Category Archives: Current Events

Siccus Silicis. Oh yonder dessicated moon! Why dust thou taunt me?

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Big discovery. A few doors down at The Universe Today there is a report of findings showing that the moon is quite dry. This result is from an interpretation of radar soundings taken by the Japanese lunar probe SELENE.

Given the near proximity of the sun, and lack of any atmosphere, it would be astonishing that any water would be found on the moon, at least in the top few meters. Perhaps there are mineral hydrates in the regolith, but discrete surface water as ice or liquid in the shadows seems a bit of a stretch. Supposedly a trace of water was found by others near the polar regions where the sun angle is always low. 

Comets famously de-gas when they come near the sun. Maybe the moon was blowing a vapor trail too- 3 or 4 billion years ago.

The SELENE radar soundings were used to infer the presence of aqueous reservoirs well below the surface. The results failed to give any evidence of such bodies of water. Given the tumultuous history of the moon, as evidenced by the lava plains and impact activity it has experienced, there has been lots of opportunity for water to sublimate or cook off through fractures in the regolith in the past.

I like and appreciate the Universe Today site. But if I could offer some constructive criticism, they could do with more links to primary references rather than just recursive links to previous Universe Today articles. Actually, more than a few news sites do this.

On a side note, it is worth browsing the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) website to get a feel for the depth of their program.

Dooleysquatt Schwartz and Schmuck PLC

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Looks like the major law firms in the USA are pitching staff overboard. These corporate Zepplins have hit hard times as the money dries up. According to Law Shucks, this year 2,289 people have been laid off from the top tier firms as of this posting. 

It’s prob’ly a good time to getcher self a cheap deevorce, seein’s how there oughtta be a bunch’a hungry attorneys scratchin’ in the gutters.

GOP setting up for a repeat of 1994

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It is interesting to watch the GOP setting up a 2010 slam dunk like a bunch of beach vollyball players. After the House Dems served the bail-out bill across the political net, the House GOP tapped the ball vertically to give the Senate a chance to scramble under it and slam it in the face of president Obama who’s standing next to the net, doe-eyed with optimism.

While Obama is making nice with the GOP by trying to be cooperative, the House Dems load the bill with goodies like ravenous college students load their scuffed melamine plates at an all-you-can-eat salad bar. To the delight of the GOP, they now have a plausibly deniable excuse for being uncooperative with the Obama administration. And the Housed Dems have served it up on a garnished platter.

The GOP leadership exclaims with alligator tears dripping onto their tailored suits, “How can we possibly accept the imposition of such tremendous debt on future generations of Americans? We believe, like Ronald Reagan, that tax cuts are the best stimulus for America.” Harumph, grunt, snort.

The Dem world view is to embrace new ideas and use government as a lever for doing good. The GOP world view is that government is bad, except for defense of property, and the economic Darwinism of the market should determine how civilization is shaped. Liberals tend to be eclectic and less focused on tangible goals. Conservatives tend to be doctrinaire and acquisitive. Obviously, there are exceptions.

President Obama is foolishly assuming that GOPers are just like Dems at heart. If only they could sup together they could find common ground. What the Obama Dems have failed to grasp is that the GOP wants to annex that common ground for their own new subdivision.

The GOP is plainly setting up for a turnaround in the upcoming 2010 midterm election. They are priming their huddled supporters for a campaign of  Limbaugh bile and Hannity disaffection with the Obama administration, in the same manner that Gingrich did in 1994 to the Clinton Administration by riling up the bible-belt like a nest of hornets.

The truth is that the GOP does not share the aspirations annunciated by the Obama Dems. The GOP leadership are more like Mongolian horsemen and the Dems are like a bunch of sod farmers. The only hope the sod farmers have is that the Mongolians will fall off their horses again.

It’s too painful to watch.

Buddy Holly

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I was a grubby little 18 month old Iowa farm toddler, eating dirt and tripping over cow pies when Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper augered into a frozen cornfield near Clear Lake, in northern Iowa. The date was February 3rd, 1959.

The pilot, 21 year old Roger Peterson, took off at 1 AM in light snow flying a 1947 Beechcraft Bonanza. A few minutes later, the aircraft impacted the ground at high speed a few miles from the airport, killing all aboard.  Tommy Allsup and Waylon Jennings, Holly’s backup musicians, were supposed to be on board the plane with Holly. But at the last minute they were pursuaded to give up their seats.

Last night, on the 50th anniversary of the untimely death of Buddy Holly, we went to a dinner theater production of the Buddy Holly Story. It turned out to be quite entertaining. I say “turned out” because in truth I’m not much of a 50’s music fan. Being a serial doofus in the area of music, I didn’t realize that Holly was such a prolific song writer. Wasn’t paying attention.

On a side note, a Beechcraft Bonanza has been flown underneath the Eiffel Tower. It is hard to imagine that permission was given, much less, an insurance policy.

Redoubt’s Rumbling Redux

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The Redoubt volcano along the Cook inlet in Alaska is showing seismic activity according to the Alaska Volcanic Observatory (AVO). Seismic activity may be a precursor to eruption. Dedicated seismic recorders show frequent bursts of activity on the volcano.  The USGS has a website with advice and information aimed at helping people cope with an ashfall. 

In the past, the prevailing winds have carried the ashfall in an easterly direction over and past Anchorage. According to AVO, Redoubt is a stratovolcano located several hundred km west of Anchorage. It has reportedly erupted explosively six times since 1778, with the most recent being in 1989-90.

Note to Wal-Mart:  You may want to stock up the anchorage stores with extra brooms and shopvacs.

The House GOP. Hear Them Squeal!

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Poor GOP. The party of values, Tom DeLay, and Karl Rove. Now that they are the loyal opposition, they seem to have forgotten their time in the sun. Remember the good old days when Majority Leader Tom “The Exterminator” Delay ran roughshod over house Dems? The tide has turned and today they are whining vociferously about the lack of input into legislation.  Should they be surprised at like treatment? Actually, they are not getting like treatment. Boehner and party have been asked to participate in problem solving and, naturally, they have reverted to their rabid, atavistic reflex for eating the liver of any democrat within reach.

US Airways Splashdown on the Hudson

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The Hudson River touchdown of US Airways flight 1549 has been called a miracle by some folks. How these folks would describe the ingestion of a flock of birds in terms of miraculous phenomena has not been disclosed. Whatever it was, the aircrew certainly performed admirably.

If you look at a map of the flight path and note the timing, one minute after the birdstrike the A320 had descended from 4000′ to 2000′. At this phase of flight 1549, the airplane is heavy with fuel, baggage, and people. They are configured for climbout and are navigating in congested airspace at low altitude.  At least one of the pilots has his head on a swivel watching for traffic while the other is monitoring flight control systems.

After the birdstrike, there would be some seconds of confusion where the pilot and first officer would have to analyze the warning annunciators as well as what story the flight instruments are telling them. Loss of power on climbout means a prompt loss of airspeed. Here the pilot and first officer would coordinate their cockpit duties. One pilot will concentrate on flying the airplane while the other would, for instance, focus on an engine restart, declaring an emergency with the tower or TRACON, notify the cabin crew for emergency procedures, etc.

While the pilots are determining what kinds of flight controls they have to work with and what other failures may be unfolding, they have to establish a standard airspeed that will minimize their decent rate. This gives them more time in the air and correspondingly, more landing options.

An airplane does a coordinated turn by banking the wing and tilting the lift vector in the direction of the turn. As you tilt the wing, the force vector acting against gravity becomes smaller and without coordinated input from other controls and a bit of power, the airplane will begin to sink.

The point is that when you bank an aircraft during a deadstick glide, you will increase the sink rate. Looking at the map, the pilot could not afford to lose anymore altitude by attempting to make a gliding turn to Teterboro to get lined up with the runways. They had no choice but to continue straight forward along the direction of the river and hope they could land in the water without dipping a wing and cartwheeling the airplane.

I’d say the aircrew made a series of good decisions.

Martian Swamp Gas

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According to recent reports, space scientists using infrared spectrometers at observatories in Hawaii and Chile have detected low levels of methane in the Martian atmosphere. This finding is consistent with results from as far back as 2003 when several studies reported methane at approximately 45 ppb.  Observers performing the latest work conclude that the observed methane must be of recent origin, given the short half-life of atmospheric methane due to photodegradation. 

The connection of these findings with the possibility of past or present life on Mars has proven irresistable. I’m sure there are group leaders beavering away at mission proposals this very moment based upon these findings.

An explanation that is much less exciting and much more challenging in regard to grant proposals is the abiotic explanation. Here on earth there we have a lesser known and widely overlooked abiotic theory of hydrocarbon origin. Abiotic hydrocarbons are often referred to as primordial and are known to exist in planetary atmospheres elsewhere.

According to John S. Lewis, Physics and Chemistry of the Solar System, 2nd edition, 2004, Elsevier, Inc.,  p. 159, the mole fraction of methane in the atmosphere of Jupiter is 0.001 and for Saturn it is 0.002.  The mole fractions of water are 0.001 and 0.002 respectively. Among heavy atom species, only ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, neon, and argon approach these levels within a factor of 0.5 to 0.1.

Oxygen and carbon are two of the most highly abundant heavy atoms and to see them richly represented as their respective hydrogen compounds isn’t so surprising.

At some point in the formation of the solar system, atomic carbon and atomic hydrogen were cool enough to collide and form molecular methane.  Hydrogen with its larger mole fraction would be expected to dominate bond forming interactions with carbon atoms, forming H-saturated methane.

Given the abundance of methane in the gas giants (and don’t forget the methane atmosphere of Titan)  it is hard to discount that Mars has trapped methane in the vast interstitial spaces of the interior of the planet. Methane is known to form clathrate structures with water, so perhaps the proposed underground reservoir of Martian water is comingled with methane.

I believe we should be exploring Mars. But I am increasingly uncomfortable with this stream of “Entertainment Tonight” titillation coming from NASA in regard to the possibility of life on Mars.  Perhaps our culture isn’t as advanced as we assume. Space exploration has always had a large political prestige component to it. Contractors need new contracts and politicians are always keen to bring funding to their districts.  If it takes our lesser angels to make it work, then so be it.

A Constitution in Need of a Few Revisions

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An article in the Alantic Monthly by Garrett Epps entitled “The Founders Great Mistake” offers some observations on weaknesses in the US constitution regarding the Presidency.  In particular –

The most dangerous presidential malfunction might be called the “runaway presidency.” The Framers were fearful of making the president too dependent on Congress; short of impeachment—the atomic bomb of domestic politics—there are no means by which a president can be reined in politically during his term. Taking advantage of this deficiency, runaway presidents have at times committed the country to courses of action that the voters never approved—or ones they even rejected.

Epps offers several examples of runaway presidency. The example of Andrew Johnson is particularly good-

Andrew Johnson was the next unelected runaway. Politically, he had been an afterthought. But after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson adopted a pro-Southern Reconstruction policy. He treated the party that had nominated him with such scorn that many contemporaries came to believe he was preparing to use the Army to break up Congress by force. After Johnson rebuffed any attempt at compromise, the Republican House impeached him, but the Senate, by one vote, refused to remove him from office. His obduracy crippled Reconstruction; in fact, we still haven’t fully recovered from that crisis.

Epps, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, points out the origin of the mysterious electoral college-

The system that the Framers developed for electing the president was, unfortunately, as flawed as their design of the office itself. When Madison opened discussion on presidential election in Philadelphia, he opined that “the people at large” were the “fittest” electorate. But he immediately conceded that popular election would hurt the South, which had many slaves and few voters relative to the North. To get around this “difficulty,” he proposed using state electors. Electoral-vote strength was based on a state’s total population, not on its number of voters—and the South received representation for three-fifths of its slaves both in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.

The electoral college was merely a scheme to manipulate the weighting of ballots in states with a low fraction of voters among the population. In other words, it was a “duct tape and baling wire fix” to accomodate the slave states embarrassingly low fraction of voting adults. This antebellum artifact should be abandoned in favor of simple vote counting.

The citizens of the USA need to have a better mechanism with which to fire a President who is crooked or incompetent. The provision for impeachment carries a high threshold for activation. A president must engage in some kind of serious malfeasance to provoke the congress to vote for impeachment. But the application of this provision has been very nonlinear. Clinton was impeached for lying about consensual sex. Bush arguably lied or at least tolerated falsehoods leading to the invasion of Iraq and the resulting civil war with tens of thousands of deaths. Depending on the congress for an even application of its powers is a sketchy proposition.

The framers of the constitution did not anticipate the situation where an incompetent president might be elected by “low-information voters”.  A government that has usurped the consensus of the electorate and is allowed to remain in play because of a fixed period of tenure is a government that serves only itself.  This is wrong and we should not stand for it.