinations of the K-t boundary at numerous locations around the world. (The K-t boundary is the layer of rock strata that marks the end of the dinosaurs, below the boundary is the Cretaceous period rich in dinosaur fossils, above it is the Tertiary period with absolutely none! The K-t boundary is dated to some 66 million years ago.)

Walter Alvarez (r) standing with his Father Nobel Prize Winning Physicist Luis Alvarez (l). Walter has his hand on the rock layer that is the k-T boundary (Credit: Wikipedia)

What Alvarez found at the K-t was a very thin layer of rock rich in the element iridium, which is very rare of Earth but much more common on meteoroids. It was this thin layer that led him to speculate that an asteroid; perhaps 10 kilometers in diameter had struck the Earth triggering a worldwide extinction.

Then in 1978 the actual crater, now named Chicxulub, formed by that asteroid was identified centered just off shore of the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Evidence from that crater confirmed that the amount of energy released by that collision was indeed sufficient to cause mass destruction around the world. Additionally, evidence of rocks distorted by high temperature and pressure and material thrown about by enormous tsunamis has been found throughout both North and South America. Still, some researchers have asked, if the dinosaurs, and many other creatures became extinct in such a violent episode, shouldn’t we be able to find a mass graveyard showing some unmistakable signs of such an event.

Location ans Size of the Crater caused by the Asteroid that killed the Dinosaurs (Credit: Kut.org)

Now a team of paleontologists from the University of Kansas has announced the discovery of a fossil site that provides just the smoking gun they were looking for. Led by paleontologist Robert DePalma the site is called Tanis and is located in the Hell Creek Formation in the southwestern corner of North Dakota.

Rock section of k-T boundary taken From Tanis Fossil Site. Thin middle layer contains 1000x as much Iridium as upper and lower layers. Credit: Wikipedia)

The fossils recovered from the site consist of a mashup of freshwater and saltwater animals and plants that appear to have all perished in a very short period of time. More telling however was that some of the fish were found to have small, glass like balls of compressed and heated rock imbedded in their gills as if they had breathed them in. These small rocky balls are known as tektites, a common product of volcanic activity or an asteroid strike. The fact that these tektites were found more than 3,000 kilometers from where the asteroid struck is a testament to the power that had been unleashed.

Some of the fossilized fish killed by the asteroid strike and uncovered at the Tanis fossil site (Credit: Science News)

 

Prepared Microscopic Slide from a fossil at the Tanis site showing tektites (Credit: Robert DePalma)

So complete and well defined are the remains from the Tanis site that the paleontologists believe that they can actually make out the sequence of the events that occurred there. It appears that first came a tremendous seismic surge, an earthquake of such power as to dwarf any in recorded history. This geologic upheaval began the mixing of fresh and saltwater environments that continued when a massive tsunami followed some 16-18 hours later. Finally, over a period of days or even months a thick layer of ash would have fallen from the skies covering the dead and dying animals, leaving them for us to uncover 66 million years later.

This photo taken and handout on March 29, 2019 by the University of Kansas,shows Robert DePalma(L)and field assistant Kylie Ruble(R) excavate fossil carcasses from the Tanis deposit.The site appears to date to the day 66 million years ago when a meteor hit Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet. (Photo by Robert DePalma / Kansas University / AFP)

It is true that no dinosaur fossils have been discovered at Tanis so far; the site appears to have been a shallow water environment. Still one may turn up whose body got washed into the area. If not sooner or later we’ll find another site that has dinosaurs, it’s only a matter of time, and time is one thing this old Earth has got plenty of.