The 'Greenhouse Effect

One of the most interesting concepts bought up in class was the Greenhouse Effect. I found some nice slides explaining the Greenhouse effect, that I will use with my students.


The 'Greenhouse Effect

The greenhouse effect is a natural occurrence that maintains Earth's average temperature at approximately 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
The greenhouse effect is a necessary phenomenon that keeps all Earth's heat from escaping to the outer atmosphere. Without the natural greenhouse effect it is certain that we would all be lost. Temperatures on Earth would be much lower than they are now, and the existence of life on this planet would not be possible. The global average temperature would drop precipitously 33 degrees from its current 15° to -18°C. The Earth would become an ice planet.
However, too many greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere could increase the greenhouse effect. This could result in an increase in mean global temperatures as well as changes in precipitation patterns.
The Earth's atmosphere, a thin blanket of gases, protects the planet from the harshest of the sun's ultraviolet radiation. The atmosphere, by trapping the Earth's warmth, keeps rivers and oceans from freezing. Carbon dioxide and water vapor are the most important gases in creating the insulating or "greenhouse effect" of the atmosphere.

Extremophiles Are Alive & Well - Everywhere!!

Definition - Lover of extremes
History - Suspected about 30 years ago
Known and studied for about 20 years
Temperature extremes - Boiling or freezing, 1000C to -10C (212F to 30F)
Chemical extremes - Vinegar or ammonia (<5 pH or >9 pH)
Highly salty, up to ten times seawater
How we sterilize & preserve foods today
What are they? - Microbes living where nothing else can.
How do they survive? - Extremozymes
Why are they are interesting? - Extremes fascinate us & the idea of
life on other planets is even more fascinating.

Thermophiles
There are microbes called thermophiles, or heat-lovers, that live in temperatures so hot, the microbes could actually melt if they hadn’t developed tricks and tools to handle such extreme heat. Thermophiles have certain proteins, or enzymes, that are specially geared to working in high temperatures even as hot at 284° F (140° C). Keep in mind that water boils at 212° F (100° C). The normal-temperature proteins and enzymes in your body would start unfolding and breaking apart long before it got as hot as 284° F. Understanding the biology of thermophiles may help scientist understand the boundaries of which life can exist on other planets.




Psychrophiles
On the opposite end of the spectrum from the thermophiles, psychrophiles
burgeon in extreme cold. Life cannot grow where liquid water can’t exist,
but it does grow at or slightly below freezing temperature.
The most studied psychrophilic environment is Antarctic sea ice. This area is mainly populated with algae, diatoms, and bacteria. Certain species in this ecosystem are incapable of reproduction at temperatures above 2 degrees centigrade. Psychrophiles also inhabit the ocean’s freezing cold floor.
Among the most well known psychrophiles are the worms that dwell in methane
ice at the bottom of the Sea of Cortez. Psychrophiles are probably the
least studied of extremophiles, so obviously little is known about them.




Additional information:
Low temperature
Arctic and Antarctic
1/2 of Earth’s surface is oceans between 10C & 40C
Deep sea –10C to 40C
Most rely on photosynthesis

Black/white photo: Methane worm up-close





Halophiles
The word halophile means, “salt loving”. A halophile is an organism that can grow in higher salt concentrations than the norm.
Based on optimal saline environments halophilic organisms can be grouped into three categories: extreme halophiles, moderate halophiles, and slightly halophilic or halotolerant organisms.
Some extreme halophiles can live in solutions of 35 % salt. This is extreme compared to seawater which is only 3% salt.
Diversity of Halophilic Organisms
Halophiles are a broad group that can be found in all three domains of life. They are found in salt marshes, subterranean salt deposits, dry soils, salted meats, hypersaline seas, and salt evaporation pools.

The Big Bang!!

Did you know that the matter in your body is billions of years old? 

According to most astrophysicists, all the matter found in the universe today -- including the matter in people, plants, animals, the earth, stars, and galaxies -- was created at the very first moment of time, thought to be about 13 billion years ago. The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang. 

The Big Bang was like no explosion you might witness on earth today. For instance, a hydrogen bomb explosion, whose center registers approximately 100 million degrees Celsius, moves through the air at about 300 meters per second. In contrast, cosmologists believe the Big Bang flung energy in all directions at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters per second, a hundred thousand times faster than the H-bomb) and estimate that the temperature of the entire universe was 1000 trillion degrees Celsius at just a tiny fraction of a second after the explosion. Even the cores of the hottest stars in today's universe are much cooler than that. 

There's another important quality of the Big Bang that makes it unique. While an explosion of a man-made bomb expands through air, the Big Bang did not expand through anything. That's because there was no space to expand through at the beginning of time. Rather, physicists believe the Big Bang created and stretched space itself, expanding the universe. 


The Earths Energy Balance

Heat (heat energy) is the total kinetic energy of all the atoms in a substance.
The Earth's climate system constantly tries to maintain a balance between the energy that reaches the Earth from the Sun and the energy that is emitted to space. Scientists refer to this process as Earth's "radiation budget".
The Earth's energy balance diagram.
On the Moon where there is no atmosphere, a surface temperature far below freezing emits enough radiation to balance the absorbed solar energy.
Because of the tilt of the Earth's axis, incoming solar radiation is not evenly distributed on the Earth's surface and seasonal changes occur.
The Sun is not in the exact center of the Earth's orbit. During the Southern hemisphere summer the Earth is closer to the Sun than during the Northern hemisphere summer. The Earth is farthest from the Sun during the Southern hemisphere winter.
As the Sun's electromagnetic radiation penetrates the Earth's atmosphere it is selectively absorbed and scattered by molecules of gases, liquids, and solids.
The energy coming from the Sun to the Earth's surface is called solar insulation or shortwave energy.
The average temperature of the systemÂ’s radiating surfaces controls both the amount of energy and the wavelengths at which energy is emitted by any system. The temperature of the Sun's radiating surface, or photosphere, is more than 5500 degree C (9900 degree F).
Energy goes back to space from the Earth system in two ways: reflection and emission.
Reflection:
Part of the solar energy that comes to Earth is reflected back out to space in the same, short wavelengths in which it came to Earth.
The percentage of solar energy that is reflected back to space is called the Aledo.
Different surfaces have different albinos. Over the whole surface of the Earth, about 30 percent of incoming solar energy is reflected back to space.
Ocean surfaces (26% Aledo) and rain forests (15% Aledo) reflect only a small portion of the Sun's energy.
Deserts however, have high albedos (40%); they reflect a large portion of the Sun's energy.
A cloud usually has a higher Aledo than the surface beneath it; the cloud reflects more shortwave radiation back to space than the surface would in the absence of the cloud, thus leaving less solar energy available to heat the surface and atmosphere.
Emission:
Another part of the energy going back to space from the Earth is the long wave radiation emitted by the Earth. The solar radiation absorbed by the Earth increases the planet's temperature. Heat energy is emitted into space, creating a balance.


A cloud can absorb radiation emitted by the Earth's surface and radiates in all directions.
The long wave energy emitted from the surface of the Earth and absorbed by the atmosphere results in an increase in the ambient temperature (i.e., the greenhouse effect). This absorbed energy is then emitted both to space and back towards the Earth's surface.
The greenhouse effect is due mainly to water vapor in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide, methane and other infrared-absorbing gases enhance this effect.

The Tilt Of The Earth's Axis & The Seasons

If the axis of Earth was perpendicular to the plane of its orbit (and the direction of incoming rays of sunlight), then the radioactive energy flux would drop as the cosine of latitude as we move from equator to pole. However, as seen in
Figure 6, the Earth axis tilts at an angle of 23.5° with respect to its plane of orbit, pointing towards a fix point in space as it travels around the sun. Once a year, on the Summer Solstice (on or about the 21st of June), the North Pole points directly towards the Sun and the South Pole is entirely hidden from the incoming radiation. Half a year from that day, on the Winter Solstice (on or about the 21st of December) the North Pole points away from the Sun and does not receive any sunlight while the South Pole receives 24 hours of continued sunlight. During Solstices, incoming radiation is perpendicular to the Earth surface on either the latitude of Cancer or the latitude of Capricorn, 23.5° north or south of the equator, depending on whether it is summer or winter in the Northern Hemisphere, respectively.

During the spring and fall (on the Equinox days, the 21st of March and 23rd of September) the Earth's axis tilts in parallel to the Sun and both Polar Regions get the same amount of light. At that time the radiation is largest at the true equator.

Effect of Earth's spherical shape

If the Earth were a disk with its surface perpendicular to the rays of sunlight, each point on it would receive the same amount of radiation, an energy flux equal to the solar constant. However, the Earth is a sphere and aside from the part closest to the sun, where the rays of sunlight are perpendicular to the ground, its surface tilts with respect to the incoming rays of energy with the regions furthest away aligned in parallel to the radiation and thus receiving no energy at all

Cause of the Seasons

Earth's Seasons Are Caused by the Axial Tilt! No Tilt, No Seasons.

Solstices: Locations in Earth's orbit when the axis is pointed the most toward or away from the Sun. The longest and shortest day of the year depending on which hemisphere you live, North or South.

Equinoxes: Locations in Earth's orbit when the axis is not pointed at all toward or away from the Sun, but tangent to it. Length of the day is the same for everyone on Earth. 12 hours of day and 12 hours of night.

Earth's rotation axis Precesses about in a 26,000 year cycle. This Changes the Date of Equinoxes and Solstices. 

Seasons happen because sunlight is distributed over the surface of Earth differently throughout the year, NOT because the Earth is closer or farther away.
When Sunlight is direct is delivers more energy per unit surface area than when it is indirect (or oblique).
Tilt also causes length of days to change. During summer, days are longer and sunlight is more direct. During winter, days are short and sunlight is more oblique.

MY MONEY IS ON THE EXPERT ON BLACK HOLES STEVEN HAWKINGS

To say that the idea of black holes is complicated is an understatment. Even the great Steven Hawking changed his mind on the subject. Here are some nice pictures on what a Black Hole might look like- (Sandi has the best Picture on here blog, check it out.)




In an artical in news @ nature. com back in 2004, The eminent physicist Stephen Hawking has conceded that information can escape from black holes after all. The idea has been gaining popularity with physicists for some time, but the fact that Hawking, a pioneer of black-hole theory in the 1970s, has finally accepted it is something of a watershed.

Hawking had believed that anything swallowed by a black hole was forever hidden from the outside universe. A freind of Hawking- John Preskill bet that the information carried by an object was not destroyed when it plummeted into a collapsed star, and could actually be recovered.

Hawking's original view follows Einstein's general theory of relativity, which predicts that, at certain locations in space, matter collapses into an infinitely small and dense point, called a singularity. The theory says that the force of gravity at this point is so great that nothing, not even light itself, can escape, hence the term 'black hole'.



Because the singularity is infinitely small, it cannot possibly have any structure and so there is no way that it can hold information. Any data about particles entering the black hole must be lost forever.

The problem is that quantum theory, which describes space and matter on very tiny scales, contradicts this. Quantum theory says any process can be run in reverse, so starting conditions can theoretically be inferred from the end products alone. This implies that a black hole must somehow store information about the items that fell into it.

So an object falling into a black hole is not completely obliterated. Instead, the black hole is altered as it absorbs the object. Although it would certainly be very difficult to retrieve any information about that object, the data are still there, somewhere inside the black hole.
How could that information ever escape? The answer lies in one of Hawking's greatest discoveries: that black holes slowly evaporate into space by losing particles from the very edge of the gravitational precipice at their rim, called Hawking radiation. The black hole eventually shrinks to a tiny kernel, at which point a growing torrent of radiation begins to leak out, potentially carrying the lost information with it.

SUNDIAL ACTIVITIES

HERE ARE SOME GREAT SITES FOR SOME FUN ACTIVIES ON SUNDIALS - http://www.fi.edu/time/Journey/Sundials/interactsd.htm http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/kids/summer_activities/make_sundial.shtml
THESE SITES HAVE CROSSWORD PUZZLES & GAMES THAT KIDS MIGHT ENJOY.

I found some interesting information on sundials that helps me have a better appreciation for this instrument - here are some nice pictures & some details on how a sundail works.



This is a Sundial for Mars - very cool!!!


As the earth turns on its axis, the sun appears to move across the sky. The shadows the sun casts move in a clockwise direction for objects in the northern hemisphere. If the sun rose and set at the same time and spot on the horizon each day shadow sticks would have been accurate clocks. However, the earth is always spinning like a top. It spins around an imaginary line called its axis. The axis runs through the center of the earth from the North Pole to the South Pole. The earth's axis is always tilted at the same angle.
Every 24 hours the earth makes one complete turn, or rotation. The earth rotates on its axis from west to east. The earth's rotation causes day and night. As the earth rotates, the night side will move into the sunlight, and the day side will move into the dark.
On the earth's yearly trip around the sun the North Pole is tilted toward the sun for six months and away from the sun for six months. This means the shadows cast by the sun change from day to day.
Because the earth is round, or curved, the ground at the base of a shadow stick will not be at the same angle to the sun's rays as at the equator. Because of this the shadow of the shadow stick will not move at a uniform rate during the day.
Eventually man discovered that angling the gnomon and aiming it north made a more accurate sundial. Because its angle makes up for the tilt of the Earth, the hour marks remained the same all year long. This type of gnomon is called a style. After this discovery, people were able to construct sundials that were much better at keeping accurate time.

BUMBLE BALL MANIA!

One of the more interesting experiments we did in class is when we used a bumble ball to model the random walk of photons in the Sun. I can see how the bumble ball experiment can give my students a hands look at how electrons scatter. Also, In the experiment we wanted to know how the photons get from the Sun's core and "escape" as light.

Once we got some good data went into the lab and did the computer simulation. The simulation was excellent because I see how the data came to life. An interesting note in class was the fact that a Sun’s photon only travels one centimeter before it gets remittedd in a process called "random walk".
After this experiment I was interested in knowing more about the photosphere - I found some great photos that I think may give my students a better understand of this concept.

The photosphere is lowest layer of the atmosphere. This zone emits the light that we see. The photosphere is about 300 miles (500 kilometers) thick. But most of the light that we see comes from its lowest part, which is only about 100 miles (150 kilometers) thick. Astronomers often refer to this part as the sun's surface. At the bottom of the photosphere, the temperature is 6400 K, while it is 4400 K at the top.

The photosphere consists of numerous granules, which are the tops of granulation cells. A typical granule exists for 15 to 20 minutes. The average density of the photosphere is less than one-millionth of a gram per cubic centimeter. This may seem to be an extremely low density, but there are tens of trillions to hundreds of trillions of individual particles in each cubic centimeter.




A Moreton wave, a type of surface wave caused by a sudden release of energy by the sun, spreads across the solar surface in a series of four images. This wave front traveled at about 186 miles (300 kilometers) per second.


The surface of the sun is marked by many small patches of gas called granules, which are believed to be produced by the violent churning of gases in the sun's interior.


A rapidly expanding solar quake, which resembles an Earthquake, is shown in a series of images of the sun's surface. This quake spread out across the surface more than 62,150 miles (100,000 kilometers).

NEWS FLASH!! FROM SPACE & BEYOND

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.
The two spiral galaxies started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image. The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.
The new image allows astronomers to better distinguish between the stars and super star clusters created in the collision of two spiral galaxies. By age dating the clusters in the image, astronomers find that only about 10 percent of the newly formed super star clusters in the Antennae will survive beyond the first 10 million years. The vast majority of the super star clusters formed during this interaction will disperse, with the individual stars becoming part of the smooth background of the galaxy. It is however believed that about a hundred of the most massive clusters will survive to form regular globular clusters, similar to the globular clusters found in our own Milky Way galaxy.
The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms" extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by ground-based telescopes. These "tidal tails" were formed during the initial encounter of the galaxies some 200 to 300 million years ago. They give us a preview of what may happen when our Milky Way galaxy will collide with the neighboring Andromeda galaxy in several billion years.

"LOOK IT'S GRUS - THE CRANE - WHAT CRANE? "

October Constellations
The October sky contains seven constellations, including such well-known formations as Aquarius, the water bearer, and Pegasus, the winged horse. The only notable deep sky objects are located in these two constellations. Aquarius contains two globular clusters and one open cluster. Pegasus is home to a single globular star cluster. The remaining constellations of October are relatively unremarkable, composed mainly of faint stars with no deep sky objects worthy of mention. The only bright stars worth mentioning are Alnair, in Grus, and Fomalhaut, in Piscis Austrinus.

Grus
The Crane

Pronunciation: (GRUS) 
Abbreviation: Gru Genitive: Gruis
Right Ascension: 22.61 hours Declination: -44.52 degrees Area in Square Degrees: 366
Crosses Meridian: 9 PM, October 10
Grus, the Crane, is visible in latitudes south of 33 degrees north from July through September. It was named by Johann Bayer and represents the crane, which was the symbol for the office of astronomer in ancient Egypt.

Mythology of the constellation Grus
During the late 1590's, two Dutch navigators, Pieter Keyser and Frederick de Houtman, mapped several new constellations as they traveled south, the majority being named after recently identified birds and animals. A few years later Johann Bayer, the German astronomer, included these new star patterns in his Uranometria, published in 1603



Alnair
The Bright
Alnair means 'The Bright One', and its magnitude of +1.7 certainly makes this variable blue star the brightest in its home constellation of Grus, the Crane.

A constellation of the southern sky, lying immediately south of the bright star Fomalhaut. Important features are the hot blue star Alnair, and the easily distinguished double star of Delta Gruis.

Alnair, brightest of the stars that make up Grus the Crane, is just over one hundred light years from the Solar System.
Al Na'ir is a blue B7IV sub giant about 3 times the diameter of the sun and about 170 times as luminous.

Distance (Light Years) 101 ± 3
Visual Magnitude 1.73
Color (B-V) -0.13

Alnair (Alpha Gruis)

The brightest star in the constellation Grus and the thirtieth brightest star in the sky. Its Arabic name (also written “Al Na’ir”) means “the bright one,” and comes from a longer phrase for “the bright one in the fish’s tail,” since the Arabs considered the stars of Grus to be the tail of Piscis Austrinus. Alnair can't be seen from latitudes higher than 42° N.

Visual magnitude 1.73
Absolute magnitude -0.74
Spectral type B7IV
Surface temperature 13,500 K
Luminosity 380 Lsun
Distance 101 light-years
Position R.A. 22h 8m 14s, Dec. -46° 57' 40"

In astronomy, stellar classification is a classification of stars based initially on photospheric temperature and its associated spectral characteristics, and subsequently refined in terms of other characteristics. Stellar temperatures can be classified by using Wien's displacement law; but this poses difficulties for distant stars.

"DAD, WHY AM I DOING THIS ?"

My daughter Maya was not sure what I was doing but I promised here a stawberry sunday if she held still. The picture does not show the concept of umbra & penumbra but here is a definition that might help. ( note, blog would not let me download some nice animations that gave some examples of these concepts - please advise)
Umbra and penumbra from an extended source. You may have noticed that shadows are often fuzzy, particularly when the surface on which the shadow lies is far from the object casting the shadow. This fuzziness is because no light source is only a point in space. All sources have some geometrical size. Thus, light from one edge of the source is not quite parallel to light from the other edge.
The evenly dark part of a shadow is called the umbra. The fuzzy part between the dark and the light is called the penumbra.
If one is in the umbra of an object, the light source is completely obscured. If one is in the penumbra, the source is only partially obscured, to a greater or lesser degree as one moves through the penumbra.
The umbra of a shadow is not absolutely black because there is always scattered light that makes its way into it. In the case of sunlight, the scattered light is mostly bluish skylight, so shadows are bluer than normal.

"TEACHER, WHAT IS THE LITTLE YELLOW DOT ?"

MY STUDENTS WERE FACINATIATED WITH HOW THIS 1.4 MILLION KM SUN WAS NOW A 2-3 MM IMAGE BEHIND THE VIEW FINDER.
I HAD A HARD TIME WITH MATH AT FIRST - BUT I THINK I HAVE SOME NUMBERS I CAN USE IN CLASS. THE PICTURE SHOWS SOME OF MY STUDENTS VIEWING THE SUN WITHOUT THE RULER TO MEASURE THE DISTANCE FROM THEMSELVES TO THE IMAGE. THEY HAD A DIFFICULT TIME WITH THE RULER - THEY KEPT HITTING THEMSELVES IN THE THROAT.
HERE ARE SOME MORE FUN FACTS ABOUT THE SUN FOR MY STUDENTS.
Diameter: 1,390,000 km.
Mass: 1.989e30 kg
Temperature: 5800 K (surface)
15,600,000 K (core)

HERE COMES THE SUN

ON A SUNNY SUNDAY AFTERNOON I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPERIMENT WITH MY COMPASS. IN THE TWO PICS YOU CAN SEE HOW WE ARE AT A 40 TO 45 DEGREE LAT. ONE LINE IS AT THE NOON LINE WHILE THE COMPASS LINE IS SHOWING THE MAGNETIC NORTH. COOL!

THIS IS TEST

MORE LATER -