While high over the grasslands of Kazakhstan, the Terra Earth-observing satellite saw something interesting… can you spot it in this image?

Not so easy, is it? But if you look just left of center you’ll see this:

See it there, right in the center? It’s the Chiyli impact crater, an ancient scar from a cosmic collision. The crater is roughly 1.5 km across (about a mile) — about the same size as Meteor Crater in Arizona — meaning the object that created it was something smaller than a football field, moving at perhaps 30 km/sec (20 miles/sec). It hit about 46 million years ago, give or take. Long after the dinosaurs, but long before us, too. Note that it’s a double-rimmed crater too, which sometimes form in large impacts depending on the conditions of the impactor and the ground.

This is a false-color image, at least part of which is in the infrared; vegetation appears red, water blue, and bare land is "earth tones" (browns and tans). This sort of imagery allows scientists to investigate how vegetation, land, and water change over time.

When I first saw this image, I didn’t see it as a crater, but more as a raised annulus, a ring in the ground. I knew immediately that this meant that in the picture, the sunlight was coming up from the bottom, and it turns out that’s correct. It’s a cool and optical illusion; when we see craters illuminated from below, they look like domes, and vice-versa. In the picture here, I flipped the image and now, to me at least, it looks more like the depression that it really is. The wide inner rim is more obvious, too.

Here’s an even better example:

Is it a dome…	… or a crater?

It just goes to show you that finding evidence of extra-terrestrial events on Earth can be tough, and even when you find them you can’t rest easy. They’re apt to fool you one way or another.

Last Friday, my friend and colleague Eli Kintisch of Science magazine had a piece in Slate about the latest in geoengineering research, a field that continues to burgeon. Now, scientists are talking about the possibility of conducting real geoengineering trials, on both the small and the medium scale–right up to the verge of climatic detectability. But as Kintisch reports, while some scientists think there could be a “safe” geoengineering trial, others argue there’s really no such thing. Perturb the planet enough that you see a climatic effect, goes the thinking, and there are going to be a cascade of other consequences.

The implication of this dispute, writes Kintisch, is disturbing:

…[the] back-and-forth over which experiments might be best and what sort of political treaties would be necessary raises a distressing possibility: It’s not just that geoengineering tests will be difficult. It’s that the problems they invite would be so diverse—and their results so inconclusive—that we’re likely to skip the testing altogether. If countries are going to hack the stratosphere, they may just do it full-bore in the face of disaster.

Or, perhaps some rogue countries will do large scale geoengineering tests and defy the rest of the world. As the Russian scientist Yuri A. Izrael has rather ominously written, “Already in the near future, the technological possibilities of a full scale use of [aerosol-based geoengineering] will be studied.”

Speaking of study, I have a recommendation. Anyone interested in the geoengineering debate ought to click over to Amazon right now and pre-order Kintisch’s forthcoming book, Hack the Planet: Science’s Best Hope–or Worst Nightmare–for Averting Climate Catastrophe. I’ve read an early version and give my full and enthusiastic endorsement. If our society is going to properly weigh the costs and benefits of geoengineering, we need a citizenry literate in and knowledgeable about the issue, and right now, there is no better way to achieve such literacy than to dig into this text….as someone who has followed the geoengineering debate for years now, I can guarantee it.

Originally designed as part of the Mariner Program, Voyager moved into a class of its own almost immediately.  The tiny spacecrafts, weighing roughly 1,500 lbs each, were launched in 1977 to take advantage of the positioning of the planets.  Voyager 1 and 2 both took advantage of Jupiter’s mass in assisting them on their way, receiving a relative boost of 35,700mph.  This was essential to reach Saturn.  After reaching the Saturnine system, Voyager 1 was sent off initial trajectory by massive Titan (Saturnine moon).  Scientists deliberately sent Voyager 1 close by Titan, knowing it would fling it off the Ecliptic, but the knowledge gained in learning more about Titan was deemed more important at the time.  Voyager 2 continued on the planned trajectory, receiving gravity boosts from Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Voyager    Image:  NASA

An interesting aside about Voyager 2:  The scientists had kept its sensors online as it was launched, and Voyager 2 experienced a completely unexpected robotic “vertigo”, switching itself to its backup sensors.  Of course, the Voyager 2 computers were not controlling the launch; computers on board the Titan/Centaur rocket (amazing things, aren’t they?  I need to do a post on them.) remained in control.  Voyager 2 effectively became our first motion-sick space craft.  After separation from it’s rocket boosters in space, Voyager 2 deployed its arm, but then sensed something wrong,  immediately cutting communication and firing thrusters to orient itself.  Shutting down most of its links to Earth, Voyager 2 spent 79 minutes alone and lost in space, unable to orient itself.  Of course, Voyager 2 found the Sun, oriented itself, and re-established communication with Earth. Voyager 2, despite being nauseous, space sick and disoriented (your indulgence requested), went on to make amazing discoveries, not the least of which was that the surface of Europa is covered in ice.  Prior to the Voyager 2 flyby, scientists suspected Europa’s surface irregularities where caused by tectonic activity.

For 23 years, Voyager 1 and 2 have continued to provide scientific data to Earth.  Both have passed termination shock, and are in the heliosheath, approaching heliopause.  Neither is en route to any specific star.  Both carry the “golden record”.  On board platforms are being slowly powered down, but Voyager is expected to continue transmitting information until 2020, possibly 2025.  Following termination of power, Voyager will drift… controlled by the pull of the Milky Way itself.

Voyager at Termination Shock    Image:  NASA/Walt Feimer

Just to the end of their primary mission, the exploration of the solar system up to Neptune, Voyager has returned five trillion bits of information back to Earth.  It’s my understanding that this represents 6,000 complete Encyclopedia Brittannicas, or 1,000 bits of information to each man, woman, and child on Earth.  Voyager 1 is currently the furthest man-made object in space, and is expected to remain so.

Our tiny ambassadors in space.

Visit the Voyager Homepage here.

Oral conception. Impregnation via the proximal gastrointestinal tract in a patient with an aplastic distal vagina. Case report.

[Ed. note: There is no abstract, so we're including most of the original article below. It's a bit long, but trust us--it's worth the read!]

“Case report:
The patient was a 15-year-old girl employed in a local bar. She was admitted to hospital after a knife fight involving her, a former lover and a new boyfriend. Who stabbed whom was not quite clear but all three participants in the small war were admitted with knife injuries.

The girl had some minor lacerations of the left hand and a single stab-wound in the upper abdomen. Under general anaesthesia, laparotomy was performed through an upper midline abdominal incision to reveal two holes in the stomach. These two wounds had resulted from the single stab-wound through the abdominal wall. The two defects were repaired in two layers. The stomach was noted empty at the time of surgery and no gastric contents were seen in the abdomen. Nevertheless, the abdominal cavity was lavaged with normal saline before closure. The condition of the patient improved rapidly following routine postoperative care and she was discharged home after 10 days.

Precisely 278 days later the patient was admitted again to hospital with acute, intermittent abdominal pain. Abdominal examination revealed a term pregnancy with a cephalic fetal presentation. The uterus was contracting regularly and the fetal heart was heard. Inspection of the vulva showed no vagina, only a shallow skin dimple was present below the external urethral meatus and between the labia minora. An emergency lower segment caesarean section was performed under spinal anaesthesia and a live male infant weighing 2800 g was born…

…While closing the abdominal wall, curiosity could not be contained any longer and the patient was interviewed with the help of a sympathetic nursing sister. The whole story did not become completely clear during that day but, with some subsequent inquiries, the whole saga emerged.

The patient was well aware of the fact that she had no vagina and she had started oral experiments after disappointing attempts at conventional intercourse. Just before she was stabbed in the abdomen she had practised fellatio with her new boyfriend and was caught in the act by her former lover. The fight with knives ensued. She had never had a period and there was no trace of lochia after the caesarean section. She had been worried about the increase in her abdominal size but could not believe she was pregnant although it had crossed her mind more often as her girth increased and as people around her suggested that she was pregnant. She did recall several episodes of lower abdominal pain during the previous year. The young mother, her family, and the likely father adapted themselves rapidly to the new situation and some cattle changed hands to prove that there were no hard feelings.

Comments
A plausible explanation for this pregnancy is that spermatozoa gained access to the reproductive organs via the injured gastrointestinal tract. It is known that spermatozoa do not survive long in an environment with a low pH (Jeffcoate1975), but it is also known that saliva has a high pH and that a starved person does not produce acid under normal circumstances (Bernards & Bouman 1976). It is likely that the patient became pregnant with her first or nearly first ovulation otherwise one would expect that inspissated blood in the uterus and salpinges would have made fertilization difficult. The fact that the son resembled the father excludes an even more miraculous conception.”

Thanks to Eric for today’s ROFL!
Photo: flickr/Randy OHC