Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

Darwin Exhibition last Fall in London- Dan's picture

It was an idea that did nothing less than revolutionise Science. It all started 150 ears ago today when Charles Darwin published the famous book “On The Origin of The Species”. It’s always amazed me how few people have read it. I suspect that very few of those who still criticise it have. Almost everyone who has read it, thinks it’s genius and wonders why no one thought of it before!

Yes, it’s incompatible with a literal reading of the fundamental writings of Islam and Christianity, but only a literal reading. I know many people with deeply held religious beliefs who accept Darwin’s Big idea as the work of genius. If a supreme being with unlimited power wanted to make an earth with millions of species, then Darwin figured out how he did it!

No matter what you think, Natural Selection published by Darwin 150 years ago today has become the foundation for modern biology and life science. It’s so simple it has to be right. If you have never read it, pick it up. It’s not a long read, and it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Here’s to you Charley!

dan

To me the most fascinating part of synoptic forecasting is Satellite Meteorology. I can still remember working in Tulsa at KJRH TV where we had a GOES Unifax machine. Every 15 minutes a high resolution image would spit out. During the day the resolution was 1 km on a visible image. This was good enough to see jet contrails at times.

Jet Contrails from the NASA Modis Satellite- It sees true colour. GOES does not. These contrails keep the nights warmer and days slightly cooler over much of America.

One afternoon a large contrail was visible across Northeast Oklahoma and I ran outside the station and there it was! I was looking at the bottom of it, the satellite was seeing the top from 36,000km away. This seems like no big deal now, but in 1978, it was a very big deal!

TV viewers have since grown very accustomed to seeing satellite images on TV weather reports and now even online. What the average person does not know is just how incredibly valuable these images are.

It was once said that if the GOES Satellites could see nothing but hurricanes in the ocean, they would be worth 100 times the money spent to build them and put them in orbit. I certainly agree.

They do however see MUCH more than just hurricanes. Read on learn some of the incredible ways these satellites are making accurate forecasts and early severe weather warnings possible.

First some misconceptions.

1. Satellite images are not in colour. TV Weather graphic equipment remaps the cloud images over colour maps. The next generation of weather satellites GOES R will be able to see almost true colour. It is really not that necessary to forecasting anyhow.

2. These satellites are VERY high. About 1/10th the way to the moon. The reason is that at 36k km they orbit the earth once a day, and since the Earth turns once a day, they appear to hover over the same spot. If one breaks, the Space Shuttle cannot even get one tenth of the way up to fix them.

3. They are called GOES for Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite. We use two if them in the USA. Goes East and GOES West. They are in orbit over the Equator and cannot see well in the high latitudes because of the curve of the Earth. Alaska, and Northern Canada forecasters use the Polar Orbiting satellites, but only get a few pics a day. The current operational east satellite is GOES 12. GOES 13 and 14 are in orbit, but in storage until needed.

GOES Water Vapor IR imagery Image from July 4 05Z

4. They take mages every 15 minutes and can do an image over a small area every 7 minutes in rapid scan mode.

5. They do not have cameras per say. They have sensors that detect electromagnetic radiation. The visible light that your camera records when you take a picture is electromagnetic radiation. It’s light in the visible part of the spectrum.

X-rays and the radio waves from your favourite FM station are “light” as well. We humans just cannot see that light. So is infra-red radiation that “night goggles” use. You can buy video cameras now that see in the IR wavelengths.

The GOES imaging sensors actually see electromagnetic radiation in 5 different bands. One visible and 4 in the infra red. The GOES also has another sensor called the sounding radiometer. The sounder imager can actually detect temperatures and moisture at different levels in the atmosphere. Even under clear skies.

We can actually take a sounding without launching a weather balloon. (They cost you the tax payer about 100$ a pop too)

Even in daytime we get both the IR and visible images. At night we only get the IR of course. The visible channel can resolve objects bigger than about 1 km square. The IR imager is 4 km. One image you see rarely on TV is the Water Vapor IR images. These images look almost like an atmospheric X-ray and are very valuable to forecasters like me.

IR Image from GOES East Midnight 4 July 2009. See the storms in Kansas!

Using water vapor imagery we can see the outlines of troughs and even upper level low pressure centers called vorticity maximums. These “vort maxes” can kick off convection or intensify a low pressure system. Skies may clear suddenly behind them. Knowing their position also allows us to compare the real world with a forecast model. If the model has forecasted it well,then confidence in the models forecast is increased!

Since the amount of radiation an object gives off is related to it’s temperature, the IR images also can tell us the height of clouds and thunderstorms! The colder the cloud, the higher it is! High ice crystal cirrus clouds show up bright white on IR images, where ground fog is sometimes hard to see since it’s the same temp. as the ground.

A new technique has been developed that subtracts one channel from another and makes it possible to see fog at night. We call it the “fog Product“. High clouds over a fog layer will usually keep it from dissipating as fast so seeing the different layers of clouds is very important.

Lines of building cumulus clouds can be seen long before radar echoes show up. Many times when the atmosphere is unstable, these building towers are the first clue that severe convection is imminent and a tornado watch may be issued.

Geostationary weather satellites are over Europe and Asia, along with the Middle East, So we can actually see every corner of the globe. Not the high latitudes though, we only get images of the poles a few times a day. Forecasters in these high latitudes get very good at interpreting the lower and higher resolution images from the polar orbiting satellites. If you have the money, you can download the images from these satellites as they pass overhead. Lots of people do it!

Temperature structure of the atmosphere near Huntsville AL. From GOES. Numbers on the right are indexes that tell the forecaster about instability etc.

There are other sensors on these satellites as well. If you crash in a remote island, your plane will have an ELT on it. This Emergency Locating Transmitter will be picked up by the GOES. Detection of solar storms is also made possible by GOES along with other satellites. Arctic Ice in shipping lanes is also monitored with GOES. If there were GOES in 1912, maybe the Titanic would have missed that berg.

Yes, it cost a lot of money to put these satellites up in space and even more to build them, however the images they provide are very nearly priceless.

My son underneath one of the 5 first stage engines.

There is only one upright model of a Saturn V Moon Rocket. It’s right here in Huntsville, and it’s next to the first Saturn V ever built. (The real one is in a building to protect it!). The rocket that took man to the Moon is 363 feet high. That’s 36 stories.

Saturn 5 mock up- next to the real thing (enclosed).

It’s one of only three remaining, and is a priceless object of history. For my readers in other states, and other countries, it’s well worth a visit. The U.S. Space and Rocket Center is also located here, and is the home of Space Camp.

The Saturn 5 was built here in Huntsville and many residents still remember their windows rattling as the GIANT engines were tested in the mid 1960′s.

The real Saturn in the Davidson Center in Huntsville. It was the first one built. Only three Saturn Moon Rockets remain.

Walking through the Davidson Center is a truly awe inspiring experience. I am very lucky to have met two people who rode one of these beasts to the Moon.

WHNT -TV, the TV station I work for, installed a high definition camera at the top of the Saturn. I thought you might enjoy seeing a time lapse of Sunset from the top of the rocket. Taken on Wednesday evening 20 May 2009.

sunset0520

The photos are mine.

Later,

dan

When I was young, if you were an Astronaut, you were famous. Everyone knew what you looked like. Not so anymore. The public fascination with space waned after the Moon landing and it has not recovered. These days, the only way an Astronaut gets famous, is if he dies or gets caught in a sordid love triangle. Astronauts are not household names anymore.

Some of the reasons for this may be the general lack of Science education in this country. Some have called it a war on Science. Based on some emails  I get from this journal, I tend to agree with them. It extends beyond climate change, and Biology to almost every facet of Earth Science. Some of the statements I hear political leaders make on Science, are stunningly ignorant of the very basics.

The Astronauts flying on the next Shuttle mission deserve some REAL public recognition. This mission is going to be one of the most difficult and dangerous missions ever attempted by NASA. The previous administrator of NASA (Sean O’Keefe) cancelled it for just that reason, but the public and (especially) the scientific community pushed hard for it to be flown. A new NASA Administrator put it back on the schedule. An article in SCIENCE this week suggests that it was his reluctance to approve the mission led to him being replaced.

I’ve had the privilege of talking with two Apollo Astronauts and even strapped into some simulators. (Zero G movement is easy, as long as you don’t care where you go. Try a task and it’s much more difficult than you can imagine). These Astronauts have trained very hard for these 5 days. The risk of death is about 2% for each Shuttle mission. Would you drive to work tomorrow if you had a 2% chance of dying? I wouldn’t.

They will.

NASA picture of the Hubble Telescope.

You probably know already the task ahead for these Astronauts. They are going to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. No telescope has done more to answer the fundamental questions of Physics since Galileo’s (Which is still working in Italy, but good luck getting to look through it!).

Two new cameras will be added along with fresh batteries and new gyroscopes. The new Wide Field Camera will be 10-30 times more sensitive than the previous one! If it all goes well, Hubble will be astoundingly better than before. It’s hoped that it will last until 2014.

It might still be working when the new James Webb telescope sees it’s first star light. The JWT will be the most advanced telescope ever made and will no doubt make profound discoveries. Testing for this telescope is going on only 9 miles away from where I sit writing this, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

From NASA web.

This mission will use dozens of tools made especially for the mission. It will indeed be dangerous. Remember that satellite collision awhile back? Well some of that debris is orbiting at around 500km. Where Hubble is. When this flight launches, a rescue Shuttle will be on the pad at KSC, just in case. (Addition May 9th: Former Mission Control Scientist James Oberg wrote more about the rescue possibilities and orbital mechanics on MSNBC’s web site.

It will take multiple space walks to do the job, and NASA has collected the best and the brightest of the “Right Stuff” to do it. Two members of the crew have repaired Hubble before. It will be the last repair mission on Hubble. The Shuttle is about to be retired and when the computers and the gyros fail in about 5 years, Hubble will see no more light from across an unimaginable distance of Space and time.

Just 100 years ago, astronomers thought that the Universe and the Galaxy we inhabit, were one and the same. Those fuzzy spiral “nebula” visible in the best telescopes were thought to be relatively nearby. We really had no idea of just how far away they were and how big the galaxy was. It was Astronomer Edwin Hubble who figured out a way to measure the distance to these galaxies. He used a type of star called Cepheid Variable. He realized that these gave him what astronomers now call a standard candle.

In 1998 Hubble stared at what looked like an empty spot in the sky near the Big Dipper. The 10 day exposure showed millions of galaxies at distances too great to fathom.

Think of  it this way. Look at a street light in the far distance. You can tell if it’s near or far, because you know from experience how bright street lights are. If you had some good scientific equipment, you could measure the light from a nearby street light and assuming the distant one is about as bright, you could with some fairly simple math, get a very good estimate of the distance to the far one.

This is exactly what Edwin Hubble did! He found out that these so called nebula were galaxies like our own, but at incredible distances of 250 million light years, and even further. We have now made measurements of galaxies nearly 13 billion light years away. We can only see 13.5 billion light years, because the universe is that old. Light from farther away, could not have reached us yet! (See my previous post on this).

From NASA web site. Click image to go there.

Now we know that we truly are, a grain of sand, in a vast cosmos. There are, however, still fundamental questions to be answered. Most of the universe is invisible to we humans. It’s full of what Cosmologists call dark matter.

What is it?

NOBODY knows. The newly improved Hubble Telescope just might answer that question.

For 7 NASA Astronauts. That’s worth the 2%.

On behalf of Scientists, and Science lovers world wide.

THANK YOU.

What were you doing on Christmas Eve 1968?

If you are younger than 40 you weren’t even alive. I hit 50 next month, and I remember it well. Not just because I was 9 years old and Christmas morning was a few hours away. Apollo 8 was circling the Moon, and I was  (and still am) a Space nut. Human beings on that Christmas Eve were for the first time in human history, looking at the Earth from another World. We take it for granted now, but in 1968, this was an almost unbelievable event. My Grandfather never did really believe it.

The Crew of Apollo 8: Borman, Anders and Lovell

The Crew of Apollo 8: Borman, Anders and Lovell

When Apollo 8 went around the edge of the Moon, all contact was lost with Earth.  NASA had a nervous half hour plus waiting for the Spacecraft to re-emerge. Hopefully the Astronauts would have successfully fired their engine, and slowed down enough to fall into Lunar Orbit. Finally, through the static the voice of Frank Borman said, “OK Houston, you can tell the world, we have arrived.”

Those words were spoken just after the astronauts saw something incredible. Earth rise. The Bright Blue Earth rose above the gray Moon as they rounded the back side. Bill Anders grabbed a camera and took a quick snap. It has become one of the most famous photos ever taken. Probably, it is THE most famous photograph ever made.

It also changed the World.

Earthrise from Apollo 8. 24 Dec. 1968 By Bill Anders

From the Dawn of human history through the 1960′s the human mindset was “us against nature”. A popular song in the 70′s was titled “You and me against the World”. This was how Humans thought of our relationship with the planet. Over the last 4,000 years, humans had learned to shelter ourselves, and develop agriculture. We  built cities, and in the 1800′s America tamed the continent. The idea that we could significantly harm the planet was not really considered. Nature was the enemy to be battled against. Humans were tiny. The world was huge. It  could care less about us.

In reality however, it was no longer true in 1968, and it’s much more a falsehood now.

You could argue that we can’t harm the planet, and you would be right. It’s probably more correct to say that humans are harming themselves, and the other life on the planet. The Earth will adjust. New life will evolve suited to the changed Earth. This itself is nothing new. 99.9% of the species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct. The Biologists tell us that the more successful a species is, the sooner it goes extinct. Go figure that. We humans have been around for less than 5 million years. Dinosaurs lasted well over 100 million years. The Trilobytes lasted even longer before they died suddenly in the great Permian extinction.

Bill Anders photo changed the human mindset. For the first time in Human history, we humans saw just how insignificant a home we have in the vast Universe. A small island of colourful life in lonely cosmos. The foundations had been layed before Anders took that photo. Rachel Carson had written “SILENT SPRING”. It was perhaps the first environmental best seller. A popular public service announcement on TV against littering and pollution, featured an Indian who cried at the site of a littered landscape. It was a powerful 60 second spot.

Rachel Carson wrote the first environmental best seller. wiki.

Just 16 months after Bill Anders pressed the shutter release on Apollo 8, the planet celebrated the first EarthDay.

Scientists in the late 1960′s warned that if we did not change our ways, that by the end of the century, the majority of our rivers would be seriously polluted, and that Ocean fishing stocks would crash. Others warned that millions would suffer health affects from air pollution. Still other scientists warned Congress that there was growing evidence that we were risking our stable climate by continuing to burn fossil fuel at an increasing rate. President Lyndon Johnson was first warned of this in 1965!

Asian Brown Cloud from NASA/NOAA

So here we are 40 years later, and most every one of those predictions have come true, and much more. Nearly every major river on this planet is heavily polluted. The air pollution is so bad in Asia that a giant brown cloud blocks the sunlight, over the planet from India to China. The Asian brown cloud has reduced sunlight by more than 10%, in huge swaths of the planet. Invasive species are costing governments, and citizens billions each year. With the Arctic ice melting at an alarming rate, it seems that humans have, at last, gotten the message. Is it too late?

A series of papers in the journal NATURE last week, have shown that we may have less than 40 years to make DRASTIC cuts in greenhouse gases. That’s  IF we want to hold the warming of our planet to 2C. This will still be a major change to our Climate, but almost no serious Climate Scientist thinks we can hold it below 2C now.

We humans learn slowly it seems. Still, we should all be glad that the crew of Apollo 8 thought to grab a photo of the Earth rise on Christmas Eve 1968.

Later,

Dan