Clancy on Science and Nature

This is a Test Entry--testing ScribeFire

2009-05-25T09:49:00.001-04:00

This is a test... this is only a test.

I've been a fan of Star Trek
for a long time, but I am not a fanatic--I own no Star Trek memorabilia
nor have I donned a Star Trek costume. I've yet to see the new Star
Trek movie, but I've read that it is excellent and am looking forward
to watching it. But thinking about Start Trek something came to me--a
little disturbing, perhaps.

In the scene in my mind there is this villain who has commandeered a star ship
(not unlike Khan) and warped around the galaxy destroying and
terrorizing. Capt. Villain has a right hand man who I'll just call mr.
mini. So Capt. Villain suspects that mr. mini is plotting a coup and
plans to kill him after taking the ship. Obviously Capt. Villain is
angered and so, as one would expect, he plans his own small plot to get
rid of mr. mini, but he wants to do it in such a way that mr. mini
suspects nothing and to send a powerful message that mutiny is a bad
idea.

So mr. mini happens to also be an engineer and knows how to repair
stuff on ships. Capt. Villain hatches an evil scheme to rid himself of
all those who oppose him. He gives a task to mr. mini to go for a
spacewalk on the outer hull to repair some damage in a bulkhead. So
off mr. mini goes to repair the bulkhead. He puts on his space suit,
heads to a pressure hatch, straps on the tether and exits the ship.
Mr. mini pokes about to find the damage and at that Capt. Evil locks
the hatch and, after revealing his plan to a now terrified mr. mini,
orders his navigation officer to go to impulse and then full warp.

So, after an unnecessarily long winded bit of prose, I wondered what
would actually happen to mr. mini. Yes, Star Trek is fiction, of
course, but let's assume that it's all real. Would mr. mini suffer a
horrible death? At first I thought yes, but then I thought perhaps
not. Given that mr. mini is still tethered to the hull and is
surrounded by the ships "warp bubble", would he not also just move with
the ship? It's kind of like riding on a train or in a car and tossing
a ball up in the air. The ball, you, your coffee, etc., is moving with
the vehicle and so given your point of view, these things seems to be
still.

So now what would happen if the captain also cut the teather holding
mr. mini thus forcing him to float free from the ship as it goes to
impulse. Of course mr. mini would eventually exhaust his oxygen and
just die. But that's not the point. Say the Capt. orders the ship to
go to warp at the point when mr. mini is no just past the warp bubble
barrier. If the ship goes to warp, will something grizzly happen to
mr. mini. Maybe he would be dragged in to the warp worm hole (or
whatever it is called) and thus forced to travel perpetually at warp speed
until his body reaches the end of the universe, assuming there is an
end to it. Without navigation, would his body warm into a star or a
black hole? And how the hell does a star ship, traveling at warp,
avoid such obstacles? Does the ship's computer have the ability to
"look" ahead and so move the ship around these obstacles?

And last (and perhaps the most important thing), will I ever stop writing about this stupid thought experiment?

Yes.

The Lonely Galaxy: Birthing Stars Too Quickly?

2009-01-06T21:06:00.000-05:00

I found this interesting piece from NASA about a mystery behind why a lonely galaxy, NGC 1569, is creating new stars more quickly than other galaxies.

Discovered: A Hidden Video of a Squid

2008-11-30T14:17:00.001-05:00

On Greg Laden's blog is the following video. It was created late last year and was just recently discovered floating around the internet as an email attatchment.

Now, a "Shell Oil submersible robot" filmed the squid. I don't know if it was attempting to do this unaided or if someone was at the controls (I'm sure it has to be the latter), but after watching the video I had an idea. The video is badly shot with the squid out of many scense as if someone with no experience was attempting to control it. So the idea I had was to figure out how a computer could automate the actual filming.

This robot, not completely autonomous, would have the ability to follow the subject (squid) by first having someone point to it and then locking on to it. After that the subject would always be in the scene and either the onboard computer, given a general description (script) of how to behave, could film the squid entirely autonomously. Or, once locked in and filming, someone could feed it commands or take manual control of the camera and move it about. Some of these commands might be able to control the camera in the following ways: zoom out, zoom in, hold, pan up, pan down, pan left, pan right, etc.

Anyway, this is my idead.

NASA TV Goes HD

2008-11-23T16:18:00.002-05:00

Check it out:

NASA Television is broadcasting highlights from the ongoing STS-126 space shuttle mission in high definition (HDTV).

Note: Boo to NASA for not permitting their logo.

Cassini-Huygens: Images from Titan

2008-11-19T23:23:00.009-05:00

I remember hearing about the Cassini-Huygens mission, but then forgot about it. But in the December issue of Sky & Telescope there is an article about Titan and the spacecraft that visted it. I think that it is perhaps the coolest thing in the world (or outside it) when we send spacecraft and probes that can land on a new world and take images. It just makes my yearning for knowledge about the universe that much stronger. And I am simply astonished that in my lifetime I've been around to hear and see the discovery of exoplanets. But we'll leave that for another time.

When I explored further I found the official sites for this mission, one of them at NASA's JPL and the other at ESA. At ESA web site I found a really cool slideshow of the images taken by the Huyens probe as it decended to the planet surface.

I highly recommend checking out the slideshow of the images taken by the probe, and don't forget to visit the home sites. It's really cool stuff.

Witch Head Nebula

2008-11-01T20:55:00.004-04:00

This is the Witch Head Nebula, NASA's Image of the Day. It's appropriate for this Halloween weekend.

The Nature Blog Network

2008-10-29T14:05:00.004-04:00

I really enjoy reading about nature and at times actually leaving the deep dark den in which I live to venture out to my back yard to photograph birds, trees and bugs. Sometimes when I feel really adventurous I take the dogs and my binoculars to the park so the we can enjoy the beauty and the sun.

But when I cannot get out of the house, I like to read books about nature. But today, rather than a book, I tootled about the academic section of a blog network and happened upon a site called "Teach Me About Bird Watching!!!".

Now this is kind of a novel idea. Rather than profess expertise about some topic such as birding, the author of this blog invites others to send her information which she then posts. But when I tootle, I don't stay long, so on this blog I found a link to another kind of blog network called the Nature Blog Network. You can create an account and submit your nature blog listing under one of ten topics:

Birds
Ecosystem
Flora
Hiking & Outdoors
Insects & Invertebrates
Mammals
Marine
Mollusks
Mushrooms & Fungi
Reptiles & Amphibians

I submitted this blog (Science and Nature), but because it's theme isn't concerned specifically with one of the listed topics, I don't think it will be accepted. Which is fine because I enjoy writing about a lot of different things.

Anyway, check out The Nature Blog Network and if you have a nature blog, try submitting it. If you're accepted your blog will be among the best.

Armadillo Aerospace Wins Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge 2008

2008-10-29T10:22:00.003-04:00

It was recently announced that Armadillo Aerospace won the level 1, $350,000.00 Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

The competition has two levels to it. In the level one challenge, the lunar lander rocket is supposed to lift off and achieve a height of 150 feet, hover for 90 seconds, then land on a specific target. Level 2 is similar except that it is required to hover for twice as long as level 2.

Weird Instant Slush Phenomenon

2008-10-26T20:16:00.004-04:00

This evening when I poured myself a pepsi over ice, I noticed the weirdest thing. As I poured, the liquid, once it hit the ice cubes, immediately turned to pepsi slush. I'd never seen that happen before, but I think I know what happened. Where we keep the soda in the refrigerator is a compartment that has a cooling vent that blows cold air into it. I imagine this is there because things on the door of a fridge don't get as cold as those in the center and back of the fridge. For some reason, and perhaps it has to do with the changing weather and drop in humidity, the soda has been getting colder than it had been. Perhaps it's temperature is below freezing--the CO2, I think, lowers the freezing point of a liquid. So when I poured the really cold liquid over the ice, it instantly began to freeze. I thought I was going mad, but I searched the web and found a really cool video that shows this phenomenon. This video shows a more drastic version of what I experienced. Have a look:

Supercooling Experiment #4 - Instant Slush - The top video clips of the week are here

First Moon Mission Launch from India

2008-10-22T13:21:00.001-04:00

Anything that concerns space, from spaceflight to finding exoplanets, is something that captures my interest. So today in the online BBC NEWS: Science and Environment, I read that India has finally launched their unmanned mission to the moon on the Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft.

While they aren't touching down on the lunar surface, rather it will orbit the moon for two years mapping the surface, PM Manhoman said that this is a first step for the country's space program. The site article contains a video clip of the launch and interviews with people on the streets to garner their reactions. It's a pretty exciting time for India, and even the world.

Wernher Von Braun's Sketches of the Future of Spaceflight

2008-10-20T09:28:00.002-04:00

Scientific American is my favorite source for scientific news. So today while checking out their web site, Scientific American put together a slide show of the sketches that Wernher Von Braun, sometimes referred to as the preeminent rocket engineer of the 20th century, made in 1952 about his vision for the future of spaceflight and his dream of putting men on the moon.

The Cat, The Chipmunk and the Acorn

2008-10-04T19:46:00.000-04:00

Chipmunks. They're everywhere. And acorns all over the lawn. And squirrells. When I was growing up I lived in a home with a backyard that was mostly hill and trees--a tiny forest all to myself and my tiny imagination. And I'd see chipmunks and squirrels, (albeit briefly), scampering about the yard, foraging for acorns, and once I even tried to follow a chipmunk to get a better look, but alas, it is very difficult to keep up with them, even for a spry child as I.

I then discovered cats. When and how, I don't recall, but I pestered my parents until their resolve had waned, and so one day we went in search of my very first kitten that I named Angel. And when she grew big enough to hunt (I should have given her the more appropriate name of Beelzebub) and share with the family her shredded prey by placing it on the patio in front of the sliding door, I was forced into morbid labor as undertaker in charge of carrying and dumping the masticated remains up the lonely, dark forest and into the woods beyond. And so over the many years of this performing this duty, my forest had become to me nothing more than an animal cemetary.

But today whilst walking the dogs and with their keen eyes seeking out these sprightly creatures picking up the acorns in my front lawn under the oak trees, I got to thinking about them. I've seen them whole and alive, and I've seen every part of them inside and out. But I wondered, what the hell is a chipmunk? A rodent? A squirrel? A rodent squirrel? Are squirrels rodents? What the hell is a rodent anyway? So I googled all of this (I mean really, does anyone use anything else?) , and what's cool about google and searching for facts like these is that inevitably it will pull up a hit on wikipedia, and so I used this as my source of information. A quote from wikipedia concerning the chipmunk follows:

The Chipmunk is the common name for any small squirrel-like rodent species of the genus Tamias in the family Sciuridae. Around 25 species fall under this name, mainly in North America, although one species is native to Eurasia.

So this describes, in cold, rational, scientific language what a chipmunk is. But really, this provides no meaning about the nature of these rodents. Further down the article it finally speaks, also in cold language, more about the chipmunk and it's nature, but I decided I should find something more literary, poetic, about these "Tamias in the family Sciuridae" in an endeavor to further understand the chipmunk. It is in things poetic where we come to best understand the nature of its subject as well as the nature of the poet. And as fortune would have it, I found on Famous Poems and Poets The Chipmunk, by Ogden Nash

The Chipmunk by Ogden Nash
My friends all know that I am shy,
But the chipmunk is twice and shy and I.
He moves with flickering indecision
Like stripes across the television.
He's like the shadow of a cloud,
Or Emily Dickinson read aloud.

I think that this poem for me captures the essence, the very nature of the chipmunk and also gives us a glimpse into the artist himself. In fact the very first line, "My friends all know that I am shy...", not only gives us something about the nature of the chipmunk, but it describes me, and perhaps this is why the poem resonates so much with me.

So I think I'll end here, take the dogs for another walk, and see if I can spy the chipmunks with my eyes.

Introduction

2008-10-03T23:28:00.002-04:00

Clancy on Science and Nature is a blog about my passion for all fields of scientific inquiry and love of nature and the natural world.