Study: Seattle becomes like San Jose, Portland like Sacramento under climate change

If humans continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere at the rate we are, Seattleites in 80 years will be turning on their heaters less and air conditioners more … though not a lot more. In fact, they’ll be living a lot like present day San Jose-ites.

… at least as far as dealing with average outdoor temperatures, reports a recent study published in Scientific Reports.

We’ll be using these more than our heaters by 2099.

Basically, the researchers looked at how climate change under the go-as-we-are scenario will change how often we need to crank on the heat or the air conditioner to keep our homes at 65 degrees. Then they compared the number of days in the past one would have put on heat or air with the number of days of such activity by the end of this century and found, essentially, that higher temperatures move north.

So, Seattle (152 sunny days) puts on the heat less and the air a bit more to become like present-day San Jose (257 sunny days); Portland, Ore., (144 sunny days) becomes more like Sacramento (269 sunny days); San Francisco like L.A.; New York like Oklahoma City; Denver like Raleigh, NC. And so on.

That sounds great for Seattle … until you consider … *drums beating slowly and ominously in the background*:

Well, be that as it may. It’s still nice to consider more sunny days. Unless, of course, you think about all those people in San Diego who are cranking on the air conditioner a lot more moving north … and L.A. moving north and San Fran moving north and so on.

Our results could be potentially useful for assisting residents with the selection of housing locations in the present and future, taking into consideration potential effects of global warming on residential building heating and cooling demand and associated outdoor thermal comfort.

— Write the researchers.

The study was conducted by climate scientist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University’s Carnegie Institute of Science and a high school student interning in his lab, Yana Petri.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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If humans continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere at the rate we are, Seattleites in 80 years will be turning on their heaters less and air conditioners more … though not a lot more. In fact, they’ll be living a lot like present day San Jose-ites.

… at least as far as dealing with average outdoor temperatures, reports a recent study published in Scientific Reports.

We’ll be using these more than our heaters by 2099.

Basically, the researchers looked at how climate change under the go-as-we-are scenario will change how often we need to crank on the heat or the air conditioner to keep our homes at 65 degrees. Then they compared the number of days in the past one would have put on heat or air with the number of days of such activity by the end of this century and found, essentially, that higher temperatures move north.

So, Seattle (152 sunny days) puts on the heat less and the air a bit more to become like present-day San Jose (257 sunny days); Portland, Ore., (144 sunny days) becomes more like Sacramento (269 sunny days); San Francisco like L.A.; New York like Oklahoma City; Denver like Raleigh, NC. And so on.

That sounds great for Seattle … until you consider … *drums beating slowly and ominously in the background*:

Well, be that as it may. It’s still nice to consider more sunny days. Unless, of course, you think about all those people in San Diego who are cranking on the air conditioner a lot more moving north … and L.A. moving north and San Fran moving north and so on.

Our results could be potentially useful for assisting residents with the selection of housing locations in the present and future, taking into consideration potential effects of global warming on residential building heating and cooling demand and associated outdoor thermal comfort.

— Write the researchers.

The study was conducted by climate scientist Ken Caldeira of Stanford University’s Carnegie Institute of Science and a high school student interning in his lab, Yana Petri.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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NASA forced to rehire Russia to take Americans into space

Thank goodness Russia is still in the business of sending people into space aboard its aging Soyuz spacecraft (designed in the 1960s!). Otherwise — says NASA — the United States of America wouldn’t have any manned space missions.

Soyuz spacecraft.

The heads of NASA announced to Congress today that all its budgetary penny pinching has led the space agency of world’s greatest power and economy to hire Russia to carry its people to the International Space Station … for a cool $490 million.

The agency announced today:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015 informing members that, due to continued reductions in the president’s funding requests for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station.

And here’s the full text of the letter sent by Bolden:

NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden
Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Since the decision to retire the Space Shuttle in 2004, NASA has been committed to developing a follow-on, low-Earth orbit transportation system and limiting our reliance on others to transport U.S. crew to the International Space Station (ISS). In 2010, I presented to Congress a plan to partner with American industry to return launches to the United States by 2015 if provided the requested level of funding. Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned. This has resulted in continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for American and international partner crews to the ISS.

I am writing to inform you that NASA, once again, has modified its current contract with the Russian government to meet America’s requirements for crew transportation services. Under this contract modification, the cost of these services to the U.S. taxpayers will be approximately $490 million. I am asking that we put past disagreements behind us and focus our collective efforts on support for American industry – the Boeing Corporation and SpaceX – to complete construction and certification of their crew vehicles so that we can begin launching our crews from the Space Coast of Florida in 2017.

Across the United States, aerospace engineers are building a new generation of spacecraft and rockets that will define modern American spaceflight. The safe, reliable, and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure U.S. leadership in spaceflight this century. The fastest path to bringing these new systems online, launching from America, and ending our sole reliance on Russia is fully funding NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in FY 2016. Our Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contractors are on track today to provide certified crew transportation systems in 2017. Reductions from the FY 2016 request for Commercial Crew proposed in the House and Senate FY 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bills would result in NASA’s inability to fund several planned CCtCap milestones in FY 2016 and would likely result in funds running out for both contractors during the spring/summer of FY 2016. If this occurs, the existing fixed-price CCtCap contracts may need to be renegotiated, likely resulting in further schedule slippage and increased cost.

Human spaceflight and exploration are important activities for this Nation. The broad scope and bold goals of our human spaceflight program set our Nation apart from all others. Human spaceflight is both an exploration program beyond low-Earth orbit comprised of the Space Launch System and the Orion crew vehicle as well as the ISS and the private sector crew transportation systems necessary to support our research and technology development on the ISS – research and development that is critical to the success of the exploration program. While I understand that funding is extremely limited, it is critical that all of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts be supported.

It is my sincere hope that we all agree that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on others to launch humans into space. I urge Congress to provide the funds requested for our Commercial Crew Program this year, so we can prevent this situation in the future.

Of particular note is the relationship NASA is trying to forge with private industry (you know, the kind of thing smaller-government folks are in favor of) to build up the private sector, much the way Boeing and other major companies in America have been built up by military spending on research and development.

Well, we can’t have it all. But surely we can continue leading the way into space … if not for purely scientific reasons then for national security reasons, too. Or, I guess we could cut back on going to Mars or Pluto and stuff like that?

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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Thank goodness Russia is still in the business of sending people into space aboard its aging Soyuz spacecraft (designed in the 1960s!). Otherwise — says NASA — the United States of America wouldn’t have any manned space missions.

Soyuz spacecraft.

The heads of NASA announced to Congress today that all its budgetary penny pinching has led the space agency of world’s greatest power and economy to hire Russia to carry its people to the International Space Station … for a cool $490 million.

The agency announced today:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress Wednesday, Aug. 5, 2015 informing members that, due to continued reductions in the president’s funding requests for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program over the past several years, NASA was forced to extend its existing contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) to transport American astronauts to the International Space Station.

And here’s the full text of the letter sent by Bolden:

NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden
Credits: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Since the decision to retire the Space Shuttle in 2004, NASA has been committed to developing a follow-on, low-Earth orbit transportation system and limiting our reliance on others to transport U.S. crew to the International Space Station (ISS). In 2010, I presented to Congress a plan to partner with American industry to return launches to the United States by 2015 if provided the requested level of funding. Unfortunately, for five years now, the Congress, while incrementally increasing annual funding, has not adequately funded the Commercial Crew Program to return human spaceflight launches to American soil this year, as planned. This has resulted in continued sole reliance on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft as our crew transport vehicle for American and international partner crews to the ISS.

I am writing to inform you that NASA, once again, has modified its current contract with the Russian government to meet America’s requirements for crew transportation services. Under this contract modification, the cost of these services to the U.S. taxpayers will be approximately $490 million. I am asking that we put past disagreements behind us and focus our collective efforts on support for American industry – the Boeing Corporation and SpaceX – to complete construction and certification of their crew vehicles so that we can begin launching our crews from the Space Coast of Florida in 2017.

Across the United States, aerospace engineers are building a new generation of spacecraft and rockets that will define modern American spaceflight. The safe, reliable, and cost-effective solutions being developed here at home will allow for more astronauts to conduct research aboard the space station, enable new jobs, and ensure U.S. leadership in spaceflight this century. The fastest path to bringing these new systems online, launching from America, and ending our sole reliance on Russia is fully funding NASA’s Commercial Crew Program in FY 2016. Our Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contractors are on track today to provide certified crew transportation systems in 2017. Reductions from the FY 2016 request for Commercial Crew proposed in the House and Senate FY 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bills would result in NASA’s inability to fund several planned CCtCap milestones in FY 2016 and would likely result in funds running out for both contractors during the spring/summer of FY 2016. If this occurs, the existing fixed-price CCtCap contracts may need to be renegotiated, likely resulting in further schedule slippage and increased cost.

Human spaceflight and exploration are important activities for this Nation. The broad scope and bold goals of our human spaceflight program set our Nation apart from all others. Human spaceflight is both an exploration program beyond low-Earth orbit comprised of the Space Launch System and the Orion crew vehicle as well as the ISS and the private sector crew transportation systems necessary to support our research and technology development on the ISS – research and development that is critical to the success of the exploration program. While I understand that funding is extremely limited, it is critical that all of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts be supported.

It is my sincere hope that we all agree that the greatest nation on Earth should not be dependent on others to launch humans into space. I urge Congress to provide the funds requested for our Commercial Crew Program this year, so we can prevent this situation in the future.

Of particular note is the relationship NASA is trying to forge with private industry (you know, the kind of thing smaller-government folks are in favor of) to build up the private sector, much the way Boeing and other major companies in America have been built up by military spending on research and development.

Well, we can’t have it all. But surely we can continue leading the way into space … if not for purely scientific reasons then for national security reasons, too. Or, I guess we could cut back on going to Mars or Pluto and stuff like that?

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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Video: Hot Puget Sound — A new view of climate change

What will the future under climate change look like? Will it be raging storms, fires and floods? Well, sure, but to a lesser degree than we often think. Instead … as University of Washington scientist and weather expert Cliff Mass told us via email:

Ecology: A warmer Puget Sound looks less like a paradise for fishing and wildlife viewing, and more like a haven for jelly fish.

“Based on climate modeling we have an excellent idea of what the world will be like.  Less cold waves, more heat waves. Some storms will decline (like our windstorms) but others (the strongest hurricanes) will get stronger.  Less overall hurricanes though.

Wetter places will tend to get wetter (SEATTLE!), while drier places (S. CA) will tend to get drier. There has been so much simplistic stuff in the media (ALL STORMS WILL BECOME MORE EXTREME!) that are simply untrue.”

So what will a hot world look like, especially here in the Puget Sound region? Well, check out this video built around a news conference put on by Washington’s Department of Ecology July 30 in Seattle for your answer:

 

 

And, go to Ecology’s blog ECOconnect for an excellent writeup of the information around the news conference and the hot hot hot state of Puget Sound. Here’s a taste of that story:

Everyone in Washington is feeling the heat this summer, and Puget Sound is no exception. It’s been hot and dry, with all kinds of weather records being set. These unusually hot temperatures don’t end at the water’s edge. We’re also seeing the record-breaking warm water temperatures from “the Blob” of North Pacific Ocean water that made its way through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into Puget Sound late last year.

“The Blob entered Puget Sound on a massive scale in the fall of 2014 and rapidly changed conditions for temperature and also oxygen,” said Dr. Christopher Krembs, Ecology senior oceanographer. “We’re measuring water temperatures 4° F higher than normal from our past 25 years of record keeping. We’re seeing the warm water everywhere, from Olympia to Bellingham.”

Monitoring suggests that these warm conditions are having many negative consequences on the Puget Sound marine environment. This year we’ve seen increasing harmful algae blooms, increasing and early shellfish closures, lower dissolved oxygen levels, and unfavorable conditions for salmon and other cold-loving marine species.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

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What will the future under climate change look like? Will it be raging storms, fires and floods? Well, sure, but to a lesser degree than we often think. Instead … as University of Washington scientist and weather expert Cliff Mass told us via email:

Ecology: A warmer Puget Sound looks less like a paradise for fishing and wildlife viewing, and more like a haven for jelly fish.

“Based on climate modeling we have an excellent idea of what the world will be like.  Less cold waves, more heat waves. Some storms will decline (like our windstorms) but others (the strongest hurricanes) will get stronger.  Less overall hurricanes though.

Wetter places will tend to get wetter (SEATTLE!), while drier places (S. CA) will tend to get drier. There has been so much simplistic stuff in the media (ALL STORMS WILL BECOME MORE EXTREME!) that are simply untrue.”

So what will a hot world look like, especially here in the Puget Sound region? Well, check out this video built around a news conference put on by Washington’s Department of Ecology July 30 in Seattle for your answer:

 

 

And, go to Ecology’s blog ECOconnect for an excellent writeup of the information around the news conference and the hot hot hot state of Puget Sound. Here’s a taste of that story:

Everyone in Washington is feeling the heat this summer, and Puget Sound is no exception. It’s been hot and dry, with all kinds of weather records being set. These unusually hot temperatures don’t end at the water’s edge. We’re also seeing the record-breaking warm water temperatures from “the Blob” of North Pacific Ocean water that made its way through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and into Puget Sound late last year.

“The Blob entered Puget Sound on a massive scale in the fall of 2014 and rapidly changed conditions for temperature and also oxygen,” said Dr. Christopher Krembs, Ecology senior oceanographer. “We’re measuring water temperatures 4° F higher than normal from our past 25 years of record keeping. We’re seeing the warm water everywhere, from Olympia to Bellingham.”

Monitoring suggests that these warm conditions are having many negative consequences on the Puget Sound marine environment. This year we’ve seen increasing harmful algae blooms, increasing and early shellfish closures, lower dissolved oxygen levels, and unfavorable conditions for salmon and other cold-loving marine species.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

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Cave crab? A new really strange thing ‘seen’ on Mars!

It’s been tooooooo long since we’ve seen a good one of these. They’ve become a dime a dozen … strange things seen in photos sent back from various Mars rovers. But this one! It’s from the rover Curiosity’s right mast camera … and it’s awesome! Hilarious even.

Click through the gallery to zoom in on it … to get the full effect:

Now, we’ve been having fun with these because they’re fun. And, they also speak to those people around the world who are using the tools they have at hand to find life on Mars and else where. Frankly, that’s what NASA scientists are doing, too … though obviously in a more scientifically robust fashion, but still.

Here are other strange things … on Mars!

The newest photo has been kicked around mostly on social media and seemingly mostly from a Facebook post by these folks, Journey to the Surface of the MARS. Take a quick spin through their page and you’ll see a lot of stuff. But even they were impressed by this one:  “Now this one is AWESOME !!!.. . . . .. ‘CAVE GUARD’ ”

Huffington Post couldn’t help themselves so they called a scientist to tell them that the image is not of a cave monster on Mars:

Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research, said he gets images showing formations such as this one about once a week.

“Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble SOMETHING you wouldn’t expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Planet,” he said via email. “It’s usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars.”

He said it’s really just a phenomenon called pareidolia, or the brain’s ability to make shapes out of random objects — like seeing animals in clouds.

Oh, fine.

Hey, speaking of strange and foreign and seemingly weird things ‘seen’ … we got to the bottom of this image a couple of years ago, but it’s also a good one.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1M1GHic

It’s been tooooooo long since we’ve seen a good one of these. They’ve become a dime a dozen … strange things seen in photos sent back from various Mars rovers. But this one! It’s from the rover Curiosity’s right mast camera … and it’s awesome! Hilarious even.

Click through the gallery to zoom in on it … to get the full effect:

Now, we’ve been having fun with these because they’re fun. And, they also speak to those people around the world who are using the tools they have at hand to find life on Mars and else where. Frankly, that’s what NASA scientists are doing, too … though obviously in a more scientifically robust fashion, but still.

Here are other strange things … on Mars!

The newest photo has been kicked around mostly on social media and seemingly mostly from a Facebook post by these folks, Journey to the Surface of the MARS. Take a quick spin through their page and you’ll see a lot of stuff. But even they were impressed by this one:  “Now this one is AWESOME !!!.. . . . .. ‘CAVE GUARD’ ”

Huffington Post couldn’t help themselves so they called a scientist to tell them that the image is not of a cave monster on Mars:

Seth Shostak, Senior Astronomer and Director of the Center for SETI Research, said he gets images showing formations such as this one about once a week.

“Those that send them to me are generally quite excited, as they claim that these frequently resemble SOMETHING you wouldn’t expect to find on the rusty, dusty surface of the Red Planet,” he said via email. “It’s usually some sort of animal, but occasionally even weirder objects such as automobile parts. Maybe they think there are cars on Mars.”

He said it’s really just a phenomenon called pareidolia, or the brain’s ability to make shapes out of random objects — like seeing animals in clouds.

Oh, fine.

Hey, speaking of strange and foreign and seemingly weird things ‘seen’ … we got to the bottom of this image a couple of years ago, but it’s also a good one.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

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Astronaut Scott Kelly shoots amazing Earth photos from International Space Station

A couple of years ago astronaut Chris Hadfield began wowing us with photos of Earth taken during his time on the International Space Station. (You can see some of the more than 40,000 photos he shot in the gallery at the bottom of this story.)

Now comes Scott Kelly, the U.S. astronaut who is spending a year on the ISS. He’s been shooting and tweeting some amazing photos of our dear planet as well. He has shot so many, we’ve selected some of the standouts from July only. Check them out:

Kelly is in on the ISS for a year as part of Human Research Program. Here’s what the agency says about it:

The One-Year Mission will focus on seven categories of research. In March 2015, American Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will begin collaborative investigations on the International Space Station (ISS). They will reside on the ISS for a year, which is twice as long as typical U.S. missions. These investigations are expected to yield beneficial knowledge on the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.

So the two have been on the station for more than 128 days (since publication). You can learn all you want to about the mission and astronauts on the agency’s one-year mission page.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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A couple of years ago astronaut Chris Hadfield began wowing us with photos of Earth taken during his time on the International Space Station. (You can see some of the more than 40,000 photos he shot in the gallery at the bottom of this story.)

Now comes Scott Kelly, the U.S. astronaut who is spending a year on the ISS. He’s been shooting and tweeting some amazing photos of our dear planet as well. He has shot so many, we’ve selected some of the standouts from July only. Check them out:

Kelly is in on the ISS for a year as part of Human Research Program. Here’s what the agency says about it:

The One-Year Mission will focus on seven categories of research. In March 2015, American Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will begin collaborative investigations on the International Space Station (ISS). They will reside on the ISS for a year, which is twice as long as typical U.S. missions. These investigations are expected to yield beneficial knowledge on the medical, psychological and biomedical challenges faced by astronauts during long-duration spaceflight.

So the two have been on the station for more than 128 days (since publication). You can learn all you want to about the mission and astronauts on the agency’s one-year mission page.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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Single-family housing is an ecological disaster and Murray was right (now wrong)

Neighborhoods built around single-family housing are ecologically unsustainable in a world increasingly challenged by climate change.

So, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray was right to seek more density in those neighborhoods. Compromising single-family zones to allow more multi-family housing (however mis-judged or inaccurately the idea was portrayed in the media), is the future of how we will live with each other.

Murray — who has since backed down and so is now wrong — wanted that density to lower housing costs and improve diversity (of all kinds) in the city. He was probably right about that, too. In fact, many of us who currently own single-family homes, and those who threw a fit at the idea of condos moving in next door, will eventually be priced out of our homes by masses of newcomers wealthier than we are. (See San Francisco)

But that’s the weakest argument (however good it might be) for changing the ideology around how and where we live. It’s a concept change that has to happen: We have to shift from the ideal of palatial homes spread out from each other to living in dense neighborhoods where everything we need is within walking distance.

Oh sure, you say. More chest beating about climate change … everything is causing climate change.

Well, the fact is that climate change is being driven by human produced CO2 and dense cities do far far better at reducing our venting of CO2 into the atmosphere than single-family home neighborhoods (a.k.a suburbs).

Click for larger view: From Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change and Prosperity. Center for Clean Air Policy 2011

According to a 2014 study by UC Berkeley researchers, as stated in a news release:

“… population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits. Dominated by emissions from cars, trucks and other forms of transportation, suburbs account for about 50 percent of all household emissions – largely carbon dioxide – in the United States.”

A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.

“Metropolitan areas look like carbon footprint hurricanes, with dark green, low-carbon urban cores surrounded by red, high-carbon suburbs,” said Christopher Jones, a doctoral student working with Kammen in the Energy and Resources Group. “Unfortunately, while the most populous metropolitan areas tend to have the lowest carbon footprint centers, they also tend to have the most extensive high-carbon footprint suburbs.”

The researchers also point out, however, that density alone isn’t the key. As our neighborhoods become more dense, the infrastructure has to be there to get us out of our cars as well as into green homes.

Increasing population density alone, for example, appears not to be a very effective strategy for reducing emissions. A 10-fold increase in population density in central cities corresponds to only 25 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, and “high carbon suburbanization results as an unintended side effect,” Jones said.

Nevertheless, multifamily density is an important part of not only keeping some affordable housing in the city, but also for creating a new housing ideology for a world drastically changed by global warming and the desperate need to drastically reduce our production of carbon.

From The Atlantic:

It doesn’t solve the problem to buy a hybrid and retrofit your house if all of that takes place 20 miles from your job. You’d still consume more energy (“suburban single family green”) than an urban household without the latest green tech (“urban single family”). And that has as much to do with associated transportation emissions as the size and efficiency of your home.

The implication is that if more suburbanites opted to move out of their low-density detached homes and into walkable, mixed-use urban communities (or if we retrofitted suburbia to better resemble such places), right there we’d be on our way to taking a real whack at carbon emissions.

From the study “Implications of global climate change for housing, human settlements and public health“:

Global climate change has profound implications for human societies. The present—ecologically unsustainable–trajectory of human development fails to provide for the basic needs of a substantial fraction of the global population, while diminishing the prospects for future generations. Human-caused climate change has already begun to affect weather patterns, physical and biological phenomena, and vulnerable human communities. Because the social processes of production and consumption have their own momentum, and because carbon dioxide has a long atmospheric lifetime, further climate change is inevitable over the coming century, even allowing for the adoption of mitigation measures. This situation implies that we should also try to reduce, and where possible to prevent, the adverse effects of climate changes by planned adaptation.

Note: I currently own a home outside of Seattle’s city limits, so yes there’s that. However, I owned a home in the city limits at one time and have rented in four of the city’s neighborhoods over a 14-year period. That said, this is not a NIMBY issue. All of us will be living in more-dense, more-compact neighborhoods (including the one I currently live in, which is also dealing with growth pressure) when the oceans rise and droughts push people into farther into the northern hemisphere. 
Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

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Neighborhoods built around single-family housing are ecologically unsustainable in a world increasingly challenged by climate change.

So, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray was right to seek more density in those neighborhoods. Compromising single-family zones to allow more multi-family housing (however mis-judged or inaccurately the idea was portrayed in the media), is the future of how we will live with each other.

Murray — who has since backed down and so is now wrong — wanted that density to lower housing costs and improve diversity (of all kinds) in the city. He was probably right about that, too. In fact, many of us who currently own single-family homes, and those who threw a fit at the idea of condos moving in next door, will eventually be priced out of our homes by masses of newcomers wealthier than we are. (See San Francisco)

But that’s the weakest argument (however good it might be) for changing the ideology around how and where we live. It’s a concept change that has to happen: We have to shift from the ideal of palatial homes spread out from each other to living in dense neighborhoods where everything we need is within walking distance.

Oh sure, you say. More chest beating about climate change … everything is causing climate change.

Well, the fact is that climate change is being driven by human produced CO2 and dense cities do far far better at reducing our venting of CO2 into the atmosphere than single-family home neighborhoods (a.k.a suburbs).

Click for larger view: From Growing Wealthier: Smart Growth, Climate Change and Prosperity. Center for Clean Air Policy 2011

According to a 2014 study by UC Berkeley researchers, as stated in a news release:

“… population-dense cities contribute less greenhouse-gas emissions per person than other areas of the country, but these cities’ extensive suburbs essentially wipe out the climate benefits. Dominated by emissions from cars, trucks and other forms of transportation, suburbs account for about 50 percent of all household emissions – largely carbon dioxide – in the United States.”

A key finding of the UC Berkeley study is that suburbs account for half of all household greenhouse gas emissions, even though they account for less than half the U.S. population. The average carbon footprint of households living in the center of large, population-dense urban cities is about 50 percent below average, while households in distant suburbs are up to twice the average.

“Metropolitan areas look like carbon footprint hurricanes, with dark green, low-carbon urban cores surrounded by red, high-carbon suburbs,” said Christopher Jones, a doctoral student working with Kammen in the Energy and Resources Group. “Unfortunately, while the most populous metropolitan areas tend to have the lowest carbon footprint centers, they also tend to have the most extensive high-carbon footprint suburbs.”

The researchers also point out, however, that density alone isn’t the key. As our neighborhoods become more dense, the infrastructure has to be there to get us out of our cars as well as into green homes.

Increasing population density alone, for example, appears not to be a very effective strategy for reducing emissions. A 10-fold increase in population density in central cities corresponds to only 25 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions, and “high carbon suburbanization results as an unintended side effect,” Jones said.

Nevertheless, multifamily density is an important part of not only keeping some affordable housing in the city, but also for creating a new housing ideology for a world drastically changed by global warming and the desperate need to drastically reduce our production of carbon.

From The Atlantic:

It doesn’t solve the problem to buy a hybrid and retrofit your house if all of that takes place 20 miles from your job. You’d still consume more energy (“suburban single family green”) than an urban household without the latest green tech (“urban single family”). And that has as much to do with associated transportation emissions as the size and efficiency of your home.

The implication is that if more suburbanites opted to move out of their low-density detached homes and into walkable, mixed-use urban communities (or if we retrofitted suburbia to better resemble such places), right there we’d be on our way to taking a real whack at carbon emissions.

From the study “Implications of global climate change for housing, human settlements and public health“:

Global climate change has profound implications for human societies. The present—ecologically unsustainable–trajectory of human development fails to provide for the basic needs of a substantial fraction of the global population, while diminishing the prospects for future generations. Human-caused climate change has already begun to affect weather patterns, physical and biological phenomena, and vulnerable human communities. Because the social processes of production and consumption have their own momentum, and because carbon dioxide has a long atmospheric lifetime, further climate change is inevitable over the coming century, even allowing for the adoption of mitigation measures. This situation implies that we should also try to reduce, and where possible to prevent, the adverse effects of climate changes by planned adaptation.

Note: I currently own a home outside of Seattle’s city limits, so yes there’s that. However, I owned a home in the city limits at one time and have rented in four of the city’s neighborhoods over a 14-year period. That said, this is not a NIMBY issue. All of us will be living in more-dense, more-compact neighborhoods (including the one I currently live in, which is also dealing with growth pressure) when the oceans rise and droughts push people into farther into the northern hemisphere. 
Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1go0yg5

Mystery bright spots on Ceres appear a little steamy (sublimating ice?)

Here’s the problem with those bright spots on Ceres: They are not alien signals or artificial lights, so in that environment they’re supposed to be ice or salt (or something like salt) reflecting sunlight. They don’t show up when not on the sunny side of life, but they also appear to be accompanied by vapors rising off the surface of the planet and filling that big crater they’re in.

If they are the result of sunlight reflecting off ice, there’s the tiny problem of sublimation … ice would evaporate too quickly into the vacuum of space (which is pretty much right on top of the surface). So, if it is ice, the spots have to be replenished with more ice … a lot.

One of the latest bits of information about Ceres that supports this hard-to-support theory of ice or “ice rinks” is that bit of vapor rising above the spots and a previous discovery of water vapor plumes above the planet surface.

Space.com reports:

The famous bright spots at the bottom of Ceres’ Occator crater appear to be sublimating material into space, creating a localized atmosphere within the walls of the 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) hole in the ground, new observations by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft suggest.

“If you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze, and it comes back in a regular pattern,” Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, said during a presentation Tuesday (July 21) at the second annual NASA Exploration Science Forum, which took place at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

However, Russell has told us that ice is too simple an answer to this complex problem, see gallery below:

And he told Universe Today:

“I was speaking from less than a handful of images, and the interpretation of the images is disputed by some team members,” Russell said in an email. “I would like the debate to go on internally before we make a pronouncement one way or the other. I of course have my personal opinion, but I am not always right.”

Russell said the ice-vs.-salt debate is continuing. “I originally was an advocate of ice, because of how bright the spots seemed to be,” he said. However, the bright material’s albedo, or reflectivity factor, is about 50 percent – which is less than Russell originally thought. “This could be salt and is unlikely to be ice. I think the team opinion is now more in line with salt,” he said.

Here’s a tweet of that Forum discussion:

"Whateer the cause of the bright spots, Ceres is active today". #nasaames #ceres #sservi http://pic.twitter.com/y718IDloda

— Sidney N. (@snnaka) July 21, 2015

So, salt or ice … salt or ice?

If it’s ice, I owe the guy in the above “answer” gallery a cigar. So, I’m going with salt left behind by evaporating or “sublimating” ice. It’s a combo deal, like a two-for-one. So, he’ll get one and I’ll get one (though I am not allowed to smoke cigars).

Now the good news is that Ceres is closing in on the planet and will point more of its instruments at it from a closer range …

“Dawn is currently spiraling toward its third science orbit, 900 miles (less than 1,500 kilometers) above the surface, or three times closer to Ceres than its previous orbit.  The spacecraft will reach this orbit in mid-August and begin taking images and other data again,” the agency reports.

And now for some zoomable eye-candy:

What NASA said:

Colorful new maps of Ceres, based on data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, showcase a diverse topography, with height differences between crater bottoms and mountain peaks as great as 9 miles (15 kilometers).

Scientists continue to analyze the latest data from Dawn as the spacecraft makes its way to its third mapping orbit.

“The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres. The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust,” said Dawn science team member Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Some of these craters and other features now have official names, inspired by spirits and deities relating to agriculture from a variety of cultures. The International Astronomical Union recently approved a batch of names for features on Ceres.

The newly labeled features include Occator, the mysterious crater containing Ceres’ brightest spots, which has a diameter of about 60 miles (90 kilometers) and a depth of about 2 miles (4 kilometers). Occator is the name of the Roman agriculture deity of harrowing, a method of leveling soil.

A smaller crater with bright material, previously labeled “Spot 1,” is now identified as Haulani, after the Hawaiian plant goddess. Haulani has a diameter of about 20 miles (30 kilometers). Temperature data from Dawn’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer show that this crater seems to be colder than most of the territory around it.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1Se5FQK

Here’s the problem with those bright spots on Ceres: They are not alien signals or artificial lights, so in that environment they’re supposed to be ice or salt (or something like salt) reflecting sunlight. They don’t show up when not on the sunny side of life, but they also appear to be accompanied by vapors rising off the surface of the planet and filling that big crater they’re in.

If they are the result of sunlight reflecting off ice, there’s the tiny problem of sublimation … ice would evaporate too quickly into the vacuum of space (which is pretty much right on top of the surface). So, if it is ice, the spots have to be replenished with more ice … a lot.

One of the latest bits of information about Ceres that supports this hard-to-support theory of ice or “ice rinks” is that bit of vapor rising above the spots and a previous discovery of water vapor plumes above the planet surface.

Space.com reports:

The famous bright spots at the bottom of Ceres’ Occator crater appear to be sublimating material into space, creating a localized atmosphere within the walls of the 57-mile-wide (92 kilometers) hole in the ground, new observations by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft suggest.

“If you look at a glancing angle, you can see what seems to be haze, and it comes back in a regular pattern,” Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, said during a presentation Tuesday (July 21) at the second annual NASA Exploration Science Forum, which took place at the agency’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.

However, Russell has told us that ice is too simple an answer to this complex problem, see gallery below:

And he told Universe Today:

“I was speaking from less than a handful of images, and the interpretation of the images is disputed by some team members,” Russell said in an email. “I would like the debate to go on internally before we make a pronouncement one way or the other. I of course have my personal opinion, but I am not always right.”

Russell said the ice-vs.-salt debate is continuing. “I originally was an advocate of ice, because of how bright the spots seemed to be,” he said. However, the bright material’s albedo, or reflectivity factor, is about 50 percent – which is less than Russell originally thought. “This could be salt and is unlikely to be ice. I think the team opinion is now more in line with salt,” he said.

Here’s a tweet of that Forum discussion:

"Whateer the cause of the bright spots, Ceres is active today". #nasaames #ceres #sservi http://pic.twitter.com/y718IDloda

— Sidney N. (@snnaka) July 21, 2015

So, salt or ice … salt or ice?

If it’s ice, I owe the guy in the above “answer” gallery a cigar. So, I’m going with salt left behind by evaporating or “sublimating” ice. It’s a combo deal, like a two-for-one. So, he’ll get one and I’ll get one (though I am not allowed to smoke cigars).

Now the good news is that Ceres is closing in on the planet and will point more of its instruments at it from a closer range …

“Dawn is currently spiraling toward its third science orbit, 900 miles (less than 1,500 kilometers) above the surface, or three times closer to Ceres than its previous orbit.  The spacecraft will reach this orbit in mid-August and begin taking images and other data again,” the agency reports.

And now for some zoomable eye-candy:

What NASA said:

Colorful new maps of Ceres, based on data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, showcase a diverse topography, with height differences between crater bottoms and mountain peaks as great as 9 miles (15 kilometers).

Scientists continue to analyze the latest data from Dawn as the spacecraft makes its way to its third mapping orbit.

“The craters we find on Ceres, in terms of their depth and diameter, are very similar to what we see on Dione and Tethys, two icy satellites of Saturn that are about the same size and density as Ceres. The features are pretty consistent with an ice-rich crust,” said Dawn science team member Paul Schenk, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston.

Some of these craters and other features now have official names, inspired by spirits and deities relating to agriculture from a variety of cultures. The International Astronomical Union recently approved a batch of names for features on Ceres.

The newly labeled features include Occator, the mysterious crater containing Ceres’ brightest spots, which has a diameter of about 60 miles (90 kilometers) and a depth of about 2 miles (4 kilometers). Occator is the name of the Roman agriculture deity of harrowing, a method of leveling soil.

A smaller crater with bright material, previously labeled “Spot 1,” is now identified as Haulani, after the Hawaiian plant goddess. Haulani has a diameter of about 20 miles (30 kilometers). Temperature data from Dawn’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer show that this crater seems to be colder than most of the territory around it.

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1Se5FQK

Seattle’s heat-wave terror in one graphic!

Here is your Seattle spring and summer in a handy graphic created by the FiveThirtyEightScience site:

Basically – we’ve been very hot. Click for larger, scarier view. Graphic created by RANDY OLSON at FiveThirtyEightScience. Follow the link for graphics of other U.S. cities experiencing out-of-normal-range heat.

We’ve been talking about it being hot around here and have more heat on the way … though more within that normal range.

Here’s what the science site says:

These charts (follow the link for more cities) show the record, average high and low (“normal range”), and actual temperatures over the past year for each day in each city. Dots indicate days when there was a new record low (blue) or high (red), even if it was only a tie with a previous year. … Seattle experienced a strangely warm winter, with 12 days since the beginning of December setting a record high.

Is it global warming? Well, University of Washington meteorologist say it’s more the product of a natural or long-occurring cycle and that the climate change signal isn’t really driving it.

Check out this gallery for more on our heat wave …

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1S9LbZ6

Here is your Seattle spring and summer in a handy graphic created by the FiveThirtyEightScience site:

Basically – we’ve been very hot. Click for larger, scarier view. Graphic created by RANDY OLSON at FiveThirtyEightScience. Follow the link for graphics of other U.S. cities experiencing out-of-normal-range heat.

We’ve been talking about it being hot around here and have more heat on the way … though more within that normal range.

Here’s what the science site says:

These charts (follow the link for more cities) show the record, average high and low (“normal range”), and actual temperatures over the past year for each day in each city. Dots indicate days when there was a new record low (blue) or high (red), even if it was only a tie with a previous year. … Seattle experienced a strangely warm winter, with 12 days since the beginning of December setting a record high.

Is it global warming? Well, University of Washington meteorologist say it’s more the product of a natural or long-occurring cycle and that the climate change signal isn’t really driving it.

Check out this gallery for more on our heat wave …

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

 

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1S9LbZ6

Disasters Americans should fear more than terrorism

Americans fear terrorists most of all, according to new data by the PEW Research Center, and that’s stupid.

What we fear:

• ISIS – 68 percent;
• Iran’s nuclear program – 62 percent;
• Cyber-attacks – 59 percent;
• Global economic instability – 51 percent;
• Tensions with Russia – 43 percent;
• Global climate change – 42 percent;
• Territorial disputes with China – 30 percent.

Of course, no one wants to be shot at work or get one’s head cut off in some desert compound or blown up in a suicide bombing but those events are not going to cause anything like the damage and loss of human life and livelihood as the mega-disasters we are threatened with and can do something about.

And, in fact, we’d probably be at least as effective against these mega-disasters as our fight against terrorism around the globe has been. (… of course we can continue the fight against terrorism at the same time.)

While fears of being shot, blown up or decapitated have a very direct, personal threat feeling attached to them, we’re talking a relative few Western deaths a year (tragic and criminal as they are) compared to the deaths of tens of thousands if not tens of millions caused by these also very real threats to our personal and collective survival. (Does this make you feel safer?)

Many of these mega-threats are not a matter of if but when and not possibly hundreds of years from now but decades. So, to remind us all of what we should fear and thus attempt to do something about … we’ve made a list:

Now, here’s the breakdown of what the world’s people fear:

Here’s a more tongue-in-cheek version of what would ruin our day in the Northwest:

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. 

If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1S5rW36

Americans fear terrorists most of all, according to new data by the PEW Research Center, and that’s stupid.

What we fear:

• ISIS – 68 percent;
• Iran’s nuclear program – 62 percent;
• Cyber-attacks – 59 percent;
• Global economic instability – 51 percent;
• Tensions with Russia – 43 percent;
• Global climate change – 42 percent;
• Territorial disputes with China – 30 percent.

Of course, no one wants to be shot at work or get one’s head cut off in some desert compound or blown up in a suicide bombing but those events are not going to cause anything like the damage and loss of human life and livelihood as the mega-disasters we are threatened with and can do something about.

And, in fact, we’d probably be at least as effective against these mega-disasters as our fight against terrorism around the globe has been. (… of course we can continue the fight against terrorism at the same time.)

While fears of being shot, blown up or decapitated have a very direct, personal threat feeling attached to them, we’re talking a relative few Western deaths a year (tragic and criminal as they are) compared to the deaths of tens of thousands if not tens of millions caused by these also very real threats to our personal and collective survival. (Does this make you feel safer?)

Many of these mega-threats are not a matter of if but when and not possibly hundreds of years from now but decades. So, to remind us all of what we should fear and thus attempt to do something about … we’ve made a list:

Now, here’s the breakdown of what the world’s people fear:

Here’s a more tongue-in-cheek version of what would ruin our day in the Northwest:

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. 

If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1S5rW36

New photos reveal Pluto in greater detail, plus atmosphere

NASA released a few new photos of dwarf planet Pluto on Friday, including a “farewell” shot from behind, showing a thin atmosphere illuminated by the distant sun:

Here’s some of what the space agency had to say about the latest revelations:

Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.

“We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now — 10 days after closest approach — we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling.”

Just seven hours after closest approach, New Horizons aimed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) back at Pluto, capturing sunlight streaming through the atmosphere and revealing hazes as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface. A preliminary analysis of the image shows two distinct layers of haze — one about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 kilometers).

“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries — it brings incredible beauty.

And Pluto continues to stump scientists with each new image:

Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles — a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The breakdown of methane triggers the buildup of more complex hydrocarbon gases, such as ethylene and acetylene, which also were discovered in Pluto’s atmosphere by New Horizons. As these hydrocarbons fall to the lower, colder parts of the atmosphere, they condense into ice particles that create the hazes. Ultraviolent sunlight chemically converts hazes into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.

Scientists previously had calculated temperatures would be too warm for hazes to form at altitudes higher than 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1LDml02

NASA released a few new photos of dwarf planet Pluto on Friday, including a “farewell” shot from behind, showing a thin atmosphere illuminated by the distant sun:

Here’s some of what the space agency had to say about the latest revelations:

Flowing ice and a surprising extended haze are among the newest discoveries from NASA’s New Horizons mission, which reveal distant Pluto to be an icy world of wonders.

“We knew that a mission to Pluto would bring some surprises, and now — 10 days after closest approach — we can say that our expectation has been more than surpassed,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA’s associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate. “With flowing ices, exotic surface chemistry, mountain ranges, and vast haze, Pluto is showing a diversity of planetary geology that is truly thrilling.”

Just seven hours after closest approach, New Horizons aimed its Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) back at Pluto, capturing sunlight streaming through the atmosphere and revealing hazes as high as 80 miles (130 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface. A preliminary analysis of the image shows two distinct layers of haze — one about 50 miles (80 kilometers) above the surface and the other at an altitude of about 30 miles (50 kilometers).

“My jaw was on the ground when I saw this first image of an alien atmosphere in the Kuiper Belt,” said Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “It reminds us that exploration brings us more than just incredible discoveries — it brings incredible beauty.

And Pluto continues to stump scientists with each new image:

Models suggest the hazes form when ultraviolet sunlight breaks up methane gas particles — a simple hydrocarbon in Pluto’s atmosphere. The breakdown of methane triggers the buildup of more complex hydrocarbon gases, such as ethylene and acetylene, which also were discovered in Pluto’s atmosphere by New Horizons. As these hydrocarbons fall to the lower, colder parts of the atmosphere, they condense into ice particles that create the hazes. Ultraviolent sunlight chemically converts hazes into tholins, the dark hydrocarbons that color Pluto’s surface.

Scientists previously had calculated temperatures would be too warm for hazes to form at altitudes higher than 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Pluto’s surface.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1LDml02

Likely culprit found in bumblebee decline, a devastating cousin to honeybee loses

A study published last week in the journal Science has found the likely culprit in the disappearance of bumblebee colonies across the northern hemisphere.

The bumblebee decline is a phenomenon that mirrors the decline of honeybees in recent years but is one that may have even more foreboding ecological implications.

In a world where species ranging from sea turtles to bald eagles are labeled as endangered, it’s tempting to write off the decline of bee population as just another addition to the list of threatened animals. However, bees are a key player in our ecosystem and their shrinking geographic range is bad news.

Bumble bees, known for being an aerodynamic anomaly, are key players in agriculture with quick and widespread pollination habits. Photo – Getty Images.

Colony collapse disorder, one of climate change’s most nefarious consequences, grabbed headlines a few years ago when honeybees were announced as at-risk. As it turns out, the bumble’s more recent demise is equally mysterious.

Scientists expected bumblebees to simply move into cooler climates, abandoning their habitats as temperatures went up and moving towards the poles. But they didn’t. Instead they found that colonies were neither migrating away from nor surviving in their newly uninhabitable homes. While the reason for this isn’t completely clear, one theory suggests that the plant populations in cooler areas are too difficult for bumblebees to adapt to.

Is this more consequential than the decline of honeybees?

Well, the two species are valued for different reasons. Bumblebees are incredibly important in commercial pollination of agriculture, and thanks to some anatomical features that differentiate them from honeybees, as well as a longer foraging season, they can pollinate different plants at quicker rates. And according to a BioEssays study, production of 39 out of the world’s 57 most important crops rely heavily on the very bees that are now dying at unprecedented rates.

Climate change responses of 67 bumble bee species across full latitudinal and thermal limits in Europe and North America. Graph – Science.

The Science study investigated other possible contributors to this phenomenon, such as use of pesticides, but after looking at patterns in more than 400,000 observations of 67 bee species from data going back to 1901, climate change arose as the probable culprit.

“Climate change appears to contribute distinctively, and consistently, to accumulating range compression among bumblebee species across continents,” noted the study.

Here in Washington state, home to iconic rhododendrons, endless fields of tulips, resilient wildflowers, and countless other species of flowers, we may need to put a new environmental worry on our radar.

However, scientists say there may be hope for bumblebees if folks plant bumble-friendly flowers and berries to encourage bee populations to make a stable home here where it’s still safe for them.

 

 

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1gSE4DN

A study published last week in the journal Science has found the likely culprit in the disappearance of bumblebee colonies across the northern hemisphere.

The bumblebee decline is a phenomenon that mirrors the decline of honeybees in recent years but is one that may have even more foreboding ecological implications.

In a world where species ranging from sea turtles to bald eagles are labeled as endangered, it’s tempting to write off the decline of bee population as just another addition to the list of threatened animals. However, bees are a key player in our ecosystem and their shrinking geographic range is bad news.

Bumble bees, known for being an aerodynamic anomaly, are key players in agriculture with quick and widespread pollination habits. Photo – Getty Images.

Colony collapse disorder, one of climate change’s most nefarious consequences, grabbed headlines a few years ago when honeybees were announced as at-risk. As it turns out, the bumble’s more recent demise is equally mysterious.

Scientists expected bumblebees to simply move into cooler climates, abandoning their habitats as temperatures went up and moving towards the poles. But they didn’t. Instead they found that colonies were neither migrating away from nor surviving in their newly uninhabitable homes. While the reason for this isn’t completely clear, one theory suggests that the plant populations in cooler areas are too difficult for bumblebees to adapt to.

Is this more consequential than the decline of honeybees?

Well, the two species are valued for different reasons. Bumblebees are incredibly important in commercial pollination of agriculture, and thanks to some anatomical features that differentiate them from honeybees, as well as a longer foraging season, they can pollinate different plants at quicker rates. And according to a BioEssays study, production of 39 out of the world’s 57 most important crops rely heavily on the very bees that are now dying at unprecedented rates.

Climate change responses of 67 bumble bee species across full latitudinal and thermal limits in Europe and North America. Graph – Science.

The Science study investigated other possible contributors to this phenomenon, such as use of pesticides, but after looking at patterns in more than 400,000 observations of 67 bee species from data going back to 1901, climate change arose as the probable culprit.

“Climate change appears to contribute distinctively, and consistently, to accumulating range compression among bumblebee species across continents,” noted the study.

Here in Washington state, home to iconic rhododendrons, endless fields of tulips, resilient wildflowers, and countless other species of flowers, we may need to put a new environmental worry on our radar.

However, scientists say there may be hope for bumblebees if folks plant bumble-friendly flowers and berries to encourage bee populations to make a stable home here where it’s still safe for them.

 

 

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1gSE4DN

NASA announces Earth-like planet discovery

NASA announced Thursday morning that its Kepler planet-hunting mission had discovered a bigger, older cousin to Earth revolving around a similar star to our sun.

The planet is the smallest yet discovered within the “habitable zone” — the area around a star where water would pool on the planet’s surface — though it’s estimated to be about five times the mass of Earth, plus or minus two Earth masses, NASA officials said in a briefing.

“This is the closest things we have found to an earth analogue, a planet like our own,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, during the briefing.

Researchers have dubbed the planet Kepler 452b and it is one of 12 planetary candidates announced in the latest review of Kepler data.

Kepler 452b revolves around a sun similar to our own, on a 385-day orbit and is about 6 billion years old — while Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. That’s sufficient time for life to develop, providing all the necessary ingredients are there, Jenkins said in a NASA release.

“This is really the first step to answering that question, ‘Are humans alone in this universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “We’re finding out if planets like Earth are common and the answer seems to be yes.”

Here’s a video showing Earth and Kepler 452b’s movement within the timeline that’s considered habitable:

Unfortunately, little is known about the atmosphere of the planet — though researchers estimate it does have one — and it’s unlikely we’ll get there any time soon. Kepler 452b is 1,400 light years away.

Still, if humans could get there, it might feel familiar, Jenkins said.

“If you traveled to this (planet) with an ark full of plants and animals, even when we got there, there would be a lot of raw materials for you to use, but even for the plants, the sunshine…is very similar to the sunshine of our own star,” he said. “It would feel a lot like home in terms of the sunshine you would experience.”

The discovery brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030,

Here’s a gallery of 10 planets NASA has found that are like Earth.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1IkTJGa

NASA announced Thursday morning that its Kepler planet-hunting mission had discovered a bigger, older cousin to Earth revolving around a similar star to our sun.

The planet is the smallest yet discovered within the “habitable zone” — the area around a star where water would pool on the planet’s surface — though it’s estimated to be about five times the mass of Earth, plus or minus two Earth masses, NASA officials said in a briefing.

“This is the closest things we have found to an earth analogue, a planet like our own,” said Jon Jenkins, Kepler data analysis lead at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, during the briefing.

Researchers have dubbed the planet Kepler 452b and it is one of 12 planetary candidates announced in the latest review of Kepler data.

Kepler 452b revolves around a sun similar to our own, on a 385-day orbit and is about 6 billion years old — while Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. That’s sufficient time for life to develop, providing all the necessary ingredients are there, Jenkins said in a NASA release.

“This is really the first step to answering that question, ‘Are humans alone in this universe,” said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “We’re finding out if planets like Earth are common and the answer seems to be yes.”

Here’s a video showing Earth and Kepler 452b’s movement within the timeline that’s considered habitable:

Unfortunately, little is known about the atmosphere of the planet — though researchers estimate it does have one — and it’s unlikely we’ll get there any time soon. Kepler 452b is 1,400 light years away.

Still, if humans could get there, it might feel familiar, Jenkins said.

“If you traveled to this (planet) with an ark full of plants and animals, even when we got there, there would be a lot of raw materials for you to use, but even for the plants, the sunshine…is very similar to the sunshine of our own star,” he said. “It would feel a lot like home in terms of the sunshine you would experience.”

The discovery brings the total number of confirmed planets to 1,030,

Here’s a gallery of 10 planets NASA has found that are like Earth.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1IkTJGa

Second mountain range on Pluto adds to geo-mysteries of dwarf planet

Another photo of Pluto’s surface from NASA’s New Horizons … another mountain range of mysteries!

The agency plans to release more photos and discuss the latest round of data this Friday, but in the meantime they’ve released this image …

Click for larger view.

… and had this to say:

These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high, about the same height as the United States’ Appalachian Mountains. The Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) discovered by New Horizons on July 15 more closely approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains.

The new range is just west of the region within Pluto’s heart called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain). The peaks lie some 68 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Norgay Montes.

This newest image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old – the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

Now for some mysteries of the solar system’s other celebrity dwarf planet, Ceres:

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1KkqPbD

Another photo of Pluto’s surface from NASA’s New Horizons … another mountain range of mysteries!

The agency plans to release more photos and discuss the latest round of data this Friday, but in the meantime they’ve released this image …

Click for larger view.

… and had this to say:

These newly-discovered frozen peaks are estimated to be one-half mile to one mile (1-1.5 kilometers) high, about the same height as the United States’ Appalachian Mountains. The Norgay Montes (Norgay Mountains) discovered by New Horizons on July 15 more closely approximate the height of the taller Rocky Mountains.

The new range is just west of the region within Pluto’s heart called Sputnik Planum (Sputnik Plain). The peaks lie some 68 miles (110 kilometers) northwest of Norgay Montes.

This newest image further illustrates the remarkably well-defined topography along the western edge of Tombaugh Regio.

“There is a pronounced difference in texture between the younger, frozen plains to the east and the dark, heavily-cratered terrain to the west,” said Jeff Moore, leader of the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging Team (GGI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “There’s a complex interaction going on between the bright and the dark materials that we’re still trying to understand.”

While Sputnik Planum is believed to be relatively young in geological terms – perhaps less than 100 million years old – the darker region probably dates back billions of years. Moore notes that the bright, sediment-like material appears to be filling in old craters (for example, the bright circular feature to the lower left of center).

Now for some mysteries of the solar system’s other celebrity dwarf planet, Ceres:

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1KkqPbD

America like you’ve never seen it before in NASA’s ‘epic’ million-mile shot

From a million miles away, our big blue home still awes us. Perspective is the name of the game when it comes to understanding much of anything … so, here’s some perspective for your morning!

(Click for larger view) A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away. NASA photo and caption.

What the agency said:

This color image of Earth was taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters — from ultraviolet to near infrared — to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images.

The image was taken July 6, 2015, showing North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands. This Earth image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team is working to remove this atmospheric effect from subsequent images. Once the instrument begins regular data acquisition, EPIC will provide a daily series of Earth images allowing for the first time study of daily variations over the entire globe. These images, available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired, will be posted to a dedicated web page by September 2015.

The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1OhIUVz

From a million miles away, our big blue home still awes us. Perspective is the name of the game when it comes to understanding much of anything … so, here’s some perspective for your morning!

(Click for larger view) A NASA camera on the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite has returned its first view of the entire sunlit side of Earth from one million miles away. NASA photo and caption.

What the agency said:

This color image of Earth was taken by NASA’s Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC), a four megapixel CCD camera and telescope. The image was generated by combining three separate images to create a photographic-quality image. The camera takes a series of 10 images using different narrowband filters — from ultraviolet to near infrared — to produce a variety of science products. The red, green and blue channel images are used in these color images.

The image was taken July 6, 2015, showing North and Central America. The central turquoise areas are shallow seas around the Caribbean islands. This Earth image shows the effects of sunlight scattered by air molecules, giving the image a characteristic bluish tint. The EPIC team is working to remove this atmospheric effect from subsequent images. Once the instrument begins regular data acquisition, EPIC will provide a daily series of Earth images allowing for the first time study of daily variations over the entire globe. These images, available 12 to 36 hours after they are acquired, will be posted to a dedicated web page by September 2015.

The primary objective of DSCOVR, a partnership between NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Air Force, is to maintain the nation’s real-time solar wind monitoring capabilities, which are critical to the accuracy and lead time of space weather alerts and forecasts from NOAA.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1OhIUVz

‘Stunned and stumped': NASA finds new mysteries in images of Charon and Pluto

They say travel opens the mind. Well, NASA shot a spacecraft three billion miles at the most distant large objects in our solar system and got its collective mind blown.

“Stunned and stumped” and “This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds” are the kinds of things agency scientists are saying about photos and data retrieved from the spacecraft New Horizons and its encounters this week with Pluto and its moon Charon.

It’s exactly what they were shooting for: Humankind’s first views of strange new worlds are expanding our understanding … even if, so far, it’s just our understanding how much we have to learn.

We leave the familiar to find the strange to expand our minds. And how.

The latest image of Charon is a case in point (click on it for a larger view).

NASA says,

The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters.

“The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat,” said Jeff Moore with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, who leads New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. “This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped.”

Here is New Horizons’ first close-up view of Pluto’s surface (you’ll find more details in the gallery above) …

The main takeaway from the image is that Pluto is active geologically, even though it’s out there all alone without some other big body’s gravity to tug and pull on it.

That’s a surprise, NASA scientists said at a news conference on Wednesday. The image challenges assumptions about how small space objects like these can smooth themselves over. That is, scientists know Pluto has been pummeled by meteors, but it’s not showing the evidence of those strikes. Consequently, the dwarf planet is smoothing out its surface all on its own.

The agency stated,

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.

“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The Associated Press adds:

 … scientists now know Pluto is a bit bigger than thought, with a diameter of 1,473 miles, but still just two-thirds the size of Earth’s moon. And it is most certainly not frozen in time.

The zoom-in of Pluto, showing an approximately 150-mile swath of the dwarf planet, reveals a mountain range about 11,000 feet high and tens of miles wide. Scientists said the peaks — seemingly pushed up from Pluto’s subterranean bed of ice — appeared to be a mere 100 million years old. Pluto itself is 4.5 billion years old.

“Who would have supposed that there were ice mountains?” project scientist Hal Weaver said. “It’s just blowing my mind.”

NASA has a press conference scheduled for 10 am Pacific Time today in which scientists will discuss, undoubtedly, more mind blowing photos and data sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft.

Stay tuned!

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. 

If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1Kbatz1

They say travel opens the mind. Well, NASA shot a spacecraft three billion miles at the most distant large objects in our solar system and got its collective mind blown.

“Stunned and stumped” and “This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds” are the kinds of things agency scientists are saying about photos and data retrieved from the spacecraft New Horizons and its encounters this week with Pluto and its moon Charon.

It’s exactly what they were shooting for: Humankind’s first views of strange new worlds are expanding our understanding … even if, so far, it’s just our understanding how much we have to learn.

We leave the familiar to find the strange to expand our minds. And how.

The latest image of Charon is a case in point (click on it for a larger view).

NASA says,

The image shows an area approximately 240 miles (390 kilometers) from top to bottom, including few visible craters.

“The most intriguing feature is a large mountain sitting in a moat,” said Jeff Moore with NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, who leads New Horizons’ Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team. “This is a feature that has geologists stunned and stumped.”

Here is New Horizons’ first close-up view of Pluto’s surface (you’ll find more details in the gallery above) …

The main takeaway from the image is that Pluto is active geologically, even though it’s out there all alone without some other big body’s gravity to tug and pull on it.

That’s a surprise, NASA scientists said at a news conference on Wednesday. The image challenges assumptions about how small space objects like these can smooth themselves over. That is, scientists know Pluto has been pummeled by meteors, but it’s not showing the evidence of those strikes. Consequently, the dwarf planet is smoothing out its surface all on its own.

The agency stated,

Unlike the icy moons of giant planets, Pluto cannot be heated by gravitational interactions with a much larger planetary body. Some other process must be generating the mountainous landscape.

“This may cause us to rethink what powers geological activity on many other icy worlds,” says GGI deputy team leader John Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The Associated Press adds:

 … scientists now know Pluto is a bit bigger than thought, with a diameter of 1,473 miles, but still just two-thirds the size of Earth’s moon. And it is most certainly not frozen in time.

The zoom-in of Pluto, showing an approximately 150-mile swath of the dwarf planet, reveals a mountain range about 11,000 feet high and tens of miles wide. Scientists said the peaks — seemingly pushed up from Pluto’s subterranean bed of ice — appeared to be a mere 100 million years old. Pluto itself is 4.5 billion years old.

“Who would have supposed that there were ice mountains?” project scientist Hal Weaver said. “It’s just blowing my mind.”

NASA has a press conference scheduled for 10 am Pacific Time today in which scientists will discuss, undoubtedly, more mind blowing photos and data sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft.

Stay tuned!

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. 

If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1Kbatz1

Redmond company deploys spacecraft, closes in on mining asteroids

With the deployment of its test-spacecraft Thursday morning from the International Space Station, the Redmond company Planetary Resources  has taken a big, practical step toward its goal of mining asteroids.

The company announced in a news release that its Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) left an airlock and began a 90-day mission.

“The demonstration vehicle will validate several core technologies including the avionics, control systems and software, which the company will incorporate into future spacecraft that will venture into the Solar System and prospect for resource-rich near-Earth asteroids,” the company said.

Arkyd 6, launching later this year. Photo by Planetary Resources.

The simple-sounding step came after a rocket exploded in October last year destroying their first test vehicle just as it got off the ground, a $1.5 million Kickstarter campaign to fund a super-telescope and tons of press about their asteroid-mining desires.

After the private, old-tech Antares rocket failed during lift-off on its ISS resupply mission, Planetary Resources wrote on their Kickstarter page,

While these frustrating types of setbacks do happen from time to time (it’s rocket science after all), we prepare for these challenges and have never been more motivated to keep at it! We’re already hard at work developing our next test vehicle, the Arkyd 6, which is planned for launch in Q3 2015. These spacecraft all help prove technology for the Arkyd 100 spacecraft that will deliver your #SpaceSelfies and more.

And indeed, they have now taken that next step into space … where trillions of dollars lay waiting on asteroids!

Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., co-founder and co-chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc., stated (in the news release), “The successful deployment of the A3R is a significant milestone for Planetary Resources as we forge a path toward prospecting resource-rich asteroids. Our team is developing the technology that will enable humanity to create an off-planet economy that will fundamentally change the way we live on Earth.”

Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc., said, “This key technology for determining resources on asteroids can also be applied towards monitoring and managing high-value resources on our home planet. All of our work at Planetary Resources is laying the foundation to better manage and increase humanity’s access to natural resources on our planet and in our Solar System.”

Related story: Rosetta/Philae: Is this the most important space image of a generation?

We have robots on Mars, satellites spread throughout our galaxy, circling the sun and even one zooming through interstellar space, but the above photo of Philae — the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission lander — may document the most important space mission yet.

Why? Asteroid mining. They’re like little resource packets just floating around out there.

If NASA finds the remnants of life on Mars, that will be intellectually, psychologically … hell, philosophically important. But, it won’t by itself potentially revolutionize the world’s industry and human ability to populate space.

But capturing and dragging asteroids back toward Earth or landing on them where they are as Philae did, hunkering down and mining rare metals or building platforms for expanding our presence off Earth, has the real potential for changing our lives.

Read the rest here … 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1SpVNxQ

With the deployment of its test-spacecraft Thursday morning from the International Space Station, the Redmond company Planetary Resources  has taken a big, practical step toward its goal of mining asteroids.

The company announced in a news release that its Arkyd 3 Reflight (A3R) left an airlock and began a 90-day mission.

“The demonstration vehicle will validate several core technologies including the avionics, control systems and software, which the company will incorporate into future spacecraft that will venture into the Solar System and prospect for resource-rich near-Earth asteroids,” the company said.

Arkyd 6, launching later this year. Photo by Planetary Resources.

The simple-sounding step came after a rocket exploded in October last year destroying their first test vehicle just as it got off the ground, a $1.5 million Kickstarter campaign to fund a super-telescope and tons of press about their asteroid-mining desires.

After the private, old-tech Antares rocket failed during lift-off on its ISS resupply mission, Planetary Resources wrote on their Kickstarter page,

While these frustrating types of setbacks do happen from time to time (it’s rocket science after all), we prepare for these challenges and have never been more motivated to keep at it! We’re already hard at work developing our next test vehicle, the Arkyd 6, which is planned for launch in Q3 2015. These spacecraft all help prove technology for the Arkyd 100 spacecraft that will deliver your #SpaceSelfies and more.

And indeed, they have now taken that next step into space … where trillions of dollars lay waiting on asteroids!

Peter H. Diamandis, M.D., co-founder and co-chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc., stated (in the news release), “The successful deployment of the A3R is a significant milestone for Planetary Resources as we forge a path toward prospecting resource-rich asteroids. Our team is developing the technology that will enable humanity to create an off-planet economy that will fundamentally change the way we live on Earth.”

Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-chairman, Planetary Resources, Inc., said, “This key technology for determining resources on asteroids can also be applied towards monitoring and managing high-value resources on our home planet. All of our work at Planetary Resources is laying the foundation to better manage and increase humanity’s access to natural resources on our planet and in our Solar System.”

Related story: Rosetta/Philae: Is this the most important space image of a generation?

We have robots on Mars, satellites spread throughout our galaxy, circling the sun and even one zooming through interstellar space, but the above photo of Philae — the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission lander — may document the most important space mission yet.

Why? Asteroid mining. They’re like little resource packets just floating around out there.

If NASA finds the remnants of life on Mars, that will be intellectually, psychologically … hell, philosophically important. But, it won’t by itself potentially revolutionize the world’s industry and human ability to populate space.

But capturing and dragging asteroids back toward Earth or landing on them where they are as Philae did, hunkering down and mining rare metals or building platforms for expanding our presence off Earth, has the real potential for changing our lives.

Read the rest here … 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1SpVNxQ

Northwest’s 2015 summer: The good, The bad, The ugly

We’ve had a hot summer so far, and we’re in for a long hot stretch of the same and that’s great. Unless it isn’t. And, it may not mean anything for the future of humanity … but then it might, depends on how you look at it.

It’s complex! So, let’s break it all down in this gallery of …

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1HOJbdX

We’ve had a hot summer so far, and we’re in for a long hot stretch of the same and that’s great. Unless it isn’t. And, it may not mean anything for the future of humanity … but then it might, depends on how you look at it.

It’s complex! So, let’s break it all down in this gallery of …

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1HOJbdX

Oregon university grows seaweed that tastes like bacon … or so they say

By and large, from what we understand, seaweed is good for you … it just tastes like … well … seaweed. Maybe you’re into that “spat out of the ocean onto hot sand” taste, but many of us have a hard time with it.

Chris Langdon, who leads research in shellfish aquaculture at Oregon State University, has been breeding new varieties of dulse at Hatfield Marine Science Center for several years. (Photo by Stephen Ward.)

But, still, it’s a superfood that could healthy-up our diet of potato chips and beer, so the scientists at Oregon State University have been tinkering with strains of “succulent red marine algae called dulse” to find more palatable varieties.

They came up with one that tastes like bacon, they say.

“In Europe, they add the powder to smoothies, or add flakes onto food,” the lead researcher said in a news release. “There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing. When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”

The release adds,

… researcher Chris Langdon and colleagues at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center have created and patented a new strain of dulse – one he has been growing for the past 15 years.

This strain, which looks like translucent red lettuce, is an excellent source of minerals, vitamins and antioxidants – and it contains up to 16 percent protein in dry weight, Langdon said. …

“The dulse grows using a water recirculation system,” Langdon said. “Theoretically, you could create an industry in eastern Oregon almost as easily as you could along the coast with a bit of supplementation. You just need a modest amount of seawater and some sunshine.”

Well, okay. Maybe they can dry it and sprinkle it on our cheeseburger?

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1MsB7nn

By and large, from what we understand, seaweed is good for you … it just tastes like … well … seaweed. Maybe you’re into that “spat out of the ocean onto hot sand” taste, but many of us have a hard time with it.

Chris Langdon, who leads research in shellfish aquaculture at Oregon State University, has been breeding new varieties of dulse at Hatfield Marine Science Center for several years. (Photo by Stephen Ward.)

But, still, it’s a superfood that could healthy-up our diet of potato chips and beer, so the scientists at Oregon State University have been tinkering with strains of “succulent red marine algae called dulse” to find more palatable varieties.

They came up with one that tastes like bacon, they say.

“In Europe, they add the powder to smoothies, or add flakes onto food,” the lead researcher said in a news release. “There hasn’t been a lot of interest in using it in a fresh form. But this stuff is pretty amazing. When you fry it, which I have done, it tastes like bacon, not seaweed. And it’s a pretty strong bacon flavor.”

The release adds,

… researcher Chris Langdon and colleagues at OSU’s Hatfield Marine Science Center have created and patented a new strain of dulse – one he has been growing for the past 15 years.

This strain, which looks like translucent red lettuce, is an excellent source of minerals, vitamins and antioxidants – and it contains up to 16 percent protein in dry weight, Langdon said. …

“The dulse grows using a water recirculation system,” Langdon said. “Theoretically, you could create an industry in eastern Oregon almost as easily as you could along the coast with a bit of supplementation. You just need a modest amount of seawater and some sunshine.”

Well, okay. Maybe they can dry it and sprinkle it on our cheeseburger?

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook.
If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1MsB7nn

Biggest Pluto mystery NASA will not solve with this flyby

What’s that giant polygonal shape? Those regularly spaced anomalous “dark patterns”?

Well, no matter what we all find out about the demoted-to-dwarf-planet Pluto from photos and scans of its surface by the spacecraft New Horizon as it shoots past at better than 30,ooo miles a hour … we won’t know what those features are “for decades to come.”

That just one of the vagaries of sending a probe into the farthest regions of our solar system to get close-up information from a mysterious rock in space … you might see things from afar that you couldn’t have guessed were there only to find out …

… they’ll be on the other side of the planet when you get there! Ugh.

NASA states in its wistful blog post on July 11 titled, New Horizons’ Last Portrait of Pluto’s Puzzling Spots:

Three billion miles from Earth and just two and a half million miles from Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has taken its best image of four dark spots that continue to captivate.

The spots appear on the side of Pluto that always faces its largest moon, Charon—the face that will be invisible to New Horizons when the spacecraft makes its close flyby the morning of July 14. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, describes this image as “the last, best look that anyone will have of Pluto’s far side for decades to come.”

And to top it off … they are profoundly interesting to NASA scientists who, despite the miracle of shooting this spacecraft through the eye of a needle from roughly 4 billion miles away

The spots are connected to a dark belt that circles Pluto’s equatorial region. What continues to pique the interest of scientists is their similar size and even spacing. “It’s weird that they’re spaced so regularly,” says New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur at NASA Headquarters in Washington.  Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, is equally intrigued. “We can’t tell whether they’re plateaus or plains, or whether they’re brightness variations on a completely smooth surface.”

The large dark areas are now estimated to be 300 miles (480 kilometers) across, an area roughly the size of the state of Missouri.  In comparison with earlier images, we now see that the dark areas are more complex than they initially appeared, while the boundaries between the dark and bright terrains are irregular and sharply defined.

In addition to solving the mystery of the spots, the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team is interested in identifying other surface features such as impact craters, formed when smaller objects struck the dwarf planet. Moore notes, “When we combine images like this of the far side with composition and color data the spacecraft has already acquired but not yet sent to Earth, we expect to be able to read the history of this face of Pluto.”

When New Horizons makes its closest approach to Pluto in just three days, it will focus on the opposing or “encounter hemisphere” of the dwarf planet. On the morning of July 14, New Horizons will pass about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) from the face with a large heart-shaped feature that’s captured the imagination of people around the world.

You know … because it’s a heart-shaped valentines kind of thing! Crap.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1dXhRCg

What’s that giant polygonal shape? Those regularly spaced anomalous “dark patterns”?

Well, no matter what we all find out about the demoted-to-dwarf-planet Pluto from photos and scans of its surface by the spacecraft New Horizon as it shoots past at better than 30,ooo miles a hour … we won’t know what those features are “for decades to come.”

That just one of the vagaries of sending a probe into the farthest regions of our solar system to get close-up information from a mysterious rock in space … you might see things from afar that you couldn’t have guessed were there only to find out …

… they’ll be on the other side of the planet when you get there! Ugh.

NASA states in its wistful blog post on July 11 titled, New Horizons’ Last Portrait of Pluto’s Puzzling Spots:

Three billion miles from Earth and just two and a half million miles from Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has taken its best image of four dark spots that continue to captivate.

The spots appear on the side of Pluto that always faces its largest moon, Charon—the face that will be invisible to New Horizons when the spacecraft makes its close flyby the morning of July 14. New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado, describes this image as “the last, best look that anyone will have of Pluto’s far side for decades to come.”

And to top it off … they are profoundly interesting to NASA scientists who, despite the miracle of shooting this spacecraft through the eye of a needle from roughly 4 billion miles away

The spots are connected to a dark belt that circles Pluto’s equatorial region. What continues to pique the interest of scientists is their similar size and even spacing. “It’s weird that they’re spaced so regularly,” says New Horizons program scientist Curt Niebur at NASA Headquarters in Washington.  Jeff Moore of NASA’s Ames Research Center, Mountain View, California, is equally intrigued. “We can’t tell whether they’re plateaus or plains, or whether they’re brightness variations on a completely smooth surface.”

The large dark areas are now estimated to be 300 miles (480 kilometers) across, an area roughly the size of the state of Missouri.  In comparison with earlier images, we now see that the dark areas are more complex than they initially appeared, while the boundaries between the dark and bright terrains are irregular and sharply defined.

In addition to solving the mystery of the spots, the New Horizons Geology, Geophysics and Imaging team is interested in identifying other surface features such as impact craters, formed when smaller objects struck the dwarf planet. Moore notes, “When we combine images like this of the far side with composition and color data the spacecraft has already acquired but not yet sent to Earth, we expect to be able to read the history of this face of Pluto.”

When New Horizons makes its closest approach to Pluto in just three days, it will focus on the opposing or “encounter hemisphere” of the dwarf planet. On the morning of July 14, New Horizons will pass about 7,800 miles (12,500 kilometers) from the face with a large heart-shaped feature that’s captured the imagination of people around the world.

You know … because it’s a heart-shaped valentines kind of thing! Crap.

 

Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at http://twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1dXhRCg

Super telescope proposed for discovering life on Earth-like planets

“I like to think of finding life elsewhere as greater of a revolution than the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions combined.”

We’ve come a long way since Galileo confirmed that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and we’ve come even further since the Hubble Telescope gave us proof that there are billions more galaxies out there than just our own little Milky Way. Now, for the first time, scientists have proposed the technology capable of revealing the answer to the most sought after question of all time: Are we alone in the universe?

On July 6, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) presented a report for the creation of the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST).

The AURA report detailed the High Definition Space Telescope’s potential technological advancements as compared to its predecessors. The Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors were much smaller than that of what the HDSP could have.

This powerful telescope, still in its conceptual stages, would be placed more than 1 million miles from Earth and would be able to find and directly image Earth-like exoplanets in high definition to determine if they host life.

“I like to think of finding life elsewhere as greater of a revolution than the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions combined,” Mario Livio, astrophysicist with the Space Telescope Science Institute said. “We have the potential to show that either life is indeed found in other places or that perhaps, life is extraordinarily rare and even more precious than we think it is. Both of these findings have incredible implications.”

This high-definition telescope would essentially refine work already completed by NASA’s Kepler mission. Launched in 2009, Kepler was a space observatory designed to find Earth-like planets within the Milky Way Galaxy that orbited other stars. Since then, almost 2,000 exoplanets have been found in the universe, most of which cannot be seen clearly.

This is where the HDST comes in.

The telescope would be able to locate Earth-like exoplanets that orbit within the habitable zones of hundreds of stars, and dim down the intense light these stars omit. In doing so, the much dimmer light of the exoplanets themselves would become visible so that scientists back home could get a good look at the planet’s atmospheres.

When analyzing the atmospheric conditions, scientists could discover whether or not these exoplanets show signs of life. If life is to be found on the surface, theoretically, the atmospheric conditions should be altered in a way that reflects this. Just as how the Earth’s atmosphere is rich with oxygen and methane, which indicates thrive is thriving at the surface and constantly replenishing these gases.

How it works

Finding these exoplanets in the first place is no easy task. These planets may be as much as 10 billion times fainter than their host star, according to AURA’s website. To put this into perspective, imagine trying to spot the earth from lightyears away as it orbits the blinding Sun. This is why the telescope would contain an almost 40-foot-wide mirror to suppress the starlight and enhance image quality.

This 12-meter mirror with heightened UV-sensitivity will be five-times the width of the Hubble telescope’s (now celebrating its 25th anniversary), and almost twice the width of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), resulting in much sharper and detailed images.

The JWST is the next concrete step in space exploration preceding the HDST, as it is being readied for launch in 2018, roughly around the time the Hubble is set to expire.

However, the actual technology needed for such starlight suppression is not yet created, and optimistically speaking, the earliest the HDST may be ready would be in the mid-2030s. Primarily, the AURA report was intended to address technologies needing to be further developed in order to bring such a high-powered telescope to life, according to Marc Postman, coauthor of the HDST report and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

“The HDST will be more than a hundred times more sensitive than the Hubble in terms of seeing faint things,” Postman said. “It will have the best image quality of any spacecraft ever flown, so it will produce remarkable images of not just exoplanets but also of planets in our own solar system or very distant components of faraway galaxies.”

Just like the Hubble, the HDST will not just have one mission, but many. The hope is that the HDST will be able to survey about 50 Earth-like worlds in hopes of finding signs of life. And if it does, it has the potential to change our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos for good.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1UVASXL

“I like to think of finding life elsewhere as greater of a revolution than the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions combined.”

We’ve come a long way since Galileo confirmed that the Earth is not the center of the universe, and we’ve come even further since the Hubble Telescope gave us proof that there are billions more galaxies out there than just our own little Milky Way. Now, for the first time, scientists have proposed the technology capable of revealing the answer to the most sought after question of all time: Are we alone in the universe?

On July 6, the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) presented a report for the creation of the High Definition Space Telescope (HDST).

The AURA report detailed the High Definition Space Telescope’s potential technological advancements as compared to its predecessors. The Hubble Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope mirrors were much smaller than that of what the HDSP could have.

This powerful telescope, still in its conceptual stages, would be placed more than 1 million miles from Earth and would be able to find and directly image Earth-like exoplanets in high definition to determine if they host life.

“I like to think of finding life elsewhere as greater of a revolution than the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions combined,” Mario Livio, astrophysicist with the Space Telescope Science Institute said. “We have the potential to show that either life is indeed found in other places or that perhaps, life is extraordinarily rare and even more precious than we think it is. Both of these findings have incredible implications.”

This high-definition telescope would essentially refine work already completed by NASA’s Kepler mission. Launched in 2009, Kepler was a space observatory designed to find Earth-like planets within the Milky Way Galaxy that orbited other stars. Since then, almost 2,000 exoplanets have been found in the universe, most of which cannot be seen clearly.

This is where the HDST comes in.

The telescope would be able to locate Earth-like exoplanets that orbit within the habitable zones of hundreds of stars, and dim down the intense light these stars omit. In doing so, the much dimmer light of the exoplanets themselves would become visible so that scientists back home could get a good look at the planet’s atmospheres.

When analyzing the atmospheric conditions, scientists could discover whether or not these exoplanets show signs of life. If life is to be found on the surface, theoretically, the atmospheric conditions should be altered in a way that reflects this. Just as how the Earth’s atmosphere is rich with oxygen and methane, which indicates thrive is thriving at the surface and constantly replenishing these gases.

How it works

Finding these exoplanets in the first place is no easy task. These planets may be as much as 10 billion times fainter than their host star, according to AURA’s website. To put this into perspective, imagine trying to spot the earth from lightyears away as it orbits the blinding Sun. This is why the telescope would contain an almost 40-foot-wide mirror to suppress the starlight and enhance image quality.

This 12-meter mirror with heightened UV-sensitivity will be five-times the width of the Hubble telescope’s (now celebrating its 25th anniversary), and almost twice the width of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), resulting in much sharper and detailed images.

The JWST is the next concrete step in space exploration preceding the HDST, as it is being readied for launch in 2018, roughly around the time the Hubble is set to expire.

However, the actual technology needed for such starlight suppression is not yet created, and optimistically speaking, the earliest the HDST may be ready would be in the mid-2030s. Primarily, the AURA report was intended to address technologies needing to be further developed in order to bring such a high-powered telescope to life, according to Marc Postman, coauthor of the HDST report and astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

“The HDST will be more than a hundred times more sensitive than the Hubble in terms of seeing faint things,” Postman said. “It will have the best image quality of any spacecraft ever flown, so it will produce remarkable images of not just exoplanets but also of planets in our own solar system or very distant components of faraway galaxies.”

Just like the Hubble, the HDST will not just have one mission, but many. The hope is that the HDST will be able to survey about 50 Earth-like worlds in hopes of finding signs of life. And if it does, it has the potential to change our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos for good.

from The Big Science Blog http://ift.tt/1UVASXL