Uncategorized Archives ~ Page 4 of 11 ~ From The Stratosphere

Darker Days Ahead

By hsrivney | December 11, 2016

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Hang in there, the solstice is coming. You might not notice it at first, but around December 22 we have our shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, although not usually the coldest. Those come in January for most of us. And then the days mercifully begin to last a little longer and a little longer, lifting depression and signaling the coming of Spring.

If you’re a scientist like me, and I assume most of you are at least hobbyists, you want the truth, up front, bad news or good. You value that science and knowledge sets us apart from the ignorant, superstitious, unnatural world view for which we’ve lived with most of our evolutionary days, which, depending on when you decide to call our species ‘human’ is, somewhere between a million and a hundred thousand years ago.

We are forcing humans into unnatural selection these days. If you’d like to read about it in depth, I recommend a book by Juan Enriquez, “Evolving Ourselves”, available in the customary locations worldwide.

We have pigeonholed ourselves away from even the smallest resemblances of our original existence. Babies are born by C-section, antibiotics kill every microbe we want to destroy, and the toxins of pollution are starting to express their effects in the newest generations, such as autism, allergies, and shorter life spans. Our immune systems are coddled, our drudgery’s solved, artificial daylight rules, and our food is wrapped in plastic.

I am still hopeful in this new age of corporate control that science will last, because it doesn’t change except to uncover a deeper truth. If it’s found incorrect, its duty and obligation is to correct itself. Facts remain despite any objections, propaganda, denial, or wishful thinking. When you make decisions in your life, inform yourself from reliable sources, be skeptical of wild claims and extraordinary declarations. Look for the facts, the proof, the evidence. In this way, you promote the brain over the brawn, the science over fiction, the future over the past.

Wishing you peace and warmth as the sunlight returns to generate life on Earth. (For those of you on the other side of the equator, read this again in June when it applies on your half of the planet.)

PUPPIES

By hsrivney | November 20, 2016

laika On a lighter note, I thought maybe you’d like to know a few tidbits about dogs. A dog was the first animal sent into space on behalf of humans, a Soviet dog named Laika, sent on Sputnik 2 in November of 1957. It may not be such a lighter note since Laika perished in orbit about four hours after launch, despite the initial reports from Moscow that reported she stayed alive several days. Her death was likely stress from the launch and the high heat of the space capsule that transferred into the cabin.

Not a large dog, she was a vagabond picked up off the street, not a pure bred dog. She and two others were prepared for the trip by spending time in a centrifuge, being kept in decreasingly smaller cages, and dressed in vests covered in heavy sensors and transmitters. Yes, a dog was the first living thing to leave the planet Earth alive.

So if you’re considering bringing home a pet for the holidays, a rescue dog can be a legend, a ‘caninonaught’, or a great friend that will steal your heart. Before you bring a pet home, be sure all family members agree on the care and maintenance for the new member of the family. Learn about dog care, training, and health. Don’t skimp on veterinary visits, and consider a puppy or dog will be at least a ten year commitment. If you’re lucky, they will be a companion for much longer and a permanent piece of your life, heart, and memories.

And now here’s your cute puppy stamp. beagle

Homochirality – the foundation of life

By hsrivney | November 15, 2016

This is interesting as hell if you are a geek. If you’re too busy ranting about the election, sitting in front of a game console, or watching soaps, go ahead and skip this post. For those of you still with me, we’re talking about the subject of my first novel, PARADOX. We’re talking about chemicals, DNA, atoms, and the forces that make the world go round.

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The image above is the molecule LIMONENE. A molecule is a compound of atoms, remember, which are the smallest units of a single element. A center has the neutrons and protons, and in shells around the nucleus zing the electrons. Molecules, like atoms, are three dimensional things. Think of them as Tinkertoys, it helps.

Water is a molecule, made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. It is always the same no matter how it combines because the two hydrogen atoms always sit in the outermost shell of the oxygen atom. That will never change.

Most molecules are chiral. They can exist only if the atoms hook up together in the correct order at the correct electron. DNA is one of those molecules. You’ve all seen an illustration showing the twisting molecule, sometimes two meters long, all scrunched up into a microscopic package – it’s truly amazing. All biological DNA but for a few archaic bacteria twist to the right.

Huh? Th glow-dna e only way I can explain it is this: The strips of DNA in the foreground are spiraling down FROM the right in the picture. If you see a drawing of the strips in the foreground going left, it is drawn incorrectly. But that’s not what the post is about. What I want to explain is how it got like this and why it’s important. The geeky part is coming, hang in there.

IT MATTERS which way the thing goes, because if you take a look at the LIMONE molecule above, if it chirals to the left, (L or S) it smells and tastes like lemons. If it spirals to the right (R or D) it smells and tastes like oranges. The molecule cannot match up with it’s own mirror image in 3D. Your hands are like that. The palms can meet, but that is not because they are symmetric. If they were symmetric they would look the same from your viewpoint. Place one over the other in front of you (not palm to palm).They are not mirror images of each other.

Where am I going with this? Remember, salts, minerals, chemicals can and mostly are asymmetrical. All over the world with few exceptions (which I’ll theorize about shortly) amino acids spiral to the right and sugars spiral to the left. In a lab environment, we’ve created compounds that still spiral, but in both directions. Why in nature are these compounds homochiral, but heterochiral in the lab?

soup What mechanism drives the biological compounds to homochirality back in the prebiotic world? If you think back to our atoms and their electrons, could it be that a tiny (really tiny) bit of energy happened to pull the molecule a little one way or the other? It could have just as easily been to the left as to the right. This small imbalance in the two different enantiomers is real and in my humble opinion could have been the result of the direction of planetary motion. Earth revolves counterclockwise around the sun and its own axis. By considering the earlier Earth and its molten core, a bit of centrifugal motion may have been the magic ingredient to push biology one direction or another.

I’m at the really geeky part now. If this might be true, then it might be true that on Venus, which spins clockwise on its axis, lifeforms would have the opposite chirality. And here is something we don’t know. How long ago did Venus flip? Most likely, it was early on when the solar system was forming, and models suggest that it was hit by some planetessimal, possibly the fragment of which became Mercury. Another time for that avenue.

So, if Venus were not such a hot and hostile place, would we be able to eat vegetation that arose there or only if it formed before the planet was kicked over? Are the theoretical life forms on Venus opposite from Earthlings and does their DNA spiral left? Are there both biological creatures – those that developed before the collision and after? Wouldn’t it be a fantastic mission, to land on Venus, pick up some creatures, and find out which way they tick? darwin-soup-252x300

More fodder for my science fiction novels, Paradox is exactly this scenario. The planet around Beta Hydri suffered a collision with a space body and was turned upside down so that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. And the first life forms to develop were similar to Earth – right enantiomer DNA until the planet changed, and then new life forms developed with left enantiomer DNA.

In the last 20 years or so, the classification of biological life forms has itself evolved, and now we have Daredevil Kooky Prince Charles On Friday Goes Surfing. Daredevil stands for DOMAIN, and further divides the kingdoms into Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukarya (this last one holds fungi, plants, and animal kingdoms). Should we find such life forms, on Mars or one of Jupiter’s moons how will we classify them? Do they get their own Domain or Kingdom, will they exhibit the D enantiomer or the L, and why? Finding life on another world is more than exciting, it’s an entirely new science to explore. A hundred years ago there was no job for the pizza delivery man. A hundred years from now, I guarantee we will have exobiologists answering these very questions.

Quakes in Oklahoma?

By hsrivney | November 8, 2016

Damage to home in Pawnee Oklahoma, 9/2016

California is the land of quakes in North America. San Francisco gets an extra shout out for being at one end of a fault line known as San Andreas which runs vaguely northwest to southeast to Los Angeles, at the other end. When you grow up there, you know what to do when the ground begins to shake and the rumble of sound waves try to warn you out of bed or away from a window. You sleep with hard soled slippers next to your bed and keep trash cans full of survival supplies in your garage near the door, so if the building begins to crunch you can walk without stepping on glass and get to your container.

Don’t forget water. You need to keep a lot of water on hand because the old pipes will break and you will be SOL if that happens. Besides thinking about water, I’d get one of those portable device chargers and keep it in the emergency can as well, so you can text to your friends if you’re safe or not. When the thing hits, if you’re a native Californian, you wait before you act. It might just be a 4 or 5, and the epicenter might be anywhere. But sometimes it keeps going, and you realize it’s either closer or more powerful than you first hoped. It could be a 6, and that means you need to get up and stand in the doorway away from windows. Stuff will fall off shelves, roads will crack, a few landslides and lots of broken windows. But still not time to panic.

Then it could become a 7. Now it’s time for those slippers and to head outside if the walls might come down. Don’t forget, it’s time to curse the fact that you didn’t stock up on batteries or take my advice to keep a portable charger in your emergency can. A 7 can be downright exciting as long as you’re not on top of it. Lots of shaking, a few random broken water lines, the gas lines not so exciting, and when roads buckle, not so exciting either.

Yeah, I’m an old hat at riding out quakes. If I was transplanted to Oklahoma, I’d be significantly more terrified of tornadoes. Now those people have to worry about both quakes and tornadoes. Why?

There’s no tectonic plate under Oklahoma like the North American and Pacific plates that bump up against each other underneath California. It’s our need for those portable rechargers. It’s our addiction to electricity. America has worked hard to become energy independent, and hydraulic fracturing is a technology that supports the generation of electricity. It releases natural gas which is used to run turbines that create electricity for the grid. Also called fracking, for short, since 2008 when fracking began to seriously ramp up in Oklahoma, the number of earthquakes over a magnitude 3.0 has risen from 2 to almost 900. Half of all earthquakes over 5.0 have occurred in 2016, which isn’t over yet, in the last 135 years! Think that’s suspicious? The total number of earthquakes over 5.0 in Oklahoma in those 135 years has been 6. So, 3 happened in 134 years, and 3 happened in the last 10 months.

Fracking involves drilling into rock and injecting the hole with water and sand, the sand holding open tiny fissures to let the natural gas escape. That waste water allows the fractures to slip, causing the quakes. So far in 2016, Oklahoma has had 572 – about 2 per day. Coincidence? From 2 in 2008 to 889 in 2015. In fact the largest quake ever recorded in Oklahoma was a 5.8, which occurred just last September.

Humans are changing the face of the planet, even the dermis of the planet, for the sake of electricity. I don’t suggest it’s possible for Americans to make a significant lifestyle change in a short enough period of time to make a difference, but we can certainly see where this voracious appetite for energy is taking us. If we don’t abandon our need for non-renewable sources, (coal and natural gas), and exchange them for clean renewable sources (solar and wind, geothermal and hydro electric), we will find ourselves in dire straights when the planet is severely damaged and the black gold is gone.

Our planet will survive. It’s downright ridiculous for humans to think we can destroy the planet. We can destroy the climate that we love, we can destroy our ecosystem, force thousands of species into extinction, and find ourselves warring over resources, but Earth doesn’t care if we’re here or not. When the dinosaurs ended their 200 million year reign, the Earth didn’t care, and here we are. If they could have made changes to save themselves, would they have let their thirst for power and control shadow the possibilities of extinction? Can we evaluate ourselves and conclude that we have more intelligence than the dinosaurs, and make those changes before it’s too late?

Move Over, Hubble

By hsrivney | November 4, 2016

james-webb-space-telescope A golden telescope is ready to be tested after twenty years under construction. It will be the largest space telescope humans have ever deployed, and it’s scheduled to assume its final position about a million miles away from Earth in 2018. This magnificent feat of engineering will have seven times the light collecting surface of Hubble in addition to having the ability to collect infrared light.

It’s called the James Webb Space Telescope. If the moon was only the size of a jellybean, this telescope could see it, and any heat that it might emit. From its orbit ‘behind’ the earth at a place in space officially called Lagrange Point 2 (see the info graphic), and by maintaining a temperature near absolute zero, the telescope will, among other tasks, be able to penetrate clouds of dust and analyze the atmospheres of exoplanets that have been discovered around nearby stars.

The cost? Almost 9 billion bucks. That’s a lot of money, but it didn’t simply go up in smoke. The money supported high tech and manufacturing jobs for the betterment of man as opposed to more nuclear weapons, wars for oil, and the interest on the national debt, which by itself is over 230 billion dollars annually. Over the course of 20 years, this single project cost less than a third of a single year’s American science budget. When you look at it that way, it’s downright reasonable given its projected lifespan, the information we will gain, and again, the high tech jobs that go with. We spend that money and we have something to show for it.

NASA leads the project, but has considerable support by the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. The 21 foot mirror has to be launched folded and will unfurl once it has endured the launch itself which will take about two weeks! It will be told to open its solar shield, then it must cool down. The last thing ground engineers will do is focus the instrument, and it should begin functioning by Spring of 2019. It carries enough fuel to sustain it for ten years but with typical spacecraft, it will probably function much longer than anyone expects.

I borrowed (stole) this info-graphic from Space dot com that broke the story, and hope if you are interested in more details you’ll go visit them. I’m all about giving credit where it is due, and simply want to bring a little good news to you in light of all the ugly news on the television these recent days. Enjoy, share, and dream.

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