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Phoenix Lander on Polygon Structure as seen by HiRISE

(disclosure: I left my cellular internet dongle in my room, so I’m twittering sessions live and posting blog entries on a semi random basis when I can go out and find internet)

I’m leaning against the back wall of a packed ballroom filled with the brim with silent and attentive geophysicists who are absorbing all they can about the Mars Phoenix Lander.

This fairly large (5,5m or 18 ft long) and heavy (350kg or 770lb) spacecraft parachuted to the surface of Mars on May 25, 2008 and poked, prodded and dug into the surface until it froze to death on November 10. While this seems like a short period, the original plan was to wind up operations in August, so the craft had been living on borrowed time. While it is unexpected that the craft will be able to turn back off when it thaws in the next Martian Spring, the lander is programmed to phone home should it survive.

If you want to go back and see what the mission knew in the moment, it’s all recorded on twitter. Check out: http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

Today is all about what we can now say with certainty.

The session started with a broad overview of the results everyone was waiting to hear: Is there evidence of past liquid water and is their the possibility Mars can (at other temperatures) support life. The answer is a qualified yes.

For Water:

• The soil Phoenix dug up was clotted/cemented (this is geology speak for what happens when you mix dirt and water, stir, and then let it “dry” out.)
• There is Calcium Carbonate at 3-4% level in some of the samples. This is a mineral that only forms in wet environments
• In addition to Calcium Carbonate, there are other aqueous minerals
• And, to give the most obvious case, there is water ice 5cm below the surface, and this ice is segmented in the same way as a stream that has frozen and thawed and refrozen

For Habitability:

• There are the materials needed to process energy and to get nutrients from the environment
• The 1-2% perchlorate is not a life killer
• The 7.7 pH is friendly

It just happens to be a bit too cold at the moment…

Additional work looking at the variation of ice with depth found that it matches models, and that based on the fact that the rocks aren’t frozen into the ice, but rather are capable of getting flung out of place by casual assualt by alien space laboratories, the ice is old. (Over time the ice contracts, loosening around the rocks).

There was also work that showed that the fascinating polygon structures surrounding the lander are likely caused by seasonal cracking that occurs when the ice contracts and sand and small rocks fall in between the gaps in the ice. The “flat” part of each polygon typically measured 4-5 meters in diameter and have multiple lumps and peaks indicating there is multiple events building these structures. Unlike on Earth, where these can be caused by frost heaves, these patterns are caused by sand wedges.

Sadly, I know need to go play scientist and be part of a telecon. More to come on the other side…

Since I don’t consider the spoilers in this blog to be more then what you’d get watching previews on NBC, I’m now going to move on with life and blog.

So… I watch Heroes. It gets stored on our Windows Media Center and sometimes I just binge. It is not a particularly great show, but I have a special soft spot in my heart for corny science fiction. (I also like Sanctuary, although the fake British accent is driving me crazy). Heroes, however, crossed a line from corny to just plain misplaced in time in their past two episodes. Creatively titled Eclipse 1 and Eclipse 2, these two episodes detailed what happens to our Heroes during a solar eclipse. The only problem is, the events can’t happen until 2041! Specifically, they have an eclipse that is visible for several hours to people in Kansas, Haiti, and someplace that I *think* was California (but I admit to missing a few details). One of the Heroes also mentioned how solar eclipses are events shared across the globe. While generally eclipses are events only seen by a lucky few who take off (often via ship or bus) to exotic locations, there are rare occasions when the world gets lucky.

Solar Eclipses occur when the Moon passes directly in front of the Sun when viewed from a given position on the surface of the Earth. This is a very careful alignment and you have to be in just the right place at the right time to see it. It’s along the lines of walking around to frame a photo so that it looks like a friend is holding the full moon in their hand. Sure, you can stand in more than one place, but those places are all pretty close together and along one line and you have to be in the right place at the right time.

Solar eclipses work much the same way, but more than just the moon is in motion so you have to move rather radically if you want to try and maintain alignment. All at the same time we have the Earth rotating and sweeping the position of eclipse from East to West, the moon orbiting (which also moves the shadow), and then of course you have the whole Earth-Moon System orbiting the Sun. All these motions together create an arcing eclipse path across the planet that is only about 160 miles wide (although admittedly a partial eclipse of the Sun will be observable over a huge swath of planet). From any given location it can take up to 4 hours for the moon to go from just starting to touch the Sun to barely no longer touching the Sun. During half that time, less than half the Sun is covered.

I looked at a bunch of eclipse maps to figure out just how insanely wrong the episode was and found myself surprised to find that there is an eclipse in 2045 that almost pulls off what they showed in the last two episodes of Heroes. Totality does pass across America (North *I think* of the California/Arizona characters and south of the Kansas characters) and over Haiti. It is visible at some level to people in pretty much all of the USA. If you click on the image above, it will show you the path of the total solar eclipse (The blue path containing circles), and areas of different percentages of coverage (the blue lines from East to West mark varying amounts of eclipsing).

So, while I was annoyed with the episode for taking advantage of an astronomical event in a way that initially seemed very improbable, it turns out that if Heroes were placed in 2045 what they showed about the eclipse could be true. Sadly, I think the show is supposed to be placed about now and not 33 years in the future. While there will be a rather cool eclipse of the Sun this summer, you’ll need to join me on a boat off the coasts of China and Japan if you want to see it. The next major eclipse to be seen in North America will occur in 2017.

I’ve been hanging out with (left to right) Richard Saunders and Phil Plait a lot, and here we are showing a little leg. Silly enough? (In general, this place is filled with people with truly killer shoes. We aren’t among those with awesome shoes, but mine are at least cute )

So, I was saying I’ve been sitting in on Skeptics sessions most of the weekend. Currently I’m sitting in on one that is about Dogma versus Skepticism. A very good point was just made by the speaker: He pointed out that someone who holds on to the Belief that God can not exist is just as dogmatic as someone who has no doubt that God does not exist. He went onto explain that it is possible for someone to be both a theist and a scientist. I’m so glad he said that, because it’s true.

As a scientist and a skeptic, I’m more than willing to say that I can’t prove that God exists (I’m much more skilled at proving the Big Bang existed), but I also can’t disprove God, and so I choose to believe (see link under About if you want to read more about my belief system). I also know from earlier discussions that I am not the only skeptic in the room who is some species of Christian (although I won’t out anyone).

This is the first time I’ve been in a large population of Skeptics and not experienced a ton of Christian slamming. Instead, what I’ve seen is specifics slamming. In dealing with people with non-logical world views based on no evidence or fake evidence or imaginary evidence, we can’t simply walk up to them and say “Your belief in God is false.” We can’t prove that. What we can do, however, is walk up to them and say, “The Earth is more than 6000 years old, let me prove it.” I can walk up to someone and say, “Let me show you ways to test if psychics are real so you know if you’re being fooled.” I can take on ghosts, aliens, Big Foot, and little green men with science and come out showing them with logic how their worldview is broken and offer them some experimental truth without taking away their God.

What we need to do as skeptics is teach reasoning and show people how understanding the world around them can keep them safer. We need to rebuild how they look at the world from the ground up and help them build a strong foundation of curiosity and the scientific method. We live in a wonderfully fantastic universe, and with science, what we understand can be seen as far cooler than what our limited imaginations can falsify when we step into the world of woo-woo insanity.

This week’s carnival of space is over on Riding with Robots. Enjoy!

A GIANT carnival awaits you over on New Frontiers Blog. It may require more than one circuit to take it all in

Go ride the Frog around the carnival!

To keep you busy while I survive writing exams and dealing with panicky students, here are some links:

An interview I did on Brains Matter is here [mp3].

There is a blog carnival like thing that includes some of my content and other stuff you may be interested in over at Sorting Out Science.

Tomorrow I’m going to be writing about the perception of time and velocity.

There is a Science Blog book being put together and they are looking for submissions here .  I’m considering entering and struggling to figure out what to submit. I’m looking at these three posts: 1, 2, 3. What do you think?

Ok, maybe its just a regular Carnival of Space, but it’s still pretty cool, and you can find it over on Phil’s Bad Astronomy Blog.

Enjoy!

If you, like me, are looking for ways to procrastinate on writing reports, preparing Halloween costumes, or preparing for a mid0term (writing it or studying for it), then I have the procrastination tool for you: a Space Carnival! It’s a small one this week, so you’ll be able to get back to more fruitful ways of procrastination (like cleaning your desk) quickly.

A Babe in the Universe: The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment (LLRE) told us that the Moon still has a liquid core, verified that Newton’s G is indeed constant, and provided one more test of General Relativity. LLRE also found a huge but little-known anomaly in the Moon’s drift from Earth.  One possible solution involves the speed of light signals reflected from the Moon.

Bigelow Aerospace:  Bigelow Aerospace has published on its Website a new image from Genesis I showing smoke from the Southern California wildfires.

Blue Skelton Publications: “Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.” These words bring back a few things from my childhood. The Last Starfighter is one of my favorite scifi flicks of all time and is quite possibly the best cult classic ever made.

Cumbrian Sky:  As Opportunity and Spirit continue to rove Mars, exploring Victoria Crater and Homeplate respectively, Stuart Atkinson ponders why so many people feel so fascinated by and dedicated to the two “plucky little rovers” which have survived everything Mars has thrown at them – and wonders if they’re the closest he’ll ever get to being a part of an Apollo-type space exploration adventure…

Space for Commerce: I note that a fellow on LiveJournal has coined a great nickname for mechanical counter pressure suits – ‘Squeeze Suits‘.  Includes a picture of Dava Newman modeling a prototype of the Bio-Suit at MIT.

In the interim, there is a carnival <a href=”http://sortingoutscience.net/2007/10/18/carnival_of_space_25/”> here </a> that is worth playing at.

A Babe in the Universe discusses how the private space industry has long believed that they can explore Space for less cost than NASA.
This article discusses a plan that would service a lunar observatory and incidentally return people to the Moon.

Advancednano discusses a trio of proposals for $500/kg or less launches to space in this post Ram accelerators are variations on big cannons and could be very cheap to develop. Magnetic ring launch is similar but more expensive for infrastructure but would be cheaper to operate. Plasma hypersonic is interesting, has a credible promoter but has secret core technologies.

Alfa King Memories asks the question, is their life on Mars? Looking at the question is particularly timely with the launch of Phoenix.

The Bad Astronomer points out that people sometimes just don’t get it. In this blog article, he point’s to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s recent article on space flight and then comments on the poor logic of folks arguing against NASA.

Bigelow Aerospace announces history in the making. For the first time, Bigelow Aerospace is able to project images on the outside of a spacecraft! You can learn all about what they are up to here.

Astroblog takes readers on a walk through the sky. This post points toward a beautiful morning with the Moon, Pleiades, Mars and the Hyades close together. The to top it off, the ISS goes in front of Mars!

Astroversity notices that when people think of NASA, they think of a big building in Florida that is in charge of Space Shuttles and the Mars Rovers. This is a common misconception amongst the general population. In this post, the record is set straight by explaining that NASA is built upon by a foundation of other branches and centers that each individualize in something different to help NASA advance, learn, and build. NASA attempts to understand our Universe, and at the same time they try to better the lives of the individual person.

Centauri Dreams has a piece discussing new research that changes the ground rules for storing antimatter, and goes on to look at one proposal for using antimatter as a propulsion system that takes into account how hard it is to create significant amounts of antimatter at this point in our technological development.

Colony Worlds notes that if scientists are unable to develop faster than light or wormhole technology by the 22nd Century, humanity may find themselves using gravitational assistance in order to travel throughout our solar system. This leads to a discussion on how he Jovian king (aka Jupiter) has been frequently used to fling satellites across the gulf of space, and why establishing a colony inside its domain may be the next logical step for conquering the outer solar system–with Callisto being the key.

Cumbrian Sky asks that we put behind it a week of horror headlines involving drunk astronauts and embezzling employees, last weekend NASA successfully launched its latest probe to Mars. As Phoenix begins its long cruise to the Red Planet, blogger Stuart Atkinson looks at why people have been so moved by the mission, and wonders why one part of that mission – looking for a habitable environment near the martian pole – has such a hold on our imaginations…

Geek Counterpoint talks about the first high-resolution image of a dust devil as seen by MRO has just been released. This prompts the question — what do we know about Martian devils, and what’s the history of our knowledge of them?

Hobby Space writes a response to those who attempt to use the recent accident at Scaled Composites as evidence that space tourism faces insurmountable safety hurdles.

Phil for humanity looks up and sees junk. In this post, he discusses the problem with space debris and possible solutions.

Universe Today gives us a glimmer of hope for the dust fighting rovers. In this blog story he discusses current weather and rover status for the red planet.

WTTF: Welcome to the Future notices that astronomers need love too. In this post help is offered in the form of the worst pickup lines you’ll ever hear.

Why Homeschool blogger (and Space Carnival founder) Henry writes about the importance of selling the dream in his article, “Space flight ticket seller – selling dreams.”