Category Archives: Science

OSIRIS-REx to Gather Sample from Asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20th

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On Tuesday October 20, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission will gather a sample from the surface of an asteroid – a first in U.S. space exploration history! The OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL); the spacecraft has been in proximity to the asteroid for quite some time, mapping the surface in great detail. Asteroid Bennu’s unexpectedly rocky surface made selection of a safe sample location difficult, but eventually 4 candidates were selected and a final site chosen. The spacecraft has done two test-runs of its sample collection maneuver in August, getting to within 131 ft (40 m) of the asteroid’s surface. OSIRIS-REx has made several discoveries as it has surveyed the surface of asteroid Bennu – it saw particles being ejected from the asteroids surface. We’ve also learned a lot about Bennu’s gravity field. Using the natural supply of mini gravity probes (ejected particles), the team discovered that the interior of Bennu is not uniform. … Continue reading →

Sew Then, Who does Science? (re-run)

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This is a “re-run” of a post that originally ran in January of 2019. One correction is that I have since retired from my work at Jefferson Community & Technical College, after a 30 year career there.   Let’s bet on that. Is that not what science boils down to?  Something that can be tested, proven?  Like with a bet? That ‘something’ might be:  The sun will rise in the East tomorrow. It might be more complex:  The sun’s position at 8:45 A.M. tomorrow will be such that the sunlight passing through that window will fall upon this spot. It might be quite a bit more complex:  The sun’s light will be eclipsed by the moon on this date, starting at this time, and the eclipse will last this long. But ultimately, you can make a bet on it: whether the sun will rise in the East, or whether its light shines on a certain spot, or whether the eclipse … Continue reading →

Young People Leaving the Church Because of “Science”

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Do young Catholics leave their faith because of science? Some data say they do. In 2017, St. Mary’s Press of Minnesota and Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate published Going, Going, Gone: The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics. This very short book was a report on a study done in 2015 of young former Catholics, ages 15-25 at the time. Those former Catholics would today be ages 20-30. The study involved a national survey that sifted through almost 4000 young adults (ages 18-25) and teens (ages 15-17) to find 184 young adults and 20 teens, all who self-identified as Catholic in the past but did not self-identify as Catholic at the time of the survey. The median age at which these folks abandoned Catholicism was 13 (that is, of the 204 respondents in the survey, half stated that they had left Catholicism at age 13 or earlier, half said they left at age 13 or later). … Continue reading →

North of Brahe

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This entry is part 35 of 34 in the series Lunarcy

Center bottom we have the spectacular crater Tycho (diameter 88km) the center of the largest ray system on the Moon that completely wraps around the globe. This is two days after the terminator passed over this crater and already the sun is high enough to show the rays without washing out some of the topographic details. For orientation purposes, the large dark crater at the top is Pitatus. Just below that are two similar sized craters Gauricus (82km) on the right and Wurzelbauer (90km) and off to the right is a much smaller well defined crater with a fairly dark patchy floor, Hell (34km). To the left of Pitatus and you’ll see one of the better double walled craters on the Moon, Hesiodus A (15km) looking like a little bulls-eye target with the small central peak. The parent crater Hesiodus (44km) is above it with a small 5km central crater. Going back to Tycho we can see one of the … Continue reading →

A Gift to Us?

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Professor Jim Peebles is the 2019 Nobel Laureate of Physics. I have had the pleasure to meet him and hear him give talks in the field of Cosmology, or the study of the shape, history, and future of the universe. In a recent talk Professor Peebles made an interesting comment about the study of science in general. He asserted that “nature operates by rules we can discover.” He went on to say that there was never a guarantee that it would have turned out to be that way. Scientists do seem to work with a kind of blind faith that the universe is knowable, and without necessarily realizing how exciting it is that so much of science is that way. After all, we know enough physics now to launch rockets that explore space. At the same time, there is a lot of physics that we still do not fully understand, such as how gravity works. When I give a talk … Continue reading →

Arecibo Observatory Damaged After Support Cable Snaps

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In the early morning hours on Monday August 10th, a 3-inch cable supporting a metal platform over the Arecibo Observatory’s dish snapped; a 100 foot-long gouge was ripped through the dish’s structure; observatory director Francisco Cordova has a team looking at the situation. At the time of this writing, it is unknown what caused the cable to break – the observatory was shuttered for a few days when tropical Storm Isaias passed over Puerto Rico on July 30th, but was functioning properly afterwards. For those unaware:@NAICobservatory can observe with holes in the primary reflector – although they decrease sensitivity. But the cable break also caused damage up on the platform that needs to be repaired, along with replacing the cable itself.https://t.co/ovJZGVglJW — Michael Busch (@michael_w_busch) August 12, 2020 Arecibo is home to a team that runs the Planetary Radar Project, which is supported by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program in NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office – this means that a … Continue reading →

St. Julian of the Crater

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Right near the point where Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia all come together stands a Catholic church in an asteroid impact crater. The church is St. Julian in Middlesboro, Kentucky. In fact, the entire town of Middlesboro sits in the crater. For most of St. Julian’s history, no one realized that it stood within a crater. The church was built in 1892, as Middlesboro itself was being built. Middlesboro sits right below the Cumberland Gap, on the United States’ old “Wilderness Road”. As the 18th century turned into the 19th, hundreds of thousands of settlers from the original 13 states of the U.S. followed that road, migrating to what is now Kentucky. Middlesboro itself came into existence much later, however, when an English coal baron invested heavily in the area. The Middlesboro basin was a good place to put a town that was to be built around a mining economy. According to the Kentucky Geological Survey, it was not until geologists … Continue reading →

LOOKING AROUND THE CORNER

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This entry is part 28 of 34 in the series Lunarcy

Something a little different this time to demonstrate what libration is and how it can be used to advantage. Here we have two images of the region from the crater Janssen looking east. Janssen is the largely ruined 196km diameter polygonal crater near the terminator in the center top of each of the two images in this montage. To the right of the center of this crater is a smaller crater, Fabricius (80km) with an odd mountain range on its floor. To the right of this is the slightly larger Metius (90km) and farther on the trench that is Vallis Rheita some 515km long. Below Janssen are two overlapping craters, the top one being Steinheil (70km) laying on top of Watt (68km). Notice that in the image on the right you see a lot more terrain between Watt and the limb. This is what a “favorable libration” can do for you and why you need to pay attention to that. … Continue reading →

Specola Guestbook | April 1, 1920: Sydney Chapman

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This entry is part 52 of 65 in the series Specola Guestbook

Since its founding in 1891, many people have passed through the doors of the Vatican Observatory.  A quick perusal of our guestbook reveals several Names, including Popes, nobel laureates, astronauts, actors, and saints. Today’s guestbook entry is from April 1, 1920 (no foolin’!), when Sydney Chapman made a visit. Next to his name, Sydney Chapman FRS (1888-1970) wrote, “Professor, The University, Manchester, lately of Greenwich Observatory.”  He was the Beyer Chair of Applied Mathematics at the University of Manchester. He was a mathematician who turned his skills to various astronomical and atmospheric phenomena.  Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Manchester in 1919, he was assistant to the Astronomer Royal Sir Frank Dyson at the Greenwich Observatory.  Much of his work there involved studying the influence of the Sun and Moon on terrestrial magnetism. He became Sedleian Chair of Natural Philosophy at Oxford in 1946. After retiring in 1953, he relocated to the US. He spent much of … Continue reading →

Life, Lucretius, and Leeuwenhoek

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Where does life come from? Genesis describes life being created by God, who instructs living things to “be fertile and multiply” and fill the seas and land (Gen. 1:22, 28). But for much of history, scientists thought life came from the Earth itself. This idea was ancient, going back to at least Aristotle 2500 years ago. This theory of “spontaneous generation” (which has been featured in this blog before) said that matter possesses life-generating force. Small creatures could be spontaneously generated from dirt. Indeed, people claimed to see frogs forming from mud. The ancient Roman writer Pliny described this idea: Aelianus said, that as he travelled in Italy near Naples, he saw many different frogs by the road, whose fore-parts and head did move and creep, but whose hind-parts were formed and like to the slime of the Earth. This caused the poet Ovid to write thus: Dirt has his seed engendering frogs full green, Yet so as feetless and … Continue reading →

Long Crack

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This entry is part 26 of 34 in the series Lunarcy

The moon is almost full and it seems like there is little to see. But on the southwest terminator is a grouping of craters that lead us to one of the longest cracks on the Moon. Near the top of this image are two overlapping craters. The one on top is Sirsalis (43km diameter). You will notice a rima running north-south just to the right of it. This is, appropriately enough, Rimae Sirsalis one main rima with several smaller, shorter, thinner ones on the side. The main rima is 309km long, its southern end in shadow here and the northern end of the top of this image. Just to the right of the nameplate on this image is the faintest traces of the upper edge of a crater wall. This is the crater Cruger (48km) with the satellite crater Cruger A (27km) the sharp crater next to the rima. Further on in the same direction is a shallow flat bottomed … Continue reading →

Getting to Know a Neutron Star: How Heavy Can They Be?

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This year the Ligo Interferomenter Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration announced the discovery of a potentially new type of object that fell into a black hole, of course never to be seen or heard from again! Black holes are always interesting, but in this case it is not the black hole that is in the spotlight. Instead, it is that ill-fated infalling object that grabbed all the attention. This is because information was obtained that points to the discovery of the heaviest known neutron star. Neutron stars should not be confused with ordinary stars we see in the sky. Stars are made of hydrogen and tend to shine in colors which our eyes can see. On the other hand, neutron stars are formed from the centers of massive stars. They are made of neutrons, and are very dark against the night sky. These dim neutron stars are also densely-packed: so much so that a single teaspoon would weigh as much … Continue reading →