Dan’s Wild Wild Science Journal

There are some fabulously well written blogs and excellent science sites online. I have never done a post of the best that I have come across before, until now!

So below is a sampling of sound science writing that got my attention this week.

Jim Robbins at Yale Environment 360 has an in depth piece on the great die off out west. Perhaps enough evidence to indict climate change for causing it, but not enough for a conviction as of yet.

I love astronomical time lapses and Amanda Bauer in the UK has a great one.

Astropixie has a beautiful time lapse from Mauna Kea. Great blog!

Tavie Greiner and Rob Keown have a post on International Sidewalk Astronomy Night.

March 20th is the equinox (No, eggs will not stand up any better than any other day) and it's also ISAN. Oh, and guess what it's free!

Nasa’s Earth Observatory site always has something I like and the rapid urbanization of Dubai is vividly shown by NASA’s Terra satellite.

All that oil makes them a lot of money doesn't it...

Dr. Erik Klemetti has a great profile of the active volcano Erta Ale on his blog ERUPTIONS

Got Magma???

Last but not least is Peter Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week. Peter is superbly good at taking the spin out of inaccurate science reporting. This week he talks about where to get your science from, and where NOT to get it. Peter is the secret hero of a lot of scientists I think.

This is the broadband seismogram from Virginia Tech. It is set to record distant quakes. It speaks for itself. Keep in mind the distance between Chile and Blacksburg Virginia. The Earth rang like a bell last night.

Any questions?

Image of Seismogram at Nevada Seismic Lab in Nevada. The quake in Chile was so strong it is pegging the meters on seismograms world wide this morning.

An 8.8 Magnitude quake has hit Chile. It was recorded at a depth of only 35km. This is very shallow and likely means that  catastrophic damage is possible. Large aftershocks are already being recorded.

Data and images from USGS- about 300,000,000 people were close to the quake. 6 million felt a magnitude 7 quake.

The quake hit when most people were in bed asleep.

The USGS says this quake occurred 230 km north of the location of the 9.5 quake of May 1960. That quake holds the record for the largest magnitude quake measured with instruments. It killed over 1600 people.

Update Saturday afternoon:

A Tsunami Warning remains in effect for many areas of the Pacific. The BBC web site as usual has the best coverage world wide. The pictures of roads and bridges in Chile are frightening. We live on a very dynamic planet. It’s easy to forget that sometimes.

View of Opportunity on the surface of Mars! Taken by the Mars recon. Orbiter. NASA JPL

The Mars Rover Opportunity was designed to last 6 months. It’s still driving around Mars 5 years later! Both Spirit and the Opportunity Rover are still functioning, although Spirit is stuck right now in martian quicksand!

Meteorite on Mars. See thumbprints?? Courtesy NASA JPL

In the last few weeks, Opportunity has spotted a couple of meteorites on Mars. Take a look at the pictures!

This looks like an iron meteorite and seems to have the thumb prints that are common with this type. These indentations are caused by the hot ride through the atmosphere and are officially called REGMAGLYPTS. (Yeah it’s pronounced like it looks, and when you figure out how to say it, let me know too!)

Almost all meteorites are magnetic, but not all have as much iron and nickel as others. The regmaglypts tend to only show up in space stones that are almost all metal.

Meteorites are very old, and are of great interest to scientists. They are likely the left over remains of failed planets that did not congeal when our solar system formed. Most are around 4,500 million years old and are one of the clues to Earths age. (About the same)

The latest meteorite found by Opportunity. Click for hires image.

In related news, Steve Squyres the principal investigator for the Mars Rover project as just been awarded the Carl Sagan Medal, for excellence in Planetary Science communication.

Well deserved!!

Check out the apture links on this post for a quick course on meteorites.

These rovers have rewritten the text books on planetary science. If only Sagan had lived to see it!

My favourite picture sent back by them was of cirrus clouds in the martian sky. That, and martian dust devils!

Later,

Dan

Recent quake map around Mount Ranier in Washington.

I did a geological field trip to the Pacific Northwest in 2006. It was two fabulous weeks and I got some great snaps of beautiful Mount Rainier. This past Summer, while at the American Meteorological Conference in Portland, I returned to Mount Saint Helen’s as well.

When St. Helen’s exploded in May 1980, the volcanic dust was tracked on satellite imagery across the country. I had only been doing weather on TV for a few months, and I remember putting volcanic ash in the forecast in Oklahoma City! I said at the time, that it would likely be the first and last time in my entire career that I put that into a forecast.

29 years later, it still is.

The next morning a thin gray dust covered my bicycle seat in Norman, Oklahoma.

I have always been keenly interested in Geology, and my first summer job at OU, was at a seismological observatory run by the University near Tulsa. Watching the drums slowly rotate with occasional wild jumps of the needles was the fun part of the job.

My boss could always tell when I was arriving for work because the seismograph would wiggle as my station wagon crossed railroad tracks at the bottom of the mountain!

Mount Rainier is one gorgeous mountain. Dan's Photo 2006.

Looking at some of the blogs written by Geologists this evening I ran across something interesting on ERUPTIONS, written by Erik Klemetti. He spends most of his time thinking about magma. I don’t doubt it! It’s a fascinating subject!

He mentions that there has been an increase recently in quakes at the heavily monitored Mount Rainier. Nothing to panic about here, but it’s wise to remember that St. Helen’s was a reminder that the Northwest has several volcanoes, and they are not likely dead. If a Saint Helen’s event were to happen at Rainier today, the damage and disruption would be an order of magnitude higher than 30 years ago. Many more people live nearby now.

The USGS rates Rainier as the most dangerous of the NW volcanoes because of the high population nearby and the large amount of snow and ice on it’s slopes. A LAHAR is a big threat from Rainier. They are a deadly flow of mud, ash, rock and water. The water usually comes from melting snow, caused by an eruption. Raineier has A LOT of snow. These events can cause great loss of life.

A paper published in 1987 estimated that 270 cubic kilometers of lava has erupted from the mountain, over the last one million years! (USGS) This is a short nap in Geological time.

Geologists, and Seismologists are as fanatical about their work as we Meteorologists, so if you live in the Northwestern USA, you can be assured that very bright people are watching the multitude of sensors around Rainier. The Cascade Volcano Observatory has an excellent site with loads of good info.

Later,

Dan