GeekwithEnvy

Science

The Ticking Time Bomb of The U.S

by Leave a Comment

Many of us carry on with our day to day lives completely oblivious to the world outside of our own. Can you really blame us? Human society is built in such a way that we feel increasing pressure to get certain things done. This sense of urgency has has increased over the years as our world has become smaller thanks to technology. We worry about issues at work and at home and in doing so we seldom pay attention to anything else. Thankfully there are a few people who, in their field of study, feel increasing pressure to pay attention to the things we don’t.

We live among giants, supermassive volcanoes threaten our world. In The United States, one such super volcano  sits uncomfortably close. Yellowstone National Park is a bizarre and yet beautiful place with all of it’s world class geological features. Yellowstone is in many ways a natural amusement park filled with geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and fumaroles. We drive in by the hundreds of millions to witness the power of nature every year and many of us don’t even realize were walking around on top of a giant monster.

How is it that we could almost completely miss seeing such a massive volcano? Well, part of the issue is their size, they are so large that they blend in with the land surrounding them. Yellowstone’s caldera is thought to be about 35 by 45 miles wide and only from high up in the sky can we really start to bring the massive volcano into perspective and begin to appreciate it’s size.

Yellowstone Caldera
Yellowstone Caldera Map (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USGS)

 

When can we expect an eruption? Well, as of right now we have no idea. Our best scientists can only guess when it comes to the likelihood of an eruption of one of these supermassive volcanos. The other major concern is how big will the eruption be. A caldera-forming eruption would be the most devastating and would likely have an impact on the entire world. The entire human population would experience long lasting negative effects including major impacts to our food supply. Crops would likely suffer if a significant amount of ash were to enter the atmosphere and surronding lands. The temperature of Earth would change dramatically altering the climate and causing damage on a scale that we are only beginning to understand.

YellowStoneAshMap
YellowStone Ash Impact Map (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USG)

Although currently unpredictable, we can try to make an assumption of when a super volcano may erupt based on it’s past activity. In the case of Yellowstone, we see eruptions occurring at 2.1 million, 1.3 million, and 640,000 years ago. If we used this data to predict the next potential super volcano caldera-forming eruption, we would see a favorable timeframe in approximately 90,000 years from today. However, Yellowstone isn’t the only super volcano in the world.

Yellowstone is one of many super volcanoes around the world. Here is a list of a few more known super volcanoes.

  • Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia.
  • Aira, Japan
  • Long Valley California, U.S.A
  • Valles caldera, New Mexico, U.S.A
  • Lake Taupo, New Zealand

 

Magma Eruption Size Chart
Magma Eruption Size Chart (Credit: U.S. Geological Survey
Department of the Interior/USG)

So, should we worry about these sleeping giants among us? The short answer here is, no. However, knowing that they exist is important and scientists are hard at work trying to understand the geological processes that lead up to such a massive eruption, in hopes of providing us with an early warning. Currently, there is no way to prevent a volcano from erupting, especially a super volcano. We can only  hope that time is on our side and that when the next eruption happens, it’s relatively small and we have a chance to evacuate and prepare.

 

For more information about Yellowstone volcanic activity please visit the official USGS website.

 

Possibly a Big Discovery on Mars

by Leave a Comment

We have been receiving a steady stream of updates from the Mars rover, Curiosity, ever since it left the Earth’s atmosphere and began it’s mission. However, one of the more recent updates, which is being called “earthshaking”, can not be shared at this time.  So what in the world is going on? or to be more precise, what in the Martian world is going on?

Mars
Mars (Source:NASA)

One of Curiosity’s instruments, known as SAM, is able to determine what’s inside a particular sample by analyzing it and then letting us know what it’s made up of. John Grotzinger, who is part of the rover team, has mentioned that they have recently gathered a bit of soil to test with SAM and it has yielded some “Earthshaking”, results.

Unfortunately, we won’t find out exactly what these earthshaking results are until they have confirmed them beyond a shadow of a doubt. After all they don’t want to deliver big news only to have to take it back later and say they were wrong.

The funny thing about scientific discovery is that everybody interprets these sort of things differently. We could very well hear news that a never before seen gas has been found trapped in the soil sample, which would be interesting but not necessarily “earthshaking” to those of us outside the scientific community, with the exception being some of our fellow geeks of course. Either way we remain in state of suspense until we can find out more about whats going on out there. I can’t even begin to speculate myself.

There’s no doubt in my mind that these scientists are basically freaking out about not being able to tell us, and to make things worse, it may be several weeks before we can know. For now we will just have to wait and see what these earthshaking results are and hopefully we are in for a big suprise.

Possibly the Most Distant Object in the Universe and Looking Into the Past

by Leave a Comment

NASA has recently discovered what they think is the most distant object to ever be observed. This object is actually a galaxy named MACS0647-JD and it’s so far away that normally we wouldn’t be able to see it, even with our best telescopes. So, how are we able to see it then? Well, we lucked out, we got a little help from a cluster of galaxies known as MACS J0647+7015. Large celestial objects like galaxies have such large gravitational influence that they can actually distort and bend light passing near them. In the case of MACS J0647+7015, NASA was able to use this gravitational distortion as kind of a deep space magnifying glass. This effect is what enabled NASA to capture the light of this distant galaxy.

Nasa Most Distant Object
Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Postman and D. Coe (STScI) and CLASH Team.

The light of MACS0647-JD has taken nearly 13.3 billion years to reach Earth. We are essentially looking at an object from the theorized beginning of the universe (the big bang). This amazing discovery actually gets me thinking about the distances between objects in space and how long it takes for light to travel between them.

What if we could somehow instantaneously appear 65 million light years away from Earth, and what if we had a telescope with us that was capable of zooming in all the way to the Earth’s surface. Would we see dinosaurs walking the Earth? Theoretically, yes, we should. This raises some fun ideas about what’s possible in the universe. What if we just went a fraction of our first trip away from Earth? Perhaps we only go far enough away to witness the early  beginnings of human civilization and maybe we could just get it all on video. This video would be our exact history, nothing unchanged or lost from our true story. How amazing would that be?

Assuming that in our hypothetical world we can travel to almost any distance, we could actually watch the beginning of our solar system. We could know truly how the Moon was formed and perhaps even watch our solar system form, maybe even watch the Milky Way form. Of course we would need to somehow move our camera closer to the objects we are observing at a relatively quick rate in order to watch the creation of large objects like the Milky Way form in a reasonable amount of time, basically a galactic time lapse. Just a little food for thought.

To see a full article on the new discovery, head over to the official NASA post.

Amazing New Photo From Mars

by Leave a Comment

 
One of the latest images from NASA is a self portrait of Curiosity and by far it is my favorite. Below I have featured a smaller version of the image, you can view the image in it’s full resolution, which I highly recommend, here.

You can see everything in amazing detail, including the logo for the Mars Science Laboratory. It’s hard to wrap your head around this picture. At first glance it’s just an awesome photo from Mars, but once you start to realize that this image is from a completely different planet, a planet which no human has ever set foot, you start to feel different about the martian image.

 

Curiosity Self Portrait
Curiosity Self Portrait (NASA)

 

When we seen landscapes like this we tend to look at it as if it were some random, desolate, place on Earth instead of a planet that at it’s closest known approach was 34.8 million miles (56 million km) miles away from us. Most of the time Mars is much further,  somewhere near 150 million miles (240 million km) away.

There are no cities beyond the mountains and no trees or animals to be found (unless NASA is keeping something from us). It’s not a picture of a volcanic land somewhere along the Pacific Ring of Fire, but rather the view we see photographed is a picture of alien world with human technology as it’s centerpiece. As desolate as it seems, it is still beautiful and inspiring as it stirs up our imagination.

As I look at the full resolution image, I can’t help but look at the ground below Curiosity and ponder the presence of life. It seems that one would only need to dig a hole or flip over a rock to find some type of martian worm or centipede. That red soil must contain some type of bacteria, right? How could it not?

This place looks familiar and in many ways it is. Mars has iron and sulfur core surrounded by molten rock, it also has an outer shell with a heavy coating of iron oxide and volcanic basalt. These are all properties and elements that that can be found on Earth. However, the differenses start to add up rather quickly and then were are reminded again that this is an alien planet, not one of science fiction but one that actually exists. Hopefully one day we will be able to explore this world in person but for now we can all continue to appreciate the efforts of NASA and the Curiosity mission.

Weather Underground

by 1 Comment

 

Are you a weather geek? If you are, chances are you may know about weather underground, but if you don’t your missing out on a great community of fellow weather enthusiasts.wunderground logo

Weather Underground gets its weather data from over 22,000+ personal weather stations which as you can imagine creates some of the most accurate and local weather data you can get. I have been in some locations where a PWS has been within feet of my location. The best part about these Personal Weather Stations (PWS), is that you can become a part of the network. You only need to follow a few simple steps to launch your own PWS.

1. Purchase Weather Station Hardware
2. Placing Your Weather Station to Report Accurate Readings
3. Installation and Configuration of Software
4.Upload Your Data to Weather Underground

For more detailed information on this click here.

Weather Underground offers many maps and different forecasts for just about any of your weather needs including a very customizable live map dubbed the Wundermap, which allows you to adjust things like base reflectivity for radar and live storm cell tracking. Your customized weather page includes lots of information including the ability to change the weather station you get data from with some stations providing updates every few seconds.

Weather Underground also pulls data from other major sources including (ASOS) or Automated Surface Observation Systems which are located at over 2,000 airports and (MADIS) which is managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Add all this together with local web-cams, an amazing photo gallery, weather blogs and videos and you have one of the most complete weather sources on the net. You can find Weather Underground at wunderground.com. You can also get the weather underground app, which is available for both iOS and Android devices.