Science Friday: Lunar Water + Doomsday Denied + New Dinosaur + more

So much science, so little time! This week in Science Friday, DON’T PANIC come December, 2012, learn why Ares is Time’s invention of the year, discover new dinosaur species, study how butterflies flutter in space, and buy future beach-front property in the middle of Africa. All this and more plus our gadget of the week: The not-so-fantastic USS Enterprise Chandelier! Oh, and are you ready to swim on the moon?

 

LCROSS Detects Water On Moon – lots of it
Remember a few weeks back when NASA sent its LCROSS probe plummeting into the moon to see if their is any water in the shadows of the craters. Well today NASA announced the findings and it is good news for those who are looking forward to taking a lunar dip. Analyzing the plume sent up from the impact has giving clear indication of water.  LCROSS project scientist Anthony Colaprete notes "Indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit, we found a significant amount." It is estimated the plume contained 24 gallons of water in total.


LCROSS Plume is wet!

DON’T PANIC! The World WON’T End in 2012, Say NASA Scientists
The end-of-the-world thriller movie 2012, which debuts today, has popularized the idea that the world will end on December 21st, 2012. The main line of reasoning behind the idea is the “end” of the Mayan calendar on that date. What you may not realize is that the Mayan calendar “ends” in 2012 just as much as your gregorian calendar ends every year on December 31st! December 21st, 2012 simply marks the beginning of another segment of the Mayan calendar. Doesn’t that make the whole crazy idea a moot point? Not in Hollywood! Well, NASA has now come out to say “STAY CALM!” and has even released a web page debunking the 2012 myth and likens it to the Y2K scare.


Don’t worry — the world’s not going to end!

Ares: Time Magazine’s Best Invention of the Year

Time Magazine has announced their list of best inventions of 2009. At the top is NASA’s new Ares rocket. It’s actually not that surprising that TIme would consider the year’s best invention to be the rocket that will carry men back to the moon and beyond to Mars. The article at Time does a great job of highlighting the importance and details of the Ares Rocket, and why we should all be very excited for the future of human space flight.

Metal has no DNA; machines have no genes. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have pedigrees — ancestral lines every bit as elaborate as our own. That’s surely the case with the Ares 1 rocket. The best and smartest and coolest thing built in 2009 — a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before — is the fruit of a very old family tree, one with branches grand, historic and even wicked.

Read more at Time.com.


Here’s to human spaceflight!

New Dinosaur Species May Be Missing Link
Australian paleontologists have discovered three, maybe four, new dinosaur species at a dig in Johannesburg, South Africa. The first to be named and researched is Aardonyx celestae. The rest are still under study. What makes A. celestae so interesting is that it helps explain how some of the earliest dinosaurs, two-legged herbivores known as prosauropods, evolved into the largest creatures that ever walked Earth: the sauropods, four-legged creatures with long necks and small heads that ripped foliage off trees with their cavernous jaws. “It’s one of the dinosaurs in a long, smeary continuum,” said one researcher. “It shows us what we should already have pretty much guessed, which was that evolution was a messy, complicated affair.”


Scientists puzzle together newly discovered dino bones

Butterflies in Space Aboard the ISS
In a project known as Butterflies in Space, the Atlantis space shuttle will next week carry a butterfly habitat containing monarch and painted lady adults and larvae to the International Space Station. The idea is that thousands of school kids across the US will be able to study the behavior and life cycles of these little astronauts as they progress from the larvae stage to colorful butterflies in microgravity.The students will also be able to conduct their own open-ended investigations of the butterfly life cycle in the classroom. The children will be able to monitor their progress via still and video images. This project is just another way that NASA is aiming to bring real space studies to kids around the country. More info at BioEd Online.


Check out the above livestream!

Giant Crack in Africa Will Create a New Ocean
Researchers now confirm that a 35-mile rift in the desert of Ethiopia will likely become a new ocean. The crack, 20 feet wide in spots, opened in 2005 and some geologists believed then that it would spawn a new ocean. But that view was controversial, and the rift had not been well studied. A new study has revealed that the processes occurring at this rift are nearly identical to those that occur at mid-ocean ridges on the sea floor. Using newly gathered seismic data from 2005, researchers reconstructed the event to show the rift tore open along its entire 35-mile length in just days. Dabbahu, a volcano at the northern end of the rift, erupted first, then magma pushed up through the middle of the rift area and began “unzipping” the rift in both directions. This is an incredible opportunity to study an extremely rapid geologic process in action.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Pic of the Week: Awesome Raw Cassini Image

The moon Rhea hangs like a pendant against Saturn and its rings. Amazingly, this is a raw image straight from Cassini; it has not been calibrated or enhanced in any way. This is art in its purest form and evidence of the phenomenal and enchanting beauty of the Saturn system, as well as confirmation of what an amazing spacecraft Cassini is. This image was taken on November 08, 2009 and received on Earth November 09, 2009. The camera was pointing toward Rhea at approximately 1,874,061 kilometers away. Via Universe Today.

Video of the Week: ‘Science in Hollywood’ by Carolyn Porco

Gadget of the Week: USS Enterprise Chandelier…Kinda Sucks?
At first this sounds like a great idea, right? A USS Enterprise Chandelier? I would totally put that above my dining room table! Wait, is that what it looks like? Yeah, never mind. It’s unfortunate that someone would come up with this great idea and then carry it out completely wrong. This is especially true in this particular case when their target market, hard-core trekkies, would never allow the name Enterprise to be attached to such an abomination. Really, this thing doesn’t even remotely look like the big E. Let’s see, how shall I put this? THIS IS A DISASTER!


Really?!

#FollowFriday

If you are on Twitter, you know there are plenty of amazing people out there tweeting away. And, many of them are scientists! Every Friday I’ll be bringing you a new list of great scientists and techies to follow on Twitter. This week…

  • @bioedonline: Follow our butterfly astronauts into space!
  • @apod: Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
  • @KalofXeno: Scientist for THEMIS OPS studying Mars and avid Sci-Fi fan

Science Quickies
Not enough science for you? Here’s a warp-speed look at some more science tid-bits that are worth a look.

 


TrekMovie’s Science Friday is an homage the the great NPR radio show Science Friday. Science Friday® is a registered service mark of ScienceFriday Inc.

50 Comments
oldest
newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Kayla,
Excellent roundup as always.

That enterprise lighting fixture is NOT cannon! Boo!

Thanks, Kayla!

Hmmm – Butterflies. That’s not such a big deal. There have been butterflies on pretty much EVERY mission into space. They’re just usually in the astronauts’ stomachs!

As far as the new ocean coming to Africa, the first thing that popped into my head was “Crack in the World”. (1965) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059065/

The enterprise chandelier looks like it flew in from the 70’s. It belongs in Greg Brady’s swingin’ attic apartment.

3- Great movie!
I guess I’m just too dumb, though, to understand why geologists see a ‘crack’ and immediately think ‘sea,’ rather than ‘Earth’s stale crust.’ Dunno. Come back in a few million and we’ll finish this.

Thanks, Kayla!

Seems like a SF Thursday is emerging, Fringe and Flash Forward on last night, both of them outstanding epys. Both with Trekish connections, both now on my A-List of don’t miss TV and don’t call me Thursdays during prime time.

V continues to suck alien zucchini.

Waiting for W13 new season.

Have a great weekend everyone. Don’t eat too many prunes.

Wow. I can’t believe people are so dense about this 2012 thing that NASA has to stoop to acknowlege its existence. Way to fail, nutjobs.

The really funny thing is that there’s a “2012 Lean the TRUTH!!!” ad banner just above where the comments start. Oy.

That Cassini image is very cool. Just a question — why are probes still taking photos in black and white? Is there a reason that they don’t send up probes with color cameras?

I would say that the “Enterprise” (and I use the name loosely) chandelier looks far more like a Klingon D-7 with a disc at the end

Take the time to watch the Carolyn Porco vid … it’s excellent.

That Ship is NOT!!! CANON!!!!! You mean that on December 21st of 2012 that we will not all DIE!!!! a Horrible and painfull Death. Pheeew. I thought I was a Gonner there for a moment. Hey Waiter. ill have a Cheese Burger and Fries and some Moon Water to wash it down. Yum Yum!.

I want a refreshing bottle of Moon Water (TM)!
It would be the ultimate prestige drink. :)

Just fix the enterprise light, get flaming bulbs at the end, and melt the front off, so it looks like its falling out of the sky out of control!

kinda looks like a kid’s paper version of an akira class. really random, but are there any other military trek fans who check out this site? i cant be the only one. Semper Fi oorah!

That chandelier can’t be a real product, I can not bring myself to believe someone would try to market something like that!

2012- The Mayans never said 2012…. NEVER. The REAL Mayan end date is actually a period of Oct 2007- 2015. Not a DATE but a time period. And its not the end… its actually a shift in consciousness. Will there be things happening? Already is! We are on the edge of a full economic collapse, social structures are changing, there is a galactic change… new energies coming it that will cause earth changes…. but NOT like the Hollywood crap!

BTW, never listen to anything NASA says. They have lied for the last 40 years! NASA – Never A Straight Answer!

Ok, I am done venting! HAHAHA

#6

NASA cameras use a set of filters for different wavelengths of light. They usually have filters for red, green, blue, and a couple in the infrared. When they want to take a color photo, they take three shots with the red, green, and blue filters and then combine them after they’ve been sent back to earth. When they take pictures in the infrared, sometimes they add false color. Since this is a raw image, they didn’t do any of that post-processing yet.

Whoever invented that “Enterprise” chandelier should be made to wear the Cone of Shame.

Or put in an agony booth,

This sounds just like the move! Government builds big ships and tells the worlds it’s a lie? Wow it’s comeing true! Personnally I don’t have an oppinion, something might happen in 2012 but I don’t know. People thought The Day After Tomorrow was a prophetic movie too and no such thing has hapened so we’ll see.

Looks like that chandeler was designed by monkeys!

Wait, that’s an insult to monkeys , so I say it was designed by Romulans and peddled by Ferengi !

Yeah.The world won’t end in 2012,but the WAY it’s organized(ie. monetarism,free marketeering,globalization,etc…)may come to an end,at about that time.

@5: Ah, ok. Thanks. :)

@14: Please, pretty please, tell me you’re joking, right? Right?

Love it #19 I Thought it looked a little like a D7 but that might be a insult to the D7!

I think they don’t send up Color Cameras back in the day because they were too Expensive and who wants to lose a $1000 Color Camera to Deep Space because we know Klingon’s are going to use our old Satellites for canon shooting Practice!!

Apocalyptic scenarios and date making have been going on for centuries, in many cases to prove the legitimacy of the viewpoint of those who make such claims.
In the 1950s a noted evangelist preached that the confrontation with Communism was the certain sign of the end times.
Didn’t happen.
In the 1980s a group of psychics forecast 2000 would include a pole shift and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, as highlights of that year.
Didn’t happen.
The desire of the end times is part of the religious subconscious of man, and should be considered accordingly.

As much as I like every step into space I can’t see the new achievement in the ARES rocket and spacecraft. The rocket is made of old Shuttle rocket technology – and is now declared safer than ever. But what caused the Challenger explosion??? The solid rocket booster….

Plus: They strap an blown-up Apollo capsule on top – dumping 30 years of shuttle experience down the toilet. Granted the Shuttle had many problems – but why not learn from it to build a newer and better spacecraft like the now-stopped Venture Star.

Honestly: NASA has long lost it’s edge over it’s competitors. With a capsule based spacecraft they’re en par with Russia, Europe – the ATV only needs some seats in it and will then be called CTV, China.

On the 2012 scare: Even if there will be a earthwide catastrophe sometime – like a comet blast or outbreak of a super-vulcano – Earth will not go boom. Earth will still be there – we human race would be wiped out – but Earth will still be there….

“Gadget of the Week: USS Enterprise Chandelier…Kinda Sucks!”

“THIS IS A DISASTER!”

Same thing we all said when we saw JJ Abrams’ Enterprise for the first time, huh?

A 2012 scare? Oh my, Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds scare all over again.

2012! If we’re not going to die a horrible death, what am I going to do with my underground bunker full of food, water, and booze? I think I’ll launch my space ark anyway!

Looks like the people doing that light thingie didn’t want to pay for the rights to make an official one, so they made it “kinda” look like a starship and then try to pawn it off. Like the generic covers on the fake Trek books.

Light fixture looks better than new movie’s big E…

#25: The fact that Ares is based on existing Space Shuttle technology is a significant strength, because it helps improve reliability and reduces development costs. Ares is much safer than the original shuttle solid rocket boosters. First, the segment joints (which were the cause of the Challenger accident) have been redesigned to prevent burn-through. Second, the use of an Apollo-style capsule is inherently safer than the shuttle. In the unlikely event of a Challenger-type accident, the top-mounted capsule would be pulled away from the booster, saving the astronauts’ lives. Contrast this to the Space Shuttle: During the first two minutes of flight, there is absolutely no way for a Space Shuttle crew to escape in the event of a major malfunction with the solid rocket motors. Ares fixes this design flaw. Also, the fact that the capsule is mounted on top of the booster means that any insulating foam from the Ares fuel tank cannot possibly hit the capsule. Even better, the Apollo capsule design actually protects the heat shield during ascent and most of the mission, reducing the chances of damage from other causes. The Space Shuttle is an incredible machine, and it has performed many important, valuable missions, thanks to the dedication and hard work of many, many people. But it is past time for NASA to take the next step in space exploration.

With Ares, NASA is finally returning to its core mission: To explore new worlds and to boldly go where none have gone before.

-Mike

Great points Mike, I’m looking forward to the beginning of the Ares missions.

It will be interresting to see how the butterflies react to zero g. I remember a while back when some spiders were up there, I think it took them a few days to get used to it & make their webs.

Water on the Moon. Now I know Riker wasn’t crazy when he talked about Lake Armstrong.

I saw the 2012 movie last wednesday here in Belgium. Wanted to see it on the first day because I liked “Stargate”, “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Indepence Day”. But man, 2012 was the crappiest movie I have seen In a long time. The story is so bad that it makes all the special effects look bad too ( although they were the only “good” thing about the movie ). I don’t know what the writers were thinking… maybe this movie is actually meant to be a comedy, I don’t know. Everything was way over the top and totally unrealistic. 200% dumbed down for an audience of morons. Massive waste of time and money.

I want to see 2012 for the same reason i watch effects reels on youtube, I like special effects.
I am not an idiot who believes in the end of the world crap, I just like seeing cool cgi. (Twister, Deep Impact, Armageddon, ID4 etc).

*POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW*

Though the aircraft carrier smashing into the white house looked a bit lame.

Well, considering that no one has ever seen an aircraft carrier smash into the White House, I’d have to give the SFX boys some benefit of the doubt, no?

Mike Okuda. Great to have you here and as always you make some very valent points. Nasa has not realy done anything for so long. Just the usual send up the shuttle to do some experiments. But what we realy need to do is get back to the Moon and look some more. Proof in the pudding is the fact we have found some water on the Moon it self. So theres a good bet theres a lot more on the Moon and Mars has to have under ground Oceans there as well. Where thers Water there may be some kind of Life.

What a joke that Ares is the invention of the year. The Ares 1-X was just a simulation of what might have been. The current design is underpowered to carry the Orion and has vibration issues. It’s almost certain to get canned in favor of the Jupiter or HLV. Obviously, Time did not do their research.

Actually the day after tomorrow movie also directed by roland emmerich was based on a book the coming global superstorms by art bell(coast to coast radio) and whitely strieber(communion) and of course the movie accelerated it all but, their predictions–supposedly scientists are confirming most of what was in the book as happening and like the movie it all seems to be happening even faster than the book predicted–

2012 is an ok movie-i think the ultimate special efx disaster movie has now been made-it also uses every disaster movie stereotype and even features a poor cute doggie in danger! Everybody almost in the world dies and we are supposed to be rooting for the dog haha! I think movies like the towering inferno and earthquake poseidan adv. etc were better because u cared more for the characters cuz the scale was not so huge-also 2012 has gone where they all already went-but 2012 will make a lotta money as it will appeal and be watchable to a large common den. of people–no one will luv it but many will probably like it hah

a 2012-style disaster isn’t going to be like depicted in the movie where the Earth physically falls apart, but the way the economy’s going and those in charge of the different governments across the world, I’m pretty sure we will see some type of global event on an economic and political scale that will rival continental plates radically shifting below our feet.

And on a lighter note, the Ares rocket and the discovery of Water on the Moon is a great leap for space exploration. Now I can start planning my Mars landing party, right? :-)

Great to see Mike Okuda posting again. Remember, folks — a piece of Mr. Okuda’s work went up on the I-X, since he designed the official logos related to the project for NASA.

Also, if the world does end on 2012, that would not bode well for the next Trek movie. So, for that reason if no other, I’m counting on the prophecies of doom to be wrong. Here’s hoping! ;-)

Mr. Okuda…

I’m glad Ares I-X was a success, but we shouldn’t get carried away. Solid Rocket Boosters, even mature ones like Ares I-X’s are inherently dangerous. And the real Ares I will NOT be a mature SRB, it will be an almost entirely new beast, with different propellant, different structural, aerodynamic, and thrust profiles, a very heavy upper stage and payload on top (which the Original SRB never had to contend with) and an additional field joint (thanks to its fifth propellant segment, which was only a dummy on Ares I-X.) And when Solid Rocket Motors fail, they tend to fail spectacularly. They go kablooey with little or no warning, and it is very, very far from certain that an Orion capsule will have sufficient warning to get away, or that its Launch Abort System will be sufficiently powerful to escape the debris field. The Shuttle SRB was redesigned after Challenger was lost (primarily by adding a third o-ring) and it has worked well. But it has not been perfect. We still have blow-by of o-rings now and then, and not a few engineers feel it is only a matter of time before another catastrophic accident.

In short, I think NASA should pull the crew off the SRB and launch them on Delta IV or Atlas V, trusting only unmanned payloads to SRB-equipped launchers in the future. Liquid-fueled boosters like Atlas and Delta can still fail, but historically they fail in a more benign manner, where chances of crew survival will be drastically higher.

2012 was a very good popcorn movie. Its special effects are as good as its writing isn’t. Cusack is pretty good, but Chiwetel Ejiofor really rises above the lame material. The less said about the rest of the cast, the better.

“Enterprise” fans will be happy to see that John Billingsley (Dr. Phlox) has a fairly substantial role.

I refuse to see a movie that threatens the existence of the next Trek movie (through having the world end on the year it will be released).

;-)

LOL LOL LOL at the chandalier.

Little do we know, this is the work of a spy that’s seen JJ’s early ideas for STXII You’ll see. They’ll be hunting this leak down like they did with the person that released Wolverine! =P

Just got home from seeing the movie ‘2012.’ Too long. Great special effects. Strained credulity quite a bit.

Acting was okay considering the script was pretty… um, out there!

Kind of a cross between ‘When Worlds Collide, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake (remember that one?), Twister, Finding Nemo, Volcano, The Towering Inferno and Armaggedon (okay, okay.. kidding about ‘Finding Nemo’).’

Really bad science. They threw in every disaster flick cliche but the kitchen sink… Dumb fun. My grade: 2 1/2 * out of 4.

And to think, the producers want to do a TV show springboarding off of this movie (2013). We’ll see!

2012 : The Disaster Movie To End All Disaster Movies !

Irwin Allan would be so proud of Roland Emerich

– W –
* heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh *

so we can say nasa officially considers the International Space Station a failure ? And they are now back to their go it on their own way ? without the participation of international partners.

I’m going to see the 2012 movie anyway, I like seeing things blow up.
Remember the old SCTV skit with Candy and Levy? “That blow’d up real good! heh heh heh!”

I’ve always known that the Mayan calendar just represents a cycle, as a previous poster has said.

Recently I saw a one panel cartoon where two guys are staring at the newly done calandar wheel and one character,just standing and observing asks, Why did you stop at 2012? To which the sculptor replies….
“I ran out of stone” which is probably closer to the truth than we realise and if you know anything about
Mayan or Aztec culture, the poor bugger probably got executed for his trouble. :-)

Hey Mike!

Its Avenger Class Frigate, NOT Miranda!
heh heh heh!

The Whole “World ending in 2012” is just a ghost story, i mean we’ll live longer than the dinosaurs.