Homely Scientist

From Wired (which has a cool series of on this day … )

1958: Data sent back by Explorer I confirms the existence of a radiation belt girdling the Earth. Because the mission is under the control of one James Van Allen, this field becomes known as the Van Allen radiation belt.
The Van Allen belt is, in effect, two croissant-shaped belts. Trapped within these belts, which run in depth from roughly 125 to 620 miles above the Earth, are radioactive particles capable of penetrating about 1 mm of lead.

Tags: Van Allen belts

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It looks like Hubble’s time of giving us amazing pictures of the universe is done.  The main camera has shut down and, well, fixing it any time soon (or at all) isn’t likely.  From Engadget:

…the main camera on the telescope, which was installed in 2002 and multiplied discovery capability by 10, has entered "safe mode," and NASA has little hope of a fix. A final shuttle-based repair mission is planned for 2008, but NASA already has a good bit on its to-do list, and since the ACS is such a complicated fix, it doesn’t look like the Hubble will have …read more

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If you’re heading out of the solar system, you better stop off at Jupiter.  Or at least fly by.  Jupiter, as it turns out, is the place to get a huge gravity sling-shot boost if you’re heading out towards Pluto and the like.  CBC’s Quirks and Quarks blog explains:

If you’re going anywhere serious in the solar system, visit Jupiter first. You’ll save money and a lot of time. Jupiter is a planetary catapult for space probes, providing a free throw into deep space, such as the one it will give the New Horizon mission to Pluto over the coming weeks. …read more

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From the BBC,

The researchers found the beetle’s shell was covered with ultra-thin scales, measuring just five micrometres (millionths of a metre), with highly random internal 3D structures.This irregular structure, explained Dr Vukusic, was the cause of the beetle’s whiteness.While colour, he explained, could be created through highly ordered structures, whiteness is achieved through very random features that scatter all colours simultaneously."The degree of whiteness given the scales’ thinness is the really impressive thing," Dr Vukusic added."We can create this quality of white synthetically, but the materials need to be much thicker. This could have many applications."

Why is this a …read more

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Thanks again to Laura for this really cool link (she fessed up she got a calendar for Xmas with a cool link a day).  Ever want to know more about snow and snowflakes than you ever thought possible?  This is the place.  I haven’t scratched the surface of the site, but I’m sure there will be cool (ha ha) projects and stuff to do.
Speaking of snowflakes, on CSY:NY last night one of the CSIs fix a snowflake to a slide with superglue to look at its structure and then be able to set a time.  Okay, I know CSI is …read more

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Sick of cleaning your plastic stuff around the house (like the computer)?  Well self-cleaning plastics might be closer than you think.  From Wired:

In essence, a combination of water-repellent surface (to prevent the material absorbing it) and microscopic surface characteristics that keep dirt slightly elevated (so beads of water can pick them up) make for easy, contact-free cleaning. The hard part is in abrading the material’s surface just so. That’ll require "femtosecond pulsed laser micromachining," which sounds rather like it will cost money.
"The phenomenon of self cleaning surfaces is demonstrated in nature by the leafs of nelumbo nucifera, the lotus flower. …read more

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From ScienceBase comes some interesting news.  Scientists have figured out how to correlate volcanic activity to particles trapped in the Antarctic ice sheets:

Volcanic activity can have serious consequences for climate change as particles and gases spewed out by volcanoes enter the upper atmosphere and change its chemical balance altering how Solar radiation is absorbed or reflected. Now, French and US researchers have devised a technique for determining how past volcanic eruptions could have affected this delicate chemical balance. Their findings could reduce significantly the uncertainty in current models of global climate change and so provide more accurate predictions of future …read more

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It’s snowing here today.  This is actually a rare occurrence for this part of Canada.  Canada is, btw, the only country in the world that contains all the major ecozones within its borders (yes including desert and rainforest).  Anyway this post is about snow, actually predicting snow.  According to the Victoria radio station I listen to, they got walloped.  Here on Pender, not so much.  Why is that?  Well snow is one of those strange weather things that is so dependant on external conditions that this is a hard thing to predict.  A little wiggle in the storm track, a …read more

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As a good follow-up to yesterday’s post on middens, is something that I always do when visiting a beach, I look at my feet.  Huh?  Well, what I mean is, I look at what kind of beach I"m standing on.  Sandy?  Pebbly?  Rocky?  I’m not going to get into examining the sand itself (though it is cool if you find a beach made up of crushed shells), but what you’re standing can tell you a lot about how the beach forms, grows, shrinks, etc.
The beach in the midden example (at least above the high-tide line is made up of small …read more

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I took the kids beachcombing yesterday.  It was high tide so there wasn’t much room to comb.  But there were shell middens.  Shell middens are essentially trash piles, but they are special trash piles.  They are the remnants of a people’s past.  Campsites, cooking, being, living.  The piles of shells and other debris build up over time.  A long time.  The middens we saw were eroding onto the beach.  The kids took shells that had already fallen out, but no digging was allowed.  Why?  Respect.  Respect for the people.  Respect for the past.  Respect for those who came before us.  …read more

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