Soundings

Every other Tuesday at 12:06 PM

Alan Stahler

A look into how the natural world works, and how we interact with it.

You can Email Alan at; soundings @ kvmr.org

Alan's Latest Soundings

Alan Stahler's, Tuesday, July 27th Soundings

Click here for previous editions Alan Stahler's Soundings programs and many other past KVMR shows.

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Link to Iceland volcano webcam:

The Hubble Space Telescope: 20 years in space

Photo Credit: S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA

Click here for a larger image and more information

The Hubble Space Telescope has just reached twenty years in space.

This image is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field ("field" as in "field of view"; "deep" as in "way out there"; "ultra" as in "even farther out there than the Hubble Deep field").

Astronomers programmed the Hubble Space Telescope to stare at one point in space for a total of a million seconds -- over 11 days. The long exposure picked up the dimmest ... farthest ... oldest galaxies ever seen in visible light, going back over 13 billion years.

Every smudge, every blob, every point of light in this image is a galaxy.

When Nevada County astronomers view the galaxy M82 in our scopes, we see it keeping company with a larger galaxy (M81). The two were once even closer - close enough to disrupt M82, triggering starburst (birth of many new stars) and other violence. Just recently, radio astronomers have found a new radio object moving about within M82 ... and they're at a loss to explain what it is.

Cosmic collision triggers massive violence.

Photo Credit: NASA, ESA, The Hubble Heritage Team, (STScI / AURA)

When Nevada County astronomers view the galaxy M82 in our scopes, we see it keeping company with a larger galaxy (M81). The two were once even closer - close enough to disrupt M82, triggering starburst (birth of many new stars) and other violence. Just recently, radio astronomers have found a new radio object moving about within M82 ... and they're at a loss to explain what it is.

Dodging a bullet in space:

Photo Credit: Apollo 13 Crew, NASA

Apollo 13 - the planned third landing of astronauts on the moon - was aborted when an over-heated oxygen tank exploded, blowing out the side of the spacecraft

Ellesmere Island Mine Proposal - Dreamwalk Interview: Dr. Natalia Rybcznski

March 25, 2010 - Click here to listen again

When the Canadian government established the territory of Nunavut ("Our Land," in the Inuit language) in 1999, it recognized that native peoples had inhabited the Arctic for thousands of years. A process was put in place to protect the territory's environment.

The Arctic once much warmer, so warm that forests grew where today there is only tundra. Some of these forests that have since turned to coal. On Dreamwalk, on March 25, 2010, I spoke with Dr. Natalia Rybcznski, a paleontologist studying Nunavut's ancient life, concerning how both the territory's present-day environment and its ancient fossils are threatened by a proposal to mine the coal.

Check out the story of the discovery of one of the ancestors of today's seals at; http://nature.ca/puijila/

Click here for more about Ellesmere Island Mine Proposal

Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant Upgrade Issues - Interview: Arnie Gundersen

Problems with increasing power and extending its life: March 23, 2010 - Click here to listen again

Vermont Yankee (VY) is a nuclear power plant on the banks of the Connecticut River in Vermont. Several years ago, VY's owner, Entergy Corporation, received permission from the NRC to extend the plant's operating life an additional twenty years beyond its original 40-year license. The extension hinged on approval of the state legislature; until recently, that approval was thought to be a "done deal."

But then things changed. On the March 23, 2010 edition of Soundings, I spoke about VY with Arnie Gundersen, a nuclear engineer/licensed reactor operator, now working as an industry consultant.

Click here for more about Arnie Gundersen

Chemicals that masquerade as hormones - Interview: Heather Patisaul

March 23, 2010 - Click here to listen again

BPA - Bisphenol-A - is a hormonally-active chemical - a gender-bender - found in five-gallon water cooler jugs; in the lining of food cans ... and in the blood of nearly every American. On Soundings of March 23, 2010, I spoke with BP-A researcher Heather Patisaul, professor of biology at North Carolina State University.

Click here for more about Chemicals that masquerade as hormones

The Discovery of Global Warming - Author Interview: Spencer Weart

February 2nd, 2010 - Click here to listen again

Like most discoveries, the discovery that the world is warming, and the influence of "greenhouse gases," was not a sudden "Eureka" moment, but rather the result of many years of work and thought by many people. I spoke recently with Spencer Weart, recently-retired director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics and author of The Discovery of Global Warming, published by Harvard University Press.

Click here for more about The Discovery of Global Warming

The Universe's Yardstick

February 23rd, 2010

Astronomers navigate the universe using "standard candles" - objects of a (more-or-less) uniform brightness, allowing us to determine their distance by how bright they appear (brighter = closer).

Among the most distant standard candles are Type 1a supernovae - a certain type of exploding stars. But for all their utility, we haven't been able to narrow down just how these stars explode ... until now. In a recent teleconference, astronomers using the CHANDRA X-ray Observatory reported that they've found evidence that the explosions occur when two neutron stars, in orbit around each other, collide.

Below is an animation of the process. I'll talk about it on "Soundings," Tuesday, February 23, between noon and one PM.

Animation of Merger Trigger for Supernova

Interview with Alun Anderson, author of After the Ice

December 29, 2009 - Click here to listen again

Some years are better than others, but arctic sea ice shows a general trend: downward. The ice floating on the Arctic Ocean is thinning, with implications for both the Arctic and the planet. I spoke with Alun Anderson, author of After the Ice (HarperCollins) on Soundings, December 29, 2009.

Click for more about Alun Anderson

Hallmark of El Nino:

The tongue of warm water (red) along the equator. Normally, the trade winds, coming from the east, would blow warm surface water toward Asia, allowing cold water to well up from below.

Click for more info and a larger image

Brightest Lights in the Universe

Gamma rays are like high-energy light - of such high energy, they bust up atoms ... which is what happens when they hit atoms in Earth's upper atmosphere. In the process, the gamma radiation is absorbed ... none of it reaches the surface of the Earth. To observe the universe in gamma, we need to launch detectors into space.

Fermi is at gamma ray space observatory that has just completed a year of observations. Astronomers recently released what it's seen so far.

Click here for a movie (in a selection video formats) of what Fermi detected while observing the northern regions of the universe - off in the direction the Big Dipper, Virgo, and Leo: Super-high-energy (super-hot) sources of gamma radiation - very far away, winking on and winking off.

All but one of the sources stay in one place. The bright object that floats through the field is the sun - a weak gamma-emitter, but very, very close.

First Peoples in a New World: The first Native Americans

Aired: The Monday Morning Show, Indigenous Peoples' Day Special Oct 12, 2009 Click here to listen

Columbus, of course, did not discover a new world ... the western hemisphere was colonized tens of thousands of years ago by the ancestors of today's native Americans.

But who were the true discoverers, and where did they come from? And when?

I spoke recently with Dr. David Meltzer, Professor of Prehistory at Southern Methodist University, and author of First Peoples in a New World -- Colonizing Ice Age America, published by the University of California Press.

Climate Change - Picturing the Science, with Gavin Schmidt

Aired: Soundings, October 6th, 2009 Click here to listen

When you want to see where you're going, you use a map. A map is a representation of the world, small enough to fit in your hand.

To make a map, you've got to leave things out -- your map may not show all the roads and buildings. To show everything, the map would have to be just as big as the world. The challenge of making a good map is to put in enough information, but not too much.

People who design cars and planes and buildings want to test their creations, to see how they'll hold up. To build the object full-scale would be expensive, so they build models -- small scale replicas. But the model, like a map, has to leave things out.

Folks who model Earth's climate face a similar challenge: Earth's climate is so complex, trying to include everything would result in a model that would be unrunnable on any existing computer, either now or in the foreseeable future. But leave out too much, and the model becomes unrealistic.

I spoke recently with climate modeler Gavin Schmidt, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr. Schmidt is the editor and co-author of the book Climate Change: Picturing the Science, published by WW Norton and Company.

Empire Mine Clean Up Comments Due By Tuesday, October 13th

Comments on the environmental documents for the clean-up at the Empire Mine are due by Oct. 13. The documents can be found by clicking here:

US EPA proposing to allow Sacramento more time

The US EPA is proposing to allow Sacramento more time to clean up its air (and ours). To read the EPA's proposal, and to make comments, click here:

Where Our Atoms Come From

The atoms in the air we breathe, the atoms in the ground beneath our feet, the atoms in our bodies, once drifted through space.

In this Hubble image, two stars circle each other in a tight orbit. One spews its outer layers into space. Its companion shapes that outward flow, much as the nozzle of a jet engine shapes the jet's exhaust ... in this case, exhaust in two directions.

The colors are artificial; red represents atoms of oxygen; green, atoms of nitrogen that have lost electrons; blue, atoms of oxygen that have lost electrons. All of these atoms could one day become incorporated into new-born planets in new-born beings.

Credit: Bruce Balick (University of Washington), Vincent Icke (Leiden University, The Netherlands), Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm University), and NASA

Galaxies Collide, New Stars Are Born

Stars are born when clouds of gas and dust, swirling through galaxies, collapse in on themselves. The process requires a trigger - something to compress the gas and dust and start the collapse process - a shock wave from an exploding star, for instance.

As galaxies age, triggers peter out, and star formation slows down. But galactic collisions provide copious new triggers, and new generations of stars are born.

Among these new-borns are hot, massive stars, stars that live fast and die young. More than red-hot, more than yellow-hot or even white-hot, these stars are blue-white-hot, their color lighting up the galactic arms in which they reside.

In this Hubble image, an arm of the upper galaxy, rich with new-born stars, is apparently being stretched, by gravity, toward the lower galaxy.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

KVMR NEWS: Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
Al Stahler In Conversation with Rosaly Lopes

On the live interview segment of the KVMR evening news, Al speaks with volcanologist Rosaly Lopes, author of The Volcano Adventurer's Guide, about ... ???.

Click here for more and a larger image

How much light pollution is there in your sky? Globe at Night describes how to find out by observing the stars overhead with just your eyes.

http://www.globe.gov/GaN/

Soundings, Ore-Forming Processes

I spoke recently with Prof Laurence Robb of the University of Witwatersrand about ore-forming processes. Granite is the salt-and-pepper rock that's common here in the foothills. Pick up a chunk and you're holding a rock with some gold in it - though not enough gold to make it worth the effort to get it out. To make it worthwhile to pull metal out of rock, it's first got to be concentrated, by natural processes, into ore.

Click on the links to hear the conversation, or learn more about his book.

Click here to listen to the conversation

Click here for more about this book

Dreamwalk: Upload, 11 September 2008: Drilling in the Arctic

Following up our talk on Dreamwalk with Evon Peter (former chief, Neetsaii Gwich'in, Arctic Village, Alaska), you might want to contact congress to express your feelings about drilling in the Arctic, and our countyr's energy policy in general.

Click here for more information and
a way to express your views to Congress

Soundings, 9 September 2008: Bioelectromagnetics

Recently I spoke with Prof. Henry Lai, of the Bioelectromagnetics Research Lab of the University of Washington, about a report issued by the National Research Council of the Natianl Academy of Sciences: "Identification of Research Needs Relating to Potential Biological or Adverse Health Effects of Wireless Communication"

A summary of the workshop on what we don't know about wireless radiation, convened by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences can be found on-line by clicking on the link below.

Click here for more about this book

Soundings, 12 August 2008: The American West at Risk

Tuesday, Aug. 12th Alan spoke with Howard G. Wilshire, Jane E. Nielson and Richard W. Hazlett, the geologist-authors of The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery – an encyclopedic, scientific look at the challenges to maintaining – or restoring – the ecological health of the western part of our country.

Click here for more about this book

California Burning, 6 July 2008: Satellite Image

Dozens of uncontained fires continued to burn in California in the first week of July 2008. The fires, most of them started by an intense lightning storm in the first week of summer, were threatening residences, cultural resources, and utility infrastructure, such as power lines. This image of the state was captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite on July 6, 2008. Places where MODIS detected active fires are marked in red.

Click here for a larger image of California Burning,
6 July 2008: Satellite Image

Click here for a larger image of California Burning,
9 July 2008: Satellite Image

A conversation with Marc Bekoff, author of
The Emotional Lives of Animals

Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Bekoff is the co-founder, with Jane Goodall, of the organization Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (ethology is the study of animal behavior).

Dreamwalk, 27 March 2008: Chumash Ethnobotany

On March 27, 2008, Skip Allen Smith and Alan Stahler spoke with Jan Timbrook, anthropologist and ethnobiologist with the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, on Dreamwalk, about her new book, Chumash Ethnobotany, published by Heyday Books.

Click here to listen as Skip Allen Smith and Alan Stahler interview Jan Timbrook, author of Chumash Ethnobotany

Soundings, 01 January 2007: Cougars

On January 1, 2008, I spoke with Marc Benoff, professor emeritus (ecology and evolutionary biology) at the University of Colorado, and writer-photographer Cara Blessley Lowe, co-founder of the Cougar Fund, about their book, Listening to Cougar (University Press of Colorado).

Click here to listen with Alan Stahler and Listening to Cougar

To learn about the Cougar Fund, click here:

Soundings, 23 October 2007: A Field Guide to Butterflys

Alan visits with Arthur Shapiro, author of a "Field Guide to Butterflies of the San Francisco Bay and Sacramento Valley Regions" on UC Press, about how butterflies and moths evolve, mutate and populate new regions, and some of the obstacles imposed by civilization.

Click here to visit Art Shapiro's Butterfly web site.

Item of Concern:
High-Intensity sonar to Endanger Whales

The Navy plans to illuminate the oceans with high-intensity sound, intense enough to endanger whales. Click here to go to the NRDC site at; http://www.nrdconline.org/campaign/biogems_whales_0707, for a public form which will send your comment to the National Marine Fisheries Service permitting officer. For more information about the specifics of this issue, please click here to visit http://www.savebiogems.org/whales/.

Alan's Concerns: Desert Rock Power Plant

Click here to learn about the proposed Desert Rock Power Plant

Click here for the response from the San Juan Citizens Campaign

2004 Jones Tract Levee "Blue-Sky" Failure

2004 Jones Tract Levee "Blue-Sky" failure - inundated barn

Agriculture in and along the San Joaquin Valley depends, to a great extent, on water shipped from the north state via the California Aqueduct. Before water can enter the aqueduct, however, it must traverse the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, guided by the Delta's ancient levee system. While many worry about how the levee system might respond to an earthquake, the system could collapse all by itself. These are images of the aftermath of the 2004 Jones Tract levee failure - a "blue-sky" levee collapse that occurred on a bright, sun-shiny summer's day.

2004 Jones Tract Levee "Blue-Sky" failure on levee road

The Great Backyard Bird Count

Interested in participating in the Great Backyard Bird Count, 16-19 February or if you're just interested in seeing some great bird images click here.

Apollo 15 Drops the Hammer

Drop a hammer and a feather and they race to the ground. The hammer beats the feather ... on Earth, where air resistance slows the feather. On the airless moon, we get a different result. Click here to see the experiment performed during the 1971 Apollo 15 mission.

Mars Red Dirt: A Closeup

Soil scientists carry large knives, which they use to cut samples out of the ground. The first thing you do with a sample is hold it close and inspect it with your hand lens, to see color and texture.

This image shows a magnified view of Martian soil collected by the Phoenix lander. It's red and fluffy. Click here to view a larger image.