An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings
Archive for Science
Where I Want To Go On My Summer Vacation
Well, maybe not.
Historic pictures sent from Mars
A Nasa spacecraft has sent back historic first pictures of an unexplored region of Mars.
The Mars Phoenix lander touched down in the far north of the Red Planet, after a 680 million-km (423 million-mile) journey from Earth.
The probe is equipped with a robotic arm to dig for water-ice thought to be buried beneath the surface.
It will begin examining the site for evidence of the building blocks of life in the next few days.
A signal confirming the lander had reached the surface was received at 2353 GMT on 25 May (1953 EDT; 0053 BST on 26 May).
Engineers and scientists at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California clapped and cheered when the landing signal came through.
“Phoenix has landed - welcome to the northern plain of Mars,” a flight controller announced.
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Cool!
Phoenix Lander Touches Down on Mars
PASADENA, Calif. — NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft has landed near Mars’ north pole for a 90-day digging mission.
Mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated after the Phoenix Mars Lander signaled back that it had survived Sunday’s fiery entry.
Phoenix will be the first spacecraft to study the Martian arctic plains. Unlike NASA’s mobile twin rovers, the lander will stay in one spot. It will use its robotic arm to dig into the permafrost to determine if the polar environment has the ingredients needed for life to emerge.
And courtesy of Texas Fred in honor of this special occasion:
Heh.
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More Than Hypocrisy
Ben Stein Provokes the Liberals’ Wrath
Ben Stein is known to many as an actor on Comedy Central. But the funniest part about his latest movie called “Expelled” is not any clever lines spoken by Stein but the hysterical way the liberals are trying to discourage people from seeing it.
A major issue with the left is that they don’t want more than THEIR side heard on any topic.
Stein’s critics don’t effectively refute anything in “Expelled”; they just use epithets to ridicule it and hope they can make it go away. However, it won’t go away; even Scientific American, which labeled the movie “shameful,” concedes that it cannot be ignored.
Scientific American lost any credibility with me a long time ago. How can asking some pretty BIG questions be “shameful”? This is supposed scientific publication, questions should be the norm!
The only question posed by the movie is why, oh why, is there such a deliberate, consistent, widespread, vindictive effort to silence all criticism of dogmatic Darwinism or discussion of alternate theories of the origin of life? Stein interviews scientists who were blacklisted, denied grants, and ostracized in the academic community because they dared to write or speak the forbidden words.
Again, that pesky 1st Amendment gets in their way? “Freedom of speech for me, but not for thee”! The academic community is longer academic. It’s “global politics” our way, or no way. It’s a mental disorder that should be treated, and FAST!
The liberals are particularly upset because the movie identifies Darwinism, rather than evolution, as the sacred word that must be isolated from criticism. But that semantic choice makes good sense because Darwinism is easily defined by Darwin’s own writings, whereas the word evolution is subject to different and even contrary definitions.
Darwin expressed opinions from his observations. Why then, has it turned into a cult? BTW, did Darwin ever explain the platypus?
The truly funny part of the movie is Stein’s interview with Richard Dawkins, whose best-selling book “The God Delusion” established this Englishman as the world’s premier atheist. Dawkins is a leading advocate of the theory that all life evolved from a single beginning in an ancient mud puddle, perhaps after being struck by lightning.
Putting aside the issue of evolving, how did life begin in the first place? Under Stein’s questioning, Dawkins finally said it is possible that life might have evolved on Earth after the arrival of a more highly developed being from another planet.
Aren’t aliens from outer space the stuff of science fiction? And how was the other-planet alien created? According to Dawkins, life must have just spontaneously evolved on another planet, of course without God.
POOF! Stuff just happens? Ok, so what made it happen? Where did the alien POOF from….another POOF?
Stein interviewed Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist who lost his position at the prestigious Smithsonian Institution after he published a peer-reviewed article that mentioned Intelligent Design. Other academics who said they were victims of the anti-ID campus police included astrobiologist Guillermo Gonzalez, denied tenure at Iowa State University, and Caroline Crocker, who lost her professorship at George Mason University.
I find it rather arrogant of those so called institutions of higher learning to stifle Higher Learning.
Stein’s message is that the attack on freedom of inquiry is anti-science, anti-American, and anti-the whole concept of learning. His dramatization should force the public, and maybe even academia, to address this extraordinary intolerance of diversity.
Isn’t it the left who always trying to shove “diversity” down our throats? Yep, more than just a little hypocritical!
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Any Homeschoolers Out There?
Need some advice! Jr is needing some aid on her chemistry (high school). The book we are using is great, and covers a lot of the algebra/geometry she needs. My problem, I’d like to find a kit or something that she could do some of the experiments….without blowing up the house, or any such thing. You know, simple things. We have kitchen stuff, but I’d like to be able for her to actually SEE and experience some of the stuff she is reading and figuring out. Visuals, don’cha know!
In case you are wondering, she’s finished history, and mostly her electives are all wrapped up, so concentrating on one subject at a time is working for her.
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Must See
Thanks Sue.
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Martian Vacation Spot
I thought this was so much more interesting than “he who shall not be middle named” winning the Wyoming caucus.
Signs of Once-Habitable Crater Lake Found on Mars
A lake that might once have been habitable may have filled a crater for a long time on early Mars, new spacecraft images reveal.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) captured the images that suggest the debris-strewn Holden Crater once held a calm body of water that could have harbored life.
There is so far no convincing evidence life does or ever did exist on Mars, however.
The crater debris includes a mix of broken boulders and smaller particles called megabreccia.
“Holden crater has some of the best-exposed lake deposits and ancient megabreccia known on Mars,” said Alfred McEwen, principal scientist for MRO’s HiRISE camera.
“Both contain minerals that formed in the presence of water and mark potentially habitable environments,” he added. “This would be an excellent place to send a rover or sample-return mission to make major advances in understanding if Mars supported life.”
I can think of a few folks that are probably native to the area.
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A Lot More Than A Few Fries Short
Just when I thought they couldn’t get any more ignorant…..
Feinstein wants CO2 listed as a danger to public health
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, along with several other organizations, is calling for Senator Dianne Feinstein to reconsider a proposal that would list carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.
In a recent letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, Senator Feinstein (D-California) urged the agency to find CO2 emissions a danger to public health. The finding would lay the groundwork for the first ever CO2 emissions standards for new cars and trucks. However, Competitive Enterprise Institute senior fellow Marlo Lewis warns that the finding would also make CO2 a pollutant that would be regulated far beyond new cars and trucks.
“But [the EPA] would also have to regulate carbon dioxide emissions just about everywhere else in the economy,” Lewis explains. “And potentially over several hundred thousand small to mid-sized buildings, businesses, and farms could be affected.”
Lewis says that listing CO2 as a pollutant would not only put a “big chill” on new construction and cripple the economy, but it would also swamp the EPA with applications and hinder them from enforcing what Lewis describes as “critically, statutorily required Clean Air Act obligations.”
Alright! That’s IT! EVERYONE is under arrest!
Ok, here’s a little lesson for Senator Feinstein:
Carbon dioxide (chemical formula: CO2) is a chemical compound composed of two oxygen atoms covalently bonded to a single carbon atom. It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure and exists in Earth’s atmosphere in this state. It is currently at a globally averaged concentration of approximately 383 ppm by volume in the Earth’s atmosphere, although this varies both by location and time. Carbon dioxide is an important greenhouse gas because it transmits visible light but absorbs strongly in the infrared.
Carbon dioxide is produced by all animals, plants, fungi and microorganisms during respiration and is used by plants during photosynthesis. This is to make sugars which may either be consumed again in respiration or used as the raw material for plant growth. It is, therefore, a major component of the carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is generated as a byproduct of the combustion of fossil fuels or vegetable matter, among other chemical processes. Inorganic carbon dioxide is output by volcanoes and other geothermal processes such as hot springs.
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That Is So Cool!
I was trying to find some pictures of the lunar eclipse because, of course, we have nothing but cloud cover here, and came across Nasa’s site. They have a gallery of ‘todays’ pictures, and this was in the midst of them.
Morenci
Looking more like an alien landscape than an Earthly landscape, the Morenci open-pit copper mine in southeast Arizona is North America’s leading producer of copper.
In the 1860s, prospectors arrived looking for gold; instead they found copper. Underground mining began in the 1870s, and the first pit was opened in 1939. Phelps Dodge employs over 200 people in the mining and refining operations. Around-the-clock removal of 700,000 tons of rock per day results in production of 382,000 tons of copper per year.
This ASTER image uses shortwavelength infrared bands to highlight in bright pink the altered rocks in the Morenci pit associated with copper mineralization.
It might make a neat painting, the colors are GREAT!  No, not in my house, but in some house. Hmmm…well, maybe, if I could figure out where to put it. Maybe the bathroom? 
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I Guess It Missed
First Blurry Pictures of Near-Miss Asteroid Released
Astronomers have obtained the first images of an asteroid on course to make its closest approach to Earth on Tuesday, showing the space rock is lopsided.
The new images, taken with the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope in California’s Mojave Desert, refine estimates of the asteroid’s size.
Named 2007 TU24, the asteroid was estimated to span up to 2,000 feet (610 meters), but is now thought to have a diameter of about 800 feet (250 meters).
Couldn’t we just call it Gomer or something? I really don’t like those long number/letter names.
Scientists at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined that there is no possibility of an impact with Earth in the foreseeable future.
Other radar telescopes will point toward the asteroid as it makes its closest approach to Earth, 334,000 miles (537,500 kilometers), at 3:33 a.m. Eastern time Jan. 29.
Well, since I’m still here and it’s long past the wee hours, I reckon it just passed right on by. Polite like.
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Ummmmm……why?
Israeli Scientists Create Nano-Sized Bible
Israeli scientists have inscribed the entire Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible onto a space less than half the size of grain of sugar.
The nanotechnology experts at the Technion institute in Haifa say the text measures less than 0.5 square millimeter (0.01 square inch) surface. They chose the Jewish Bible to highlight how vast quantities of information can be stored in minimum amounts of space.
“It took us about an hour to etch the 300,000 words of the Bible onto a tiny silicon surface,” Ohad Zohar, the university’s scientific adviser for educational programs, told the Associated Press.
I’m sure they had a darn good reason, but for the life of me, I can’t figure it out. 
 Yeah. lots of info, stored on small thingys. But seriously, why? Kind of hard to turn the pages, don’cha think? 
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