Bob Siederer
25 November 2024
Hello again Science fans!
Like me, most of you are probably preparing for Thanksgiving, that annual tradition of food, football and family. I’ve got my turkey and the ingredients for some sides, and am only short cranberry sauce. The deli counter in my local market hasn’t got theirs out yet.
We have a lot of news to report, mostly astronomical. So lets jump in, starting with Mars.
The Perseverance rover has been climbing the 20 degree steep slopes out of the Jezero Crater, where it has explored for some time. It should reach the rim before the end of the year. Included in that article is a pretty cool animation showing the path Perseverance has taken during its journey on the surface of Mars, taking soil samples along the way. Now that Ingenuity is no longer functioning, path planning is more difficult as that helicopter was able to help with scouting easier paths. But what an incredible feat of engineering this mission has been!
November 12 here on earth marked the start of Mars year 0038! How can that be? We started counting Mars years in 1955 and it takes Mars 687 Earth days to make a revolution of the Sun.
Back in 1931, a meteorite was found in a desk drawer at Purdue University. How and when it was put in that drawer remains a mystery. But we now know it came from Mars, and it interacted with water on Mars. This find has helped add to the understanding of water on Mars earlier in its history.
Space (and other) anniversaries
Nearly 40 years ago, Voyager 2 flew by Uranus, taking just 5 hours of pictures and measurements before continuing on its journey. This is the only exploration of Uranus we have to date. It turns out that what we learned may have been affected by an exceptional increase in solar activity that coincided with the flyby causing us to draw faulty conclusions about the planet.
NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory has been up in space for 20 years and is working better than ever exploring gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the universe.
Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of an article in the New York Times covering the announcement that Spiral Nebulae are similar to our own system. The subject of the article was Dr. Edwin Hubble, after whom the space telescope is named, and what he posited was that the Milky Way is not the only galaxy, but one of many. Think how far we’ve come in our understanding of the Universe in 100 years!
Speaking of the Hubble telescope, it has seen the aftermath of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy passing and interaction with the Milky Way. The LMC managed to survive the encounter, although not without significant alteration.
The first time I saw Saturn through a telescope was awe inspiring. We’ve all seen pictures of the rings, but seeing them with my own eye was something else. Imagine then, that Earth had similar rings 466 million years ago! What a view that would have made in the night sky! The theory is that there’s a series of telltale impact craters and bizarre climage changes from that time that could be caused by rings.
Today, our cell phones keep time to the atomic clock. Before 1883, time was much more complicated. Localities measured time their own way. The hour didn’t start at a uniform time. This meant chaos for railroads which had timetables to keep that had to be adjusted every time a train entered a new time measurement area. The timetables were critical as trains were expected to be at certain points at certain times and risked catastrophic colisions if time wasn’t synchronized within their systems.
On November 18 of that year, the railroads adopted standardized time, creating five time zones across North America. To adjust to the new standardized time, Boston adjusted ahead 16 minutes, New York back 4 minutes, and Baltimore went ahead 6 minutes, 28 seconds! Historian Heather Cox Richardson describes this pivotal event.
Nature
Mary is an Asian elephant living at the Berlin Zoo. Mary has learned to give her self a shower, using a hose! Anchali, another elephant with Mary, sometimes plays pranks on her by crimping off or stepping on the hose! Elephant humor?
Another elephant at the same zoo previously learned how to peel bananas.
Meanwhile, not so far away, a dolphin called Delle is swimming around the Svendborgsund channel, off the coast of Denmark, talking to himself. Seems he’s there all alone and looking for other dolphins.
October set records for above-average temperatures and extremely dry conditions in the US. In some 80 reporting stations it was the driest month ever!
Technology
A surgical robot was trained to perform by “watching” videos of seasoned surgeons and afterwards was able to execute the same procedures as skillfully as the surgeons did. This was done using the same underlying design that ChatGPT uses to work with words and text, only now using videos for “learning”. This technology is advancing at breakneck speed.
Science and Government
I feel compelled to post a couple of things about the lack of science credentials in the cabinet appointees the incoming administration is nominating. I keep seeing images of the circus clown car when I think of these appointments.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services. He is an antivaxer, continuing to promote the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism. He’s also against fluoride in water, doesn’t believe AIDS is caused by HIV and believes chemtrails are really hazardous chemicals released into the atmosphere by planes to poison us. In reality, the exhaust is mostly water vapor.
He’s also a proponent of raw milk. Here’s what the science has to say about that.
Be skeptical. Question changes in regulations by researching the science backing them. I’m afraid that in this new administration, should it actually come to be that these unqualified folks all get confirmed, we won’t find much science behind the rules.
Have a great week in Science and a wonderful Thanksgiving from all of us at the SciSchmooze!
Bob Siederer
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