Dear SciSchmoozers,

A 6.1 earthquake topped off my birthday this month in Oaxaca, Mexico (and abruptly terminated a huge outdoor rock concert). Since the quake was located 108 kilometers below the terrain, there was almost no damage - except to nerves.

The Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989 was a 6.9 magnitude event. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 was a 7.9 magnitude event. Because the magnitude scale is logarithmic, the San Francisco quake was 10 times “bigger” than the Loma Prieta event. In terms of energy, however, the San Francisco quake released over 30 times the energy of the 1989 quake.

¿Is our Bay Area threatened by another 7.9 quake? Well, yes, but not for a while. The g

Dear reader,
I’ve assembled some ideas and information you might enjoy.

SPACE

On Tuesday, go outside at 1938 hrs (that’s nerd-notation for 7:38 PM) to watch the ISS make a 6-minute pass over the Bay Area. (NW horizon to directly overhead (86°) to SE horizon)

Astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitri Petelin returned to Earth from

Dear Reader,
Below are a few items of interest: discoveries, ideas, and issues. Pick and choose as you wish and click on links for deeper stories.

Bike sharing rentals seemed like a great idea and many millions of these bicycles were manufactured in China, clogging sidewalks and streets. Excess bikes numbering in the millions were rounded up and scrapped. This created tons of non-recyclable waste. This was a tiny trickle of the over 2 billion tons of waste created annually world-wide. Every year another 13 million tons of waste plastic enters our oceans. In less than 20 years, there will be more tons of plastic in the ocean than tons of fish. Methane is a powerful gre

Hello again dear SciSchmooze reader,

In the U.S. 69% of adults believe that angels are real, and 41% believe that extraterrestrial UFOs are regularly seen. Most children in this country are taught to believe in angels as part of their religious upbringing. I was. So that 69% figure seems explainable. 

It may be more remarkable that nearly half of adults accept that extraterrestrials are sharing our friendly skies. Wishful thinking? Underlying fears? Groupthink? Popular TV shows? “The truth is out there” … but it’s not likely to be what David Grusch would have us

July 2, 2023

Hello again, you who like me enjoys learning, enjoys fireworks, and enjoys sharing the 4th of July with friends and family. 

Hello again, dear reader,

SPACE

While we were Earth-bound this last week, 17 out of Earth’s 8 billion people were in orbit - a new (if soon-to-be-exceeded) record. ¿How high an orbit? Consider the standard (in the U.S.) 12-inch globe. They were orbiting 4 tenths of an inch above its surface. The thickness of a piece of standard copy paper represents the thickness of our atmosphere in which humans can populate - 14,000 feet.

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Dear science aficionado,

Join us in another romp through recent (and not so recent) science revelations. But first, “Infinity.” Somehow i missed the Netflix movie, “A Trip to Infinity,” when it came out last year. Carve out 80 minutes this week to watch it. You won’t be sorry. The movie reminded me of a book i ‘absorbed’ during my senior year in high school: “One Two Three... Infinity” by George Gamow. In 1956 Gamow was awarded the UNESCO Kalinga Prize for popularizing science. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Carroll, and Steven Pinker credit the book with informing or downright setting their careers. It was largel

Greetings, dear reader. I trust you will find some delectable items in this week’s science smorgasbord.

SPACE

Learned geophysicists years ago concluded that Mars has a hot liquid inner core, unlike Earth with its hot solid inner core. They calculated that Mars’ gravitational pressure is insufficient to make molten iron solid, as is the case with our home planet. But there’s nothing like good data: the seismometers on NASA’s Insight mission clinched that theory using 

Greetings, I hope you're warming up, SciSchmoozers!

I hope that you are enjoying the weather. Soon it will either be too cold or hot aga