I hope that readers are as eagerly looking forward to the big Leonid meteor shower show as I am. Planning to schlep a lawn chair to the railroad tracks where there is an unemcumbered view of the east/southeast sky and no light pollution to speak of, settle in with a blanket and toast to the solar system’s fireworks display.

It should be quite the spectacle if predictions are correct. It’s a new moon, so that source of light pollution won’t be an issue. They say we’ll only get 20 to 30 an hour, while Asia gets the really big boomers at 200-300 an hour, but I’m hoping they’ve miscalculated a bit. There should still be a few to see tonight. The Leonids put on their show every year as the planet travels through the remains of the Tempel-Tuttle comet. Our pass-through has the incoming debris originating from the direction of the constellation Leo, hence the name. This year, however, Mars is sitting right between us and the constellation, so it should look like our friendly neighborhood Martians are staging the show!

What I will not be doing is wearing a tin foil helmet to prevent those Martians from manipulating my brain waves. According to MIT research conducted in 2005, the metallic fashion statements actually amplify invasive radio frequencies reserved for use by the government in satellite communications rather than protect wearers from what they are most afraid of.

The abstract of On the Effectiveness of Aluminum Foil Helmets reads:

“Among a fringe community of paranoids, aluminum helmets serve as the protective measure of choice against invasive radio signals. We investigate the efficacy of three aluminum helmet designs on a sample group of four individuals. Using a $250,000 network analyser, we find that although on average all helmets attenuate invasive radio frequencies in either directions (either emanating from an outside source, or emanating from the cranium of the subject), certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government’s invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason.”

Oh, well. Before some reader out there comes back with the obvious, yes I do know this is mostly tongue-in-cheek from a few undergrad CompSci geeks with way too much time on their hands. But it’s still pretty funny, so enjoy!

News this week from the rarified realm of science research is both interesting and far-reaching. And no, by far-reaching I’m not talking about discovery that the planet Saturn has a huge, invisible ring nobody noticed before.

In the field of physics, some may have heard of Paul Dirac’s postulated magnetic monopoles – the quantum of the magnetic force, with a single pole instead of two. Dirac postulated that these must exist, and led to his famous ’strings’ (which eventually led to some current GUT models). But nobody has ever actually ’seen’ a monopole, so it’s been an open question of whether such beasties exist. Now, an NIST research team believe they’ve found the next best thing, monopoles the size of molecules!

They of course aren’t real monopoles, but apparently behave the same predicted way. Thus these synthetic compounds could allow scientists to do further research in the lab rather than just on paper napkins. They will be testing monopole predictions with these spin ice molecules, such as whether the postulated particles obey Coulomb’s Law. Stay tuned, this could get fascinating quickly!

Next up is a study about the ubiquitous BPA body burdens 93% of us carry around these days. BPA is a common chemical found in some plastics and epoxy resins. A paper published in Environmental Health Perspectives this week from researchers at Simon Fraser University, UNC-CH and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital linked prenatal BPA exposure to unusually aggressive, hyperactive behavior in 2-year old girls.

Neurodevelopmental disorders – ADD, ADHD, the Autism spectrum, etc. – have been most prevalent in young boys, who represent some 80% of the diagnoses. Further research on this environmental contaminant should be watched, as if the connection is solid, we can expect more and more young girls to suffer the same sorts of problems. BPA has also been linked to fertility problems, growth retardation and learning disorders as well as permanent changes to DNA in mice.

Speaking of Autism’s spectrum of neurodevelopmental disorders, researchers from MIT and the Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital have discovered that a single letter change in DNA may be indicative of Autism. This is known as a Single Nucleotide Polymorphism [SNP], and researchers tied it to chromosomes 5, 6, 20. The gene on chromosome 5 is associated with neuron development and autistic children showed lower expression.

This is just one piece of what researchers expect is a highly complex genetic puzzle, but it might lead to tests that can identify those at risk of producing autistic children, and identifying it in children very early. It also could help lead to specific treatments in the future. Progress is being made at last in dealing with this spectrum as a real medical condition and not just an indicator of lousy parenting skills. Which has been one of the most hurtful urban myths ever propagated by people who had no idea what they were talking about. That some of them were psychologists and physicians is sad, so we can all be thankful that some real answers are coming in.

Last week an amateur astronomer in Australia named Anthony Wesley discovered a ‘hole’ very nearly the size of Earth in the banded atmosphere of Jupiter, indicating that the largest of our solar system’s planets had once again been hit by a cosmic billiard ball of some kind. Space Daily reports that The Hubble Space Telescope was re-tasked after recent calibration to take a look at the expanding hole.

The sky-watchers don’t know if the billiard ball in question was an asteroid or a comet, as apparently no one saw it coming. The telescopes of both amateur and professional astronomers have been trained on the hole. They estimate the object was the size of several football fields, and the force of the explosion caused when it entered the atmosphere was thousands of times more powerful than whatever exploded over Tunguska in Siberia in 1908. This initiates what astronomers call “shock chemistry,” where rare and unexpected chemical reactions occur. Some of these can be measured from earth-based telescopes.

So if you happen to have a good-sized telescope in the attic or garage put away when you or your kids grew up, now is a great time to get it out, find a nice, dark viewing area, and take a look!

Atronomers and astrophysicists determined some years ago – after that strange beastie known as a “black hole” was accepted to probably be a real physical phenomenon, that there are gigantic black holes at the center of galaxies. Moreover, they found they could determine the mass of these galactic black holes via a fairly simple ratio between the mass of the central bulge of stars and the hole they surround (about 1:10,000). It has been presumed that the hole at the galactic center got there by the joining of stellar mass black holes, which then continued to grow by accretion of mass from the stars drawn into the gravity well.

More recently, however, scientists examining galaxies much farther away in space and time found a different pattern. The farther back into the history of the universe they looked, the ratio between galactic black holes and the mass of the stars surrounding them did not follow the 1:10,000 ‘rule’ – the holes account for much more of the mass, meaning they were huge even way back in the early days of the universe.

As quoted in Wired’s article Yo Galaxy’s Mama Is a Black Hole, astronomer Chris Carilli of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory said during a briefing at the American Astronomical Society’s annual meeting that “The simplest conclusion is that the black holes come first and they somehow grow the galaxy around them.”

Supermassive galactic black holes have been noted in galaxies as early as 1.7 billion years after the Big Bang, or 12 billion years ago as seen by us from here on planet earth. These might be survivors of “Primordial Black Holes” theorized to have been created by conditions of the Big Bang, which began to merge after inflation and draw to themselves ever increasing amounts of matter that formed into galaxies. Or some other origin may become apparent with further study, to be greatly enhanced by the Expanded Very Large Array radio telescope system [EVLA] in New Mexico and the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array [ALMA] in Chile, which should be completed by 2012.

In other news, the region of our own galaxy’s core has been detailed in high resolution infrared by a composite panorama made up of snapshots by the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. “Hi-res” in this instance, covering an area 300 x 115 light years 26,000 light years away from here (and now) means being able to see objects as ’small’ as just 20 times the size of our solar system. Which is quite a feat, and offers an awe-inspiring glimpse of conditions near the core that should make us glad we live way out here in our relatively peaceful long arm of the galaxy instead.

Our home galaxy (the Milky Way) has also grown by 50% recently, though not by accumulating mass or anything. New measurements of how quickly our galaxy is rotating in space led a team of astrophysicists from Harvard to conclude that the mass that makes up our galaxy is 50% larger than previously believed. It may also have four arms instead of two, which would make us look to an observer in Andromeda more like a pinwheel instead of a spiral.

And while the new measurements may serve to inflate our cosmic ego a bit, it also bodes ill for the future if astronomers are correct in projecting that a heavier Milky Way will inevitably collide with its neighbor Andromeda sooner than it otherwise would have.

Links:

Yo Galaxy’s Mama Is a Black Hole
Did the big bang spawn trillions of black holes?
Black Holes Grew Fast, Merged Early
Milky Way 50 Percent Larger
Expanded Very Large Array
Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array

Blue Sky Studios

Not so very long ago the wizened gatekeepers of scientific orthodoxy staged a vigorous and extremely nasty campaign designed to prevent any possibility that impressionable science students or the great unwashed masses might come to suspect that things in our cosmic neighborhood were ever anything but perfectly peaceful, perfectly ordered, and perfectly safe. It was the middle of the 20th century, a bit over 150 years since the staid scientists at the Royal Society in London had discovered the hard way that stones really can fall from the sky despite their pronouncements to the contrary.

Yet the publication of Worlds in Collision in 1950 – and Ages in Chaos in 1952 – purported to demonstrate that the Earth had suffered some serious cosmic upheavals within the memory of human civilizations. These ideas drove such astronomical lions as Harlow Shapley to use every underhanded method and scheme available to destroy the author and reassure the public once again that, despite all evidence and witness through the ages, stones do NOT fall from the sky, comets do NOT wreak havoc on the Earth, and the perfect clockwork of cosmic orderliness is NOT violated by disorderly events. Thus did the notorious Velikovsky Affair take its place in the annals of science’s ample history of internal turf wars.

Many young people today are quite used to the idea that our planet has been bombarded by cosmic billiard balls of one sort or another, learning about the epochal events that marked transitions from one age to another, usually by causing mass extinctions of life forms and altering the course of evolution. Even children’s books and movies portray the catastrophic events of 65 million years ago when a large asteroid ended the age of the dinosaurs. Yet apart from those now-recognized disasters in the distant past of our planet, scientists have tended to remain skeptical of the notion that such world-shattering events have ever occurred – or been recorded – in the short (~100,000 year) history of human beings on this planet.

Archaeologists, geologists and paleontologists do know that there was a mass extinction of megafauna such as wooly mammoths, giant bison, saber-tooth tigers, etc. in North America and Siberia just 13,000 years ago, when early Americans of the Clovis culture were known to hunt these huge mammals. Some scientists believed that they were driven to extinction by a drastic climate change that began the last ice age, others believed those early human hunters had driven their prey to extinction. But over the last few years a new narrative that reads like a fine detective novel has come to the fore, and it begins with the death of a nearby star 41,000 years ago.

In 2005, nuclear scientist Richard Firestone of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published research findings that linked the extinction of the mammoths with the supernova explosion of a star just 250 light years from Earth. The initial shockwave hit our planet 34,000 years ago, evidenced by tiny impact craters on mammoth tusks from that time, produced by iron-rich grains that bombarded the Earth at 10,000 kilometers per second. More debris from the explosion was said by the researchers to have formed a comet approximately 10 kilometers in diameter, which hit the Earth 13,000 years ago and caused the extinction.

Now another team of scientists led by anthropologist Douglas Kennett also conclude that a comet was responsible for the extinction of North American megafauna, and have even pinpointed the impact site to somewhere close to Chicago. The event caused an ice age along with the extinction of the giant mammals and disappearance of the human culture that relied upon them for sustenance.

There is of course no universal consensus about this theory despite evidence from many scientific fields, but the authors have stated that a collision so recent in human history underscores the importance of trying to detect and deflect cosmic debris that may be coming our way. And, in the end, we do now know that things are not nearly so peaceful and serene in our neck of the galaxy as scientists once assumed.

Links:

Supernova Explosion May Have Caused Mammoth Extinction
Scientists Say Comet Killed Off Mammoths, Saber-Toothed Tigers

There have been some interesting events going on in our solar system since the turn of the new millennium, just coming up on being 8 years old (when counted as the New Year’s transition 2000 to 2001). And the most recent situation here on planet earth bodes ill for sunbathers and electronic communications.

Our sun (Old Sol) has a predictable 11-year cycle of magnetic pole-flipping – with accompanying sunspots and coronal mass ejections [CMEs] of high-energy ions. The most recent pole-flip occurred between 2000 (north pole) and 2002 (south pole). Our planet has also been known to flip its poles, but on a much longer period cycle that averages ~500,000 years. It’s been about 780,000 years since this last occurred, so it’s probably not too surprising that by 2004 scientists were noticing that our field was fading fast.

Back then scientists were fairly convinced that the process of field reversal takes hundreds or thousands of years to accomplish, so the panic level wasn’t high. Earth’s magnetic field produces a “magnetosphere” that shields the surface and lower atmosphere from incoming solar wind, CMEs and cosmic rays by directing them around the planet. Occasional solar radiation does break through and wreak temporary havoc to our electrical grids and communications technologies. And some birds, turtles and bees rely on the magnetic field of the earth in order to navigate.

In February of 2007 NASA launched five satellites collectively called THEMIS to study the earth’s magnetic field, and by May of that year rumors started appearing in the press that our field flip was imminent. That could present issues due to the likelihood that the magnetosphere may essentially disappear during the period of the flip, leaving the sunny side of the planet exposed and vulnerable. There are of course ample caveats in the scenarios for such an event, given the fact that modern humans have never actually experienced one. Obviously, there is good reason to keep an eye on the process, as 5 satellites aren’t cheap to invent and deploy just for the purpose…

Just this past week we have finally been informed by NASA that indeed, the five THEMIS satellites flew through a ‘hole’ in the magnetosphere’s sun-side bow wave just as it was opening on June 3 of 2007. The hole, NASA tells us, is now 10 times larger than any such hole previously believed to exist, 4 times wider than the diameter of the planet. NASA’s description of this newly released but known for more than a year news is… colorful:

The event began with little warning when a gentle gust of solar wind delivered a bundle of magnetic fields from the Sun to Earth. Like an octopus wrapping its tentacles around a big clam, solar magnetic fields draped themselves around the magnetosphere and cracked it open. The cracking was accomplished by means of a process called “magnetic reconnection.” High above the Earth’s poles, solar and terrestrial magnetic fields linked up (reconnected) to form conduits for solar wind. Conduits over the Arctic and Antarctic quickly expanded; within minutes they overlapped over Earth’s equator to create the biggest magnetic breach ever recorded by Earth-orbiting spacecraft.

Worse, what’s going on bears little to no resemblance to sciences theories about such things. In fact, what’s happening is completely opposite to predictions!

Bottom line for our ‘interesting times’? Stock up on sunscreen, back up your hard drive regularly…

The years ahead could be especially lively. Raeder explains: “We’re entering Solar Cycle 24. For reasons not fully understood, CMEs in even-numbered solar cycles (like 24) tend to hit Earth with a leading edge that is magnetized north. Such a CME should open a breach and load the magnetosphere with plasma just before the storm gets underway. It’s the perfect sequence for a really big event.”

Links:
Sun does magnetic flip
Earth’s Magnetic Field is Fading Fast
A Giant Breach in Earth’s Magnetic Field

Most of us have never heard of this “Copernican Principle” that is apparently so popular in astrophysics. According to Wikipedia The Copernican principle insists that Earth is not in a central, specially favored position in the universe (or solar system). New York Times science blogger John Tierney examines the principle as part of the Doomsday argument.

Physicists at Oxford University, however, have released a paper that reaches the conclusion that we just might inhabit a ’special’ region of the universe after all.

In the article Dark Energy: Is It Merely An Illusion?, the Oxford scientists theorize that we might instead inhabit a “huge void” in the universe where the density of matter is particularly low. This would tend to account for increasing expansion, which simply cannot be explained by the gravitational realities factored on the density of matter, on the assumption that the density is uniform throughout the universe.

The Oxford mavericks conclude that forthcoming tests of the Copernican principle should help sort the reality from the theories in the next few years.

Fractures, or “tiger stripes,” where icy jets erupt on Saturn’s moon Enceladus will be the target of a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on Monday, Aug. 11. – JPL/NASA


Calling all space geeks! Check out the photos returned from Monday’s 50-km fly-over of Enceladus’ ridged south pole “geyser region” at JPL’s Cassini-Huygens Images page. Well done indeed!

And to get the low-down on what they’re looking at and why, Discover magazine collects the data in readily accessible links here.

Saturn and its 52 moons are a fascinating system, and Cassini keeps returning spectacular images and data that will have scientists scratching their heads for years. I personally am following the Titan and Iapetus fly-bys due to long time fascination with these particular moons, but Enceladus is one of the solar system’s most likely places to find life that’s not right here on planet earth. Here’s some useful links…

Cassini-Huygens Images
Discover: Cassini Snaps Pictures of Saturn’s Geyser-Spouting Moon
Moons: Titan
Moons: Iapetus

The annual meeting of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast this week has produced some cool news items on the astronomical discoveries of the past year. First up, we have some interesting findings in our own neighborhood with research focusing on our sun. An international team announced that they’d discovered the source of the solar wind.

The solar wind consists of electrically charged particles that flow away from the sun in all directions. The scientists working with the Hinode mission and the UK’s Extreme Ultraviolet imaging Spectrometer to determine that the sun’s magnetic fields create bright regions of activity on the solar surface. The edges of these bright regions emit hot gas at high speeds. The magnetic fields connect even in separated regions, and this connection (or collision) allows hot gas to escape from the sun’s gravitational field as solar wind.

In another presentation astronomers reported findings specific to the sun’s magnetic fountains. To model the fields that provide the solar wind engines computer simulations were combined with the Hinode mission probe data. Being able to make predictions about the sun’s dynamic magnetic fields and the particle fountains comprising the solar wind should allow for more precise prediction of satellite and on-earth electronic systems disruption.

Farther from home, astronomers have discovered smallest black hole ever. It’s in the Milky Way binary system known as XTE J1650-500 in the southern constellation Ara. NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer [RXTE] satellite discovered the system in 2001, and astronomers examining the date discovered that it harbors a black hold at the very limits of minimum size according to theory. It’s just 15 miles across and its mass is just 3.8 times greater than our sun.

Further still from home, the Hubble space telescope revealed a rare view of the early stages of an exploding supernova occurring in the NGC 2397 spiral galaxy. In addition to showing an early stage view of the supernova SN 2006bc. This has allowed astronomers to investigate stars that may go supernovae and their distinguishing characteristics.

Astronomers at the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of Western Ontario captured video of a meteor falling toward the Parry Sound area on the night of March 5. The video can be seen at UWO’s website using this link.

Because the meteor was tracked to an altitude of 24 kilometers – much closer than the 60-70 km altitude at which most incoming meteoroids burn up – the astronomers have enlisted the help of local residents in the area to search for meteorites they suspect can be found on the ground.