Soundings

Every other Tuesday at 12:06 PM

with

a_stahler85.jpgAlan 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.

Click here to subscribe podcast2.jpg to Alan Stahler's Soundings Podcasts

Oil Slick in the Gulf of Mexico
soundings20100619.jpg

Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Imagery

It can be hard to distinguish oil from ocean in a visible-light photograph; constructing an image from several different wavelengths makes the discrimination easier. On Saturday, 19 June, the Aqua spacecraft flew directly over the Gulf of Mexico; Aqua's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer collected data to make this image.

Click here for a larger image and links to more.

Soundings, Tuesday, June, 15th 2010

The Changing Range of Light

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Elizabeth Carmel and Dr. Robert Coats, The Changing Range of Light

The Changing Range of Light: Portraits of the Sierra Nevada documents the Sierra, and some of the changes the range is undergoing as our climate changes. I spoke with photographer Elizabeth Carmel, and with one of the scientific contributors to the book, Dr. Robert Coats.

Click here for Elizabeth Carmel's web site.

Soundings, Tuesday, June, 1st 2010

How Simple? The Simple Science of Flight

Click to listen to this episode of Soundings

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Dr. Henk Tennekes, author, The Simple Science of Flight

Humans have enjoyed powered flight for something over a century; birds have enjoyed the same for millions of years. The same basic principles apply to birds and aircraft. I spoke recently with Dr. Henk Tennekes, professor emeritus of meteorology at the Free University in Amsterdam, emeritus professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, and author of the book, The Simple Science of Flight, published by MIT Press. Broadcast on Soundings, 1 June 2010.

Click here for more about Dr. Henk Tennekes on Wikipedia.

Dream Walk, Tuesday, May, 27th 2010

"Restore it to what?"

Click to listen to this episode of Soundings

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Sharon Levy, science writer

When we decide to restore a landscape, the question arises, "Restore it to what?" To the way it was before Europeans were living on (and changing) it? Before native Americans were living on (and changing) it? The question is now being batted back and forth between biologists and archeologists concerned about restoring populations of the Island Fox, which lives on the Channel Islands of southern California. I spoke on-air recently with science writer Sharon Levy on DreamWalk, 27 May, 2010. Levy had published an article on the controversy in the May, 2010 BioScience.

Click here to meet Sharon Levy.

KVMR News Report, Monday, May, 24th 2010

The Gulf of Mexico Loop Current

Click to listen to this episode of Soundings

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Prof. Nan Walker, Director of the Earth Scan Lab of Louisiana State University.

Where the crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico ends up depends in large part on the Gulf's currents ... especially, the Loop Current, which begins as the Yucatan Current flowing from the Tropics into the Gulf. I spoke recently with Prof. Nan Walker, Director of the Earth Scan Lab of Louisiana State University. Broadcast on the KVMR evening news, May 2010.

Click here to meet Prof. Nan Walker.

Link to Iceland volcano webcam:

The Hubble Space Telescope: 20 years in space

soundings20100423.jpg
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.

soundings20100323a.jpg
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:

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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

soundings20100325.jpgMarch 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

soundings20100323a.jpgProblems 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

soundings20100323b.jpgMarch 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

soundings20100202.jpgFebruary 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

aanderson.jpgSome 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:

soundings20100111.jpgThe 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

fermigammarays.jpgGamma 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

firstpeoples.jpgAired: 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

m2_9.jpg (12,037 bytes)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

Galaxies Collide, New Stars Are BornStars 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

Mount Saint Helens, 1980

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

cover art The Emotional Lives of AnimalsA 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).

Soundings' Table of Contents
Recent Guests Past Programs
Helpful Links Getting Involved
Astronomy Chemistry
Climate Energy
Environment Geology
Life Sciences Physics
Skywatch Space Technology
 
Recent Guests
 
 
Past Programs
 

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.

Soundings with Alan Stahler, Tuesday, July, 03 2007
Ecological Models, with Nicholas Gotelli (UVM)
Our Solar System, with Roger Freedman (UCSB)

Part 1: A conversation with ecologist Prof. Nicholas J. Gotelli, of the University of Vermont, author of A Primer of Ecology, about making mathematical models of nature.

Part 2: A conversation with astronomer Prof. Roger Freedman, of the University of California at Santa Barbara, co-author of the textbook, Universe, about the solar system.

Click here to listen to the Jul. 3rd, 2007 Soundings program

Right click here to download to the Jul. 3rd, 2007 Soundings program

 
Helpful Links
 

Banderas de Esperanza - Flags of Hope, an organization that runs a children's shelter and aids poverty-level families living in Banderas Bay, Mexico.

Sequoia ForestKeeper protects trees by protecting their ecosystem. Even though giant sequoia in Sequoia National Monument are not being cut, the trees around them are.

The Nanoparticale Product List, compiled by the Wilson Center: consumer products incorporating nanoparticles.

The Fiji Crested Iguana Project is studying what might be the last healthy population of these rare reptiles.

Microwave News, covers research into the biological effects of electromagnetic fields

Congress.org lets you locate contact information for your state and federal legislators, as well as information about pending legislation.

Firework Sanity looks at the issue of lighting fireworks in a fire-prone ecosystem.

The latest DoE environmental documents for Yucca Mountain, proposed site of a national high-level nuclear waste repository in Nevada.

 
Getting Involved
 

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

 
Astronomy

Rings in Space, Supernova 1987a
Rings in Space, Supernova 1987a, click here for a larger image.
Click here for a larger image.

Rings in space, painted by the explosion of supernova 1987a, the subject of a recent Soundings convesrsation with Roger Freedman
Photo credit: P. Challis Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

 

Cosmic Rain

Some millions of years ago, galaxy M82 suffered a near-miss collision with galaxy M81. The gravitational disruption triggered a burst of star formation in M82, lighting it up with bright, new-born stars and spewing hydrogen gas (red) out of its core. Large, bright, new-born stars don't "live" very long - they tend to explode, the first step in the creation of cosmic rays.

M82 and M81 are fun targets when we're observing out at the old Nevada City airport.Cassiopeia A


The remains of a star that exploded 325 years ago. The colors show the energies of the x-rays coming out of the remnant - red are high energy, green higher, blue highest. In the blue areas, cosmic rays - atomic nuclei accelerated to nearly the speed of light - are being created.

Giant Cluster of Galaxies Bends, Breaks Images
Giant Cluster of Galaxies Bends, Breaks Images, click here for a larger image.
Click here for a larger image.

The blue galaxies that seem to circle the galaxy cluster in the center are actually images of just one galaxy lying beyond the cluster. The distant galaxy's light, moving past the cluster, is re-directed toward our eyes as it travels through the space bent by the gravity of the cluster.
Image credit: W. N. Colley (U. Virgina & E. Turner (Princeton), J.A. Tyson (UC Davis), HST, NASA

 

Starbirth
Starbirth
Click here for a larger image.

Giant clouds of gas and dust collapse in on themselves, creating baby stars ... and baby planets.
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI); D. Garnett (U. Arizona), J. Hester (ASU), J. Westphal (Caltech)

 

Stardeath
Stardeath
Click here for a larger image.

When a supergiant star runs out of fuel, it first collapses on itself, then explodes in a supernova.
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Y.-H. Chu (UIUC), S. Kulkarni (Caltech), R. Rothschild (UCSD)

 

Spiral Galaxy
Spiral Galaxy
Click here for a larger image.

Billions of stars, moving together through space. But their gravity, calculated from the number of stars we see, is not enough to hold the galaxy together - the stars should fly apart. Something else must be holding them together - "dark matter," perhaps - matter that doesn't interact with light.
Image Credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); N. Scoville (Caltech), T. Rector (NOAO)

 

Hyperion Closeup
Closeup of Saturn's moon Hyperion - click for a larger image
Click here for a larger image.

Saturn's moon Hyperion would float in water, if we could find a 150-mile-wide bathtub in which to float it. It seems to be made mostly of ice, with a little rock, and lots of empty space - an orbiting pile of rubble.

The "craters," with their dark centers, look a lot like the suncups found in springtime Sierran snowfields, when rocks, absorbing sunlight, melt holes into the snow.

 

Martian dust devil
Martian dust devil - Click here for more information and a link to a larger image.
Click here for more information and a link to a larger image.

As the desert floor is warmed by the sun, it heats the air above, which rises, and, swirling, creates a dust devil. The desert over which this dust devil swirls is on Mars. For a QuickTime movie of the dust devil click here.
Photo credit: Image Credit: NASA/JPL

 

First extra-solar planet to be directly imaged:
First directly imaged extra-solar planet - Click here for more info and a link to a larger image
Click here for more information and a link to a larger image
Photo credit: ESO

 
 
Chemistry
 
Climate
An Anomaly Is Something Unusual

Click here to bring up a larger map of anomalous ocean temperatures -

yellow denotes regions that are warmer than usual; blue, colder. Notice the unusually cold water off the coasts of both North and South America, indicative of La Niña.

Cold water, and other effects of La Niña, stabilize the atmosphere, preventing air from rising, cooling, and (like blowing into a freezer) forming clouds - the sort of weather we've been having a lot of, this fall and winter.

 
Energy

New International Radioactivity Symbol
New International Radioactivity Symbol The skull-and-crossbones has long been used as an "alert symbol" to warn of chemical toxicity. Similarly, a trefoil design was adopted in the twentieth century as an alert symbol for radioactivity.

A third symbol, incorporating both of the older two, has recently been adopted by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) to alert people to extremely high levels of radioactivity ... and the need to put some distance between yourself and the source as quickly as possible.

 
Environment
Our Changing World: Data Made Visible

Measuring the thickness of the dust by how much light it absorbs as it blows off the Chinese interior, across the Pacific and over the west coast: Red shows where the dust is thickest, yellow a bit thinner, green the thinnest.

Dust cloud 1, April 4-10, click for a larger .pdf image
Dust cloud 1, April 4-10, click for a larger .pdf image

Dust cloud 2, April 13-16, click for a larger .pdf image
Dust cloud 2, April 13-16, click for a larger .pdf image

Radiation Health: The Healthy from the Start Campaign

When calculating permissible doses to protect the public from radiation, the government uses a "Reference Man," defined as a Caucasian male who is 20 to 30 years old, weighs 154 pounds, is five feet seven inches tall, and is "Western European or North American in habitat and custom."

Click here to listen to
Alan Stahler's interview with Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.

Right click here to download
Alan Stahler's interview with Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.

Click here to learn about "Healthy from the Start" the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research's Campaign to Include Women, Children, and Future Generationsin Environmental Health Standards.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FIRES OF 2007
Satellite images of the October 2007 fires in southern California.
Satellite images of the October 2007 fires in southern California:
Click here for a larger image.
Photo Credit: NASA, MODIS Rapid Response Team at GSFC. Further information: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/
NORWAY ALGAE BLOOM
Algae bloom, fed by nutrient-rich runoff, off the coast of Norway. Click here for a larger image.
Algae bloom, fed by nutrient-rich runoff, off the coast of Norway.
Click here for a larger image.

Algae bloom, fed by nutrient-rich runoff, off the coast of Norway.
First step in making petroleum ... If the algae die, and fall to the bottom, and are buried before they rot, and get cooked and squeezed ... this might be a good place to drill in a few hundred million years.

Photo Credit: NASA, MODIS Rapid Response Team at GSFC. Further information: http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/
 
Geology
Earthquake "colors"
The "colors" of radar waves of the Hector Mine quake in California's Mojave Desert.
The "colors" of radar waves of the Hector Mine quake in California's Mojave Desert.

We can calculate the thickness of a soap bubble by looking at what colors make it through its skin.

We can measure the motions along an earthquake fault (here, the motion due to the Hector Mine quake in California's Mojave Desert) by studying the "colors" of radar waves that reflect off the surface.

2004 Jones Tract Levee "Blue-Sky" Failure

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

 
Life Sciences

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.

Pronghorn
The Pronghorn antelope

The pronghorn is the fastest mammal on the North American continent. At noon on Tuesday, 9 May, I'll be speaking with Prof. John Byers, Ph.D. (University of Idaho), author of Built For Speed.

 
AMBULOCETUS
Ambulocetus ("Walking Whale")

Ambulocetus ("Walking Whale") lived along the edge of the sea some 45 million years ago - a "non-missing link" in the evolutionary path that led to today's whales.

Painting by Carl Buell. Used by permission.
 
 
Physics

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.

 
Skywatch
 
Space Technology

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.

     
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