Dan's Wild Wild Science Journal

There is a paper in NATURE this week that has caught the attention of a lot of people. Even those who are not into astrophysics!

Awhile back the Hubble telescope took the image you see below. See that little smudge?

This image may contain the most distant and oldest object ever seen by human eyes. From European Southern Observatory/NASA

Astronomer Matt Lehnert from the Observatoire de Paris and a team of scientists decided to use the new Very Large Array(VLT) telescope in Chile to see of they could capture enough light from that smudge to measure the red shift.

The VLT in Northern Chile's Atacama Desert.

Remember that the farther an object is away from Earth the faster it is moving away from us. The entire universe is expanding.

Think of all the galaxies we can see including our own on the skin of a balloon that is slowly being blown up. They are all getting further apart. The farther away an object is the faster it is moving away from us.

Astronomers can measure the shift in the frequency of light to see how fast an object is receding from us. They can then use this to estimate the distance it is from us.

Matt Lehnert and his team were able to do it and were stunned to see a redshift of 8.6. That means that little smudge is 13.1 billion light years away! That means of course that we are seeing the galaxy as it was 13.1 billion years ago. The Earth itself is only 4,500 million years old!

From Marcelo Alvarez's cool page: http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~malvarez/index.shtml

Think about that. You are seeing something as it was 13 billion years ago. You are literally looking back in time.

The universe was only about 600 million years old then. This is just after what is called the dark ages. The universe was not visible after the big bang until it had cooled enough for photons to from and travel.

Marcel Alvarez is a Canadian astrophysicist and he has a great poster that explains the very wild early universe! Click the image to the right to get the BIG picture.

Image form the Climate Prediction Center NOAA. Click to make BIG.

The strong and developing La Nina means that a decent long range forecast of the winter is possible. La Nina, and it’s cousin El Nino, tend to produce predictable weather patterns over the winter months.

Something to keep in mind. The forecast is for the average of the winter months. An above average temperature does not rule out some brief severe cold outbreaks. A drier than normal winter does not mean a certain region will not get a big snow storm.

Image from NOAA.

That said, here is what we can say with the La Nina. The South and Southeast USA will likely be warmer and drier than normal. The Tennessee and Ohio Valleys may see some heavy rains and floods.

Here in North Alabama we could go either way. We are right on the line. 65% of the time we have a milder than normal winter with a La Nina.

La Nina’s tend to bring cold and snowy winters to the NW corner of North America. If you live in Vancouver BC, watch out! It might be a winter to remember!

Kentucky and Ohio look likely to be cool but quite wet.

You can check out the maps but remember this is an average for the winter months!

I was on a conference call with some climate experts yesterday when someone mentioned this graph from NOAA. Every decade from the 1950′s through 2000-2010 was warmer than the decade before it.

Every decade since 1950 has been warmer than the one before it. Click image for higher resolution.

NOAA also has released the September temperature anomalies. Even with the strong La Nina of cool waters in the Pacific, it was the 8th warmest on record. January through September is now tied for the warmest year on record as well.

Red dots are warmer than normal and blue dots are cooler than normal. The string of blue in the Pacific is the strong La Nina developing.

If someone tells you this is being caused by the sun, you can reply that the sun has been unusually quiet this year. It only recently began to get active as the next solar cycle starts.

The graph of the decadal temperatures smooths out the natural cycles like El Nino and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. It also smooths out the slight rise and fall in the global temperatures from the solar cycle.

Oh, there is this:

It’s called the Keeling Curve in honor of Charles Keeling who started the carbon dioxide measurements at Mauna Loa. The reason 97.5%* of climate scientists are sure the planet is warming, and that it’s the greenhouse gases that are doing it is simply this.

Every other realistic possibility has been ruled out. Yes, there are natural cycles but the greenhouse gases will warm the Earth no matter

As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says: The laws of physics are real. Everything else is just politics.

* That number is based on peer reviewed science

Found this online today and it’s a must for Earth Science teachers everywhere. This is definitely my longest post ever!

Okay so click on it and download the full size image and then get a poster made!

kudos to Karl Tate at OurAmazingPlanet.com

I just heard today about a fabulous project to help get supplies to teachers in need. Donors Choose is a clearing house where teachers who need supplies can be matched with donors.

Teachers list exactly what they need equipment wise and you can chip in to help them get it! Any amount is excepted and it’s tax deductible!

I have made a special page on their site where readers of this blog can help out teachers of Math and Science.

Click the image above and you can see what classroom needs what. Even a dollar makes a difference! If you have a blog, please give this project some publicity!