ASTR430 Spring 2012 BLOG

MESSAGE #33. Fri Jun 1 14:46:16 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Everyone have a good summer! (And enjoy the transit on Tuesday!)

kk

MESSAGE #32. Sun May 20 11:44:03 2012. Joseph Kreft wrote:

Finally posting on the blog after the class is over, but thanks for an enjoyable semester! This broke up the dreary days of electrical engineering quite nicely, and I feel like I learned a lot.

Joe

MESSAGE #31. Sun May 13 19:21:37 2012. Isaac Christian wrote:

anytime wednesday works for me

MESSAGE #30. Sun May 13 14:24:34 2012. David Krasner wrote:

Wednesday, anytime after 1pm, is excellent for me!

MESSAGE #29. Sun May 13 13:35:23 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

From Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/meteorites-big-fireball-spark-space-age-gold-rush-133329169.html

Stuff happens!

kk

MESSAGE #28. Sat May 12 20:24:22 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Any time after, say, 0900 is fine. Though 1700 does hit rush hour and dinner time, to boot.

kk

MESSAGE #27. Sun May 6 14:08:54 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Anyone started 7 yet?

kk

MESSAGE #26. Tue May 1 22:58:59 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

I've been meaning to do this for some time, just haven't gotten around to it. When I said in class that I had encompassed the entire Space Age, I realized later that was not quite correct. The first man-made objects that reached space, defined as 100km above the Earth's surface, were almost certainly V2 rockets in 1944. (It's possible that Big Bertha, the German WWI cannon that shelled Paris from 75 miles away also tossed shells that high. One-track minds, those Germans!) And I am certainly not that old. But if you mean Space Age starting with the first orbital flights, then, yeah, I can just qualify. I have some vignettes of my experiences to offer to all & sundry, then, chosen randomly and which stick vividly in my memory.

Vignette 1: We learned about the progression of planetary probes early on. A variant of the fly-by was the smash landing--by choice, not accident. NASA did this to get the first closeups of the Moon before it developed orbiter and landing technology; it needed some specific idea about the surface before it could begin to think about how to land there. Ranger was the tool, but the first 6 failed in a variety of spectacular ways. With Ranger 7, they finally got some images & so it was that very early one cold winter morning in Ft Knox, I got out of bed, crept over to the couch, turned on the TV with volume very low & lay there covered with a blanket, mesmerized by the (live) images coming back from the spacecraft. Each succeeding one sharper and more detailed than the next, so you really did get hooked on the progression. And then the last one ended mid-frame! I was *so* disappointed, because, well, things were just getting interesting by that point!

Vignette 2: November 1980--Voyager flies by Saturn. I was working near the USDA building, on the job for about 6 months. When I left the office at 4pm, I went over to the Air and Space museum where I had heard that there was another real-time image session, moderated by a couple of NASA spokesmen. No fancy projection TV's, no seats, just some big monitors & a couple hundred of us sitting on the carpet. Every time a new image came in, there would be a rush of comments from the science crew, avidly trying to identify just what the heck we were seeing--since most of it was unexpected. At one point, the spokesman gave a little lecture summing up the findings & trying to sort out a little of the confusion. It seemed that new interpretations had a life expectancy of 5 minutes or so before someone would point out a fatal flaw; back to the drawing board, or at least the latest data. I stayed for 5 or 6 hours & came away with a vivid impression of science as a messy, fast-moving, energetic business, as far removed from the stereotypes as you could imagine. It felt grand.

Vignette 3: I spent the summer of '69 in Macon Georgia, as hot a place as I ever want to see--and I've spent a lot of summers in the South! I was one of 400 high school juniors and seniors at something the state of Georgia called Governor's Honors Program & a very fine time was had by all; I had the unique experience of being taught by a student of a student of R. Moore, who had helped revolutionize math & the teaching thereof from the 20's through the 50's. The afternoons were for different subjects and though I am pretty sure it was not blowing up acid all over me in organic synthesis that caused me to swap subjects half way, it is undeniable both that said accident did happen & more importantly, that the theater was about the only air conditioned building on campus when the temp/humidity both went into triple digits for a week. So I was working on a production of =Julius Caesar= the night that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. for several hours leading up it, less and less work got done and more and more TV-watching until finally we were all glued to the screen. The moment came; we threw up handfuls of home-made confetti all over the stage; after 5 minutes, the director finally had had enough and commanded us with his best scowl to get the mess cleaned up and get back to work. Some people have no poetry in their souls, alas!

Vignette 4: I can actually claim to have worked, for the most infinitesimal time, on the Space Shuttle program. I had a job working the summer of '76 in the Pentagon (at the time my Dad was the Army's expert on Soviet armored vehicles; I rode into work every morning with him) with the Air Force. I was a mostly supernumerary clerk that got loaned to the division that was evaluating the program and how it was to be used. Mostly, they wanted to make a case that the use of Vandenberg as a 2nd launch site was worth more than NASA was willing to admit so that they wouldn't have to contribute as many dollars to the budget. They also wanted to make a case for a 6 shuttle fleet on the grounds that 3 shuttles was the absolute minimum to run any program; if you only built 5 and lost 1, you would be on shaky ground thereafter. They estimated a 4% loss rate--unfortunately, dead on. I didn't contribute a whole lot but I did spend 3 interesting weeks on it.

Vignette 5: I'm not proud of this one. I consider it one of my worst failures. I was in grad school in CompLit at IU, taking a sort of interdisciplinary philosophy course one semester, generally investigating how people have thought about things historically and the hidden assumptions they bring to the table. One day the subject rolled around to the message that Sagan et al had stuck on Voyager, the money it had cost. . . and the hidden assumptions behind the whole project. But it turned into a session dumping scorn not just on the project scientists, but their intelligence, the endeavor as a whole, space exploration in general, etc ad inf. I was astounded as they pointed out oh-so-smugly how they were not going to really reach any aliens with this message, because they more or less assumed the aliens would be just like us! I wanted to speak up. I wanted to tell them that the message was not an intelligence test for humans, but rather a sorting device for anyone we would meet: if they couldn't figure it out, chances are we wouldn't have enough in common to talk to each other anyways, so best to find that out ASAP. I wanted to point out that the probe wasn't going to be near *anywhere* for 80,000 years at least, which was an even bigger objection, if you were looking for objections. I wanted to tell them that the project scientists had a considerable amount of brainpower, had probably considered these points, and in any case weren't present to explain & defend themselves against what was looking like personal attacks. I wanted to say something, but I couldn't make myself speak up against the sheer vitriol I felt in that room, in an environment which should have nurtured intelligent dissent. It was a time when I knew that something was wrong & I didn't do anything about it.

I'm a bit of a slow thinker, so it was a few hours after class that I realized what I had (not) done and what would have been the best response. They were all concerned with the waste of tax dollars. I calculated that by the most extreme reckoning they were each out about. . . $0.10. I should have marched around the room, given each one a dollar, and then announced that I had just bought up all their claims to injury at 10-1. . . and that they no longer had any moral right to criticize the project at all. It would have been a grand gesture, and I kick myself every time I remember this incident for not having done so. Let that be a lesson to you!

kk

MESSAGE #25. Mon Apr 30 13:50:22 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

I don't see anyone indicating they want to come to a homework problem solving session today at 5. I've got a 30 mile trip in from Annapolis at rush hour if I want to do this & can't see it if I'm the only one there. So unless I hear otherwise by 4, I'll have to give it a miss.

kk

MESSAGE #24. Mon Apr 30 11:29:19 2012. Michaela Carpenter wrote:

They came out with a new scale of the universe interactive thing. The Scale of Things 2

MESSAGE #23. Sun Apr 29 22:24:38 2012. Christianne Bernard wrote:

SO COOL

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

MESSAGE #22. Sat Apr 28 0:09:53 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

After tangling with problem 1 to no avail, I'm certainly ready for a session on Monday. Anyone else?

kk

MESSAGE #21. Tue Apr 24 21:26:01 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

It might have to be Kerberos, to avoid conflict.

I'm still trying to remember the 3rd of the trio of punished that goes with Tantalus & Sisyphus.

Pomegranate could also work, in an indirect way (-:

Of course, when we run out of Greco-Roman mythology, we can turn to HP Lovecraft. Cthulhu, anyone?

kk

MESSAGE #20. Sun Apr 22 17:00:27 2012. Robert Morse wrote:

For those who like esoteric mythology... If P4 eventually becomes Cerberus then P5 (if and when it's located) could become Orthrus, Cerberus' litter mate.

(Sorry. I couldn't resist.)

MESSAGE #19. Sat Apr 21 12:13:25 2012. Christianne Bernard wrote:

this is cool

http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/sklnk/what_would_it_be_like_to_live_on_a_planet_with/

MESSAGE #18. Sat Mar 31 12:51:12 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

That's one honking big picture, for a honking big planet!

The latest Sky and Telescope has an article on the latest Saturn GWS (& storm) from 2010--which was 20, not 30 years, from the last one. You will be able to follow the discussion easily after the last chapter. The latest spot/storm appears to be strongly correlated with lightning & models similarly to a terrestrial t-storm.

It also reports a water exoplanet (GJ 1214b): density of 1.9 g/cm^3 & 50% of the atmosphere as water vapor. But within the depths, you'd likely get white hot ice!

Personally, I'm cool with any kind of ice except Vonnegut's Ice-9 (-;

kk

MESSAGE #17. Tue Mar 27 20:32:45 2012. Michaela Carpenter wrote:

Bad link, sorry about that.

MESSAGE #16. Tue Mar 27 20:31:14 2012. Michaela Carpenter wrote:

Our discussions in class today reminded me of this picture my friend sent me. Io releasing volcanic matter into the magnetosphere around Jupiter.

MESSAGE #15. Fri Mar 16 15:28:58 2012. Christianne Bernard wrote:

http://www.cracked.com/article_19725_5-mind-blowing-things-found-in-our-own-solar-system.html

i have a thing for hilariously immature interpretations of astronomical phenomena

also, this is the only place where you will see Jupiter referred to as "a drag queen in a police lineup of truck drivers"

MESSAGE #14. Thu Mar 15 13:33:18 2012. Christopher Biggerstaff wrote:

Cool video from NASA about the evolution of the moon.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid42804654001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAABvaL8JE~,ufBHq_I6FnyW5vEkcwl_fb_9itzlU5tt&bctid=1508060156001

MESSAGE #13. Wed Mar 7 15:28:43 2012. Brett Morris wrote:

Martian dust devil captured by MRO:

MESSAGE #12. Wed Mar 7 0:22:07 2012. Gregory Polley wrote:

"The most astounding fact" - Neil DeGrasse Tyson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9D05ej8u-gU

MESSAGE #11. Tue Mar 6 14:38:28 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Thanks!

I see from, um, chapter 12 that having only a couple of hotspots does seem to allow some useful deductions about convection within Mars, at least historically. I tried to think of some interesting questions about the terrestrial comparisons, but the blasted chapter is so full of details, I can't think of any right now--every time I came up with one, a couple of paragraphs later, the writer answered it!

Weather has cleared up down here. Seeing is slightly better than at UMd, might try some naked eye observations. Somewhere in this cluttered house is the old, old Edmund Scientific 42mm refractor I used often as a boy, but finding it would be a job for an archaeologist. (My finder was a straw secured to the barrel with rubber bands & collimated axially as best I could at 12--If I could see it through the straw, it was definitely going to be in the FOV (-: )

Also found: a tool that probably only Prof. Hamilton would know how to use or to have seen--and that is going out on a limb--my old Pickett slide rule. Have to admit, I don't remember more than vaguely how to set up a problem, although the general theory is easy enough. Slide rules disappeared more quickly than VHS once TI tossed the first programmable calculators on the market. It's a fun toy, though personally I feel an abacus is more fun--less useful, but more fun (-:

kk

MESSAGE #10. Mon Mar 5 22:58:33 2012. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

I was hoping that some of you might discuss some of Ken's questions - he's been waiting patiently for a week! I'll start us out on a few of them.

1. Really hard to measure as it is a tiny fraction of the energy received from sunlight (~0.1%). One would probably have to go down deeper than the thermal heading/cooling that accompanies one Mars rotation. Even then, the heat loss would be inferred from the measured Temperature gradient. Measurements like this have only been done on Earth.

2. I recall a related argument about whether the sky on Mars should look red or blue. I went looking and found this interesting site: http://wiki.razing.net/ufologie.net/htm/marscol.htm. Now the URL is a bit offputting, but the guy's point does not seem crazy. Partway through his argument, the HST blue sky result that I remember appears. So there is an issue on how Mars would really look to the human eye.

MESSAGE #9. Sun Mar 4 14:29:38 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Story in Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/jupiter-moons-ocean-may-too-acidic-life-151007092.html

I know, we aren't quite to that chapter yet; just keep it in mind (-:

kk

MESSAGE #8. Mon Feb 27 23:26:44 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

It was nice. All this month should be good, in fact.

My Dad is very, very ill & I am going home to Charleston tomorrow. The prognosis is not good. How long I will be gone I do not know, but I will miss at *least* 3 days of class. So I am counting on *someone* to please take notes I can cadge later, assuming that I am not forced to withdraw altogether. It's nice being in class with you all; I hope I don't have to give it up.

However, I will have internet at home and I will *try* to follow virtually via this blog. In that spirit, some questions about the current chapter:

1) Have any landers/orbiters tried to measure the heat flow through the planet directly? Is this even feasible without drilling deep?

2) On pg 144: 2 distinct colors to the rocks, one looks clearly to be dust. The other looks very blue--is this an exaggeration or true color?

3) Possible ancient seabeds in the northern hemisphere: I remember an article in =Science= from the '90s claiming that the proposed seashores didn't form a consistent whole, then a later article claiming they did. Anyone know the status of the reconstruction?

4) Shield vulcanism: there seem to be only 2 or 3 hot spots operating. Can we hypothesize anything useful about convection within Mars from this?

5) The swirls at the polar caps during the Martian summer: is there a reason for patterns like this? Prevailing winds, perhaps?

6) Seems like the results of the Viking soil experiments have been called into question due to the probe that landed near the cap a couple of years ago.

To me the most interesting things about the chapter are the shield volcanoes, the valleys, and the possibility of a hydrological cycle on Mars in the early days. It's an interesting planet and one we can get to with probes without an inordinate amount of trouble. I remember how excited everyone was to get 20-odd photos from Mariner 4. . . my, how times change (-:

kk

MESSAGE #7. Sun Feb 26 18:02:19 2012. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Jupiter, Venus, and the Moon are out tonight in a nice tight grouping! The Moon is a few degrees from Jupiter and Venus is brighter, further away, and closer to the horizon. Yesterday the Moon was close to Venus in the sky! If you are out in the early evening tonight and for the next few weeks Jupiter and Venus are easy to spot!

MESSAGE #6. Fri Feb 24 5:15:36 2012. Gregory Polley wrote:

Just going to leave this here...

http://scaleofuniverse.com/

MESSAGE #5. Thu Feb 23 20:15:39 2012. Kenneth Koester wrote:

Today's class reminded me of Neal Stephenson's =Anathem= (portmanteau of anthem & anathema), so I am heartily recommending it to all of you with your copious spare time. It gives nothing away to say that it takes place in a parallel universe & that there is much talk of orbit elements along the way (-: As theors-in-training, it may offer useful pointers in case you ever run into a Rhetor or an Incanter (read the book (-: ).

Technically, most of Stephenson's work is not actually SF, but all of it is about science & is, for my money, Way Cool. I mean, how many other authors have had the chutzspah to make Alan Turing (=Cryptonomicon=) a main character? Not to mention Newton, Leibniz, Hooke, & the rest of the Royal Academy, ca. 1670-1700 (=The Baroque Cycle=)?

kk

MESSAGE #4. Thu Feb 23 0:09:14 2012. Gregory Polley wrote:

Last year's news about faster-than-light neutrinos possibly due to a loose cable:

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/02/faster-than-light-neutrino-result-apparently-a-mistake-due-to-loose-cable.ars

Old article:

http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/11/faster-than-light-neutrinos-opera.html?ref=hp

MESSAGE #3. Tue Feb 21 19:29:56 2012. Michaela Carpenter wrote:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46467275/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.T0Q21HJrPK1

They found a planet with superfluid water and hot ice! What will they come up with next?

MESSAGE #2. Thu Feb 9 14:10:12 2012. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

I just fixed the Blog - Let the posting begin! :)

MESSAGE #1. Wed Dec 28 12:37:19 2011. Prof. Doug Hamilton wrote:

Welcome to the ASTR430 Blog! I hope that you find it useful. It works best if you all make an effort to post cool stuff here for the rest of the class to enjoy. You can use Simple HTML Commands to include links and images. Your blog usage will contribute to your participation grade. Here is a Sky and Telescope Article announcing our discovery of Pluto's 4th moon this summer! And here is the full color version of the figure from my exoplanet paper - looks pretty toasty!

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