possible brilliant sunsets
Over on http://spaceweather.com/ there is a notification that, thanks to the eruptions of Mt. Redoubt in Alaska, the Great Lakes region may be in for interesting sunsets.
It's under "SULFUR DIOXIDE LOOP" which mainly details a ring of SO2 currently approach the west coast but does mention the band approaching the Great Lakes region.
You can see an animation of the event here.
Where’s Jupiter?
A lot of children's books that feature a night sky include illustrations of various planets. Of course, these are exaggerated views and often the objects are "planet-like" variations of objects from our own solar system.
One planet, however, stands out: Saturn. Saturn (or a Saturn-like planet) is in almost every illustration of the night sky I've seen in a children's book. Of course, its distinctive rings make it an easy visual target.
Every once in a while, a book renders Saturn fairly well, and even manages to include other fairly-accurate representations of other planets. In our house, this book is "Where is Coco Going?" by Sloane Tanen.
This is a popular bed-time book in our house, and since before he was 2, Nate has known that the illustrations on a particular page are of Saturn and Jupiter (which he pronounces "Jupiper").
But if we're reading another book that also features some sort of night-sky illustration, inevitably there is a Saturn-like object but no clear Jupiter (if there's another planet at all). And Nate immediately asks: "Where's Jupiper?"
I cannot fully express to you how much joy it brings to my heart to hear him ask this question. Watching his development and growth has been (and continues to be) nothing short of astonishing.
In Celebration of the Large Hadron Collider
Today, September 10th, 2008 marks the beginning of the worlds, and histories, largest and most expensive scientific experiment ever.
Today, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland, comes on-line.
One of the main detectors, and indeed a fundamental part LHC, is called CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid. At the end-caps of the detector are cathode-strip chambers (CSC) used to measure muon rates and positions.
photographer: unknown
The end-caps on CMS are very large and no one had ever built CSC's as large as they needed to be for the detector. So a group of scientists at Fermilab (FNAL) in Batavia, IL was set to working on the problem (as a part of the overall, and very large, involvement by the US).
And, as it so happened, my application for summer employment (following my sophomore year at Valparaiso University) at FNAL was approved and I was assigned to the group studying the cathode-strip chambers. It was easily the single most exciting job I have ever had and possibly ever will have. I was at Fermilab, one of the premier locations for particle physics, working with real scientists, taking real measurements, collaborating, exploring, and in the end, (in conjunction with an undergrad from Purdue) writing a technical paper on the subject for the CMS project.
The title of the paper is: Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL and, while all the technical papers used to be available at the USCMS site, they don't appear to be any longer. I don't know how the design changed after I left (I did not keep in touch with the group) nor do I even know if anyone else even read my report. To be honest, I don't really care (especially about the last part.) My roll was as minor as one could have, but I had a roll nonetheless. The experience of that summer put me most of a semester ahead of everyone entering Nuclear Physics Lab in the fall and afforded me a taste what being a scientist was all about. Not a month goes by that I don't, in some way, reflect on that lost dream.
I have a PDF of the paper saved somewhere, but cannot immediately find it. Fortunately for me, the web provided another location: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/. Thank you Pennsylvania State University.
Study of the T0 Cathode Strip Chamber Prototype at FNAL.
So here's to science and here's to scientific discovery. May the work of the thousands upon thousands of Large Hadron Collider scientists and engineers bear wondrous and extraordinary fruit.
Illumination
The December Solstice is upon us. I look upon the now lengthening days with joy and happiness. Whether you celebrate with a feast, a flame, or simply by noting the length of the day remember: while the cold of winter may just be settling in, the sun is returning little by little.
Happy Solstice!
Possible Auroral activity tonight
Thanks to a very large coronal mass ejection recently the stage is set for, what could be, some very nice auroras tonight. These could be visible in the northern third of the US.
http://spaceweather.com/ has the latest info. Hopefully the clouds will be clearing out of here and I can grab my tripod for a bit of photography.
the vastness of what we don’t see
helloheather and I caught something on Animal Planet on Sunday that has had my brain twisted up in knots.
In Europe (and Asia), there is a genus of blue butterfly that has a symbiotic relationship with the local species of red ant. Here's how it works:
- Blue butterflies mate.
- Female lays eggs on the stems and leaves of wildflowers
- Eggs hatch and the larvae hang out on the leaves for around three weeks
- larvae fall to the ground and, if found by a red ant, are picked up and brought to the colony.
- Butterfly larvae are kept with the ant larvae and are fed, cleaned, and raised as if it were an ant larvae.
- chrysalis forms, larvae pupate, and emerge as new blue butterflies, quickly leaving the colony.
How does this happen? Why do the ants not turn the fallen larvae into ant food? Near as anyone can tell, the larvae produce the exact same pheromones as ant larvae. To an ant, if it smells like an ant larva, it must be an ant larva. (Though, it must wonder how it got so far out of the colony...). In addition, the butterfly larvae also mimic the sounds ant larvae make. It completely fools the ants.
Symbiotic relationships are not uncommon in nature, but here's where this one takes a twist.
The entire colony of ants treat these butterfly larvae as one of their own because it smells and sounds exactly like one of their own. But someone else, without even looking, can spot the fakery: a wasp. And it uses this information to climb into a colony and inject its own larva inside the larva of the blue butterfly, where it feeds once the chrysalis is formed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4460030.stm
Rather than re-type pretty much what the BBC article states, I'll just link to it. But what should be noted here is that this species of wasp (Ichneumon eumerus) can find, in a field of hundreds of ant colonies, the ONE colony that contains butterfly larva. Simply amazing.
This is just one story from a show called "Life in the Undergrowth" narrated by David Attenborough.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EBD9W6.
We watched a couple others and were equally fascinated.
wherein a baby is resolved
As helloheather pointed out in her LJ, we had another ultrasound last night.
So the baby, in this image, is on its back, facing up. Its legs are up in front of its body as if he/she is trying to touch nose to shin. I had no idea babies in the womb could be so flexible. I figured with all that space they might want to spread out a bit...give the legs and arms a good stretch. But apparently we have a taco baby. 
With the ultrasound they're able to measure the circumference of the head, chest, length of leg, and heart rate. Everything checked out normal. Hooray for a healthy baby!
RIP US Space Shuttle
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2144513/nasa-dumps-space-shuttle
For better or worse, NASA is going to retire the Space Shuttle within the next five years.