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Water on Mars? Not So Fast

February 29, 2008 4:15 PM

Maybe it was a nice idea while it lasted.  In 2006 a team of scientists published two images from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor probe -- the first, from orbit in 1999, showing the slope of a crater, the second, from 2005, showing that something had created a gully in the crater's side.

What could it be?  The researchers at the time said they thought it could be water, spurting from underground and freezing as it slid down the crater wall.  But today a second team says...maybe not.

To review: Here's that image from 1999:

And here's the second, of exactly the same spot, six years later:

Tantalizing, no?  “We are talking about liquid water that is present on Mars right now," said Ken Edgett, the scientist who led the analysis, at the time.  "It could be acidic water, it could be briny water, it could be water carrying all types of sediment, it could be slushy--but H2O is involved." 

But now, Jon D. Pelletier and colleagues at the University of Arizona in Tucson have reexamined that crater wall, using higher-resolution imagery from a newer probe, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  They've also done some computer modeling, and they conclude that a small landslide -- sand or gravel -- is a better explanation for what the orbiting cameras saw.  The deposit could have some liquid in it, but water would spread slightly differently as it came down the slope, especially at the bottom.

Take a look at the newer picture, and the Arizona team's interpretation of it:

I traded e-mails with Pelletier and with Alfred McEwen, one of his co-authors.  "If it was bright due to water ice it should have disappeared in the summer or at least changed shape if being resupplied somehow, but instead it had the identical outlines after a full summer," McEwen wrote.

"I was surprised," says Pelletier. "I started off thinking we were going to prove it's liquid water."  The team is publishing its conclusions in the journal Geology; the abstract is HERE.

To a lot of people this finding may feel disappointing; many scientists studying Mars will openly admit they want to find water there.  But as MeEwen wrote, "we should always be skeptical, especially about a brand-new observation and preliminary interpretations."

February 29, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (36) | TrackBack (0)

The Environment? Is That an Election Issue?

February 27, 2008 7:38 AM

It's part of my job to be on a lot of organizations' mailing lists.  This mailing came from the Sierra Club:

"Two weeks ago John McCain was the only Senator to duck a crucial vote on the future of clean energy in America -- dooming to failure the measure that would have helped make renewable energy more affordable and accessible. Now it turns out this missed vote is part of a pattern.

"Last week, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released the 2007 National Environmental Scorecard giving Senator McCain a score of ZERO. According to the scorecard, McCain was the only member of Congress to skip all 15 crucial environmental votes scored by LCV."

Elections are complicated for many interest groups, which lose tax-free status if they get involved in political campaigns.  The Sierra Club has long had a different arrangement, which is why it already has a list of congressional endorsements (look HERE), and took that swing at Sen. McCain.

The League of Conservation Voters, which it cites, is one of those groups that rates Senators and Representatives for how closely their floor votes matched the interests of the interest group.  But it's somewhat more charitable in its characterization of the candidates:

"The presidential candidates' scores all suffered from the occupational hazard of absenteeism.  Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.) missed four votes each in 2007, although both made a point of being on hand for the key vote that would have allowed a version of the energy bill to move forward that included a provision to repeal billions of dollars in tax breaks for big oil and put that money toward clean energy programs.  Clinton’s score in 2007 was 73 percent (87 percent lifetime); Obama’s was 67 percent (86 percent lifetime).

"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil -- a measure that failed by only one vote."

More from them HERE.  And you can go HERE to see how the people you sent to Washington voted on environmental issues.

Just for contrast, the National Taxpayers Union, which obviously has different issues on its priority list, gave Sen. McCain an 88% rating -- and a grade of "A" -- for 2006.  Sens. Obama and Clinton got 18% and 17% respectively, both good for grades of "F."

The LCV does say it wishes reporters would ask environmental questions: "In 190 interviews and debates, TV’s top five political talk show hosts have asked only 8 questions about one of the greatest challenges of our time – global climate change."

Meanwhile, as we reported back on Feb. 6, the push for a debate on science-technology issues continues to gather support from university presidents.  But not from the candidates.

February 27, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (32) | TrackBack (0)

Phone of the Future

February 26, 2008 12:34 PM

The Nokia Research Center, working with the University of Cambridge, is showing off a cell phone shaped like -- well, shaped like whatever you want it to be shaped like.

It bends.  It twists.  It stretches.  You can wear it as a bracelet, or flatten it out and use it as a keyboard.  It does this without a mess of hinges.  And it won't even get dirty; it's self-cleaning.  The key is nanotechnology, which allows an object's structure to change at the molecular level.

According to Nokia, "Nanotechnology enables materials and components that are flexible, stretchable, transparent and remarkably strong. Fibril proteins are woven into a three dimensional mesh that reinforces thin elastic structures. Using the same principle behind spider silk, this elasticity enables the device to literally change shapes and configure itself to adapt to the task at hand."

The makers call their phone the Morph, and the design is considered cool enough that it's going on display this week at New York's Museum of Modern Art.

Just one minor detail: the phone doesn't really exist yet.  It's one of those concept designs that may lead to great things, or never reach the market.

For now, it's limited by battery technology, issues of expense, and a million other things.  Nokia has put together a very pretty ANIMATION of how a nanotech phone might work, but you may find it appealing because of its low-tech feel.

Still, it prompts a million ideas -- of a multipurpose device that recharges in sunlight, shrinks to fit on your ear or spreads out on a table, and does countless other things of which we cannot yet conceive. 

(By the way, poke around the Modern Art online exhibit; you may find things you think are even cooler.)

February 26, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (26) | TrackBack (0)

Clean Kill

February 25, 2008 12:26 PM

The Defense Department this morning reports that not only did it hit that disabled spy satellite last week, it pulverized it, including its fuel tank. 

The operations center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is reported to be tracking about 3,000 pieces of debris, none larger than a football.  That debris would mostly be following the decaying orbit the satellite was following, which means that most of it should burn up in the atmosphere in a few weeks.  What little danger there was to anyone on the ground is over.

Their statement is HERE; key paragraphs below:

"The Department of Defense announced today that based on debris analysis, officials are confident the missile intercept and destruction of a non-functioning National Reconnaissance Office satellite, achieved the objective of destroying the hydrazine tank and reducing, if not eliminating, the risk to people on Earth from the hazardous chemical.

"By all accounts this was a successful mission. From the debris analysis, we have a high degree of confidence the satellite's fuel tank was destroyed and the hydrazine has been dissipated," said Gen. James E. Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff....

"A single modified tactical Standard Missile-3 (SM-3), fired from the USS Lake Erie was used to engage the satellite. The remaining two modified missiles will be configured back to their original status as tactical missiles and the operational computer software programs aboard the Aegis ships will be re-installed.

"The Joint Functional Component Command for Space Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., is tracking less than 3,000 pieces of debris, all smaller than a football. The vast majority of debris has already reentered or will shortly reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the coming days and weeks. To date, there have been no reports of debris landing on Earth and it is unlikely any will remain intact to impact the ground."

There's been little reaction since the successful hit last week.  But on the way to looking for what there was, I tripped across this from the "People's Weekly World," which describes itself having a "special relationship" with the Communist Party in America:

"The interception of a 'disabled spy satellite' by a Pentagon missile is worrying some countries that see it as a poorly disguised attempt to test an anti-satellite weapons system. The Pentagon missile launch Thursday amounted to an unprecedented demonstration to the world that the U.S. can take out spacecrafts launched by other nations."

On the flip side, take a look at a column by Vincent Massaro in The Independent Florida Alligator.  "We did it!" he writes.  He continues, "the need to search and the need to destroy address the same issue: the need to retain superiority over other countries."

====================

UPDATE, Monday Evening:

One of you commented that we hadn't heard from the Union of Concerned Scientists...so I got curious and checked.  Turns out they posted a statement on Feb. 20, before the satellite was taken out:

"'The potential political cost of shooting down this satellite is high,' said Laura Grego, an astrophysicist with UCS's Global Security Program. 'Whatever the motivation for it, demonstrating an anti-satellite weapon is counterproductive to U.S. long-term interests, given that the United States has the most to gain from an international space weapons ban. Instead, it should be taking the lead in negotiating a treaty.'"

Full text HERE.

February 25, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

The Fate of the Gray Wolf

February 21, 2008 2:04 PM

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that the gray wolf in the northern Rockies "is thriving and no longer requires the protection of the Endangered Species Act."  The Interior Department says there are now 1,500 wolves roaming free in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. 

The wolves, which once ranged from Mexico to the Arctic, all but disappeared by the 1930s.  They were listed as an endangered species in 1973.  In 1995, amid great controversy, wolves from Canada were released in the region, and now, says the government, there are at least 100 breeding pairs in the area.

A quote from Lynn Scarlett, Deputy Secretary of the Interior: "The wolf population in the Northern Rockies has far exceeded its recovery goal and continues to expand its size and range. States, tribes, conservation groups, federal agencies and citizens of both regions can be proud of their roles in this remarkable conservation success story."  Find more HERE, and the actual rule, proposing that state governments take over, HERE.

Local people, especially ranchers, have been pushing for the government to do what it did today.  They complain about wolves threatening their livestock; now, if the decision stands, they'll be allowed to hunt them.

But not so fast, say environmental groups.  “The decision to remove protections for wolves is premature. We still have a long way to go before wolf populations are sustainable over the long term. This is like declaring victory at mile eighteen in a marathon,” says Melanie Stein of the Sierra Club.  They had been expecting today's decision, and had their responses -- as well as legal petitions -- at the ready.

Take a look as well at what's been posted by the National Wildlife Federation.

And contrast it with an editorial last month in the Idaho Statesman: "As the wolf population continues to increase -- actually explode -- so do concerns about conflicts." The paper, like many of its readers, expresses distrust of Washington bureaucrats making decisions from afar.

The issue is really more nuanced than left-vs.-right.  But how you feel about the gray wolf, it's been suggested, can depend on where you live, how you vote, how you interpret Genesis.  Are you a rancher or a city-dweller?  Do you think of humans mostly as having domain over the earth, or having an obligation to be stewards of it? 

February 21, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (76) | TrackBack (0)

Earthset

February 20, 2008 4:53 PM

Since October, a Japanese space mission called Kaguya has been orbiting the moon, taking all sorts of measurements and sending back pictures.  It gets little notice here, considering that the U.S. sent its first Lunar Orbiters in 1966.

But that was before HDTV.  Kaguya -- actually an orbiter accompanied by two relay satellites -- is equipped with a high-def camera, which has sent back images like the one above.  Click HERE for a larger version, and HERE for other, less colorful ones.

Looks like something a special effects artist would create, doesn't it?

(Image credit: JAXA/NHK.  Hat tip to Science@NASA for pointing this out.)

February 20, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (6) | TrackBack (0)

The Realm of the Tunicates

February 19, 2008 5:44 PM

The Aurora Australis, a research ship operated by the Australian Antarctic Division, has just come back from the Southern Ocean with some remarkable findings.  It lowered a robot submersible to depths of more than 6,000 feet, and found that even there, in waters off the coast of Antarctica, the ocean pulsates with life.

Up to a quarter of the species seen, according to the expedition leaders, were new to science.  There were strange white spider-like creatures wafting by. 

"We saw giant worms, giant crustaceans, giant sea spiders," said Martin Riddle, the head of the expedition. "In other places things scraped bare and barren by iceberg scour. So a huge diversity of life, very colorful, very rich, far exceeding any of our expectations."

A tunicate, by the way, is a delicate glass-like animal, which survives by consuming plankton.  The ones in the picture above are three feet tall; much smaller versions can be found in oceans elsewhere.  Sea creatures often grow unusually large in polar regions.

We've put together a slide show, which you can find HERE if you haven't seen it.  And there's more HERE from the Australian government, which conducted a census of the Southern Ocean along with Japanese and French scientists.

Some of the most striking images showed -- nothing.  In many places along the ship's path, the ocean floor had been scraped bare by the bottoms of passing icebergs.  A reminder that this is a very alien place.

February 19, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (10) | TrackBack (0)

'Expelled'

February 19, 2008 7:25 AM

This is not an evolution blog -- honest -- but the issue keeps coming back.

Ben Stein, the TV personality, writer, actor, lawyer, economist, and speechwriter for Presidents Nixon and Ford, has now joined the debate, with a film called "Expelled."  In it, he talks to various academicians who say they were punished for taking positions doubting Darwin and promoting creationism or Intelligent Design.

The film won't be released until April, but it's been setting fires for months.  Last year several advocates of the theory of natural selection (including Richard Dawkins, the author of "The God Delusion") said they felt misled when they were contacted for interviews; Dawkins thought he was to appear in a documentary called "Crossroads," from Rampant Films, and only later did it morph into "Expelled," from Premise Media.

In October Stein raised a hackle or two when he wrote, "Darwinism, perhaps mixed with Imperialism, gave us Social Darwinism, a form of racism so vicious that it countenanced the Holocaust against the Jews and mass murder of many other groups in the name of speeding along the evolutionary process."

At HumanEvents.com, Gary Bauer, the former presidential candidate and head of American Values, now writes that the film "shockingly exposes the blatant hypocrisy of the scientific establishment."  Find it HERE.

Bauer writes, "The great irony of the entire evolution/ID debate is that it is the atheists whose views are rooted in blind faith (in Darwinism), while those scientists who suggest the existence of an “intelligent design” to the universe have had to embrace the mantle of free inquiry to do so."

Biola University, a Christian school in La Mirada, Calif., has announced it will give Stein its Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth.  They laud him for uncovering "an elitist scientific establishment that punishes the scientific proponents of Intelligent Design because they reject some of the claims of Darwin’s theory of evolution."

Gary Stix, blogging at Scientific American's website, replies, "What can only be hoped is that a trenchant critical response by journalistic and science publishing institutions (and, of course, the blogging community)--will suffice so that Ben Stein never gets funding to make an Expelled II."

The film's subtitle is "No Intelligence Allowed."  Pun presumably intended.

February 19, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (235) | TrackBack (0)

Shuttle to Stay Out of Spy Satellite's Way

February 15, 2008 6:27 PM

ABC's Gina Sunseri, covering the current shuttle mission from Houston, reports that in order to get Atlantis on the ground and out of the Defense Department's way, it will activate the landing strips at both the Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base in California on Wednesday, when the shuttle is scheduled to land.

This is not standard procedure.  To save expense and trouble, NASA usually only brings up KSC on the first landing day, and if the weather interferes, they wait.  It's actually cheaper to let the astronauts orbit for an extra day than it is to have landing crews at the ready at Edwards, and then ship a shuttle all the way across the country to Florida.  At last count, a California landing cost NASA an extra $1.7 million.

Atlantis, orbiting somewhat higher and in a very different orbit from USA 193, is not actually "in the way" of potential debris if the Navy's missile works, but shuttles have been dinged by small pieces of space junk before, and, well, things have gotten complicated enough. 

Look HERE for NASA's map of the shuttle/Space Station orbital track, and HERE for Heavens-Above's unofficial track of the spy satellite.

February 15, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

How to Down a Wayward Satellite

February 15, 2008 1:40 PM

ABC's Luis Martinez reports the following new details on how the Navy would try to intercept USA-193, the disabled reconnaissance satellite the Pentagon announced yesterday it would try to destroy before it re-enters the atmosphere:

-- The total cost of the operation to hit the satellite is $74 million.  Three SM-3 missiles have been modified for this mission at a cost of $10 million each.  For comparison, the first test of an SM-3 fired from a destroyer last June cost $50 million.

-- The first missile will be fired from the cruiser USS Lake Erie. Two destroyers will also be a part of the mission and each will be equipped with back-up missiles. 

-- The ships will be operating in waters west of the Hawaiian island of Kauai, mainly because that is where the Navy's missile tests take place  Therefore, all the clearances, procedures and authorizations are already in place.

-- The seven or eight day window for launching the missile at the satellite begins Sunday, Feb. 17.  However, the Navy will not fire the missile until after the shuttle Atlantis returns to earth on Feb. 20. 

One extra point: there have been a lot of posts, some joking and others not, about where the remains of the satellite might land.  The government's problem is that it doesn't know.  The density of the upper atmosphere varies constantly because of temperature, solar wind, and other factors.  NOAA actually runs a Space Weather Prediction Center; find more HERE.

==============

UPDATE, Friday evening:

ABC's Gina Sunseri, covering the current shuttle mission from Houston, reports that in order to get Atlantis on the ground and out of the Defense Department's way, it will activate the landing strips at both the Kennedy Space Center and Edwards Air Force Base in California on Wednesday, when the shuttle is scheduled to land.

This is not standard procedure.  To save expense and trouble, NASA usually only brings up KSC on the first landing day, and if the weather interferes, they wait.  It's actually cheaper to let the astronauts orbit for an extra day than it is to have landing crews at the ready at Edwards, and then ship a shuttle all the way across the country to Florida.

Atlantis, orbiting somewhat higher and in a very different orbit from USA 193, is not actually "in the way" of potential debris if the Navy's missile works, but shuttles have been dinged by small pieces of space junk before, and, well, things have gotten complicated enough. 

(Above: ABC News graphic, based on drawing from GlobalSecurity.org.)

February 15, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (78) | TrackBack (0)

Look Out Above: Spy Satellite in Plain Sight

February 14, 2008 5:37 PM

"Deep Black" is the time-honored shorthand used for America's second space program -- the one the involves secret spy satellites.  William Burrows, a writer and professor at New York University, wrote a book by that title 20 years ago.

For the moment, part of Deep Black is very much in the open.  An American intelligence satellite, having broken down shortly after launch in 2006, is quickly losing altitude, and the Bush Administration is being very public about its plans to destroy the satellite before anything hits the ground.

How secret a satellite is this?  SpaceWeather.com says you can see it with the naked eye as a slow-moving star -- and has posted photographs of it taken by enthusiasts.  Look HERE for a time-lapse movie shot by Friedrich Deters from LaGrange, North Carolina.  (Don't be distracted by the bright dots of stars and planets--the satellite, says Deters, is the vertical streak moving downward in the center of the frame.)

Want to take your own shots?  Heavens-Above allows you to track the satellite, as well as many other objects in orbit.  Log on if you like, or click on "Select your location," and you'll get a map and sighting predictions.

These folks are not revealing big secrets that other countries can't figure out for themselves.  (An alleged Chinese spy was arrested earlier this week.)  As for what the satellite was for, we'll leave that to the people at John Pike's GlobalSecurity.org.

(Air Force photo of the 2006 launch of the satellite via GlobalSecurity.org)

February 14, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (14) | TrackBack (0)

Sick in Space

February 13, 2008 4:02 PM

In December 1968, on the first day of the first flight ever by astronauts to orbit the Moon, Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman became unexpectedly nauseated -- and the whole world soon knew about it.  Borman felt better the next day, and the flight went on to make history.

Back then, Borman's motion sickness was a matter of mystery.  Previous astronauts had reported nothing -- partly because their ships were too small for them to move around a lot and get queasy, partly because they kept their mouths shut for fear they'd never fly again.

Now, almost 500 men and women have been in space, and it's been well-documented that about half of them suffer from "space adaptation syndrome."  NASA plans around it.  Space Shuttle crews typically go to bed about five hours after launch; a docking with the Space Station doesn't happen until day three of most flights. 

But after years without trouble, something happened on the current flight, STS-122, to interfere with the best-laid plans.  My ABC colleagues asked me to help explain why it became a quandary.

Mission manager John Shannon reported there was "a medical issue," requiring that German astronaut Hans Schlegel be replaced on the mission's first spacewalk by crewmate Stanley Love -- but NASA wouldn't say what the illness was, or even whether it was Schlegel who was ill. 

It's a thorny little issue.  On the one hand, astronauts do something very public, and carry out missions paid for from public money.  When something happens that affects a mission -- this one is being extended a day because of the illness -- it would seem at first blush as if that ought to be public information.

On the other hand, they are entitled to a modicum of privacy, aren't they?  How would you feel if half the solar system knew you were throwing up or had a fever?

So NASA, since the early 1970s, has refused to comment on the health of individual astronauts.  Since then, medical privacy laws have kicked in as well.  You can find some thoughts HERE from Dr. Chuck Berry, the flight surgeon during the early years.

Schlegel, in an interview from orbit yesterday, said, "I feel really great right now. I'm, of course, a little bit anxious because tomorrow will be my first EVA."  As for his health, "That's all I want to say because medical issues are private."

Most of us would tend to agree with him...but the European Space Agency, whose Columbus laboratory is being added to the space station on this mission, has slightly different rules than NASA.  It posted this NOTE on its own website, and a controller in Germany radioed to the shuttle crew:

“Tell Hans to get better. We are keeping our fingers crossed he will feel better soon.”

He does now.  Today, as planned, he went on the mission's second space walk.

(NASA-TV image of Schlegel in the Space Station airlock.)

February 13, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (11) | TrackBack (0)

A Star Field is Born

February 12, 2008 1:48 PM

Far away, in the summer constellation Scorpius, is a region known as Rho Ophiuchi.  It is a place where stars are being born. 

It is distant by human standards, but by astronomical measures, it is right in the neighborhood -- only about 500 lightyears away.  It is the closest star nursery that we know of.

Now the Spitzer Space Telescope has provided a very beautiful view of it.

Click HERE for a high-resolution version of the image, and HERE for background information from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"The colors in this image reflect the relative temperatures and evolutionary states of the various stars," says the CfA. "The youngest stars are surrounded by dusty disks of gas from which they, and their potential planetary systems, are forming. These young disk systems show up as red in this image. More evolved stars, which have shed their natal material, are blue."

Since the Spitzer observes principally infrared light, the image we see is quite different from what the human eye would.  We would see white on black -- and we would see much less detail, obscured by the dust and gas around the newborn stars.

What will those stars be like?  Will there be worlds around them?  For now, it's best just to enjoy a distant image.

February 12, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (17) | TrackBack (0)

The Changing Face of America

February 11, 2008 1:13 PM

"If current trends continue," says the Pew Research Center, "the population of the United States will rise to 438 million in 2050...and 82% of the increase will be due to immigrants arriving from 2005 to 2050 and their U.S.-born descendants...."

The full report, "U.S. Population Projections: 2005-2050," released today, is HERE.  Click on the graph to make it slightly clearer.

Other points they make:

"--The Latino population, already the nation’s largest minority group, will triple in size and will account for most of the nation’s population growth from 2005 through 2050. Hispanics will make up 29% of the U.S. population in 2050, compared with 14% in 2005.

"--The non-Hispanic white population will increase more slowly than other racial and ethnic groups; whites will become a minority (47%) by 2050.

"--The nation’s elderly population will more than double in size from 2005 through 2050, as the baby-boom generation enters the traditional retirement years. The number of working-age Americans and children will grow more slowly than the elderly population, and will shrink as a share of the total population."

The opening phrase is key, of course -- "If current trends continue" -- but if they do, they suggest a more diverse and older America. 

(Graph from Pew Research Center.)

February 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (133) | TrackBack (0)

Jack McWethy

February 07, 2008 2:23 PM

Those of us who knew him feel a bit empty today.  John McWethy covered the Pentagon, the State Department, a million diplomatic missions and too many wars, and the gravity of what he was doing never went to his head.  He was a solid, low-key, genuinely nice man.

Now he is gone, all too young, and those of us who counted him as a friend are at a loss.  He lived a purposeful life.  He affected his times for the better. 

It occurs to me that some visitors to this site -- those of you who are younger, perhaps, or even some of you who watched our broadcasts before Jack retired four years ago -- may not register just who he was.  He'd probably take no offense.  Reporting the story was more important to him.  We are the richer for it.

February 7, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9) | TrackBack (0)

A Presidential Debate on Science?

February 06, 2008 2:47 PM

It's safe to come out now.  Super Tuesday is over. 

Many of the country's most prominent scientists and universities, though, have signed on to an effort to host "a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy."  See their website HERE.

"From global warming and energy independence to developing vaccines to emerging diseases, scientific issues will be critically important to the continued vitality of our nation and the health of our people," writes William Chameides of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke.  "We cannot afford to elect the next president without having a clear understanding of his or her grasp of the scientific issues confronting society and of the policies he or she would implement in response to new scientific information."

Donald Kennedy, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal SCIENCE, has signed on: "Get your questions ready!" (A summary is HERE; full text is by subscription only.)

But the editors of NATURE disagree.  In tomorrow's edition they warn against "turning a presidential campaign into a reality-TV version of 24..."  (See full text HERE.)  Candidates need to be well-informed, and scientific knowledge may be critical, but a debate?

"Take the key issue of climate change, which is at the top of the science debate list," say the editors. "The Bush administration's self-interested denialism and subsequent heel-dragging have infuriated informed opinion at home and abroad. But this anger, widely felt by scientists and others, should not lead us to raise science above other concerns out of a sense of slight."

For all the accusations of the "war on science" waged by the current White House (Hillary Clinton's version is HERE), one of the world's leading scientific journals just took quite a slap at some of its own readers.

February 6, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (116) | TrackBack (0)

Robo Cops

February 04, 2008 11:38 AM

On West End Avenue in New York there's an automated camera on a post in a sturdy metal housing, meant to catch drivers if they jump the light a hundred feet away. At times, when I've been in a bad mood, I've fantasized about covering the lens in the middle of the night with spray paint.

Understand that this camera has never nailed me.  By sheer luck, I've never had a traffic ticket at all (though I presume that by posting this, I'll end my streak).   I just resent that all-seeing camera, catching people without their even knowing it.  No traffic cop needed. The system just mails the ticket to the guilty driver in the picture.

In Knoxville, a man named Clifford Clark appears to have acted on my fantasy in a more emphatic way than I might have.  He was arrested for firing three shots at a camera on Broadway St.

Patrick Bedard, in his Car and Driver column, uses Mr. Clark's story to launch a screed against the tyranny of, as he puts it, being "governed by robots."  (The article is not yet online.)

"This is not about running red lights," Bedard writes.  "Camera enforcement is a revenuing scheme that depends on an end run around the fundamental American principle of innocent until proven guilty."

My ABC friend Lisa Stark reports on a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (click HERE and see p. 4), showing that speeders actually slow down because of traffic cameras.  But that doesn't go to the moral question that gets Bedard so mad.

Take the case, he says, of Tim Alstrom, a city council member in Aberdeen, Wash., who got a $101 ticket in the mail because a camera had photographed him running a light at three in the morning -- a hundred miles away, in Seattle.  The picture was blurred and showed a Honda Alstrom didn't own.  He did what cities count on people not to do: go to the trouble to fight the ticket. He drove four hours round-trip to Seattle.  He won the case, but lost a day doing it.

Since then, Aberdeen's city council has voted 6-5 to install its own red-light cameras, though the town's mayor has not, er, green-lighted the project.  (Alstrom voted no.)  Seattle, in a year testing cameras at four intersections, mailed out 14,000 tickets and collected $900,000 in fines.

The Daily World, Aberdeen's local paper, quotes City Attorney Eric Nelson in favor of the cameras: “There is a real animosity toward the notion of big brother taking pictures of you,” Nelson said. “A camera’s no different than a person. A police officer can be in a public place and watch what you do, but somehow if you use a camera instead of a police officer, people start getting really weirded out.”

February 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (13) | TrackBack (0)

'Across the Universe'

February 01, 2008 2:43 PM

"Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world...."

That's from the Beatles' "Across the Universe."  Monday, 40 years after they recorded it, NASA will send it...across the universe. 

It's part publicity stunt, part nostalgia, part anniversary celebration.  The space agency tries hard to reach people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in space.  NASA claims it's also taking the moment to celebrate its own fiftieth anniversary, the fiftieth anniversary (yesterday) of the first American satellite, and the 45th anniversary of the Deep Space Network, which it uses to communicate with interplanetary probes.

At 7 p.m., EST Monday (midnight, Greenwich Mean Time), one of the great dish antennae near Madrid, Spain, will transmit an mp3 file of the song in the direction of Polaris, the North Star.  Traveling at the speed of light, the signal will take 431 years to get there. 

"Send my love to the aliens," said Sir Paul McCartney in a statement released by NASA. "All the best, Paul."

You can find all sorts of versions of the song, authorized or otherwise.  There's a YouTube video HERE, a  Wikipedia article HERE, and so on.

It may seem a bit un-technological, or lowbrow, or something, for NASA to give even the little time it's given to this little project.  And yet...and yet....

If there were intelligent beings on a planet orbiting another star, and they had technology similar to ours,  and they looked in our direction, they would miss us.  They would see the Sun, a pretty average yellow star,  with perhaps one or two planets, Jupiter and maybe Saturn.  Earth, less than eight thousand miles in  diameter, would be too small to show up. 

They would not pick up our television broadcasts either; we don't transmit in ways that get very far.  It's  an urban legend -- a terrific one, but a legend -- that the first thing aliens will see of us is a rerun of  "I Love Lucy."

But here's a transmission that stands a chance of traveling, not across the universe, but at least across a part of space.  The odds are low that any beings out there will detect it -- they don't call it space for nothing -- it still....

Will someone out there have radio like ours?  Will they be able to decipher the signal?  What might they think?  Is this how we on this little blue planet want to be known?

"Nothing's gonna change my world,
Nothing's gonna change my world...."

Of course, back in 1972, NASA launched Pioneer 10 to fly past Jupiter and on out of the Solar System, and on it was that famous plaque of a man and a woman, both nude, with encoded information on where to find the ship's makers.  It provoked a parody: a drawing of a man and a woman, both well-dressed, holding the plaque next to the crashed spacecraft and saying, "The people on Earth appear to be the same as we are on Jupiter, except that they don't wear any clothes."

February 1, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)