Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Sumatra was hit by a magnitude 7.7 quake at 10:18 GMT this Wednesday morning. This quake was on a different fault zone and was likely not related to yesterday’s quake in Samoa.

Here is a seismogram from Washington State in the USA. The seismograph picked up the quake from half a world away.

The BBC is reporting the death toll rising in Samoa tonight, from the massive quake earlier in the day. The quake registered 8.3 with a very shallow depth of 18km. A quake that strong and that shallow can produce deadly tsunamis and is capable of great destruction.

The quake hit at 17:48 GMT. This is 1:48pm U.S. East Coast time, and 6:48pm in London. This was 6:48am Wednesday in American Samoa.

Reports of whole villages swept away by a Tsunami are being broadcast by the BBC. The Tsunami hit an area very near the quake and this would mean a very short warning time. A Tsunami Warning was issued, but it likely hit within minutes of the quake itself.

Here is the Seismogram from New Zealand:

Here is what the seismograph of the USGS in Northern California recorded.

Seismogram from USGS in California

The Guardian newspaper has a story on American climate illiteracy. Being on air, and talking about climate change, I suspect it’s correct. Some of the comments I get after writing or airing something related to climate science truly amaze me.

Worth a read:

Click image to read the story by David Adam the Guardian Env. Correspondent.

Now watch this incredible video of the first ever swim at the North Pole. I can tell you first hand that you cannot imagine how cold that water is. I count myself as one of the lucky few to see a Polar Bear on the ice. A sight you will never forget. Will my grandchildren be able to see it. I sincerely doubt it.

Most likely you have never seen Mercury. It’s not easy to see because it is so close to the sun. Your only chance is just before sunrise or just after sunset, and you will need to be in a really flat place or on a high mountain with a clear view of the horizon.

You can see Mercury before sunrise this week!

It’s also one of the planets we know little about. The picture above is a view taken by the Messenger spacecraft of a side of Mercury we have never seen before. NASA wanted to send a mission to Mercury but on the cheap. They did it by taking the LONG way. Messenger is using Mercury’s gravity to slow down a little as it passes by.

Messenger Spacecraft. Teachers, mouse on image for a NASA Fact Sheet!

This is the last pass. It will slow down enough to fall into orbit the next time it comes by Mercury. That will be March 18th- 2011!

Today it will skim by at just 228km above the surface! It will allow us to see things on the surface we have never seen before. The data should start flowing back to Earth around 11pm Eastern time tomorrow (04 GMT Wednesday).

Mercury is one weird place. It rotates twice for every 3 orbits of the sun. This leads to a day lasting nearly 6 Earth months. It also has almost no tilt. Because Earth is tilted at 23.5 degrees we have seasons. On Mercury, the sun is always the same elevation above the horizon at local noon. Because of this, it’s thought that deep craters near the poles, may never see sunlight, and could be among the coldest spots in the solar system!

Recent Science points to our very own Moon as possibly being a little colder still for the same reasons. If Carl Sagan were alive he’d be on pins and needles tonight. A lot of NASA scientists certainly are! In the next few days, we will learn things we never knew before.

So teachers, do you want to get your class involved as Messenger flies by??

Mouse on the image to learn more about following the historic fly by of Mercury today!

One of my friends on twitter is Doctor Jeff Goldstein. He is the director of the National Center for Earth Science and Space education. His blog is full of  all kinds of info. Check it out, and you can follow what’s happening tomorrow as we learn new things about our home in the cosmos.

My geeky self will be there.

Later,

Dan

You probably have seen the pictures of the dust storm in Sydney last week, but NASA has weighed in, with the view from the Modis sensor on the Terra and Aqua satellites. These satellites can produce stunning true colour images of the Earth.

So here they are, and I am uploading the 500 meter resolution, so mouse on the image and you can make your video card whimper!

The outline of the Queensland Coast has been overlaid, so you can see how thick the dust was. The dust cloud eventually reached New Zealand!

Here is another shot. The length of the dust cloud is over 3,500 kilometers. The distance from Boston to Los Angeles, or Liverpool to Jerusalem!

Aussie dust cloud moving toward New Zealand

My wife and I have actually experienced a dust storm of nearly this intensity.

Norman, Oklahoma was hit by one in the late 1970′s while I was an undergrad in the Meteorology program. My grandmother grew up in the dusty bowl of Oklahoma in the 1930′s, and clearly remembers it. They would put wet sheets over the doors and windows to keep the dust out. They would be dripping with mud in an hour!

Later,

Dan