The May 24th, view of the BP oil leak from MODIS. Click for a larger version. Credit: Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC

This from the MODIS satellite today (taken on May 24^th).

Scary stuff.  I hate the way we go about these things,  probably it would be a good idea to stop pointing fingers and covering butts and start doing some clean up.  IMHO,  it’s a little late but I think we need to get representation from all the potentially affected people/groups together and get a unified game plan worked out.  It sounds to me like the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and we are winding up with a (insert your own adjective here) response to this mess.

From the MODUS page with this image, and by the way pay the MODIS site a visit for more versions of the image above:

Sunlight illuminated the lingering oil slick off the Mississippi Delta on May 24, 2010. The MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image the same day.

Oil smoothes the ocean surface, making the Sun’s reflection brighter in some places, and reducing the scattering of sunlight in other places. As a result, the oil slick is brighter than the surrounding water in some places (image center) and darker than the surrounding water in others (image lower right). The tip of the Mississippi Delta is surrounded by muddy water that appears light tan. Bright white ribbons of oil streak across this sediment-laden water.

Tendrils of oil extend to the north and east of the main body of the slick. A small, dark plume along the edge of the slick, not far from the original location of the Deepwater Horizon rig, indicates a possible controlled burn of oil on the ocean surface.

To the west of the bird’s-foot part of the delta, dark patches in the water may also be oil, but detecting a manmade oil slick in coastal areas can be even more complicated than detecting it in the open ocean.

When oil slicks are visible in satellite images, it is because they have changed how the water reflects light, either by making the Sun’s reflection brighter or by dampening the scattering of sunlight, which makes the oily area darker. In coastal areas, however, similar changes in reflectivity can occur from differences in salinity (fresh versus salt water) and from naturally produced oils from plants.

The Voyagers nearing the edge of the heliospheric bubble carved out by the solar wind. Art Credit: JPL / NASA

Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977 and has since traveled 8,600 million miles from mother Earth.

The four-year mission to Saturn has lasted 33 years and Voyager 2 enjoys the distinction of being one of two man-made objects at the very edge of the solar system.  Voyager 1 is a little further out than Voyager 2, if  1 or 2 billion miles can be called “a little further”.

Both Voyagers, built and operated by JPL, have been returning data.  On April 22 changes in the return of data packets was noticed.  At the time there was a moratorium on sending commands and a planned roll-maneuver and engineers were not able to send commands to the spacecraft until April 30th.    Radio protocols are understandable, imagine, it takes 13 hours for a radio command to reach the spacecraft and another 13 hours to get return data.  The returning signal must be astonishingly weak, being a ham radio operator, it boggles my mind.

At the moment we know by the preliminary engineering data from May 1, the spacecraft is basically healthy and the problem is in the flight data system which formats the data sent back.  The change in the pattern of the returning data is being evaluated.

…and it’s about time!  Seemed like we were heading into another Maunder Minimum there for a while.  Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little, but we did go through a long stretch of time when we should have been seeing sunspots and we were not.

So what?  It’s not like sunspots do anything, right?

National Science Foundation, Dunn Solar Telescope, NSO, AR 10810

Wrong.  There’s actually a lot going on with them.

Sunspots are in fact areas of intense magnetic activity.  The increased activity inhibits convection, causing cooler areas to form on the surface.  “Cooler” is, of course, relative.  A sunspot is about 3,500 K; while the Sun’s average surface temperature is about 5,800 K.  Sunspots only appear dark against the brilliant glare of the Sun.  If you could hold a sunspot away from the surface you would see that it’s brighter than an electric arc.

NASA/TRACE 09/2000 Sunspot in UV

The frequency of sunspots follows an approximate 11-year cycle.  The time period which has the most sunspots is the Solar Maximum, the least is the Solar Minimum.  Variations in the cycle appear to coincide with climate variations on Earth.  The Maunder Minimum (ca 1645-1715) was during a period of overall cooler temperatures known as The Little Ice Age.  How or if sunspot activity and climate are linked is unknown, as is unknown which is the cause and which is the effect.

Records of solar cycles have been kept since March 1755 (cycle 1).  We are currently in cycle 24, which began January 4, 2008.  Sunspots don’t just pop up at random all over the Sun, but are concentrated in two latitude bands on either side of the equator.  The bands form first at mid-latitude, widen, then move toward the equator as the cycle progresses.  It’s plotted on a “butterfly diagram”, which shows every sunspot since March 1755.  This is what it looks like:

We now know that all conditions on (and in) the Sun effect conditions on Earth; and not just whether or not your cell phone (or you) is going to get fried.  From this site you can link to SOHO (far right) and get a picture of the Sun today, and you can go to SpaceWeather.com, or NASA anytime.

Isn’t it nice to be seeing spots again?

Kitt Peak Observatory, spiral sunspot

Image of STS-132 Control Room 1. Click for larger. Image: Ken Buxton

I have a treat you today!  One of our readers, Ken Buxton, was one of the lucky winners of NASA’s Tweetup!  When I found out, I asked Ken if he could do a short write-up on the trip and his experience.  I am pleased to say he agreed and what a great job he did too.  I thank you for your wonderful effort Ken!

Before you start to read about Ken’s  trip, I want to point you to the pictures he took on the trip and of course to his website: The Computerbugg.

Without further delay, here is Ken’s trip:

NASA Tweetup May 19, 2010 Johnson Space Flight Center, Houston TX

A couple weeks ago I received an email stating I had been selected to attend a tweetup at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.  A tweetup is a special event sponsored by NASA for twitter followers.  I read it over and over, was this for real?  I remembered I had signed up for a tweetup that was posted by NASA on twitter.  You know, all those things you sign up for and never win.  As requested, I replied to the email and waited for confirmation.  Sure thing, I got a response saying I was accepted for a behind the scenes tour of JCS during the flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on   May 19th.  I quickly made airplane, hotel and rental car reservation, and waited for the big day.  I flew to Houston on the 17th, found my hotel, settled in and got ready for my tweetup.

The tweetup started with an informal meeting at a local restaurant the evening of the 18th.  I got to meet others on the tweetup as well as several of the NASA ambassadors who would be with us on our adventure and help us along and answer questions. There’s nothing like a bunch of space geeks getting together.

Our morning of the tweetup started at 8:00 am by checking in at the Space Center Houston.  Space Center Houston is adjacent to Johnson Space Flight Center and is an information and museum of manned space flight and is open to the public.  After checking in and having some more coffee, I wandered about the museum.  There were replicas of the Lunar Lander of Apollo, mock up of parts of the ISS and of the Space Shuttle.  I looked around and was surprised by the size of these machines, they were huge.  There was a Welcome Home sign for the crew of STS-132, which everyone was invited to sign.  Also available to look at was a glove warn by space walkers and a helmet.

At 9:00 we all met in an auditorium for the formal part of the day.  We were officially welcomed and introduced to NASA people who would help us through the day.  NASA scientist Talat Hussain made a presentation on the new Ku band antenna that had just been installed on the ISS.  This antenna will allow much more data to be transferred to and from the ISS, including better live television.  Next, the main speaker of the morning was Astronaut Jeff Williams. Jeff had just returned from several months aboard the ISS.   I especially enjoyed his descriptions of how it felt to be launched into space and then return.  There is quite a difference between how it feels in the Shuttle and how it feels in the Russian Soyuz.  Landing in the Shuttle is a breeze, while the Soyuz is a parachute landing with rockets that blast a moment before impact with the earth to give a “soft” landing.   He said there is nothing “soft” about the landing.  After his talk, I made sure I got my picture taken with him.

After lunch, we were off for a tour of the JCS.  First stop was Mission Control Center.  We sat in a gallery behind the STS Mission Control Center.  We were not allowed on the main floor because they were working, with a live shuttle in space.  Next we wound our way through a maze of corridors to the original Mission Control Center used for all the manned space flights of the 60’s and 70’s.  It has been designated a National Historical Site.  We were allowed on the main floor to look at the equipment that was used to monitor and control our mission to the moon.  Each console had a little 8” TV screen and a rotary dial phone.  On the wall was replica of the plaque left on the moon by Apollo 11.  Along to walls were emblems of all the flights that were controlled by this center.  A real walk through history as I have been following the space program from the 50’s and I remember sitting in English class in High School while they broadcast through the PA system, a radio broadcast of Alan Shepard’s first manned launch into space.

From Mission Control we went to Building 9.  Building 9 is a huge structure, and inside are mock-ups of all the components of the ISS and Space Shuttle.  These mock-ups are used to train new astronauts and are also used to simulate any problems that occur in space to help find a solution.  Again, I was astounded by the immense size of everything.  Here we met with astronaut Stephen Robinson.  Dr Robinson has been with the shuttle program since 1975 and has served as CAPCOM for 13 shuttle missions.  He has flown on 4 shuttle missions, logging 1156 hours in space and performed 20 hours EVA.  He helped install piece of hardware to the Hubble space telescope and in 2005 performed the first repair of the shuttle heat shield.  He was asked what the stars look like from space, and he replied he was surprised on how the stars shine with different colors.

Still in Building 9, we met Astronaut Clayton Anderson.  In 2007 Mr Anderson spent 5 months aboard the ISS.   He described day to day life aboard the ISS.  He remembered getting to sleep and then waking up in the middle of the night and having to go to the bathroom, which was at the other end of the Space Station, then making that long fly from one end to the other and back again.  He finally decided it was easier for him to just wear a diaper to bed, and use that.  Someone asked about the food, and he said it wasn’t too bad, considering where they were.  He would not like to eat it here on earth, but is space it tasted pretty good.  He also said he preferred the Russian for over American food.

We looked at a mockup of the Russian Soyuz capsule.  It is probably the smallest container for 3 men that is possible.  While the “seats” in the shuttle resemble lawn chairs, the Russian seats are all custom molded to the person who will be using it.  When someone will be using the Soyuz capsule, they must travel to Russia several months before and be “fitted” with a seat.  You are immersed in a large vat of plaster of Paris and a mold is made of your body.  And a space suit is also made for you.  When sitting in the Soyuz capsule, you are lying on your back with your knees up against your chest.  Fortunately a ride from the ISS to the ground takes only about 22 minutes.

When we were finished with Building 9, we loaded into busses and drove a few miles south of JCS to the Sonny Carter Training Facility.  Sonny Carter was a popular astronaut who was killed in commercial airliner crash in 1991.  The Sonny Carter Training Facility contains the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory.  The NBL is a large pool of water, 202 ft by 102 ft and 40 feet deep, containing 6.2 million gallons of water.  The NBL is used to simulate the weightlessness of space.  Astronaut space walkers train here so they will be able to function in space.  They wear specially designed suits that are similar to space suits but are pumped up with air to give them a neutral buoyancy.  In the pool are sections of the ISS and mock ups of the Shuttle.

Back on the buses, we headed back to JCS and, for me, the highlight of the day.  We arrived at an area called Rocket Park.  Rocket Park consists of a small area with a Redstone rocket and Mercury capsule, just like Alan Shepard’s vehicle.  Next to that is an F-1 rocket engine, 5 of these engines powered the first stage of the Saturn V moon rocket, and next to them is the payload section of the Saturn V rocket.  Then there is a large building, over 100 yards long that contains a complete Saturn V rocket.  It is laying on its side with the sections separated, so you can see the rockets in each section.  Once again, I was astounded by the enormity of this vehicle.  In 1965, when I worked at NASA in Huntsville, AL, they did a static firing of the first stage of the Saturn V.  I was about 10 miles away, but could still see the enormous smoke plume and the ground vibrated like I had never felt before.  This is truly an awesome machine.

With the formal part of the tweetup ended, we adjourned to a local tavern to discuss and share our experiences of the day.  It was wonderful to be with a group of people who are excited about space travel as I am.

Fig 1: One of the authors (DM)
swallowing seven swords.

It’s BMJ week (again) on NCBI ROFL! After the success of our first BMJ week, we decided to devote another week to fun articles from holiday issues of the British Medical Journal. Enjoy!

“OBJECTIVE: To evaluate information on the practice and associated ill effects of sword swallowing. DESIGN: Letters sent to sword swallowers requesting information on technique and complications. SETTING: Membership lists of the Sword Swallowers’ Association International. PARTICIPANTS: 110 sword swallowers from 16 countries. RESULTS: We had information from 46 sword swallowers. Major complications are more likely when the swallower is distracted or swallows multiple or unusual swords or when previous injury is present. Perforations mainly involve the oesophagus and usually have a good prognosis. Sore throats are common, particularly while the skill is being learnt or when performances are too frequent. Major gastrointestinal bleeding sometimes occurs, and occasional chest pains tend to be treated without medical advice. Sword swallowers without healthcare coverage expose themselves to financial as well as physical risk. CONCLUSIONS: Sword swallowers run a higher risk of injury when they are distracted or adding embellishments to their performance, but injured performers have a better prognosis than patients who suffer iatrogenic perforation.”

Bonus quote from the full length article:

“Some respondents swallowed a sword easily, but mastery for most required daily practice over months or years. The gag reflex is desensitised, sometimes by repeatedly putting fingers down the throat, but other objects are used including spoons, paint brushes, knitting needles, and plastic tubes before the swallower commonly progresses to a bent wire coat hanger. The performer must then learn to align a sword with the upper oesophageal sphincter with the neck hyper-extended. The next step requires relaxation of the pharynx and oesophagus and particularly the horizontal fibres of cricopharyngeus, which are not usually under voluntary control. Devgan et al have shown that one swallower was able to reduce voluntarily the resting pressure of this sphincter by 10-20 mm Hg. This swallower described having to “relax the muscles of his neck,” and several swallowers mentioned not being able to perform when they could not “relax” or the throat “closing up” when sore. Huizinga described a swallower who “sucked in” the sword, and a lateral radiograph in Huizinga’s paper shows the pharynx filled with air, but preliminary air swallowing is not invariable. Force must not be used and the clean sword is usually lubricated at least with saliva. One performer used butter, and one had to retire because of a dry mouth caused by medication.

Once the swallower has got the sword past the cricopharyngeal sphincter and relaxed the oesophagus, he or she must learn to control retching so the sword can be passed down to the cardia. The cardia lies about 40 cm from the teeth and the sword straightens the flexible and distensible oesophagus. Further progress depends not only on the swallower learning to relax the lower oesophageal sphincter and controlling retching but also on the shape of the stomach. The angle of the gastro-oesophageal junction and lesser curve vary, being obtuse in the vertically oriented stomach, particularly when it is full, and more acute in the high horizontal stomach often present in thickset individuals (fig 2). A 220 cm giant is said to hold the record for the longest swallowed sword (82.5 cm) and body build should have a bearing on what length of sword can pass. Nevertheless, we did not find any correlation between the longest sword an individual could swallow and their size, suggesting other factors are important.”

Image: BMJ

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Injuries due to falling coconuts.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Impact of Yankee Stadium Bat Day on blunt trauma in northern New York City.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Competitive speed eating: truth and consequences.

WTF is NCBI ROFL? Read our FAQ!

Very cool news: the flying infrared observatory, SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) — which has been in the works for many years — has seen first light. What’s remarkable about this observatory is that it’s mounted in a hole in the side of a 747!

Don’t believe me? Check. This. Out:

[Click any of the images here to embiggen.]

See that ginormous square hole in the back of the plane? That’s where the telescope sits, looking out at the sky. Why put it in a plane? Because SOFIA looks in the mid to far infrared, and observations like that are impossible from the ground. Water vapor in the air absorbs the kind of infrared light seen by SOFIA, but by the time you go up to about 10 km (35,000 feet) you’re above 99% of the Earth’s water vapor. That little bit left does still absorb the light, but a telescope at that altitude receives about 80% of the IR an orbiting observatory would.

So, amazingly, they cut a big hole in the side of a modified 747 and stuck a telescope in it. A big one: SOFIA sports a 2.5 meter (8 foot) mirror, which is bigger than Hubble’s!

Here’s a sample of what it saw:

That is, of course, Jupiter. On the left is an image in visible light, and on the right the SOFIA image. It’s a composite of three infrared colors: 5.4 (colored blue in the image), 24 (green), and 37 microns (red). Your eye can see wavelengths only as long as about 0.7 microns, so these represent wavelengths well outside what we can see. See the stripe on the left that’s reddish? In the infrared it’s brighter, because the gas in that belt is transparent to infrared light and we can see deeper into Jupiter’s atmosphere where it’s warmer. Note that the other belt is still missing, in the visible and infrared. Whatever is blocking the light from that belt is opaque to both our eyes and SOFIA’s.

SOFIA also took a look at the nucleus of the nearby weird galaxy M82, which is undergoing a burst of star formation, and is lousy with thick dust that blocks visible light. SOFIA peers through that dust, revealing the star factories hard at work in the center of that galaxy.

According to preliminary reports, SOFIA is performing perfectly, and getting great observations at a far, far cheaper price tag than putting something in orbit. We still need telescopes in orbit to do other work — some IR is still absorbed even at that height — but SOFIA will make terrific achievements. It also has a robust educational arm, which includes taking as many as 200 teachers per year up on observation flights! If you’re an educator and interested in this, contact the team at SOFIA. You may just qualify to get the airplane ride of a lifetime.

Image credits: Anthony Wesley, N. A. Sharp/NOAO/AURA/NSF, NASA/Jim Ross

I have to say, I am a bit staggered by just how severe the forecast from NOAA is for the Atlantic hurricane year 2010. We know these predictions aren't always spot on, but they get increasingly accurate as the season nears--and now just before June 1, NOAA is calling for 14-23 named storms, 8-14 hurricanes, and 3-7 major hurricanes. In short, they're calling for a year that would almost rival the worst year on record--2005--the year of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma. And of course, it hardly helps matters that we have tons of oil in the Gulf this year. If NOAA's forecast is really correct, it's hard for me to imagine that there won't be a number of storms that get into the Gulf and threaten to disrupt clean up operations and/or to drive oil all over the place. This makes success in BP's ongoing "top kill" effort pretty crucial. If they can't get the spill stopped now, and it keeps pouring out oil well into the summer, then there will be hurricanes to contend with--and in a bad year, like 2005, the really strong ones can even come in July. For more on what would happen if a strong hurricane hit the oil ...

Obsessive-compulsive mice, which were once pulling their hair out from too much grooming, are now sitting pretty. Their cure? A bone marrow transplant. In a study published today in Cell, scientists show an unsuspected link between a psychological disorder and the immune system.

Here’s how they did it:

Step 1 – Finding the Problem

Since excessive cleaning is a behavior, scientists first thought to look for defects in the mouse brain. They noticed that mice with a mutant version of the gene Hoxb8 were the ones cleaning themselves bald. Hoxb8 is important for creating microglia–nervous system repair cells that search for damage in the brain.

Although some microglia start out in the brain, others are born in the bone marrow and move in. Overall, adult mice with faulty Hoxb8 harbored about 15% fewer microglia in the brain than normal. [ScienceNow]

Since many microglia move from bone marrow to brain, the scientists decided to give the compulsive mice, with the mutant Hoxb8 gene, a marrow transplant.

Step 2 — Treatment

They took marrow from mice with regular Hoxb8 and gave it to the compulsive mice mice. Within four weeks, the mice stopped their obsessive cleaning. Within about three months, they had a full coat of hair.

“A lot of people are going to find it amazing,” said Mario Capecchi at the University of Utah, who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 2007 for his work on mouse genetics [and was a co-author of the paper]. “That’s the surprise: bone marrow can correct a behavioral defect.” [Guardian]

Step 3 — Prognosis

Scientists aren’t sure why a gene controlling immune cells (the microglia) appears to cure a psychological disorder, but they have some suspicions.

“Why couple behavior such as grooming to the host’s immune system?” the researchers ask in [the paper's] conclusion. “From an evolutionary perspective it may make perfect sense to couple a behavior such as grooming, whose purpose is to reduce pathogen count, with the cellular machinery–the innate and adaptive immune systems–used to eliminate pathogens.” [e! Science News]

Humans have a psychological disorder that mirrors this grooming and hair loss compulsion in mice–the obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorder trichotillomania in which people pull out their own hair. But before jumping on this apparent marrow transplant cure, scientists would need to find the particular human gene responsible.

Capecchi warns that bone marrow transplants are too risky to be commonly used against, for example, OCD. Rather, a fuller understanding of the immune system-mental illness connection should produce new treatments. [Scientific American]

Related content:
80beats: Researchers Track the HIV Virus to a Hideout in the Bone Marrow
80beats: Obsessive Compulsive Sufferers May Find Relief With a “Brain Pacemaker”
Discoblog: Where Fat Makes Its Final Stand in the Anorexic Body: In the Bone Marrow
Discoblog: Want the Most Accurate OCD Diagnosis? Visit the Zoo
DISCOVER: Could an Acid Trip Cure Your OCD?

Image: flickr/Bascom Hogue

With hurricane season fast approaching, the official forecasts are coming out. And they’re not good. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that between 14 and 23 storms could reach the severity level of a tropical storm—the point at which they get a name.

Of those, eight to 14 are expected to become hurricanes. From three to seven of these could become major hurricanes, with winds exceeding 111 miles an hour. This compares with a long-term average of 11 named storms per season, with six becoming hurricanes and two becoming major hurricanes [Christian Science Monitor].

The warning signs are alarming even experienced hurricane watchers.

The tropics are even warmer than the toasty waters that spurred the 2005 hurricane season into such dizzying activity, with 28 named storms including Katrina, Rita and Wilma…. “The coming season looks very active based upon the latest data we’ve seen,” said Phil Klotzbach, who along with Colorado State University scientist Bill Gray publishes a widely regarded seasonal forecast. “The tropics are super warm right now” [Houston Chronicle].

Klotzbach and Gray predict 15 major storms and eight full-on hurricanes. But they warn that these predictions are an inexact science, so just because some conditions look similar to 2005 doesn’t meant there’ll be another Katrina.

One factor of great interest this year is the BP oil spill. What happens if a hurricane tears through the Gulf of Mexico, right where all the spilt crude lingers? As DISCOVER blogger Chris Mooney wrote for Slate, it depends:

Much depends on the angle at which the storm crosses the slick. In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes rotate counterclockwise, with the largest storm surge occurring where the winds blow in the direction the storm as a whole is traveling—that’s in front of the eye and off to the right…. So if a powerful storm approached the slick from the southwest, say, its most potent winds would push the oil forward, instead of sweeping it off to the side and out of the storm’s path. If the storm then plowed into the Gulf Coast, you’d expect an oily landfall [Slate].

However, there’s also the possibility that things won’t be so bad: It may not come in at that angle, and a hurricane’s rage could help to disperse the oil more, which could speed up the rate at which it degrades.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: Does Global Warming Really Boost Hurricanes?
The Intersection: Hurricane v. Oil Slick
Bad Astronomy: Chris Mooney, Hurricanes, and Warming the Globe
80beats: We Did the Math: BP Oil Spill Now Worse Than the Exxon Valdez

Image: NOAA (Hurricane Opal, 1995)

If you need a little more awesome in your weekend, then try this:

I know I’ve been posting quite a few Saturn images from Cassini, but I really like this one. It shows the big round moon Rhea, the lumpy small moon Janus, and a lovely view of the foreshortened rings. Both moons were on the far side of the rings, well over 1 million kilometers away, when Cassini took this shot. Rhea is over 1500 km (900 miles) in diameter, while Janus is only about 180 km (110 miles) across. For comparison, our own Moon’s diameter is almost 3500 km (2100 miles).

Just last year, the rings were edge-on to the Sun. In the months since, as Saturn slowly orbits our star, the Sun has begun shining down on the northern side of the rings. Cassini was just above the ring plane when it took this shot, catching the sunlight reflected off the rings. From this narrow angle, you can see the rings are divided into countless smaller ringlets, bright and dark sections carved into shape by the gravitational forces of the planet and its dozens of moons.

I love how the top of Rhea is playing hide-and-seek in the rings. And look how dark the rocky Janus is compared to the icy Rhea! Even at a glance you can see that Saturn’s environment is an amazingly rich and diverse place. Cassini’s observations will keep planetary astronomers busy for decades… and provide the rest of us with a glimpse of the beauty and awe just waiting to be uncovered.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Momma always said to pick up after yourself. Otherwise, you won’t know where your old pieces of junk will end up, and might end up confusing them with asteroids.

Astronomers have decided that a near-Earth object that passed by Earth last week is likely a rocket piece, a chunk of metal left behind in the darkness of space while some orbiter or NASA explorer zoomed off on an exciting mission.

Richard Kowalski at the Catalina Sky Survey discovered “2010 KQ,” a few-meter-wide something or other, headed for Earth on May 16. Tracked by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called “Spaceguard,” the something made a relatively close pass to our planet (it was just a bit further out than the moon’s orbit) on May 21. Yesterday, NASA announced that the object was likely the upper-stage of a rocket.

Why the confusion? First, using spectral analysis, astronomers could see that the object’s makeup was not like any known asteroid. Second, the folks at NASA were suspicious of the object’s path, which looked a lot like our own planet’s orbit around the sun. Things that start moving with us, unless overcome by gravity or propelled by rockets, tend to want keep on going the same way.

“The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect an object to remain in this type of orbit for very long,” said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. [NASA]

This isn’t the first such asteroid identity crisis. Astronomers had a similar mix-up regarding 2010 AL30, which made a pass by Earth in January of this year. Scientists debated whether it was a piece of the Venus Express spacecraft, but decided to define it as a “Apollo class” asteroid. You can look at its orbit here.

Astronomers expect for 2010 KQ to visit our neighborhood again in 2036, but there is only a six percent chance that it will actually hit us. Even if it does, it will completely burn up in our atmosphere/trash incinerator.

Related content:
Bad Astronomy: A piece of asteroid falls to Earth in June, but in a good way
Bad Astronomy: 100 meter asteroid will pass Earth Monday!
Bad Astronomy: BAsteroid
80beats: Experts Declare War on Space Junk… So What Do We Do Now?
DISCOVER: The Asteroid Hunters

Image:  NASA/JPL

One of the many places I’ve been traveling to recently is a bit unusual: the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City, Missouri. For one thing, it’s a private library; like the Huntington Library in Pasadena, it’s supported almost entirely by private funds. For another, Linda Hall is completely dedicated to science, technology, and engineering. While visiting, I asked what they considered their peer institutions to be — the other science libraries they might be compared to. Nobody could think of any. It seems to be a completely unique place.

I got to tour deep into the bowels of the building, where stacks of journals and scientific reports seem to stretch for ages. The library does a brisk job lending books and articles to other institutions; when you need a technical note from 1923 that tells you how a certain bridge was put together, this is the place to go. There is also an amazing rare-book collection, some of which was being put on display as part of an exhibition entitled “Thinking Outside the Sphere: Views of the Stars from Aristotle to Herschel.” I got to leaf through a first edition of Newton’s Principia, which I have to say was pretty awesome. I didn’t find any mistakes, but my Latin is a bit rusty. Here are the three Laws of Motion, right near the beginning of the text.

The library also adds to the intellectual life of Kansas City by sponsoring public lectures. I followed Sara Seager and Seth Shostak in a series about extraterrestrial life. Not my area of expertise by any means, but they asked me to talk about time travel, which I do know something about. (At least by the standards of other human beings, for which neither “time travel” nor “extraterrestrial life” are subjects of true expertise anywhere.)

Dr. Sean Carroll – The Paradoxes of Time Travel from Linda Hall Library on Vimeo.

Of course I also had some BBQ while in KC. One does not live by the life of the mind alone.