David Almandsmith

On Target with the SciSchmooze

DART Clobbers Dimorphos

Dear science aware reader, 

Last Monday, September 26, the 600 kg DART spacecraft struck the 4.8 billion kg asteroid Dimorphos. An Italian CubeSat detached from DART 15 days earlier to take pictures of the collision with cameras Leia and Luke. The collision ‘should’ slow the asteroid’s speed by 2 cm/sec from its initial (stellar) velocity of about 2.3 million cm/sec (about 0.00009%). It is impossible to directly measure that tiny change in velocity, but it ‘should’ detectably alter Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos, its parent asteroid weighing in at 523 billion kg. A spacecraft named Hera will launch in 2024 and rendezvous with the asteroids in 2027 to study effects of last Monday’s experiment. Stay tuned!


SciSchmoozing Earth

Geochron

Happy Labor Day dear reader,

I recall the first time i saw a geochron clock on the wall of my hometown bank. Instantly i knew where in the world there was sunrise, sunset, night, and day. It lifted me for several minutes from living in a town in California with a few thousand others to living on an entire planet with its billions. Perspective. Perspectives grow. After a year in Berlin, Deutschland, earning a degree in biology, volunteering with the Peace Corps in Lesotho, helping to establish a wildlife rescue organization, having kids, etc., etc., my perspectives are multifaceted and messy - sort of like a cluttered attic. What stays with me is the reality of living on a planet with billions of others and sharing responsibility for protecting the whole.

You can have a geochron clock for your very own if you are willi


SciSchnooze and Leap!

¿Do spiders dream of lethargic flies?

Hello again science fans,

Daniela Rößler (‘ß’ is a double-s symbol used in Deutschland) has gathered fascinating data suggesting that jumping spiders might actually dream while sleeping. ¿Sleeping spiders? Well, yes. Just about every animal has been observed in behaviors that seem to indicate sleep. REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is associated with dreaming in humans, and other mammals often move and sometimes vocalize during REM sleep. Problem here: the two big forward-facing eyes that salticids (jumping spiders) use for hunting prey don't move; they’re fixed to the head. But their retinas do move! These tiny spiders look around their surroundings by moving their retinas back and forth - sorta l


Chorizo Gate Meets the SciSchmooze

Bless you, Étienne Klein, for bringing levity and wisdom to us last week. Levity came in claiming that his photo of a slice of chorizo was a JWST photo of Proxima Centauri, and the wisdom came in the physicist’s following Tweet: “Well, when it's time for the aperitif, cognitive biases seem to have a field day... so watch out for them. According to contemporary cosmology, no object of Spanish cold cuts exists anywhere but on Earth.” (Actually it was in French and instead of “cold cuts” he wrote “charcuterie” but i had to look that up, so . . . .)

The real Proxima Centauri is the subject of this excellent 20 minute PBS video.

A real JWST photo of t


SciSchmoozing the Good Life

Nichelle Nichols 1932 - 2022 (Getty Images)

Hello again, student of reality,

Wow, what a life to celebrate. Daughter of the town mayor, dancer, singer, model, actress, and for most of us, Lieutenant Uhura on Star Trek. Nichelle Nichols had roles on stage, television, and in more than 25 movies. She worked to interest children in science and she recruited a number of astronauts for NASA including Sally Ride and the first African-American astronaut, Guion Bluford. Sadly, she lost her younger brother who died with 38 others in the Heaven’s Gate debacle. I had the pleasure of meeting her at a 100-Year StarShip Symposium in Houston. A summary of her life can be found on Wikipedia. Given that we only have one life to lead, she certainly set a sterling example for living it fully. Thank you, Nichelle.

Dear science fan, thank you for joining me.

The Declaration of Independence extolls “safety” and “happiness” so please enjoy a safe and happy Fourth of July.

The privileged white male Declaration signers accepted this passage:  “... merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”. Six of the Declaration signers were also among the privileged white men who signed the U.S. Constitution. But even after the Bill of Rights was appended, the law of the land condoned slavery and failed to give voting rights to women and 

Butting Heads with the SciSchmooze

Butting heads - Not good for Musk Oxen or People

It was given knowledge that a musk ox is protected from concussive brain injury by having an intracranial air pocket and a very broad horn. Research now shows they suffer from chronic traumatic encephalopathy - just like boxers and American football players - and may suffer some degree of dementia. The researchers surmise that mild dementia in a musk ox - unlike with humans - probably doesn’t much affect its life. 

SciSchmoozing around the Edges

Brown Bess, a muzzle-loading smoothbore musket from the Revolutionary War

The U.S. Constitution as of 1791 held that:

  • Slavery was legal;
  • For census purposes, slaves counted as ⅗ of a person;
  • Slaves and women were not entitled to vote;
  • People had the right to bear muzzle-loaded firearms.

The only “Arms” covered by the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment were single shot weapons that had to be 

SciSchmoozing through Categories

Sagittarius A* Black Hole proxy -- © Krispy Kreme

Recently your SciSchmooze has come all too often with ‘cosmic’ images: Sunday’s lunar eclipse, a solar eclipse by Phobos, low temperatures of the James Webb Space Telescope, Hubble’s image of Earendel, etc., etc. This week i was planning on an image of something closer to home, but along came the image of the supermassive black hole that warps space and time at the center of our galaxy. In spite of my intentions, the first ‘category’ is again, “SPACE.”


SPACE

Sgr A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”) is our galaxy’s supermassive black hole. It has never been observed, only surmised, 

Celebrating Mothers with the SciSchmooze

A Lunar Eclipse - Getty Images

Hello again fans of Science!

Today is Mother’s Day, that day where we honor mothers everywhere. I had always thought that, while certainly mothers are worth celebrating, the day itself was the invention of the hospitality industry. Not so!

According to historian and fellow Substack writer Heather Cox Richardson, 

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