Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

As I came into the station car park on Monday, I noticed a beautiful deck of Cirrocumulus Undulatas clouds high over the Huntspatch.

The ripples in the cloud are formed the same way that ripples form in a pond when you throw a rock in. Waves in the atmosphere can be caused by air flowing over mountains, or from strong convection. Actually there are quite a few processes, but anything that makes the air move vertically can start the process.

Meteorologists have a technical name for this. Gravity Waves.

These waves can travel hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers, if conditions are right. We do not see this often in Summer, but as the winds aloft pick up in the autumn, the clouds get more and more interesting!

I have mentioned it before, but I will mention it again, There is a fabulous book on clouds that you will really enjoy. The Cloud Book by Richard Hamblyn. Knowing something about them, only adds to their beauty.

Richard Feynman (Yes, of course I stood up when I typed his name.) talked about this in one of his lectures, albeit he was talking of science knowledge in general. He used a flower, and waves on a beach to tell his students that because he understood how they worked (down to the subatomic level), they were still beautiful and even more so!

Later,
Dan

Now, to Whom do I pass this on to...

Being from Oklahoma, it is especially gratifying to find out this Saturday night that I’ve been given the Woody Guthrie Award for a Thinking Blogger.

The award was passed to me by Mike at Greenfyre’s, and that makes it all the more pleasing since it is one of the best blogs on Science out there. I have never considered myself in the same league, but it sure was nice of him to say nice things and pass the award to me.

Woody Guthrie was born in Okemah, Oklahoma. A singer, and song writer who is probably best known for the song This Land Is Your Land.

He travelled with the “Grapes of Wrath” crowd to California during the dust bowl days. The dust bowl is relegated to the history books now, but not for me. My grandmother is still living, and she remembers it well.

Woody Guthrie is one of Oklahoma's most famous sons.

I can still hear her talking about covering the windows of the house with wet sheets to keep out the dust. They would be dripping with mud in an hour she tells me. During the awful heat of the 1930′s they moved their beds outside and slept in the back yard.

I suspect that my grandmother understands better than most climate researchers, the real life of a sudden climate change. Even if it was only temporary. There is growing evidence that the dust bowl was partially human induced as well.

You would likely be surprised how many Okies had relatives in California, when I was young in the 1960′s!

The award has to be passed on, and I am pretty sure I already know who I’ll pass it on to. Let me enjoy the ownership for a few days though!

A cluster of Galaxies seen by the Chandra X-Ray Telescope. Click the image for info on what is happening here. Then come back to find out about the most distant cluster known.

Astronomers call telescopes light buckets. This is because they are really just buckets that catch photons of light. Your backyard telescope catches photons that have mostly been travelling through space for a short time. Photons from the moon have only been travelling for 1.5 seconds. The photons from the Sun about 8 minutes.

Mars is about 15 light minutes away and Pluto is just under 6 light hours away. So if you could travel travel at light speed, you would go around the Earth 8 times in one second, and you can get to Pluto (No, it’s NOT a planet!- don’t get me started ) in 13 hours!

If you look through binoculars to see the Andromeda Galaxy, then you are catching photons that have been travelling for two and a half million years. In cosmic terms, that is a next door neighbour! The Hubble and Chandra telescopes can make images out of photons that have been travelling for BILLIONS of years. If an objects is so far away that it’s light takes 100 years to get here, then it’s 100 light years away. If you think of it that way, the huge distances in the universe make a little more sense. Our puny distance measures like miles and kilometers mean nothing.

The Chandra X-Ray Telescope. Launched July 1999.

You might ask, what is the most distant galaxy we can see??

The folks who run the Chandra X-ray telescope asked that very question, and they announced Thursday they had a new most distant galaxy. It’s actually a cluster of galaxies. Believe it or not, even huge galaxies like the Milky Way attract each other, and form groups. Astronomers believe that these clusters first formed when the universe was only about 3 Billion years old. It about 13.7 Billion years old now.

So look at the picture below. The blue haze is a cluster of galaxies 10.3 Billion light years away. You are looking at the cluster before the Milky Way likely even existed, much less Earth! The Astronomers had to give it a mysterious scientific name of course and they came up with jcks041. Not to be confused with jkcs042 which we all of course know intimately!

NOT.

JCKS041- The most distant galaxy cluster ever detected. 10.3 billion light years away!

You might think the photons were happy to stop travelling and reach someplace, but at light speed time itself stops. They didn’t age at all on the trip!

We get this kind of incredible view for the cost of a couple of jet fighters. Imagine if we spent some real money on Science…

Later,
Dan

The letter below was signed by the directors of the following scientific organizations.
I’m a member of three.
They are right.

October 21, 2009

American Association for the Advancement of Science

Dear Senator:

As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific
organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view.
Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is
occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the
greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.

These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence,
and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of
the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong
evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on
society, including the global economy and on the environment.

For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal
states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of
regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the
disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity
of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the
coming decades.1

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions
of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition,
adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already
unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design,
more sustainable management of water and other natural resources,
modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to
storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your
deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

American Association for the
Advancement of Science
American Chemical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of
Biological Sciences
American Meteorological
Society
American Society of
Agronomy
American Society of Plant
Biologists
American Statistical
Association
Association of Ecosystem
Research Centers
Botanical Society of America
Crop Science Society of
America
Ecological Society of America
Natural Science Collections
Alliance
Organization of Biological
Field Stations
Society for Industrial and
Applied Mathematics
Society of Systematic
Biologists
Soil Science Society of
America
University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research

1 The conclusions in this paragraph reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for
example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.S. Global Change Research
Program. Many scientific societies have endorsed these findings in their own statements,
including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical
Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and American
Statistical Association.

Polar Bear in North Baffin Bay - Dan's Photo Aug 2007

My two favourite animals are inhabitants of opposite poles.

Ursus Maritimas.

Polar Bears. They will eat you if you’re not careful, but they are truly majestic creatures.

When I travelled through the High Arctic in August 2007, I saw three. The best was the second encounter on an ice flow in North Baffin Bay. It was spitting snow and quite cold, but sitting in our Zodiac, we were oblivious to it.

WHY?

Because, in front of us, was a site that few humans have ever seen. A polar bear in his habitat. The experts with us kept us 30 yards away, because the bear could make a leap at us if we were closer.

A shark will eat you thinking you are a seal. A Polar Bear will eat you, thinking you are a tasty human. Something to remember if you’re ever in the Arctic. We always stayed close to someone with a gun that shot tranquilliser darts, stun grenades and as an extreme last resort, real bullets.

The bears live and hunt on the ice. As it disappears in the Arctic, they may vanish as well.

My other favourite animal lives at the bottom of the world instead of the top.

Emperor Penguins in Antarctica. Image from the Nat. Sci. Foundation. They fund much of the science done at the bottom of he world.

Emperor Penguins. Aptenodytes forsteri

Most people do not realise they stand about one meter high! I have never seen one in it’s habitat. They live only in Antarctica. I am working very hard to visit an Emperor Colony at the bottom of the world, and soon!

The Emperor’s truly have to rate among natures most beautiful creatures. The Emperors in particular are incredibly adapted to living in the harshest climate on the planet. The Polar Bears of the Arctic live a positively balmy lifestyle compared to the life in Antarctica.

The South pole is much colder than the North Pole. The warmest temp ever recorded at the South Pole is 7F. The warmest temp. ever recorded in Antarctica is 59F or 10C. That was at the edge of the continent. Normally it rarely reaches much above freezing anywhere.

There is a fabulous video on you tube of some Orca’s chasing a penguin in Antarctica. Just when you think the Penguin has had it. He makes a daring escape! It’s called ONE LUCKY PENGUIN.

You have to see the video!