Summer the Astronomer

I didn't expect to question my self-worth as an astronomer while watching the third Presidential debate last night, but that's what happened.

Sen. McCain's relentless harping on Sen. Obama for destroying "Joe the Plumber's" American dream was just too much. Let me tell you about my American dream. It has to do with stars.

I have been studying them my entire life. It began before my earliest memories, but once evident, my interest in everything celestial was supported by my mom, encouraged by my teachers, and bolstered by an elementary school field trip to a planetarium. Nothing special, just a high school in the area that was endowed well enough to have a small dome and an even smaller star projector. If I had to guess, I would say it couldn't have cost more than $3,000. (And that was in 1986). But the opportunity to actually see the motion of the planets and stars across the sky was - as the commercial says - priceless.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a great public school district in Northern Virginia where a field trip to such a high school was possible. For many students both then and now, this may not be the case. This is especially a tragedy for inner city students; those who can't even see the stars on their own because the skies over their heads are lit day and night by the sun or the ever-increasing electric glow of urban life. The best way these students can get access to the stars is through a museum planetarium that can both educate and inspire. In Chicago, the Adler Planetarium fills this role. And yes, top of the line, robust, professional star projectors cost a pretty penny. About $3 million, as Sen. McCain is so fond of pointing out.

By categorizing this proposed expense (that Sen. Obama supported) as pork, Sen. McCain is belittling my American dream, and the dream of young kids who, after a trip to the Adler, might one day grow up to share my love of the universe. Planetariums such as the Adler are in a unique position to help inspire students to pursue science and math - something our country is in desperate need of as Sen. McCain himself acknowledged in last night's debate.

I would like to remind Sen. McCain that the American dream comes in all shapes and sizes. Why does Joe the Plumber matter more than Summer the Astronomer? After all, my future observatory is going to require some plumbing.

The Next Five Days of My Life

World Science Festival 101

Brian Greene and Alan Alda were on Charlie Rose a while back to discuss the need for a large scale program such as the World Science Festival to give science a make-over and introduce it to people who might not otherwise be interested. This video is an excerpt from that program and sums up the motivations behind the Festival perfectly.

Science is Taking Over New York

I was strolling through the Broadway market in Soho this weekend, when what to my wondering eyes should appear...


This is just one of approximately 100 banners for the World Science Festival throughout the city. Keep your eyes out for them!

World Science Festival

The World Science Festival is coming to New York City, May 29th - June 1st, 2008. The inaugural Festival is a four-day celebration of science that aims to shift science from the cultural fringes of our society to the cultural center.

The brainchild of Columbia physicist and string theorist, Brian Greene, the Festival will take place all over the city and will bring together an amazing roster of Nobel Laureates, world renown scientists, intellectual pioneers, artists, and authors to help in this effort. (Full disclosure, I am a volunteer at the World Science Festival and all-around science enthusiast; it is as the latter that I write this post). The Festival will set the stage for discussions, debates, and performances that will both educate and entertain students of all ages and those of us that will always be students at heart.

Lest you think this is just a dry lecture series that will give you college flashbacks, let me assure you it is anything but. There will be film screenings on parallel universes and amnesia, dance performances inspired by string theory and planetary motion, and dramatic productions based on the discovery of oxygen, experiments gone wrong, and Einstein's theory of relativity.

Additionally, there will be a street fair in Washington Square Park all day Saturday the 31st for kids and families to explore the science of sports with Olympic Athletes and members of the NBA and discover the science behind the imagination of Disney involving robotics, pyrotechnics, and special effects.

And of course, for the purists, there will be fascinating conversations on today's hot topics such as sustainable development in cities of the future, the creative impulses in the brain, the search for extreme forms life, the science of morality, and the continued search for a unified theory of physics.

I, for one, am absolutely thrilled that something like this is finally happening! Science festivals with similar goals have been put on overseas in places like Edinburgh and Genoa, but the World Science Festival, here in New York City at the end of this month, will truly be an unprecedented celebration of science and the important role it can and should play in our society. 

(Image credits: Science Festival Foundation)

Science is Everywhere

I will flush this post out later, but just wanted to get this out there as this is what I have been slaving over for the last month!



The World Science Festival has officially been launched. Come to New York City, May 28 - June 1 and you won't be sorry.

In Memoriam

I was fortunate enough to know and work with G. David Low during my time at Orbital Sciences Corporation. He was and will continue to be an inspiration to me.

Egg on Your Face?

Did you feel any different at 12:48am EST? Feel like the laws of physics changed?

A nasty rumor that resurfaces every year when the vernal equinox rolls around (the vernal equinox marking the beginning of spring and characterized by equal parts day and night). The rumor states that you can stand a raw egg on its end today and today only. Is gravity so misunderstood that it's conceivable it can change the rules on us for a single day? Even if this were true, why only eggs? Why not eggplants? Or pickles? And why not on the autumnal equinox too? Fact is, gravity is the same today as it always was; perhaps it just needs a better public relations campaign.

In actuality, you can stand an egg on its end any day of the week, month, or year. Try it. This guy sure did!

Now, go smell the flowers and celebrate spring the old fashioned way.

Astronomer for a Day...Er, Night

GLOBE at Night is an annual program put together by Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE), which is a worldwide hands-on, school-based science education program. They encourage teachers and students to collaborate with active scientists to investigate their environment here on Earth.

GLOBE at Night is designed to study the spread of light pollution across the surface of our planet. Light pollution is the illumination of the night sky caused by artificial light sources here on earth such as streetlights, billboards, floodlights, stadium lights, etc. Quantifying it is important because it affects more than just astronomers. Cities and suburban areas are only going to continue to grow, and with them the amount of outdoor lighting. In addition to washing out the stars at night, light pollution can mess with both biological and ecological wildlife systems. More importantly it might even impact you, at least the ladies out there, as scientist recently reported finding a link between breast cancer and high amounts of light at night. The Washington Post published an article on this discovery last week and NPR's Bryant Park Project reported the news as well. This year of the program is an especially critical one as population and census data tell us that more than half the people on Earth are expected to be currently living in cities.

Now while this isn't becoming an environmental blog, I bring this to your attention because there is an astronomical connection here. As I mentioned, astronomers are not big fans of light pollution which is why most major telescopes are far away from big cities and towns and from most light sources altogether, often in deserts or on mountaintops or both. In fact, the Canary Islands of Spain have passed a lighting ordinance to preserve the visibility of the telescopes facilities located there. The University of Hawai'i has a great website dedicated to the importance of reducing light pollution. 

Your chance to help this effort comes any night between now and March 8th when you decide to participate in the GLOBE at Night program. You will be asked to observe and record the magnitude of visible stars where you live as a means of measuring the light pollution at your location. Using the constellation Orion, you will compare how bright it appears to you with example charts on the web to approximate the apparent magnitude of the stars where you are. (They will guide you through the steps, so don't worry if you the magnitude of stars means nothing to you). This will provide the data necessary to estimate your amount of light pollution. Then you can share your results online and compare the light pollution at your location with others around the world, like a global science project of sorts!

Just follow these five easy steps and you too can be an astronomer for a night!

Appeals on Behalf of Science

Science Debate 2008 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) held a candidates forum in Boston last week. They produced several video statements from attendees on why the presidential candidates should participate in this debate. I've posted a few of them here to give you an idea of the range of people involved and committed to making this event a reality.

First up is John Pedesta, former Chief of Staff to President Bill Clinton.



Next is Susan Wood, former Former Assistant Commissioner for Women’s Health at the FDA.



Lastly, here is Kevin Knobloch, President of the Union of Concerned Scientists.



View more videos from concerned scientist and policy makers who support this debate here.

Backup Astrophysicist

Stephen Colbert is after my job!

Goodnight Moon

Tomorrow night the full moon will go into shadow...for approximately 50 minutes. From 10:01 p.m. to 10:51 p.m EST, the Moon will be fully eclipsed by the Earth when its orbit places it directly opposite the Sun in our skies.

The great thing about lunar eclipses, unlike solar eclipses, is that the Moon is completely harmless to stare at directly, with the naked eye or otherwise, because it "shines" due to reflected, and not direct, sunlight. In fact, I find I appreciate lunar eclipses best without any fancy equipment at all. The Moon moves fairly fast across the sky and the more you magnify it, the faster it will move out of your view. However you look at it though, it will be a beautiful sight to behold.

The alignment of the Earth between the Sun and the Moon is not a rare thing. However, the inclination of the Moon's orbit ensures that not every alignment produces an eclipse. While Earth essentially orbits the Sun in the plane of the ecliptic, the Moon orbits earth at an inclination of five degrees. This means that the Moon is only in the plane of the ecliptic twice for every completed orbit around the Earth. When you take this into account with the lunar cycle, lunar eclipses can occur approximately every six months. This doesn't mean that everyone should be seeing such a dramatic event this frequently. The conditions for a total lunar eclipse, like you can expect to see tomorrow night, require that the Moon passes through the Earth's umbral shadow. Yep, the Earth has more than one type of shadow; two to be precise, an umbra and a penumbra, as the diagram below illustrates.


Within the umbral shadow region, the Earth blocks all direct light from the Sun. In the penumbral shadow zone, the Earth's blocks most, but not all sunlight. When the Moon moves into the Earth's penumbra, only those with very keen eyes are likely to notice any dip in the moonlight. However, as the Moon passed into the umbra, the effects can be dramatic. The colors and brightnesses of the Moon can vary considerably both over the duration of an eclipse and from one eclipse to another, but most often the Moon transitions from it's normal steel gray to a vivid red or orange hue and then back again. While the Earth's shadow does indeed block all direct light from the Sun, indirectly sunlight still reaches the Moon after being refracted through Earth's atmosphere. As the light passes through our protective layers of gas and dust, the longer (redder) wavelengths are bent more. The less refracted shorter (bluer) wavelengths don't hit the Moon, but the red ones do, producing the brilliant color changes that we can observe. The dustier our atmosphere at the time of the eclipse the more sunlight is blocked completely, rather than just refracted, and the darker the eclipsed Moon appears during totality. 

The image at the start of this post is roughly what you can expect to see tomorrow night. If like me, you are in the Easter Time Zone of the U.S., the following graphic breaks it down for you. For those of you in other time zones, go here to get your customized version. My fellow North Americans best go out and catch this one as we won't get another show like this till the winter solstice in 2012.



(Image credits: Fred Espenak, NASA's GSFC, University of Nebraska - ClassAction)

Love From the Universe

The Rosette Nebula is actually a vast cloud of gas and dust about 5,000 light years away from us. It is made up of several smaller nebulae and star clusters known by their more unimaginative names as NGC 2237, 2238, 2239, and 2246. NGC stands for 'New General Catalog'; it was compiled by J. L. E. Dreyer in the 1880's using observations made by William Herschel. It is one of the best known and largest catalogs of deep-space objects of all kinds, i.e. galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, and gas clouds. There are over 8,000 objects with NGC designations. In the center of the nebula's rose lives the open star cluster NGC 2244 which was discovered even earlier in 1690. At 130 light years across, the birth of many hot, young stars has created enough radiation pressure to clear the central region of gas and dust, thereby producing the gorgeous petal visual that we have come to know and love as the Rosette Nebula.

Nice to know we have a standing celestial valentine from the Universe. In my mind it beats anything for sale here on Earth.

The Debate is On!

The proposal for a scientifically themed presidential debate by the organization ScienceDebate2008 has taken another step to becoming a reality. A time and place have now been set: April 18th at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The candidates have been invited. Now, as the New York Times blog Dot Earth observes, we must sit back and wait to see what happens.

The question is whether or not the candidates will agree to participate. There are complicated issues and complex scientific theories at the heart of the important topics in the upcoming election such as the flailing economy, the energy crisis, and stem cell research, to name a few. Will the candidates be willing to open themselves up to in-depth discussions on these topics? It's dangerously easy to jump to the conclusion that this is just a high profile science quiz, but this is not the case! As Shaun Otto, the CEO of Science Debate, Inc. puts it:

"This debate is about your pocketbook, it’s about your job, it’s about whether you can still afford health care, whether we’re going to do something about climate change or not, what kind of world your kids are going to be living in in ten or fifteen years, how are we going to respond to peak oil, where is the next transistor economy going to come from?...
...This is the future of America, not some quirky science quiz. I’m not a scientist, I’m a writer and a concerned citizen. I care about the future for my son’s sake and for my own conscience, and I’m doing everything I can to elevate these issues in our national dialogue because they are that important…"

I support this debate wholeheartedly. It reenforces the fact that science is something everyone needs to pay attention to as it shapes so much of our world today. More importantly, I believe it sets an inspiring example for every school-age child and for the country if the president of the United States possess a high level of scientific literacy. With science and math capabilities nationwide continuing to decline, this debate provides the candidates with a unique opportunity to play a role in turning this around, before even getting into the White House.

Space Oddities

What you think is the strangest thing about space today? Anti-matter? Dark energy? Galactic Cannibalism? As strange and exciting as that last one sounds, it's actually quite common and therefore familiar in my book. I am more inclined to cast my vote for vacuum energy (or zero-point energy) - a side-effect of quantum theory in which boundless amounts of energy await harnessing in seemingly empty space. Maybe space holds the answer to our energy crisis...

Head on over to Space.com to vote for what strikes you as the oddest phenomena in our universe.

(Image credit: Space.com)

What You Missed v. What Missed You

Wow, that was close!

Did you see that?!?

There was not one, but two, near misses in the inner solar system last week. Asteroid TU24 buzzed by Earth last Tuesday while Asteroid WD5 just missed Mars on Wednesday. Who knew there was so much traffic amongst the planets?!

The Minor Planet Center (MPC) knew. They know a lot. They operate from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). They are responsible for naming, compiling, checking, and making available all data related to minor bodies in the solar system. These include all natural satellites (moons), asteroids, centaurs, Trans-Neptunian/Kuiper Belt objects, and comets. Traditionally asteroids are small rocky bodies that collectively occupy and define the asteroid belt, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is thought that there are close to two million asteroids in the solar system above 1 km in diameter. (For reference the smallest moon in the solar system is Mars' second moon, Deimos, which is only seven miles in diameter). This number is only an estimate because due to their small size and composition, asteroids are inherently hard to detect. 

To be visible through a telescope, even a very powerful one, an object must reflect a fairly large amount of sunlight. The larger the object, the more light it reflects. And the more light it reflects, the farther away you can see it. The same is true when you drive on a dark road at night; the larger and more reflective an object on the road is, the better and the earlier you will see it in your headlights. Asteroids typically have an albedo, or reflectivity, of less than 5%, meaning they reflect less than 5% of the sunlight that hits them, much like fresh asphalt. This is what makes them so hard to see.

The term asteroid is Greek for "star-like" and the first asteroid, Ceres, was discovered in 1801. The discovery of their numbers was slow at first until computerized methods were developed late last century. At first, they weren't of much interest to astronomers - some even termed them "vermin of the skies" - but when asteroids with orbits very near to Earth began to be discovered, the potential threat of an Earth impact caused astronomers to take notice. With the 1994 and crash of Comet Shoemaker-Levy into Jupiter and the increasing acceptance of the proposal that an asteroid impact may have caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, the threat became real. Now everyone is paying attention and each new discovery of a near-Earth object (NEO) brings with it both the hype and the fear that this may be the big one. One day that may be the case (that's a topic for another post), but today NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office has it all under control.

Asteroids TU24 and WD5 were discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 11th and November 20th, 2007, respectively, but merely seeing an asteroid once means nothing. For astronomers to properly calculate its physical properties such as size, mass, composition, rotation, and orbit, an asteroid must be observed multiple - the more, the better. Of these, size and orbit matter most when a potential collision with Earth is at stake. Multiple observations over consecutive nights enable astronomers to see how the light reflected by the asteroid changes, thereby helping them to estimate its overall shape and size. Tracking its path with respect to background stars gives a measure of its distance from Earth and its orbital path. Taken together, these parameters help astronomers to determine whether or not the asteroid is likely to pose a danger to us or not. Potentially hazardous asteroids whose orbits bring them close to Earth or across our orbital path are put on a watch list and are continually monitored by telescopes and observers all over the world. As a result of detailed follow-up observations of Asteroids TU24 and WD5 we now know much more about them.

Meet Asteroid TU24:


This sequence of images was taken by the Goldstone Solar System Radar Telescope out in the Mojave Desert, over the course of a few hours. Though the resolution isn't great, about 20-meters per pixel, the shift of the brightest spot in each image clearly shows how the asteroid is rotating. These images also allowed astronomers to refine their estimate of the asteroid's size to approximately 800 feet (250 meters) in diameter, or about the length of one and a half cross-town blocks in Manhattan. In the end, TU24 passed us at the safe distance of 0.003 astronomical units - 1.4 times this distance to the moon - roughly 334,000 miles. Twelve hours before this closest approach, the Arecibo and Green Bank radio telescopes were able to get this snazzy image.


And now for Asteroid WD5:

This one is a bit camera shy, and so with fewer observations, less is known about it. But the most important detail - that it would not hit Earth - was thankfully confirmed. Mars was a different story though. It was given 1 in 75 odds to brace for impact, an exceptionally high probability when astronomers primarily deal with one in a million and one in a billion statistics. Still, that's almost a 99% chance of WD5 missing Mars completely. The asteroid's orbit skims close to Earth's orbital path (long after we had been there) and continues on to intersect Mars', as illustrated in this diagram released by NASA in mid-December.


To determine if Mars and WD5 would both reach the same point in space at the same time, astronomers additional observations were required to accurately measure the asteroid's speed. Upper limits estimated WD5 to be traveling 13-and-a-half kilometers per second which still left some uncertainty as to whether or not a collision with Mars was inevitable. This animation (click to play) shows how that uncertainty factors in to where the asteroid is likely to pass across Mars' orbit.


While both Earth and Mars escaped the events of last week unscathed, near Earth objects are an actual concern that might one day pose a true danger. As of today, the inner solar system looks like this...


The Minor Planet Center updates this plot daily and it's hard not to look at it and realize that the statistics may not be in our favor in the long run.

(Photo credits: Credit: Arecibo/Green Bank, NASA/JPL-Caltech, Gareth Williams/Minor Planet Center)

Look Out Below!

Heads up, Earth!
The return of Chicken Little
The sky is falling, the sky is falling!
U.S. Spy Sat to Splat

That last one is my favorite and it's the only real headline, used by Satnews Daily. This headline fun is being brought to you by the Associated Press (AP), who are reporting that a large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and is now falling back to Earth. Government officials aren't saying much, just than the satellite can be expected to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere by late February or early March and that the appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation. My guess is that would include the DoD, NSC, NSA, and NASA.

This particular satellite was launched by the Department of Defense, not NASA, but that doesn't preclude the space agency's involvement at this time. Both the Air Force and NASA maintain tracking stations across the globe to identify, track, and monitor all earth orbiting objects down to sizes of tens of centimeters. In fact, there are lost tools that astronauts have accidentally let go while working in space that now are in orbits of their own that are being tracked. Of course, any object in orbit without its own propulsion system will eventually lose altitude and encounter the upper atmosphere, break-up, and disintegrate. This happens to the vast majority of space debris.

However, as witnesses to Skylab, Mir, and Columbia will attest, when the object re-entering the atmosphere is above a certain size, many pieces can survive the intense heat and come out the other side still intact (to a degree). When Skylab fell back to Earth, an oxygen tank the size of a large desk landed on the coast of Australia and the U.S. was charged for littering. Mir was slightly different as it's de-orbiting was controlled by it's onboard rockets so that any pieces surviving the re-entry process would fall harmlessly in the Pacific Ocean, which they did. And most recently, the Columbia accident left sizeable debris across the southwestern United States when it began re-entry under control and lost it soon after.

According to the AP, defense and intelligence expert, John Pike, estimates this spy satellite to be around 10 tons (20,000 lbs) and the size of a small bus. That's a lot smaller than any of the three examples above, but still large enough to do some damage were it to come down in a populated place. You may remember from Geography 101 that the Earth is covered by 70% water, so the odds are in our favor. At this time though, most likely due to both the secrecy surrounding government satellites and the government's desire to perhaps destroy it instead of letting a piece of intelligence out of our hands, details of where and when are complete unknowns.

A quick scan of the web brought up some international coverage of the situation and its interesting to note the different perspectives:

CTV in Canada mention the possible fuel on board as hydrazine and raise the concern of toxic exposure to the chemical should it re-enter in a populous area. They don't allude to it, but Canada was the victim of nuclear space debris once before at the hand of a Russian satellite that crashed in the skies over the Northern Territories in 1978.

Moscow released only a tersely worded statement via Interfax-AVN, declining any alarm over the situation.

And India Daily hypes the idea that China and Russia would jump at the chance to hijack the satellite to steal our spy technology, if it were possible.

At this point though, not much to do but wait...and keep one eye on the sky.

Save the Date(s)

All 365 of them.

1 Down...1190 To Go

Pale Blue Dot

If you ever have a day like I did yesterday, watching this video will help you put everything in perspective.



Repeat as necessary.

(Movie Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

Playing with Mercury

No, not the quicksilver kind. That will make you batty. I'm talking about the planet Mercury. NASA has a playdate with the first rock from the Sun coming up on Monday the 14th, its first in more than 30 years. The spacecraft MESSENGER (an acronym for a mouthful called MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) will flyby Mercury on Monday on its way to eventually going into orbit around the planet in 2011. Why isn't it going into orbit now instead of doing a flyby of its supposed target you may ask? Welcome to the world of gravity assists. You may think that gravity always keeps your feet on the ground, but in the case of cruising through the Solar System, it can also give you a swift kick in the pants, metaphorically speaking of course.


Since its launch on August 3. 2004, MESSENGER has rendezvoused with Earth once and Venus twice. After dashing past Mercury on Monday, it will fly by the planet three more times over the next four years before finally dropping in to orbit it once and for all. While this sounds like a long and winding road all over the inner Solar System (and it is), believe it or not, it is also the most efficient and therefore the cheapest route.

In the wonderful world of space flight, human or otherwise, to maneuver in space you need rockets, and rockets need fuel. Naturally, fuel for these rockets has to be stored on board the spacecraft as there are no gas stations after launch. There are warning signs at Cape Canaveral: No Gas - Next Gazillion Bagillion Miles. And just as gravity keeps your feet firmly on the ground, gravity tries its utmost to keep launch vehicles from leaving the Earth, and once in space, gravity is everywhere, despite any rumors of zero-g you may have heard.

At launch, we overcome gravity with fully fueled rocket engines. The majority of fuel on any space bound vehicle is used up during launch and most of the weight of the payload can be attributed to fuel as well; over 55% of MESSENGER's launch weight was due to propellant. This is what keeps long distance space travel just out of reach for us humans: to pack enough sustenance and fuel for the journey, you need to use even more fuel to start the journey - this becomes a runaway process resulting in an overweight space transport system that can't get its butt of the ground. Once in space, we again overcome gravity with rocket engines to keep us on course. Vehicles sent out of Earth's orbit are tugged on by every other object in our Solar System, some more than others. Naturally, the Sun is usually the winner in this case, but the other planets, especially Jupiter, always want a piece of the action. Therefore, traveling in a straight line from Earth to Mercury is a bit of a challenge, from both a mathematical and a fuel standpoint. And we haven't even gotten to the fact that Mercury is a moving target to say the least, orbiting around the Sun roughly once every three months. Unmanned spacecraft don't share human sustenance requirements and aren't restricted to non-stop flights, so to speak. Therefore, they are free to wind their way around the Solar System, however long it takes to get them to their destinations.

For example, check out this animation of MESSENGER's circuitous route from Earth to Mercury:



Each time the spacecraft passes a planet, the path changes color - indicating that its orbit has been altered by the encounter and it has moved into a new orbit around the Sun. These are the gravity assists I spoke of at the beginning of the post. They enable the spacecraft to tweak its trajectory with minimal use of fuel, sometimes none at all. The engineers in mission control only have to ensure that the spacecraft approaches the planet just right (in speed and angle) for the necessary assist, and gravity does the rest. Severe changes require the spacecraft to brake, slow down, and come in close in order to be flung around by the planet's gravity, while high speed, high altitude flybys result in only slight changes of direction. However, as the animation reveals, sometimes only good old fashioned manual steering will do the trick and MESSENGER will do five deep space maneuvers to compliment the gravity assists it gets along the way to ensure it reaches its target.

Planet hopping is not an easy task. So keep your fingers crossed for Monday when MESSENGER comes within 125 miles of Mercury at the breakneck speed of 15,877 mph (that's 4.410 miles per second!). And stay tuned for the sequel next October when MESSENGER catches up with Mercury for the second time!

(Photo credits: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

How Prescient am I?

NPR has jumped on the presidential science debate wagon, or at least is taking notice of the call for one.


Click here to listen to a great appeal by Shawn Lawrence Otto, one of the organizers of the Science Debate 2008 movement, on Talk of the Nation: Science Friday from earlier today.

Science Literacy in the White House

I know I've been offline for most of the new year so far, but never fear, I'm still in touch with the outside world. Progress on the thesis is being made and my sanity is being maintained...so far...but that's not why I'm writing now. While keeping up with current events, especially those going on back home, I have been excitedly following the twists and turns of the presidential race. (Don't worry, I have no intentions of going political on this blog!) However, I came across a great post on the New York Times' Tierney Lab proposing the idea of a scientifically themed debate among the candidates, and this struck me as a GREAT idea for several reasons:

1) There are an unprecedented number of policy issues in this campaign rely greatly on available scientific data and interpretation of said data. Think renewable energy, alternative fuel, climate change, stem cell research, etc. (Not sure if the 'unprecedented claim is true or not, but it got your attention, right? And besides, I'm way to tired and busy to do the research to back that up, so can we chalk it up to poetic license?)

2) Scientific and mathematical illiteracy is a huge problem in our nation. Fewer and fewer students are studying science and math in school and, as a result, those who don't may grow up to believe anything and everything someone in a while lab coat with glasses and a pocket protector tells them, never knowing how and why to question and investigate scientific claims for themselves.

3) We require our presidents to be fluent in areas such as law, foreign policy, economics, and the like, why not at least demand that they can pass Science & Math 101? Okay, of course they surround themselves with experts on everything under the sun, but I'll bet you that, on average, presidents have a firmer grasp of the basics and are more likely to hold their own with their advisers in every area save science (present individual in charge excluded, Oops! I just went political...). 

I don't know about you, but I would feel a lot more comfortable about our future if the leader of our country had some scientific habits of mind. If you are at all inclined to feel the same, I encourage you to check out the group Science Debate 2008 that is making a serious push for having a presidential science debate. And check out this excellent piece from Salon.com, written by one of the members of the steering committee who explains why this is such an important issue much more eloquently than I ever could.

I'm now turning my attention back to my own scientific debate with my thesis and the relative (in)significance of my own data.

(Image credit: Science Debate 2008)