Gregory Pijanowski - The Pigeon Roost

Carbon

Most are aware the role carbon, specifically in carbon dioxide, plays in global warming. What is important is not to designate carbon as something inherently harmful. In fact, without carbon, life would not be possible. So lets take a look at carbon and how it fits into the big picture on Earth.

Carbon is created in the nuclear fusion of stars. When sun-like stars become red giants, their cores fuse helium and beryllium into carbon atoms. When a massive star goes supernova, the explosion disperses the matter created by that star into the universe and is recycled into new stars and planets. Remember the old song lyric, “We are stardust?” That is literally the case. The matter that makes up most of our bodies was produced in the fusion reaction of an ancient generation star.

So what is carbon? Lets take a look at the image below:

First, note the number of protons in the nucleus equals the number of electrons orbiting the nucleus. Protons have a positive charge and electrons have a negative charge. The fact that there are equal numbers of both means the atom is electrically neutral. Also, note that there are four electrons in the outside orbital shell. This shell can fit a total of eight electrons. Thus, the carbon atom can form molecules with other elements by sharing four electrons in the outer shell with the other element. Atoms like to have their outside shells filled, or as many a high school chemistry teacher has said, are “happy” when those outer shells are filled.

Carbon Based Life

The study of organic chemistry is often treated as a course onto itself. What is important to understand is that life on Earth is carbon based. The bonds that a carbon atom can form with hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen atoms make it the backbone of organic molecules that life consists of. Carbon atoms have the ability to form long complex chains of molecules to create carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids (such as DNA).

Nature likes to recycle. As noted above, carbon was formed in stars and recycled in new stars. Carbon is recycled on Earth as well. Ever hear of the term fossil fuels? That is because the fuel we use is carbon based. And those carbon based fuels are extracted from the Earth. How did those carbon based fuels get there? From the dead remains of plant and animal life that existed on Earth millions of years ago.

Hydrocarbons

The fuel we use in our day-to-day lives are based on hydrocarbons. The term is derived from the molecular structure of these fuels based on molecules composed of carbon and hydrogen atoms. For example, natural gas is mostly methane which is a simple hydrocarbon based on one carbon atom sharing an electron with four hydrogen atoms. Hence, methane’s molecular formula is CH₄. On the other hand, gasoline is formed by long chains of carbon-hydrogen bonds designated as C₁₁H₂₄ or C₁₂H₂₆. An example of some hydrocarbons is shown below:

Credit: United States Geological Survey.

Why do hydrocarbons make an excellent fuel source? There are a multitude of reasons. Hydrocarbons produce a lot of energy and can be controlled during combustion. Economically, fossil fuels are easy to store and transport. That also makes gasoline difficult to replace as not only do new automobile engines need to be designed, but a new infrastructure would need to be built to replace the current refinery-pipeline-gas station system. While great strides are being made in alternative fuel sources, fossil fuels will be a significant player in the economy for the foreseeable future.

To see why this is a concern, we’ll take a look at a simplified version of the carbon cycle below.

Credit: U.S. Department of Energy Genomic Science Program/http://genomicscience.energy.gov

Note how the use of fossil fuels results in a net intake of 6 billion (Gt=giga tons, giga = 1 billion) tons of carbon into the atmosphere. Carbon is recycled between the land, oceans, and atmosphere. Why do fossil fuels emit more carbon into the atmosphere than absorbed back into land? The reason is, it takes millions of years to form fossil fuels but only a few months to extract and burn it. It’s the same if you run more water into a bathtub than the drain can take away. So, what happens to that carbon when fossil fuels are burned and released into the atmosphere?

Carbon Dioxide

To understand how carbon dioxide is formed, lets take a look at an oxygen atom below:

Note that oxygen has 6 electrons in the outer shell that can hold eight electrons. Remember, the carbon atom has 4 empty spots in its outer shell to share. That being the case, two oxygen atoms will combine with a single carbon atom so that the outer shells of the oxygen atoms will be completely filled with eight electrons and are “happy”.

Methane is the simplest of the hydrocarbon fuels. What happens when methane is burned for energy?

Oxygen is used as a catalyst to burn methane as follows:

CH₄ (methane) + 2O₂ -> CO₂ (carbon dioxide) + 2H₂O + energy

Note that each side of the equation contains 1 carbon atom, 4 hydrogen atoms, and 4 oxygen atoms. When fossil fuels are burned for energy, carbon dioxide is released in the exhaust and into the atmosphere.

Greenhouse Gases

The composition of the Earth’s atmosphere is as follows:

Nitrogen: 78%

Oxygen: 21%

Argon: 0.9%

Carbon Dioxide: 0.03%

Methane: 0.00017%

How is it that trace gases such as carbon dioxide and methane play a dominant role in the greenhouse effect but nitrogen and oxygen do not? That is a matter of the molecular structure of each substance. Before we get into that, lets take a look at the role greenhouse gases have on Earth’s ability to support life.

To appreciate greenhouse gases on Earth, we’ll take a look at a place without greenhouse gases, the Moon. The Moon is the same distance from the Sun as the Earth and provides a baseline to examine. Below is a comparison of average temperature on the Moon and on Earth:

Moon: 0⁰ F

Earth: 60⁰ F

In other words, without greenhouse gases, the average temperature of the Earth would be the same as the Moon at 0⁰ F. At that temperature, water on Earth would be frozen and human life would not exist. The point here is that greenhouse gases are not “bad”. In fact, we need those gases to survive. However, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing and that includes greenhouse gases.

What makes a gas a greenhouse gas?

That question can be answered by looking at the molecular structure of the gases that exist in the Earth’s atmosphere. Some molecules, such as carbon dioxide, have molecular bonds that can stretch and vibrate, while others, such as nitrogen and oxygen, have molecular bonds that are rigid. In addition, the molecules whose bonds can vibrate are choosy at which frequencies they vibrate. To understand this better, take a look at the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum below:

Note that radio, microwaves, infrared, light, ultraviolet, x-rays, and gamma rays are all forms of EM radiation. What differentiates the various types of EM radiation are the wavelengths. The shorter the wavelength, the more energy the EM radiation has. That is why gamma rays are very damaging to life and we must be careful not to overexpose ourselves to x-rays and ultraviolet rays. Greenhouse gases only absorb radiation in the infrared range. What exactly is infrared radiation?

As you can tell from the image above, our eyes can only detect a small part of the EM spectrum. Infrared radiation is one form that we cannot see but can feel as heat. The vibrational motions of atoms and molecules produce infrared radiation and all objects radiate in the infrared. In fact, humans radiate most strongly in the infrared as does the planets, including Earth. Night vision goggles are basically infrared sensors. Detecting heat from objects at night allow us to see those objects in the dark. Below is an image of a cat in infrared:

Note the yellow areas on the infrared image. These are the warmest areas of the cat. The nose, which is dark, is the coolest area of the cat.

As sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface, the ground warms and radiates the energy back into the atmosphere as heat or infrared radiation.

What happens when infrared radiation encounters a greenhouse gas? The gas molecule absorbs the infrared energy and converts it to kinetic energy via vibration of molecular bonds. The molecule then stops vibrating and reconverts the kinetic energy back into the atmosphere as infrared energy where surrounding carbon dioxide molecules repeat the process. This prevents the infrared radiation from entering the upper atmosphere and escaping into space. In essence, increasing greenhouse gases is like throwing an extra blanket on the Earth.*

The impact of the greenhouse effect is twofold. One, it traps heat in the lower atmosphere. This increases global temperature near the surface. Second, by preventing heat from escaping into the upper atmosphere, it cools the stratosphere. This provides us with a key diagnostic tool to test if greenhouse gases are causing increasing surface temperature. If the increase in surface temperature originates from another forcing such as solar irradiance, then both the lower and upper atmosphere would become warmer. So how does the evidence look? The answer is below:

As the lower atmosphere has warmed the upper atmosphere has cooled. A good portion of the upper atmospheric cooling is due to ozone loss. The less ozone there is, the less ultraviolet radiation is absorbed in the stratosphere. However, the loss of ozone has not been enough to explain all the stratospheric cooling. The rest is caused by the greenhouse effect. You’ll note the two short-term spikes in stratospheric temperatures around 1983 and 1992. These were generated by volcanic ash ejected into the upper atmosphere from two separate explosions. The aerosols reflect sunlight and heat the stratosphere. However, the effect lasts on the order of 2-3 years and should not be confused with long-term trends.

Carbon Isotopes

All carbon atoms come with six electrons and six protons. Where they differ is in the amount of neutrons in the nucleus. Most carbon atoms have six neutrons, about 1% have seven neutrons and one out of a trillion will have eight neutrons. Plant life produces carbon dioxide that favor the common six neutron configuration. As fossil fuels consist of the remnants of past life on Earth, burning it produces less of the heavier seven and eight neutron carbon atoms than natural processes. If the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is a result of the burning of fossil fuels, we would expect it to have a higher ratio of lighter six neutron carbon atoms. Indeed, the amount of six neutron carbon to seven neutron atoms has increased since 1850, and are at their highest levels in at least 10,000 years.

Thus, the theoretical model meets data, meaning the best explanation is climate change is caused by human made greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

*Gavin Schmidt uses this analogy in his book Climate Change. As Schmidt notes, like most analogies this is not perfect. Under a blanket, heat is generated by the person using it. In the atmosphere, the energy is received above from the Sun in the form of light and transformed and radiated by the ground in the form of infrared radiation.

**Image atop post is NASA computer model on the global distribution of carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/B. Putman

The Great Meteor Storm of 1833

“And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.” – Revelation 6:13

On the night of November 13, 1833, a young Illinois man was awakened by an urgent rap on the door. A Presbyterian Deacon was issuing warnings to his neighbors that the day of judgement had arrived. The young man walked outside to see hundreds of falling stars in the sky. Noting that the constellations were in their usual spots, Abraham Lincoln concluded correctly that this was an unusually intense meteor storm and not the end of the world. This scene was repeated across North America as many resorted to the biblical interpretation of what was happening. When the Sun rose the following morning, a shaken populace realized life would go on as normal. This meteor storm would begin our modern understanding of the science behind these events.

The world of 1833 was one without electric lights and the Moon had set in the early evening giving North America an unobstructed view of one of the great astronomical events in modern times. The Leonids, an annual meteor shower that yields about a dozen meteors per hour, generated tens of thousands of meteors per hour in 1833. Prior to this event, meteors were thought to be an atmospheric phenomena. The word meteor is derived from Greek as meaning high in the sky and of course, is also the basis for the word meteorology. Some good old fashion detective work by Denison Olmsted kick-started the modern science of meteors.

The 1833 meteor storm as reported by the New York Evening Post. Credit: Newspapers.com

Olmsted examined depictions of the meteor storm from across the nation via newspaper accounts, an arduous task 165 years before Google arrived on the scene. His report included descriptions from New Haven, Boston, West Point, Maryland, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, and Missouri. Olmsted also received word of a similar event in 1799, a finding that would play a key role in his investigation. A cold front had moved through the eastern half of the United States dropping temperatures 15 to 30 degrees. This had the effect of clearing haze from the previous days unusually warm weather making the seeing even more ideal.

Weather report from Buffalo describing the unusually clear skies the night of the 1833 meteor storm. Credit: Dennison Olmsted/The American Journal of Science and Arts.

Olmsted had noted there were no unusual observations from magnetic instruments. This is important as some reports came in that the storm was accompanied by aurora. Finally, Olmsted discovered that the meteors had radiated from a point in the constellation Leo.

Meteors from 1833 storm originate from the same radiant point in the constellation Leo. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski/Stellarium.

This data had led Olmsted to deduce that meteors were not an atmospheric event but caused by a cloud of debris in space. This theory was strengthened in subsequent years as observations confirmed the meteor shower was an annual event – albeit with much less intensity than the 1833 storm. The question remained, where did this debris come from and why was the 1833 storm so unique in its magnitude? It would take another three decades to obtain the answer.

In 1866, Comet Tempel-Tuttle was discovered as it approached the Sun. It had been observed before, but it was on this pass where its 33 year orbit was calculated to intersect the Earth’s orbit. As a comet approaches the Sun, it forms two tails. Radiation pressure from sunlight creates a dust tail, and ultraviolet radiation ionizes gas from the comet which is then swept away by the solar wind. Cometary tails are very tenuous. In fact, you could fit the contents of the tail inside a suitcase. However, when these small particles strike the Earth’s atmosphere at high speeds, they burn up and cause the streaking meteors we see on the ground. In the case of Comet Tempel-Tuttle, it leaves a fresh deposit of debris every 33 years. This will often, as in the case of the 1833 pass, result in a spectacular meteor storm.

The two tails of Comet Hale Bopp in 1997. The blue tail is gas and the white tail is dust. Credit: E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria/Wiki Commons.

All annual meteor showers are produced this way and the interactive below demonstrates how Comet Tempel-Tuttle generates the annual Leonids meteor shower.

Can a meteor storm generate an aurora as some reported in 1833? The answer is no. Comet debris are insufficient in mass to disturb the Earth’s magnetic field to create an aurora in the mid-latitudes. It is possible the quantity of meteors created an optical illusion of background light mistaken fo an aurora.

In 1866, observers in Europe measured hundreds of meteors per hour confirming the comets role in producing the storm. Some detective work was required to link Comet Tempel-Tuttle’s prior passes to other meteor storms. It was discovered that Chinese astronomers observed a Leonid storm in 902 AD. In 1630, two days after Johannes Kepler passed away, another Leonid storm was seen. And in 1799, as noted by Dennison Olmsted’s research, an intense storm occurred. A large storm such as these do not happen with each pass. The years 1899 and 1932 produced upticks in meteor counts, but were disappointments for those hoping for a repeat of the 1833 storm. However, 1966 & 1999 produced bursts of several thousand meteors per minute. Still, the 1833 event stands alone as the greatest of all meteor storms.

The most famous depiction of the 1833 Leonids is this 1889 illustration by Adolf Vollmy for the Adventist book *Bible Readings for the Home Circle*.

The legend of the 1833 Leonids lived for decades afterwards. Frederick Douglass recounted his memory of the meteor storm in his 1881 autobiography.

“…was also the year of that strange phenomenon when the heavens seemed about to part with their starry train. I witnessed this gorgeous spectacle, and was awe-struck. The air seemed filled with bright descending messengers from the sky. It was about daybreak when I saw this sublime scene..” – Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass , page 127.

Olmsted wrote in his 1834 report on the event:

“Probably no celestial phenomenon has ever occurred in this country, since its first settlement, which was viewed with so much admiration and delight by one class of spectators, or with so much astonishment and fear by another class.”

By the end of the 19th Century, the nature of meteor showers was understood not to be a harbinger of the end of the world. America had experienced much history between 1833 and 1900. Frederick Douglass was five years away from freedom when he witnessed the 1833 meteor storm. Lincoln was 30 years away from presiding over the most costly war in American history. By the end of the century, America was an emerging power that over the ensuing five decades and two world wars, would take over global leadership formally held by the European colonial powers. Leaving fear and superstition behind in favor of knowledge and education played no small role in that transformation.

*Image atop post is a woodcut carving of 1833 Leonid meteor shower over Niagara Falls. One witness described as such: “No spectacle so terribly grand and sublime was ever before beheld by man as that of the firmament descending in firery torrents over the dark and roaring cataract.” – From the Bible Readings for the Home Circle, page 367.

The Great Chicago Fire

Awhile back, I stumbled across the 1976 TV movie Time Travelers. Originally intended as a series pilot, it did not sell and was broadcast as a stand alone movie with a story developed by Rod Serling in what was one of his last writing credits. The plot involved two scientists going back in time to 1871 on the eve of the Great Chicago Fire to track down a doctor who mysteriously had been able to cure a fatal disease. For a TV sci-fi movie, it had a solid plot but as one would expect, the special effects do not hold up well after four decades. Still, it got me thinking how different history could be taught now as compared to the pre-internet era when I originally saw the movie while I was in grade school. Also, if sci-fi can inspire students to study science, why not history as well?

Back in the 1970’s, studying history was basically a static exercise reading a history book. With the internet, many historical archives are at your fingertips and can make history a more interactive subject. Going back to the movie, when the scientists arrive in 1871 Chicago, one mentions they must have arrived in the Summer and not in October as it was too hot. His partner replies that Chicago endured a heat wave in October, 1871. Is that right? President Grant established the National Weather Service the same year, so daily records are a bit sparse, but the answer can be found online.

What you’ll discover is that the temperature in Chicago on the day of the fire soared to a summer-like 79 degrees with winds gusting from the Southwest at 22 mph. Also, precipitation the month leading up to the fire had been sparse, making the conditions ripe for the disaster. So, the movie was spot on about the weather conditions that day. By delving into old newspaper archives, we can find out more.

Back in the day, if you wanted to look at historical newspaper accounts, you went to the library and headed towards the microfilm machines. Today, many newspapers have digitized their archives. In the case of the New York Times, the online archive goes back to 1851. Looking into the Times account of the fire, I found a few surprises.

On October 7th, there had been a sizable six block fire in Chicago that served as a prelude to the main event. That fire raged until the morning of October 8th and was reported in the Times as the worst fire in Chicago history up to that point.

On October 8th came in a report of a second fire now raging in Chicago even greater than the first. The progression of events in this article is not unlike the What’s Happened So Far features you now see in online formats today.

October 10th would bring full front page coverage of the fire including a map of Chicago where the damaged occurred. The graphic is very unusual for papers of that era. The article, titled A City in Ruins, would go on to describe the damage as 12,000 buildings lost and 100,000 homeless, and remember, there was no FEMA back then. The cause was still being investigated. In fact, the Times made no mention of the infamous O’Leary cow until November 29th. A Chicago reporter later admitted making up the story, saying it made better copy. Unfortunately, fake news is nothing new. When O’Leary died in 1895, the obituary in the Times still repeated the fake story.

The Times even repeated the story for O’Leary’s son’s obituary in 1925. This, despite the Times publishing an article four years earlier exonerating O’Leary’s cow, proving the stubborn power of a false myth.

The fire did start near the O’Leary residence at 137 De Koven St. You can locate this spot using Google Maps but you’ll need the current address of 558 W. De Koven St. What you’ll find there is, not by coincidence, the Chicago Fire Training Academy. Switching to 3-D gives this overview:

558 W. DeKoven St lower left. The Chicago river to the east failed to act as a fire break as hoped when flames moved across river bridges towards downtown. Credit: Google Maps.

As noted before, there was a strong wind from the SW the day of the fire and you can see from the image how that would have swept the flames into the heart of downtown Chicago inflicting maximum damage on the city’s residents. The fire had economic effects beyond Chicago. The price of stocks dropped 10% the days after the fire. This was a prelude to the economic crisis of 1873 which prompted a depression lasting until 1879. Chicago, then and now, is the United States’s largest railroad center and the fire had a disruptive effect throughout the nation. And that is probably what led to my biggest surprise on this project.

The Chicago fire was not the most deadly fire in the United States that day. The drought conditions that led to the Chicago fire sparked forest fires throughout the Upper Midwest. The worst of which was north of Green Bay and engulfed the town of Pishtego, WI killing over 1,200, four times more than in Chicago. The first and only article on this event appeared in the Times on October 15th and soon faded into obscurity.

I hate to admit it, but this was the first time I had heard of the Pishtego fire. It deserves a more prominent place in grade school history books and provides a greater understanding of the Chicago fire as part of an overall regional disaster.

I would be remiss in pointing out that as great as it is to have these internet resources at our fingertips, there are still some historical items not available online and it never hurts to check out your local library, especially the closed stacks, to see what might be there. You’ll never know what surprises are in store.

Returning to the movie that started me on this topic, while travel back in time is allowed in general relativity, it is not remotely doable with current technology. One solution is to have an infinitely long, rotating cylindrical tube that can drag and distort space-time to the point where you travel back in time. Good luck finding one of those lying around. Another solution allows for backward time travel but only until your time machine became operational. In the case of the movie, you could only travel back in time to 1976, but not before. However, the engineering involved would be much, much more advanced than what we now have at our disposal. In fact, a civilization would require the ability to harness the energy of an entire galaxy to attempt this.

As long as you are careful to discern fact from fiction, time travel stories can be an entertaining way to explore history. In the case of Time Travelers, other concepts besides the fire touched upon includes the traumatic impact of Civil War deaths on the civilian population, and the romantic idea of traveling to the past would be diminished greatly if you had to use the medical facilities at the time. Unlike in 1976, when I first saw the movie, technical improvements today make it possible to examine historical documents of the Great Chicago Fire at home or in the classroom. I must admit, I would jump at the opportunity to travel into the past, but I also realize there are lots of things about life in 2017 that are really great.

*Image atop post is a Currier & Ives lithograph of the Great Chicago Fire.

Equality and Space Exploration

As Apollo 11 sat on the launch pad, ready to complete what is arguably the most impressive technical achievement in history, a group of protesters marched towards Cape Kennedy. Had he not been assassinated a year earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. would have led the march. In his place was his best friend, Ralph Abernathy, who took over King’s role as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As Abernathy put it, the protest was not against the Apollo program per se, but to “protest America’s inability to choose human priorities.” As we live in a democracy, proponents of space exploration should be prepared to answer the question, how does the space program benefit the poor and the general public?

Ralph Abernathy (far left) along with Martin Luther King, Jr lead Selma March for the Right to Vote, Abernathy’s children are front and center, 1965. Credit: Abernathy Family Photos/Wiki Commons

These thoughts came back to me while watching I Am Not Your Negro, the documentary on James Baldwin. There is a tendency to think of the 1950’s and 60’s as when America was great. Certainly, the economy was booming and middle class wages were rising, but as the documentary detailed, America was suffering from terrible social strife. Progress was made legislatively on civil rights, but there were race riots in the cities claiming scores of lives along with a general spike in violent crime. It was against this backdrop that the Apollo program existed.

Aftermath of 1968 Washington, DC riot. Warren K. Leffler/Library of Congress

There is the standard argument that the funds spent on the space program are minuscule compared to the overall federal budget. And that is true, NASA’s spending is about 0.5% of the budget and peaked during the Apollo era at 5%. Current spending on NASA comes out to $60 per person per year. So is NASA just a highly publicized target for protest? I think we have to look at the problem in a different light. That being a policy of resource/education deprivation certain portions of the American population have endured in our history.

Resource deprivation is a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. If people are struggling to survive on a day-to-day basis, it makes it more difficult to sustain political resistance. The history of African-Americans is certainly one of life under authoritarianism, from slavery to Jim Crow era lynchings and segregation. And while significant improvements on that front have been made the past few decades, African-Americans continue to experience the impact of historical resource deprivation in terms of household wealth.

A key historical component of segregation was job discrimination. During its early years, NASA ranked at the bottom of all federal agencies when it came to minority hiring. While the book and subsequent movie, aptly named Hidden Figures, reveals crucial contributions to the Apollo program by African-Americans, the public face of NASA, the astronauts and mission control, were all white. It was this facade that led Gil Scott-Heron to record Whitey on the Moon.

Kennedy Space Center Launch Control, July 16, 1969. Credit: NASA.

So where do we go with this? NASA has improved the diversity of its workforce greatly. Kennedy Space Center employees are currently 27% minority. While that helps those employed by NASA, what about Americans who live in poverty? If one is segregated from the space program, you have no reason to support it, but that is true of any endeavor. It’s no different than building a shopping mall without access to public transit, or a museum, or schools that are inaccessible to minorities. The key to long-term sustainability is to integrate the benefits of the space program to all corners of society.

The Apollo program lacked this sustainability. Once the political aim of beating the Soviet Union to the Moon was achieved, the Apollo program was cancelled during the recession of the early 1970’s. Lost was the science phase of the program – Apollo missions 18-20. In fact, support for the Apollo program among the American public was tepid. The only time more than half the public approved expenditures on Apollo was briefly in 1969 during the first Moon landing. And even then, approval was only 53 percent. The key to changing this is to turn space exploration from a “spectator sport” to one the public can actively participate in.

One obvious way of achieving this is integrating NASA research in K-12 education. The amounts of data pouring in from NASA missions often require the efforts of citizen science to sort through it all. Such an effort also requires educator training since many teachers, especially in high-need districts, teach outside their specialty. And this effort should seek to aggressively reach out to the districts highest in need. If successful, a public actively engaged in space exploration will tend to be more supportive of it. Is exploring space worth this time and effort?

Perhaps the most important aspect of space exploration is understanding how the Earth fits in the universe. Right now, there are no other planets where humanity can commence a mass migration. Colonizing Mars, while feasible, is much more difficult than living in Antarctica, where only a few dozen scientists live at any given time. We may discover Earth-like planets around other stars, but traveling to them as seen in Star Trek or Star Wars will not occur in our lifetimes, if at all. Understanding this, and the fragile protections Earth offers humanity from a universe largely hostile to life, underscores the urgency in solving key environmental issues such as climate change.

Astronomy is among the most ubiquitous of the sciences. Across all the continents and spanning throughout history, civilizations have sought out answers to what lies in the sky above them. Nations that have been economically and socially healthy have been ones who have made the greatest advancements in astronomy. Recently, the Trump administration has floated ambitious plans to return to the Moon by 2020. By nature, space enthusiasts have jumped on the bandwagon. However, as history has shown, if the United States also embarks on a program of resource deprivation such as repealing ACA, cutting Medicare, and turning education over to for-profit interests, public support for space exploration spending will not only be weak, but hostile. The protest led by Ralph Abernathy in 1968 will look like a Sunday picnic by comparison.

During the Apollo program, it was often suggested that the management methods of the space program could be transferred towards solving poverty. The space program cannot solve poverty, nor should it claim to be capable of that. However, the space program can play a partnership role with the rest of the government and private entities toward that goal. If we really want a sustained effort to go to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it will have to be within an overall framework of a civilization that values inclusiveness and equality. As Ralph Abernathy stated after watching the launch of Apollo 11:

“This is really holy ground. And it will be more holy once we feed the hungry, care for the sick, and provide for those who do not have houses.”

*Image atop post is Apollo 11 on the launchpad during the early morning hours of July 16, 1969. Credit: NASA.

Cassini’s Last Picture Show

This September, one of NASA’s greatest success stories will come to an end. After 13 years orbiting Saturn and sending a probe to make the most distant landing in history, the Cassini mission will end with a controlled descent into Saturn. Thirty-five years in the making, Cassini was hatched during one of the darkest hours in NASA’s planetary program. The mission will stand as a centerpiece of a golden era of planetary exploration that has included a Jupiter & Venus orbiter, asteroid missions, and several Mars orbiters and rovers.

In 1981, the Reagan administration proposed shutting down NASA’s planetary program. For awhile, it appeared Voyager 2 would be terminated before its flybys of Uranus and Neptune. The nation was in its worst economic crisis, up to that point, since the Great Depression as unemployment soared past 10%. Scientists expressed deep alarm over planned spending cuts across the board. It was in this environment a joint working group between the National Academy of Sciences and the European Science Foundation proposed the Saturn orbiter/Titan probe mission. The intention was to follow-up the recent Voyagers 1 & 2 flybys of Saturn with a more in-depth research program.

By the mid ’80’s, the economy began to recover, and thanks to aggressive lobbying efforts by NASA, the planetary program (including Voyager 2) survived. In 1989, Congress approved funding for the mission to go ahead. During the early 90’s, on the heels of another economic recession, the Bush and Clinton administrations mandated NASA to cut the cost of the mission. Many of the improvements made on Cassini during this phase were also implemented on NASA’s subsequent “cheaper, faster, better” planetary missions. Finally, in 1997, Cassini-Huygens was ready to launch and begin its seven-year journey to Saturn.

NASA named the orbiter after Giovanni Domenico Cassini, an Italian astronomer who became director of the Paris Observatory in 1671. Among his many discoveries was the division of Saturn’s rings. The gap would separate what would be called the A Ring and B Ring. Since then, several gaps have been discovered with major divisions designated as rings C through G.

A 1676 sketch by Cassini showing a gap in Saturn’s rings. Credit: Royal Society.

The Huygens lander, intended to land on Saturn’s moon Titan, was named after Christiaan Huygens. In 1655, Huygens discovered Titan which earned him the honor over three centuries years later.

Cassini (right) and Huygens (left) at JPL in August, 1997, two months before launch. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

Cassini was launched on October 15, 1997. Its trajectory towards Saturn was not a straight shot but looped around the inner Solar System to complete two flybys of Venus, one of Earth, then finally, one of Jupiter in 2000 to put it on course towards Saturn.

The flyby maneuver uses a planet’s gravity to slingshot the probe to the required velocity to reach its target. Not unlike Marty McFly in Back to the Future on his skateboard hitching on to a car to increase his speed. This reduces the amount of fuel needed at launch which reduces weight. In space exploration, weight means cost – about $10,000 a pound to lift payload from Earth.

Image of Jupiter taken by Cassini during flyby on December 29, 2000. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Cassini finally reached Saturn on June 30, 2004, twenty-two years after the original proposal. On Christmas Day, Huygens departed from Cassini and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005. Titan, the second largest moon in the Solar System, was a mystery as its hazy atmosphere shrouded the surface. Besides Earth, Titan is the only body in the Solar System to have a nitrogen rich atmosphere.

Credit: JPL-Caltech/NASA, Space Science Institute

What did we find out about Titan? Methane plays the same role on the surface that water does on Earth. Methane melts at -295.6 F, which is close to the surface temperature recorded by Huygens. Before the landing, astronomers speculated Titan had large methane oceans. In fact, Huygens was designed to float if that was the case. Huygens descended on land, but the orbiting Cassini has detected methane lakes near the poles.

Methane lakes by polar regions of Titan. Credit: JPL/NASA.

While there is not an ocean on the surface of Titan, Huygens was able to detect a vast underground ocean via radio waves some 35 to 50 miles beneath the surface.

Surface of Titan. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona; processed by Andrey Pivovarov

And Cassini itself? The discoveries made over the past 13 years are far too many to detail in a blog post, but here are a few of the highlights.

Enceladus

The sixth largest moon of Saturn, its icy surface reflects almost 100% of light making it very bright. In 2005, Cassini discovered icy plumes emanating in the Southern Hemisphere ejecting material thousands of miles into space. Not unlike Old Faithful, but more powerful and a not understood heat source. In 2015, Cassini flew through the plumes and detected, besides water vapor and ice, hydrocarbons such as methane and formaldehyde. Cassini has also verified the presence of an ocean 26 to 31 km (16 to 19 miles) in depth. To compare, the deepest point in the Pacific is 11 km.

Icy plumes of Enceladus. Photo: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The Rings

Cassini has provided an in-depth look at perhaps the most famous feature in astronomy. Among the many firsts was a view of the vertical structure of the rings. In the image below, structures arise from the B ring to cast shadows much as buildings would do on Earth. The structures causing these shadows are about two miles high.

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saturn’s Poles

Cassini gave us a look at the poles that earlier flyby missions could not. When Cassini first arrived at Saturn, it was summer in the Southern Hemisphere so the South Pole was in daylight while the North Pole was dark. What was found at the South Pole was a hurricane type storm two-thirds the size of Earth. The dynamics of this storm are not completely understood as it is locked at the pole and there is no ocean to feed it energy.

Eye of the Saturn South Pole storm at different wavelengths. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute/University of Arizona.

By 2009, it was spring in the Northern Hemisphere (A Saturn year equals 29 Earth years) and finally, the North Pole was in daylight. Cassini discovered a hexagonal shaped jet stream formation. Inside the hexagon is a hurricane type storm. Just like the South Pole, this feature is not completely understood.

Now in its 20th year in space, like an old car, Cassini is near the end of its useful life. As its fuel supply gets lower and lower, there is the possibility that Cassini could be lost to ground control. As the mission has discovered environments on Titan and Enceladus that could sustain microbial life, NASA wants to avoid the possibility of a crash on those two moons contaminating them with Earth microbes from Cassini. Cassini will be in a ring-grazing orbital mode in the final phase of its mission until the end. As Cassini is maneuvered closer and closer to the rings, it will give us with a look at the rings its namesake could only dream about. Cassini will crash into Saturn on September 15, 2017.

Image of Saturn’s rings as Cassini enters ring grazing mode. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

The total cost of the Cassini mission has been $3.26 Billion or $163 million per year in space. That’s a tad more than the $158 million the Buffalo Bills spent on their player payroll in 2016.

For a project conceived during a time when NASA’s planetary program was in danger of being terminated, Cassini has left a remarkable legacy 35 years in the making and spanning six presidential administrations. Perhaps the most important lesson Cassini provides is no matter how dark times seem, keep pushing for your dream.

*Image atop post taken April 25, 2016 as Saturn’s Northern Hemisphere approaches summer exposing entire polar region to sunlight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Richard Feynman and the Alibi Room

During the late 1940’s, a Cornell physics professor was asked to give a series of lectures at the university’s aeronautics laboratory in Buffalo. The professor would later recount his adventures four decades later in his autobiography, including some unusual (for a physics professor) adventures in a downtown bar called the Alibi Room. That professor was Richard Feynman, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965.

Feynman begins his tale with the travel arrangements from Ithaca to Buffalo. He was spared the three hour drive by flying Robinson Airlines, with the plane piloted by Mr. Robinson himself. This regional airline was one of the many that began service after the war and would supplant train travel over the next few decades. Robinson Airlines eventually became Mohawk Airlines which was bought out by Allegheny Airlines in 1970. Allegheny changed its name to US Air in 1979 and was folded into American Airlines in 2015. A picture of a Robinson airplane along with Mr. Robinson can be found here.

Cornell gave Feynmen a $35 ($350 in 2017) stipend each week for his trouble. At first, Feynmen considered saving the money, but Feynman being Feynman, decided to use the funds to look for some adventures while in Buffalo after his lectures at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory. The facility was originally operated by Curtiss-Wright, but as the war ended, the company downsized its production in Buffalo greatly and turned the lab over as a gift to Cornell. During its run as a Cornell facility, the staff invented the crash test dummy, seat belts, and developed aircraft simulators. Now privately operated, the facility is still located across the street from the airport and is known as Calspan.

Feynman was hired by Cornell after working at the Manhattan Project where he became known for his uncanny ability to quickly solve equations and for picking locks. The latter was Feynman’s way of irking the powers that be at the project. During the first atomic test at the Trinity site, Feynman threw off his eye protection gear so as to be one of the few to actually witness the blast. However, Feynman eventually became melancholy over both the destructive nature of the atomic bomb and the death of his wife in June 1945 from tuberculosis. This may have contributed to his slow career start at Cornell.

“I would see people building a bridge and I would say “they don’t understand.” I really believed that it was senseless to make anything because it would all be destroyed very soon anyway, but they didn’t understand that and I had this very strange view of any construction that I would see, I would always think how foolish they are to try to make something. So I was really in a kind of depressive condition.” – Richard Feynman from the documentary The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

Nonetheless, when Feynman got to Buffalo, he asked a local cab driver, a man named Marcuso, driving cab No. 169, to take him to a bar “with lots of interesting things going on.” The cabbie drove Feynman to the Alibi Room located at 8 W. Chippewa near the corner of Main St. The late 40’s, at the start of the post-war boom but before the exodus to the suburbs starting in the ’50’s, was when downtown was in its peak. The Alibi Room was situated in the heart of the theater district and the scene would have looked like this as Feynman’s cab approached the bar.

Main Street one block north of Chippewa, 1950, from a postcard of the era.

The Alibi Room itself was new, first appearing in the Buffalo Register in 1946. Feynman described it as a place where, “The women were dressed in furs, everybody was friendly, and the phones were ringing all the time.” As Feynman would later find out, the phones were ringing all the time as it was a local bookie joint, and the women in furs were ladies of the night. This is confirmed by my discussions with those familiar with the Alibi Room. Eventually, Feynman settled into a routine where he would order shots of Black and White scotch with chaser of water and close the place down at 2 AM – Buffalo’s current 4 AM closing time did not go into effect until the 1970’s.

This went on for the duration of the semester. Sometimes, Feynman would end up at an after hours speakeasy. Following his last lecture of the semester, Feynman found himself in a fight in the restroom at the Alibi Room. Once the situation calmed down, Feynman downed a shot of scotch, started talking loud, almost caused hostilities to resume at the bar with three friends of the original antagonist. Another regular at the bar, whom an appreciative Feynman later described as a first-rate expert in diffusing bar fights, interceded by pretending to be a friend of Feynman, then convinced Feynman to leave. Returning to Cornell with a black eye, Feynman went to teach his class, looked at his students, shiner and all, toughened up his tone of voice and asked…

“Any Questions?”

That was the end of Feynman’s adventures with Buffalo nightlife. In 1951, Feynman moved on to Caltech where he developed a quantum theory of electromagnetism. Referred to as quantum electrodynamics (QED), this theory incorporated relativity with quantum mechanics. Merging the two fields is the holy grail of physics. There are four basic forces of nature, electromagnetism, weak nuclear (released in radioactive decay), strong nuclear (released in nuclear explosions), and gravity. The first three are explained by quantum mechanics, the physics of atomic scale. Gravity is explained by relativity, the physics of large scale that we can see. Finding a quantum theory of gravity would unify relativity and quantum mechanics into “the theory of everything.”

Interestingly enough, despite unifying electromagnetism into quantum mechanics, Feynman was ambivalent about finding the theory of everything…

“Are you looking for the ultimate laws of physics? No, I’m not, I’m just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it’s like an onion with millions of layers and we’re just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that’s the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she’s going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn’t pre-decide what it is we’re trying to do except to try to find out more about it.” – Richard Feynman from The Pleasure of Finding Things Out.

A decade later, around the time he was awarded the Nobel Prize, Feynman found himself in Buffalo once again and paid the Alibi Room a visit. His former adversaries were nowhere to be found. What would have happened if he had bumped into them again? Knowing Buffalo, and that generation, they probably would have bought Feynman a beer (or a Black and White) and had a good laugh.

This time around Feynman found the scene different, describing the formally posh bar and neighborhood as seedy. During the 1950’s, in Buffalo and across America, the middle-class fled the cities for the ranch houses and shopping malls in suburbia. The downtown stores started to close and buildings became vacant. Chippewa St. was on its way to becoming a red light district populated with flop houses, topless bars, and adult book stores. The street reached its nadir in the 1970’s.

Oddly enough, there was an optical lab located on Chippewa during the ’70’s. How do I know this? Before the age of one hour glasses, a repair job for broken glasses could take a week or more. After breaking my glasses in 6th grade, my eye doctor suggested I take them directly to the lab on Chippewa for a quick repair. I hopped on the No. 24 bus, got off at the foot of Chippewa, and headed for the Root Building where the lab was located. This was intriguing as Chippewa was the focal point for much of our middle school humor, but my trip was uneventful. I walked by the Alibi Room without taking note, unaware a Noble Prize physicist once hung out there. Got my glasses back, walked back past the forlorn Chippewa storefronts, noting how much the street resembled the ones television detective Baretta worked.

By the late ’70’s, the Alibi Room changed owners and was now operated as the New Alibi Lounge. I was not able to find any images of the original Alibi Room, given the going ons inside, I imagine photography would have been frowned upon. One image does survive from 1980 which shows the overall decline of the area Feynman commented on.

New Alibi Lounge is red building in center. The brown building to the left was once a Gutman’s store. Credit: Buffalo Department of Community Development/The Public.

Within a few years, all the buildings, including the former Alibi Room, would be gone. Cleared out in an urban renewal project, this block was an empty lot for most of the ’80’s when Feynman wrote Surely Your Joking, Mr. Feynman! The book was a best seller and Feynman became even more well known to the public as a member of the commission to investigate the Challenger disaster. It was Feynman who demonstrated to the public how the O-rings in the shuttle’s solid booster would have become brittle during the cold weather conditions the Challenger launched in.

Feynman passed away in 1988. At the same time, Fountain Plaza was rising on the former site of the Alibi Room. Once home to local banking operations, Fountain Plaza is now the site of IBM’s Buffalo Innovation Center as part of the continuing transition of the local economy.

Fountain Plaza in 2016. The Alibi Room was on the corner where the North Tower sits in middle of picture. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

Throughout the 1990’s, Chippewa and the surrounding Theater District experienced a renaissance. Mark Goldman got the ball rolling with the Calumet Arts Cafe, also played a key role in the development of Canalside. The Root Building is now home to Emerson Commons, part of Emerson High’s Culinary program. Once again, Chippewa is an entertainment center in the city.

Beyond physics, Feynman’s legacy continues in education. During a stint on California’s Curriculum Commission, Feynman was critical of common educational techniques. For example, rather than emphasize memorization, Feynman pushed for comprehension of physical concepts. Feynman also wanted children to understand there are a variety of ways to solve mathematical problems. His reasoning is that scientists focus on getting the right answer, not a rote process. This is the underpinning of common core curriculum.

Common core is part of an overhaul to move education away from being geared toward the old industrial economy to one more suited for the 21st Century. During the early 1900’s, rural residents moved to cities as farming became mechanized, reducing the need for labor. The educational system was geared to train students for life in the manufacturing economy. Now, 100 years later, manufacturing is becoming more robotized, meaning labor has to switch over to a knowledge based economy. Feynman’s insights from his stint evaluating textbooks in the 1960’s influences science education to this day.

Chippewa Street today. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski

Last summer, a friend visited Buffalo and arrived at a downtown hotel. She asked the staff where was a good spot to eat. Like Richard Feynman some 70 years earlier, was suggested to go to Chippewa St. Upon arrival, she witnessed a bar brawl that had extended out onto the sidewalk.

The more things change…

*Image atop post is Richard Feynman giving a lecture on planetary orbits in 1964. Credit: United States Department of Energy/Wiki Commons.

Why Facts Matter

Imagine building a new home with a flimsy frame, then subjecting it to the rigors of winter. As you might expect, the house would not stand up very well. That is what making an argument without credible facts is like. Governments generally try to spin the facts in their favor, but the new Trump administration has shown a propensity to discard facts all together. The first week in, this has resulted in mostly silly arguments over the size of the inauguration crowd. However, if government agencies such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are politicized, important scientific and economic research can be compromised.

Most of us do not deal with economic statistics, or even think about calculating those figures. I’ll start with another example. Imagine being a baseball scout. Well, most of us have never come close to employment in baseball either, but at least have pulled a George Costanza and pretended we were. Lets consider the following scenario:

You are scouting a minor league prospect for a possible promotion to the majors. The player’s batting average is a mediocre .250, but since you get a bonus for scouting a player that makes it to the majors, you decide to report the player hits a stellar .350. Are you performing the service asked by your employer? Will your employer benefit from this falsified data. Is taking the money and running a good career move? Sound unrealistic? This is exactly what happened in the mortgage industry during the bubble years as substandard loans where classified as prime in quality.

Now consider this, you are employed by MLB to maintain and archive statistics. Your boss, who is a Yankees fan, orders you to lower David Ortiz’s career home run total from 541 to 200. Now imagine five years from now, when Ortiz is eligible for the hall of fame, your boss loudly proclaims via his Twitter account and media that Ortiz should not be considered for induction as his home run total of 200 does not merit it. The fan reaction would be, regardless of whether they think Ortiz belongs in the hall or not, justified outrage. As Bill Veeck once jokingly said, the baseball record book is cast in bronze, carved in marble and encased in cement. And, exaggeration aside, there is a reason for that.

It’s simply a matter of integrity of the game. When you want to find out what Ted Williams career on base percentage was, then see the staggering figure of .482, you want assurance that is a legitimate stat and not just something a Red Sox fan entered to puff up Williams reputation. You can argue who was better, Williams or DiMaggio, but you can’t argue Williams did not reach base 48% of the time. If the record book was not reliable, you really couldn’t have the who was better argument at all.

Now I want to ask is this, why should we place a higher standard on the baseball record book than government research? Nobody (except the players) would be harmed if baseball records were tampered with. That is not the case with government work. Economic policy is difficult enough with reliable data, almost impossible with tampered data. Considering suicides increase with unemployment, faulty policy due to rigged data would put lives at risk. It is imperative that the BLS is not politicized. The same holds true for government climate studies. If policy is not informed by reliable data, you can rest assured there will be a body count associated with that.

How can you tell the data is reliable? Replication of results is a good metric. The famous hockey stick graph indicating a climb in global temperatures over the past century has been replicated by independent sources. The same is true with the government inflation rate which has matched MIT’s Billion Price Index. One data set that was not replicated? Andrew Wakefield’s claim that vaccines cause autism. As it turned out, every one of Wakefield’s child subjects had their medical records falsified. The result? As the public received false data, vaccination rates fell in the U.K. and U.S., causing needless outbreaks of preventable diseases.

If we are going to treat politics as sport, the least we can do is demand the same honesty in government record keeping. The public will not be able to argue the pros or cons of policy without reliable data to go by. If we do not maintain the validity of government data, besides endangering lives, we endanger the integrity of our democracy.

Lucy and Psyche – Why Go to Asteroids?

Some 3.2 million years ago, a female hominin lived in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. Her fossilized skeleton was discovered in 1974 and she was given the name Lucy, after the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, which had played repeatedly during the expedition. The discovery of Lucy has done much to increase our understanding of the origins of the human race. The new NASA mission, named after Lucy, is anticipated to increase our understanding of the origins of the Solar System. That, along with the Psyche mission, will explore asteroids as part of NASA’s Discovery program.

A reconstruction of “Lucy”, on display in the Hall of Human Origins in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Credit: Tim Evanson/CC 2.0

The Discovery program was initiated in 1992 as part of an effort to provide “faster, better, cheaper” missions. This was in response to funding cuts in the early 90’s as part of an overall effort that eventually balanced the federal budget. These missions typically cost around $400-500 million as opposed to Flagship missions such as Cassini which cost $1.5 billion. Prior Discovery missions have included Mars Pathfinder, the Messenger mission to Mercury, and the Kepler mission that unearthed thousands of exoplanets. The initial Discovery mission was NEAR, which was the first to land on an asteroid. With Lucy and Psyche, the Discovery program is returning to its roots.

In grade school, when we learn about the Solar System, we are typically presented with a model of the planets with the main asteroid belt located between Mars and Jupiter. Lucy will flyby one asteroid in the main belt but then move on to examine six Jupiter Trojan asteroids. These asteroids are in the same orbit as Jupiter but are situated in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. These are located 60 degrees behind and ahead of Jupiter in its orbit. At these points, the gravitational tug from the Sun and Jupiter are equal and stable. That is, if an asteroid moves away from this point, the resultant gravitational forces will tug it back in. This is why these regions serve as collection points for asteroids.

Trojan asteroids lead and trail Jupiter in the L4 and L5 Lagrange points. Credit: NASA/LPI

Jupiter is not the only planet that shares its orbit with Trojan asteroids. Mars and Neptune have been discovered to have these, along with Earth in 2011.

Why study asteroids? These objects are remnants, or if you will, fossils from the formation of the Solar System 4.6 billion years ago. Chunks of asteroids make their way to Earth in the form of meteorites, but these become contaminated by the Earth’s atmosphere which can compromise the data received. Going directly to the source provides a pristine environment to examine the primordial Solar System. Lucy’s complex trajectory will enable visits to both the L4 and L5 asteroid swarms and to various asteroid types.

Lucy trajectory from launch in 2021 to final asteroid visit in 2033. Credit: SWRI

Lucy will visit C, D, and P type asteroids. These types are broken down as follows:

C type or carbonaceous – as the name suggests, these asteroids are thought to be rich in carbons. About 75% of known asteroids fall into this type. These asteroids reside in the outer main asteroid belt and beyond.

D type – rare in the main belt and mostly found among the Jupiter Trojans, these asteroids are very dark and reddish in color. The red color could indicate the presence of organic material.

P type – located in the outer main asteroid belt and beyond, these are among the darkest objects in the Solar System. Even redder than D types, it is thought P type asteroids are very rich in organic material.

The reddish tint to these asteroids are thought to be caused by an organic material referred to as tholins. This substance is common in the outer Solar System but cannot exist on Earth as oxygen breaks it down. However, when the Earth was formed the atmosphere was mostly carbon dioxide. Oxygen did not come on the scene until plant life developed to produce it via photosynthesis. Tholins could have been present on Earth in its early history and played a role in the formation of life as it breaks down into amino acids in water. Understanding how the Trojans formed could help us understand how organic material was delivered to Earth to bring about life.

Pluto’s moon Charon. The red spot at the pole is caused by methane gas escaping Pluto then trapped by Charon and converted to tholin via chemical reactions sparked by UV radiation. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.

The origins of the Trojan asteroids are unclear. They may have formed near where they are now, or they may be Kuiper Belt objects ejected towards Jupiter as it migrated after the formation of the Solar System. It is hoped Lucy can solve this part of the puzzle in the early Solar System’s history. The instrument package on Lucy will record surface composition and geological characteristics. While Lucy will go to the Jupiter Trojans, Psyche, named after its target, will travel to the more familiar asteroid belt.

Psyche is unique in that, rather than consisting of rocky material, appears to be the left over metallic core from a protoplanet. The core was exposed by a series of impacts cracking open the outer layers. The Psyche mission will allow us to take a look at a planetary core that we cannot do here on Earth. The metallic cores of planets are formed by the process of differentiation.

When a planet is being formed, heating processes caused by gravitational compression, impact events, and radioactive decay allows for melting and differentiation between heavier and lighter elements. The heavy iron and nickel sinks to the core while lighter silicates rise to the surface. On Earth, this has led to four distinct inner layers, the inner core, the outer core, the mantle, and crust as seen below.

What we know about the Earth below the crust is through study of seismic waves. The deepest hole drilled into the crust was the 7.5 mile Kola Superdeep Borehole started by the Soviet Union in 1970 and abandoned in 1992. This was not even halfway through the crust. Eventually, as one digs deeper, the temperature rises to the point where drilling equipment is damaged. As we cannot get anywhere close to the mantle yet, much less the core, this is where the Psyche mission comes in.

The Psyche asteroid is thought to be the left over core from a Mars sized protoplanet. It was a Mars size protoplanet that crashed into the Earth shortly after its formation creating the Moon. Psyche is scheduled to launch in 2023, flyby Earth in 2024 and Mars in 2025 for a gravity assist to bump up its velocity to reach the asteroid in 2030. Then, the mission will provided planetary scientists the first look into what Earth’s core might look like if we could venture to the center of the planet.

The Lucy and Psyche missions will hopefully, allow us to learn about the origins of the Solar System, Earth, and thus, humanity.

*Image atop post is artist rendition of Lucy (left) and Psyche (right) missions. Credit: SwRI and SSL/Peter Rubin.

Black Holes – Past, Present, and Future

On November 27 1783, two days after the last of the British troops evacuated New York City to conclude the Revolutionary War, the rector of St. Michael’s Church near Leeds postulated the existence of stars so massive light could not escape its gravitational field. The rector, John Michell, was also a scientist and the first to conceptualize what we now call a black hole. Michell was using Newton’s theory of light consisting of corpuscles that had mass and were affected by gravity in the same manner any other body of mass would be. This didn’t quite turn out the case and would take Einstein’s new theory of gravity described by relativity in 1915 to formalize the concept of a black hole.

George Washington enters New York City on November 27, 1783. Across the pond, John Michell had just published his theory of dark stars. Evacuation Day was last celebrated in New York City in 1916, a year after Einstein published his theory of general relativity paving the way for the modern understanding of black holes. Credit: Library of Congress.

Before we get into all that, we need to familiarize ourselves with the concept of escape velocity. This is the velocity required to escape the gravity of a body of mass and is defined as follows:

V_escape= √(2GM/r) where:

G is the gravitation constant = 6.67408 × 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2

M = mass of the body

r = radius of the body

To calculate the escape velocity of Earth:

V_escape= √[2(6.67408 × 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2)(5.972 x 10²⁴ kg)/6,371 km]

= 11.2 km/s or 7 miles/second

What would have to happen for Earth to become a black hole? Earth’s radius would have to be reduced to the point where the escape velocity is equal to the speed of light at 3.0 x 10⁸ m/s or 186,282 miles per second. For this to occur, Earth’s radius has to be reduced to 9 mm or about a third of an inch. For the Sun to become a black hole, its radius would have to be reduced to 3 km or 1.9 miles. As you probably now have surmised, black holes have to be very dense and/or very small. This is where Einstein comes in.

By the time the 20th Century rolled around, it was thought that light consisted only of electromagnetic waves. As such, gravity would not affect light and thus, Michell’s idea of a dark star had been forgotten. In 1905, Einstein discovered the photoelectric effect. Light striking a metal ejected electrons from the surface meaning light had to consist of particles as well as waves. In 1915, Einstein’s general relativity theory viewed gravity as a bending of space-time rather than a force between two objects. Light would be affected by gravity as it would travel along the bend on space-time around a body of mass. The next step in formalizing a theory of black holes would come from the Eastern Front in Russia during World War I raging at the time general relativity theory was published.

The more mass an object has, the more it warps space-time as predicted by general relativity. Light and mass move along the curved space-time fabric or gravity well. Credit: ESA/C.Carreau

Karl Schwarzschild was a German astrophysicist who had volunteered for military duty in World War I. While calculating artillery trajectories, Schwarzschild somehow found the time to solve Einstein’s field equation for a gravitational field around a non-rotating object. If a mass was smaller than a certain radius, space-time would curve into itself in a manner that would not allow light to escape. This is in some sense, the Michell solution but using Einstein’s relativity theory to describe gravity instead of Newton’s theory. This radius, now called the Schwarzschild radius, is defined as:

r_s= 2GM/c²

c = speed of light

Using the Sun as an example:

r_s= 2(6.67408 × 10^-11 m³ kg^-1 s^-2)(1.989 x 10³⁰ kg)/(3.0 x 10⁸ m/s)²

r_s= 2944 m or 2.94 km

This is to say any mass the size of the Sun with a radius less than 2.94 km will form a black hole. Any light or matter within the 2.94 km radius will not be able to escape the gravitational field of the black hole. The radius defined by this equation is the event horizon surrounding a black hole. The more mass in a black hole, the larger the event horizon. Once an object or light passes the horizon, it can never get back out. However, outside the radius, the effect of gravity is the same. If the Sun’s radius was reduced to the point of being a black hole, Earth’s orbit would remain the same as the Sun’s mass is the same.

Unlike Michell’s concept, rather than a dark star smaller than this radius, a singularity would form. A singularity is an object of only one dimension and of infinite density and is infinitely small (volume = 0). Admittedly, this is a mathematically abstract concept that is difficult to imagine. Think of a gravity well in the image above that has an infinite depth, the proverbial bottomless pit. Time also stands still in a black hole from the perspective of an outside observer. The nature of a singularity seemed so bizarre that Einstein himself doubted there was a physical process that could create such an object. It would be the father of the atomic bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, who would confirm that theoretically black holes could exist.

Gravity well of black hole is infinitely deep. Credit: NASA

As a star the mass of the Sun nears the end of its life, it runs out of hydrogen to fuse into helium atoms. What’s left are helium atoms to fuse into carbon, and this type of nuclear fusion burns hotter. This pushes the outer layers outward to form a red giant, a star so large it will swallow up the Earth. Eventually, the helium runs out and the outward expansion ceases. The red giant sheds its outer layers and what’s left over is a planetary nebula surrounding a shrinking core. The core is shrinking as the inner force of gravity is now greater than the outward force of heat produced by fusion. The remaining core is compressed to a white dwarf the size of Earth. That’s pretty dense, in fact one teaspoon weighs 15 tons, but not quite small enough to be a black hole. The radius of a white dwarf is on the scale of a few thousand kilometers and the Sun, as noted above, would have to collapse to smaller than 3 kilometers to be a black hole.

The Hourglass Nebula – a planetary nebula with a white dwarf embedded in the center. If you are a Pearl Jam fan you’ll recognize this from the Binaural CD cover. Credit: NASA, Raghvendra Sahai, John Trauger (JPL), and the WFPC2 Science Team

What keeps a sun-like star from collapsing into a black hole are the nuclear forces that bind atoms together. This force is strong enough to keep atoms intact and prevents a gravitational collapse beyond the white dwarf stage. When a star is 8-20 times the mass of the Sun, it ends its life in a supernova explosion. These stars fuse elements up to iron at which point fusion can no longer occur. The resultant supernova leaves an iron core that becomes a neutron star. Here, the gravitational force is strong enough to compress electrons and protons to form neutrons. The density becomes higher than in a white dwarf, one teaspoon of a neutron star weights about 10 million tons. The gravity here is pretty intense but still not quite enough to form a black hole. More mass is required, and this is where Robert Oppenheimer comes in.

Embedded in the Crab Nebula is a pulsar which is a rotating neutron star. The Crab Pulsar rotates 30 times a second. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Hester, A. Loll (ASU)

In 1939, Oppenheimer, along with his student, George Volkoff, published a paper demonstrating that a collapsing star, with sufficient mass, could overcome nuclear forces and form a singularity. As World War II was about to commence, Oppenheimer found himself busy with the Manhattan Project and the paper generally went forgotten. At the time, general relativity and singularities were considered fallow ground for experimental research. Black holes were still considered an odd offshoot of relativity theory. The problem is, how to observe an object that by definition, does not emit light. The solution could be found in Michell’s 1783 paper and some 20th Century technological advancements.

Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, 1950. Credit: Wiki Commons/Department of Defense.

Michell noted in his paper that a black hole would have to be detected by observing the impact on the mass around it. By the 1960’s, interest had been revived in the topic, especially by John Wheeler. It was Wheeler, in fact, who popularized the term black hole in 1967 (The Star Trek episode Tomorrow is Yesterday, aired in January 1967, refers to a black star). Just three years prior, the first black hole candidate was detected as an x-ray source dubbed Cygnus X-1. Why would the presence of x-ray emissions possibly be a sign of a black hole? The answer lies in the surrounding accretion disk of matter falling into the black hole.

Matter falling in the surrounding accretion disk can be heated up to several million degrees. At this temperature, matter will begin to emit high energy, short wavelength x-rays. We are not able to observe x-rays from the Earth’s surface as they are absorbed in the upper atmosphere. That’s a good thing as x-rays are harmful to life, but it does require observations above the surface. The first observations of Cygnus X-1 in the 1960’s were made by sounding rockets and high-altitude aircraft. The launch of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory in 1999 gave astronomers an opportunity to take a good look at Cygnus X-1 from space.

Hot gas surrounding Cygnus X-1. Credit: NASA/CXC

The hot gas is siphoned off from an orbiting blue giant that is visible. This star orbits Cygnus X-1 every 5.6 days and from that, it can be deduced that Cygnus X-1 is 15 solar masses. There is nothing known that can be that large and not be visible besides a black hole. In 1975, Stephen Hawking bet Kip Thorne that Cygnus X-1 was not a black hole. Since then, Hawking has conceded that he lost the gamble. The age of orbiting telescopes would also reveal a different kind of black hole, one much larger in mass than the remnants of supernova explosions.

M87 is a very large elliptical galaxy containing several trillion stars and is 54 million light years from Earth. Back in the 1950’s, there were hints of something unusual in M87 when a large radio source was detected. When charged particles are accelerated, they emit radio waves. This is the principle behind radio towers as electrons are accelerated up and down the tower producing a radio broadcast. Sounding rockets during the 1960’s detected x-ray sources from the galaxy as with Cygnus X-1. In 1998, the Hubble Space Telescope imaged a jet of electrons and sub-atomic particles protruding from M87. Originally discovered in 1919 at the Lick Observatory, Hubble’s high resolution capabilities determined this 5,000 light year jet was caused by a black hole with a mass 2 billion times that of the Sun.

Jet emanating from M87. Credit: The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and NASA/ESA

How does a jet of matter become ejected from a region with a black hole? Astronomers are not quite sure but it appears so much mass is trying to enter the black hole that it results in a traffic jam of sorts. Think of it as shooting a fire hose into a bathtub drain. The rejected material gets shot out along the intense magnetic field surrounding the black hole as charged particles will travel along the path of magnetic field lines. M87 is not the only galaxy with a central black hole, in fact, most galaxies have been discovered to have these including the Milky Way.

Composite image of the Milky Way center. The blue and white at right center are x-ray observations of jets emanating from the galactic black hole. Yellow is near-infrared observations from Hubble and are areas of star formation. Red represents dust clouds detected by the Spitzer infrared telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, SSC, CXC and STScI

During the summer months, the constellation Sagittarius is visible. Located in this constellation is the center of the Milky Way. We cannot see the center as it is shrouded by dust. However, infrared observations allow us to peer behind the dust. The UCLA Galactic Center Group has been using the 10-m Keck Telescope to observe the galactic center since 1995 to track the motions of stars in the region. Just like using the orbit of the blue giant around Cygnus X-1 to determine the properties of the black hole, the UCLA team has been able to determine that the Milky Way’s central black hole is 4 million times the mass of the Sun and has a Schwarzschild radius 17 times the Sun’s radius. Below are the observations from the UCLA team.

The star marks where the Milky Way central black hole is located. Credit: Keck/UCLA Galactic Center Group.

What does the future hold for black hole research? One intriguing prospect is the possible existence and detection of atomic sized black holes. Speculation is these would have formed during the Big Bang and pass routinely through our bodies. The CERN supercollider may be able to produce such black holes. No need to worry, it would not present a danger to Earth. Most importantly, black holes represent where quantum mechanics and general relativity theory intersect. Quantum mechanics provides the physics for atomic sized particles, relativity provides the physics for gravity and large objects. Relativity breaks down once you reach the singularity. As the universe was a singularity at the beginning of time, understanding the physics of gravity at this scale is required to understand the universe when it originated. Black holes, once considered an abstract oddity of relativity theory, may be able to provide the key to the answer of how the universe came to exist.

* Image atop post is a computer simulation of a galactic black hole. The edge of the black region is the Schwarzschild radius. The light from stars passing near, but not inside, the Schwarzschild radius is smeared by the curvature in space-time caused by the black hole. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI)

The Far (not Dark) Side of the Moon

On October 4^th 1959, exactly two years after the launch of Sputnik, the Soviet Union launched Luna 3 to solve one of astronomy’s enduring mysteries. You’ve probably never heard of it as it has since been overshadowed by the race to land a man on the Moon the following decade. However, this four-foot probe gave humanity its first glimpse at the far side of the Moon. And while it helped solve the mystery how the other side of the Moon looks, it opened up new questions to answer on the nature of the Moon.

Before we get into all that, it’s important to clarify one misconception regarding the Moon. The far side, famous Pink Floyd album notwithstanding, is not the dark side of the Moon. The far side is dark during a full Moon while the familiar near side is facing the Sun. It is not dark during a new Moon when the near side is facing away from the Sun and the far side is facing towards the Sun. That is after all, how images of the far side are obtained-when it is bathed in sunlight.

First image taken of the far side of the Moon. Credit: Luna 3-1, Russian Space Agency

When we look upon the Moon, the near side is divided into two types of regions. The highlands are the bright regions and are quite old (4.5 billion years old) and heavily cratered. The mare are darker, younger, and less cratered. These regions formed some 3-3.5 billion years ago when large impact events occurred on the Moon, causing magma to flood the impact basin then solidifying into darker, basaltic plains.

The first images from Luna 3 were quite noisy but had enough resolution to determine the far side was mostly highlands. As you might imagine, the Soviet Academy of Science gave the far side features Soviet orientated names. The one major mare region was called Mare Moscoviense and the lava filled crater was dubbed Tsiolkovsky after the Russian rocket pioneer.

Tsiolkovsky Crater is 185 km (115 miles) wide and features a central peak 3200 m (10,500 ft) high. This is a few hundred feet lower than San Jacinto Mountain in California. As the crater has a smooth mare floor, it would make for a good landing spot and was a proposed, but eventually rejected, landing site for Apollo 17. The central peak was formed by the rebound effect of the original impact. You can see such a rebound effect if you drop an object into a glass of milk. In the case of the crater, the uplifted rebound material solidified creating the central peak.

Tsiolkovsky Crater imaged by Apollo 17. Credit: NASA

The crater is named for Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who in the early 1900’s, developed many of the theoretical underpinnings of modern rocketry. He independently derived the ideal rocket equation relating a rocket’s change in velocity to the change in mass and thrust. In 1929, he published his theory of multi-staged rockets. His work was key to the Soviet Union’s initial burst into space.

Mare regions account for only 1% of the far side surface area as opposed to a third of the near side. Both sides have had an equal amount of impacts during its history but the far side did not experience the upwelling of magma after these events. The interior of the Moon is not symmetric. The core of the Moon is closer to Earth and the near side. As a result, the near side has a thinner crust than the far side. It is thought this extra crust made it more difficult for magma to flood the surface on the far side after the impact events.

Only 27 humans in history have seen the far side personally. Those would be the astronauts from the Apollo program that orbited and/or landed on the Moon. All the Apollo missions landed on the near side although there was the proposal to land Apollo 17 on the far side. No doubt, this would have provided rich scientific returns, but would have necessitated the cost of a lunar orbiting communications satellite. As the Apollo program was winding down, this was deemed too expensive. The Apollo program did provide some high-resolution images of the far side as seen below.

Far side of Moon taken by Apollo 16. Credit: NASA

After the Apollo program, there was a lull in lunar exploration. A sense of been there, done that, pervaded the public mindset. However, the lunar surface is four times the size of the United States. The six Apollo landings covered a very small area and none of it was on the far side. Exploration of the Moon would not resume until the 1990’s. This modern phase would make some key discoveries on the far side, especially in the Polar Regions.

The presence of a large impact basin on the far side near the South Pole was suspected during the early 1960’s. It was not until the Clementine mission in 1994 that the true extent of the basin was discovered. The South Pole-Aitken Basin stretches some 2,500 km (1,600 miles-about the same from New York City to Cheyenne, WY)) from the South Pole to the Aitken crater. The basin is five miles deep (five times deeper than the Grand Canyon) and is the second largest impact basin in the Solar System. Only Hellas Basin on Mars is larger.

The basin is thought to have been created by a 170 km wide asteroid striking the lunar surface at 10 km/s. To put this in perspective, the asteroid responsible for the dinosaur extinction was about 10 km wide. From a scientific perspective, this basin is of interest as such an impact would uncover the deeper parts of the Moon’s crust. Another aspect of interest is some parts of the basin are permanently shadowed.

South Pole and Aitken Basin (darker region) imaged by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University

The Earth’s axis is titled 23 degrees from the orbital plane. What this means at the poles is that the Sun at its highest point during the Summer Solstice is 23 degrees above the horizon. The Moon’s axis is only tilted 1.5 degrees. Thus at the lunar poles, the highest the Sun rises above the horizon is 1.5 degrees. This is about how high the Sun is fifteen minutes after sunrise in the mid-latitudes on Earth. As a result, a basin as deep as the Aitkin will have cratered sections that never see the light of day. As the Moon has no atmosphere to distribute heat from daylight areas to dark regions, any water that collects in the basin will not evaporate. And indeed, ice and water has been discovered in the basin near the pole.

Topography of the Aitkin Basin (lower right) relative to rest of the Moon. Credit: Brian Fessler and Paul Spudis, LPI

How does water get to the Moon? The main suspect is the solar wind which transports hydrogen nuclei to the lunar surface. Unlike Earth, the Moon does not have a magnetic field to deflect the solar wind away from the surface. The hydrogen interacts with oxygen in the lunar soil to form water. We typically think of oxygen as an atmospheric gas rather than something in rocks. However, 47% of the Earth’s crust is oxygen in mass and 94% in volume. Oxygen and silicon form chemical bonds quite easily and make up silicate oxides such as silicon dioxide (SiO₂) and ferrous oxide (FeO) or iron as it is more commonly known. The same is true of lunar soil and this provides oxygen to combine with hydrogen from the solar wind resulting in water.

Typically, water cannot exist on the lunar surface. Any water would sublimate (transform directly from ice to water vapor) due to the lack of atmospheric pressure. However, in areas without sunlight to start this process, water can exist on the surface. Now, we’re not talking about lakes or seas here, the average amount of water comes out to one liter per ton of lunar soil. The total amount of water on the surface is estimated as several hundred million metric tons. And that is enough to extract and make human settlement on the Moon possible. One possible site for a base would be Shackleton Crater at the South Pole in the Aitken Basin. This site has the benefit of both sunlit and shadowed regions in close proximity of each other.

Blue indicates presence of hydrogen and most likely, water. Credit: NASA

Any talk of settlement on the Moon needs to include cost. Currently, it costs about $10,000 to lift an ounce of payload from Earth. Although companies such as SpaceX endeavor to bring that cost down with reusable rockets, it will still be quite expensive at this point for humans to migrate into space. Utilizing resources on the Moon would be key for any permanent settlement. Before we talk about space colonies, we need to take baby steps first. This could include a rover and/or sample return mission to the far side followed up by human landings. At that point in time, an assessment of the potential for a permanent presence on the Moon, whether it is on the near side, far side, or at the poles can be made.

Still, the far side is distinct enough compared to the near side that it definitely deserves a look into. And while the idea of a human settlement on the far side seems pretty speculative today, consider this, sixty years ago no one had seen the far side. In 2012, the GRAIL mission MoonKAM, a video instrument devoted to K-12 outreach, took the first video of the far side. Whose to say what the next fifty years will bring?

* Image atop post is a look of the far side of the Moon with the Earth in the background from the DSCOVR satellite. Credit: NASA

Author: Gregory Pijanowski

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