And, now the Weather on Mars

So, at last the wait is over, and Innovation Canada’s cool new website is online. You gotta check it out for an example of a news media really trying to use all the tools of the internet to best effect.

And, of course, you’ve gotta check it out to read my article on the weather experiments aboard Mars Phoenix. Developed for the Canadian Arctic, the LIDAR and other instruments are now receiving data from the very cold Martian surface.

If you want to see what the weather is like on Mars, you can check out NASA’s excellent Phoenix website. I’ve been dazzled by how open and transparent NASA is being with this mission. It seems as though as soon as the images and data get back to Earth, they are hitting the web. Perhaps the opportunity is there for some smart people online to make some discoveries before NASA.

TiVo for Astronomers

Supernova are some of the most unpredictable, exciting, and short-lived events in space. But, now some researchers are using a pretty cool technique to rewind the explosion and play it back.

It’s called light echoes, and the group I mention in my National Geographic News article used the technique to find out what kind of supernova Cassiopeia A was.

I first learned about the technique a few years ago from Doug Welch at an astronomy conference. His group at McMaster University in Hamilton has also just had a paper approved for publication where they discuss finding the light echoes of Cassiopeia A and Tycho Brahe’s 1572 supernova.

Mars Phoenix Hopes to Avoid Fiery Landing

In less than two hours (just before 8pm), NASA’s next Mars space mission will land on the rust colored planet.

The Mars Phoenix mission emerged out of the ashes of the failed 1999 Mars Polar Lander Mission, but scientists are confident that the mistakes that doomed the previous lander will not be repeated.

And, to clarify, there is no cool rover in this mission. Instead, scientists have given up breadth for depth. The lander will stay in one spot but has a digging arm and a bunch of chemistry experiments to see if there is any water or organic molecules on Mars.

The Viking missions did similar experiments in the 1970s, but we’ve learned a few things about Mars since then and hope to get better results by asking smarter questions.

Another key element of the Phoenix mission will be a suite of weather instruments made in Canada. Among them is a LIDAR, basically a laser that shoots up into the clouds to see what kind of light bounces back into its telescope. LIDAR is commonly used in the Arctic and Australia, but the team of Canada scientists that built it say this is the first time LIDAR has been used on another planet.

I profiled the Canadian weather instrument package and LIDAR for an article for Innovation Canada, but website overhauls might prevent it from hitting the web in time for the landing.

Personally, I will be on the edge of my seat until we get the first data back from Mars (there’s a 15 minutes lag time, so expect it around 8:10PM EDT). Mars was what got me inspired in science and science writing back in 1997 with Pathfinder and its little rover Sojourner. In 1999, I was very excited to be seeing Mars again and was sorely disappointed with the loss.

I hope we have learned from 1999, and get it right this time. It would be a great early birthday present (my birthday is May 29th).

PI & Pub Night in K-W for Local Science Writers

On Wednesday, June 4th I will be helping to organize the final PI and Pub night of the 2007-2008 season. In essence a group of local science writers come out to the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to listen to a public lecture by some incredibly brilliant person. After the talk, we all head over to the Black Hole Bistro for a drink, a light bite to eat, and some good conversation.

In June we will hear from Bill Phillips, Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1997. His talk will be about time and clocks, and should be very interesting because I believe he is involved with the Clock of the Long Now project.

If you write about science and want to come out to the PI and Pub night, just let me know and I will arrange a ticket.

Water and Chemicals Do Mix – But the Results aren’t Pretty

A couple months ago, I covered the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are the largest science society in the world, and publish a scientific journal you may have heard of….SCIENCE.

Oceans were a big topic at this year’s meeting. There was the release of a map showing all the pristine bits of water left in the world (spoiler…there aren’t too many!). And, of course, there were plenty of discussions about overfishing.

But, what I found most interesting were the discussions about chemicals that we use in everyday life, such as birth control or car exhaust, and their impact on the oceans. I got to write a story about the research presented in Boston for Environmental Health Perspectives, and the article was published in April’s issue.

Perhaps the thing I found most scary was that the regulations just don’t exist to catch a lot of these chemicals. And, the regulations we do have are old and don’t consider things like what happens if two chemicals mix.

Tough Life for Penguins

So, not only do they live in the most remote, barren and cold landscape on Earth, but now Antarctica’s Adelie penguins are also being exposed to DDT thanks to climate change.

Yes, in an article of mine for National Geographic News, I discuss research that says that one of the world’s most pristine environments is actually contaminated with DDT from the 1960s. More surprising is that the DDT was frozen in glaciers but is now being released as climate change melts the glaciers.

Maybe there needs to be an educational campaign for penguins, such as “don’t lick the nasty looking snow.” Just a thought.

Taser Debate Rages On

So, I just wrote a story for Cosmos Magazine in Australia about Tasers, the electric stun guns that have caused great controversy in police forces worldwide.

I tried to avoid the controversy of whether they kill people or not, instead focusing on some recent research that debates whether or not they can affect the heart.

After researching the Taser for a few days, I can genuinely say that I would not want to be Tasered. And, I thought the shock at the bottom of the little slide at my daughter’s playground was intense?!