Mars' water is frozen, like NASA's budget

Using ground-penetrating radar, scientists have found that the south pole of Mars is covered with a layer of almost pure water ice -- enough water to cover the planet to a depth of 36 feet if it melted.

Even better, that's just the south pole. The north pole has another massive ice cap, and there's evidence that there's even more water stored underground all across the planet.

There are still plenty of technical obstacles to setting up any sort of manned station on Mars, notably the extreme cold (average temperature: -81 degrees) and thin, unbreathable atmosphere. But huge amounts of accessible water make it at least thinkable.

Other things, however, make it less thinkable. Like NASA's budget problems. Besides prompting NASA to propose scuttling useful precursor programs like the Lunar Robotics Office, the agency this week admitted it would not have a replacement for its aging space shuttles by the planned 2014 deadline. For now the delay is only a year, to 2015. But with the shuttles scheduled to be retired in 2010, that leaves a five-year gap where manned flights -- and trips to the International Space Station -- will be the domain of Russia or private organizations. Not to mention the up-and-coming space programs of India, China and Japan.

NASA's entire budget is a relatively paltry $16.8 billion. We could eliminate it entirely and still not make a meaningful dent in the budget deficit. Given the agency's usefulness -- politically, economically, militarily and scientifically -- surely we can shield it from the vicissitudes of the budget wars. If there's one thing that deserves strong support, it's scientific inquiry, the exploitation of space and (long term) developing the capacity to colonize or extract resources from other worlds.

Mars, space, politics, midtopia

The evolution of religion

As a follow-up of sorts to my genetics of altruism post, The New York Times magazine had a fascinating, thought-provoking piece on the evolutionary advantages of belief.

Turns out that some scientists have been studying religion from an evolutionary perspective, trying to figure out why religion is universal when it is seemingly maladaptive to survival: usually, believing in nonexistent things and expending energy on nonproductive pursuits will make it harder to survive, not easier.

First the science, then my two cents.

The science is split into two camps. There's the "byproduct" school, which says religion is not in itself an evolutionary advantage, but is a byproduct of a complex and imaginative brain that is. Then there's the "adaptionist" school, which argues that religious belief is in fact advantageous by promoting trust and cooperation within a group.

The byproduct folks have some fascinating bits of data to work with. Their main ones are three recognized human traits:

Agent detection: The ability to infer the presence of organisms that intend to harm us. If we see motion out of the corner of our eye, our mind tends to assume it is a potential hostile organism and react accordingly. We assume the motion is guided by a mind rather than assuming benign causes like wind blowing leaves around. This makes evolutionary sense: If we're wrong about it being hostile, we're still alive. If we're wrong about it being benign, we're dead or injured. But it predisposes us to see intelligent agents behind every observed phenomenon.

Causal reasoning: The ability to "impose a narrative" on seemingly unrelated events. I tend to describe this as "pattern detection", the ability to see patterns even where none exists. Again, this is evolutionarily advantageous: it helps us solve puzzles and figure out cause and effect even with scant evidence, and is largely harmless when applied incorrectly. But it, too, predisposes us to see order and causation where there is none.

Theory of mind: This is simply the recognition that other people have their own viewpoint and do not know everything we know; it's the ability to imagine yourself in other people's heads. It lets us anticipate the actions of other people based on our knowledge of their knowledge. The survival advantage is obvious. The link to religion is a little more complex. Experiments show that children do not develop "theory of mind" until they are 4 years old or so. Until then, they believe others -- and especially their parents -- are omniscient. In other words, we are born believing in omniscient, invisible minds, which paves the way for a belief in God.

Then come the adaptationists. They argue that while the byproduct school might help explain some of the biochemistry of belief, belief itself is also favored by evolution. Some of my thoughts on altruism closely reflect adaptationist arguments. Religion can make people feel better by worrying less about death, letting them focus on living and the future. By reinforcing desirable behavior, it helps them attract better mates. It makes groups more cohesive, allowing them to outcompete nonreligious groups. It makes individuals more willing to sacrifice themselves, again increasing the survivability of the group. Such advantages outweigh the evolutionary costs of religion, which is measured in the time and resources devoted to ritual.

Adaptationists also note that this doesn't have to be an either-or thing. All species contain a range of various traits: height, strength, speed, disease resistance, etc. Why should belief be any different? In that view, theists and atheists aren't enemies; they represent a socially healthy mix. "What seems to be an adversarial relationship between theists and atheists within a community is really a division of cognitive labor that keeps social groups as a whole on an even keel," to quote the article's paraphrase of David Sloan Wilson.

Me, I don't see the two schools as necessarily being in conflict. Humans are social creatures by design, and the idea that we're wired to view the world in a certain way makes sense. Further, anything that promotes social cooperation is evolutionarily advantageous. Religion is an effective tool to that end, so it's easy to see why it would be so ubiquitous.

I would add that belief is advantageous for a reason not cited in the article: because it gives us a sense of control. Early humans were surrounded by deadly things they didn't understand. That could be debilitating to a mind imaginative enough to envision all the horrible things that could happen. But if we think we know why lightning strikes or earthquakes happen or people die, then we can develop rituals and practices to control or appease them. If we think we know what the stars are, we can use them to store our hopes and dreams. Belief is just one more tool to help us order our surroundings, giving us a framework that lets us live our lives more successfully by explaining away the unexplainable.

Believers may be offended by this whole discussion, as if God can be reduced to a particular brain structure or random chance. But that's not necessarily the case. Knowing the mechanism by which humans experience God does not prove God doesn't actually exist. To quote Justin Barrett, a prominent member of the byproduct school and a practicing Christian:

"Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people. Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?”

This is a variation of "evolution is the tool by which God created humans" argument. And it works just as well. We believe because God gave us the ability to believe when He created us.

Anyway, it's a fascinating article, far more interesting than I can do justice to here. Give it a read before it disappears behind the Times Select wall.

evolution, religion, politics, midtopia

The genetics of altruism

Are humans innately good, or innately selfish?

That's a fundamental question when it comes to discussing morality, law and society. If humans are innately selfish, then the only way society functions is by the majority forcing everyone to behave, through tools of social control like government, religion and culture. Without such control, the argument goes, society would disintegrate into a Darwinian anarchy where the strongest reigned through force and cruelty.

In addition, this worldview lends weight to the idea that only an extrahuman authority -- such as God -- can effectively impart a moral code, for if humans are naturally immoral or amoral they simply would not bother to develop one. In such a view, religion is not merely a tool for enforcing whatever society defines as morality; it is an essential source of morality that transcends society.

If humans are generally good, however -- if they are hardwired for altruism, for example, or if our social nature makes us seek approval, and render cooperation and compromise common and successful survival strategies -- then the importance of religion and tradition and government all shrink. They are still useful as founts of distilled wisdom and as a way to enable or compel group behavior. But they are not in and of themselves a necessary component of virtue.

The reality, of course, is as variable as the human experience. Like any other distribution, human behavior follows the bell curve. So even if most humans are innately good, there will be some that misbehave. And if our natural state is despotic anarchy, there would still be a few selfless saps trying to help others. Throw in other considerations, like love of family or economic ties, and the picture becomes more muddied still.

That said, a couple of recent developments shed some interesting light on the subject.

Last year, molecular researchers identified what they called an altruism gene that is present in almost all living things. It's not a gene that makes people give to charity; it's a gene that appears to explain why some cells in a multicellular organism give up their ability to reproduce -- and thus commit genetic suicide -- in order to help the organism as a whole function better. Their conclusion? The function arose for a separate purpose -- letting cells shut off temporarily useless processes to conserve energy -- and was then co-opted by evolution in multicell organisms, in something of a biological bait-and-switch. The resulting combination was so successful that all later organisms retained it.

Another study around the same time found that altering a single gene in a species of bacteria turned resource "cheaters" into cooperative organisms. Further, the genetic change occurred naturally in response to environmental stress. In other words, the stress apparently promoted a genetic change that favored cooperation.

Couple that with demonstrated examples of altruism in the animal kingdom, and it's clear that altruism is compatible with evolution.

If altruism can arise spontaneously on the cellular level and among lower animals, it seems obvious that it can arise naturally at the behavioral level of intelligent species, which have an advantage that bacteria do not: the ability to calculate the costs and benefits of cooperation.

It could start out as loyalty to a family group, wherein a parent, for example, sacrifices itself to save its mate or offspring and thus protect its genetic legacy. As populations grow that definition could be expanded to include clan or tribe, based on a reciprocal economic calculation: I'll come to your defense if you come to mine, increasing our overall chances of survival.

Society would eventually develop ideals and traditions that enforce such altruism, allowing it to apply to larger and larger groups. It would confer approval, admiration and reproductive success on those who are generous or take risks in its defense. As social creatures we are especially susceptible to "doing what is expected" and seeking the approval of our fellows.

And that, in fact, appears to be the case, as a more recent experiment shows.

The experiment hooked up college students to MRIs and had them make decisions about whether or not to give money to various charities. What they found was that deciding to give money produced activity in two different areas of the brain: the part responsible for social attachment, and the same pleasure centers stimulated by food, drugs, money and sex. In other words, acting altruistic made them feel good, as well as involving a bit of social calculation.

Such altruism may be learned rather than innate; the study doesn't attempt to establish a root cause. But it demonstrates that good behavior does not necessarily need ongoing external enforcement. People do not have to be coerced or scared into doing good; they simply need to be attached to a society or family group that prizes such behavior.

This also demonstrates that altruism can in fact be quite selfish. Altruistic acts can lead to very real individual benefits, such as increased reproductive success, enhanced social stature or simply feeling good about oneself.

But such benefits must be weighed against the potential cost. At the extreme, altruism is detrimental: the warrior who is killed in combat never gets a chance to enjoy the fruits of his sacrifice. He may still consider the risk worth it, but how can we explain the person who deliberately sacrifices himself to save others, like the soldier who throws himself on a grenade?

In some cases, even such extreme decisions can be selfish, genetically speaking. A suicide bomber, for instance, knows that his family will probably be taken care of. A soldier's family gets a government pension and the thanks of a grateful nation.

But absent those scenarios, I think such examples demonstrate the power of societal expectations. People raised in a given society often internalize that society's values. The stronger their attachment to the society, the stronger the internalization. Further, people who live when others die often experience "survivor's guilt." Many people talk about how they "couldn't live with themselves" if they behaved in a way society disapproves of. The cost-benefit analysis is different for every individual, of course, but many people would apparently prefer to risk near-certain death than live with the knowledge that they chickened out, or let others die so that they could live.

So it turns out the question I posed at the beginning of this article is a bit misleading, because in many cases being good and being selfish are the same thing. But overall I think the evidence points to morality and altruism being biologically based but socially defined. Religion is a part of society, and thus contributes to defining society's morality just like any other philosophical system. Religion is also a singularly powerful social tool for enforcing that morality -- though like any tool it can also be used for ill. But morality can flourish absent religion, just like religion can flourish absent morality.

evolution, ethics, genetics, morality, religion, politics, midtopia

Global warming showstopper

It's real. It's serious. And it's largely man-made.

That is the consensus opinion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group that includes hundreds of scientists in 113 countries and represents the current state-of-the-art on global warming.

The report says rising temperatures are "very likely" human-caused -- a phrase that reflects more than 90 percent certainty.

Some specifics:

The panel predicted temperature rises of 2-11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100. That was a wider range than in the 2001 report.

However, the panel also said its best estimate was for temperature rises of 3.2-7.1 degrees Fahrenheit. In 2001, all the panel gave was a range of 2.5-10.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

On sea levels, the report projects rises of 7-23 inches by the end of the century. An additional 3.9-7.8 inches are possible if recent, surprising melting of polar ice sheets continues.... Many scientists had warned that this estimate was too cautious and said sea level rise could be closer to 3-5 feet because of ice sheet melt.

Besides directly flooding land, rising sea levels would increase erosion, increase flooding during storms, and degrade inland soil and water quality. And that effect would be compounded by another effect of global warming: an increase in the number and intensity of severe storms like hurricanes.

What should be done? The report is a bit gloomy about that. It says the warming at this point will continue for centuries no matter what humans do about it. So the question is, what effort should be made now to eventually mitigate our influence on global temperature?

Those are the sort of questions that Congress will take up soon. The House has created a global warming committee, which is supposed to develop a bill by July. Meanwhile, various Senators have introduced bills aimed at reducing U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases by various amounts. So we can expect some sort of action on that front sooner rather than later. Whether it will amount to more than grandstanding, and whether it will survive potential Republican opposition, is another thing.

Food for thought.

politics, midtopia

A cure for cancer?

It sounds too good to be true. But everything I can find says this could be legitimate.

A molecule used for decades to combat metabolic diseases in children, may soon be available as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer, University of Alberta researchers are reporting.

In results that “astounded” school scientists, the molecule, known as DCA, was shown to shrink lung, breast and brain tumours in both animal and human tissue experiments. The study is being published today in the journal Cancer Cell.

Besides being known and safe, the drug is in the public domain -- meaning if this pans out, treatments would be dirt cheap. On the downside, it might be difficult to get it through clinical trials and bring it to market, since there's little or no profit in it for drug companies. So public financing of the trials may be necessary.

And those clinical trials are crucial. Lab results and even animal testing are nice, but the drug industry is littered with compounds that passed those two hurdles and failed in human testing. Such trials are expensive and take time, so any actual treatment is still years away.

But if this works, it would be way, way cool.

DCA, cancer, medicine, midtopia

A look at dark matter

Dark matter -- a long-postulated mystery substance that makes up at least 6/7 of the mass of the universe -- has apparently finally been found.

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is about to be unravelled with the first detailed, three-dimensional map of dark matter - the invisible material that makes up most of the cosmos.

Astronomers announced yesterday that they have achieved the apparently impossible task of creating a picture of something that has defied every attempt to detect it since its existence was first postulated in 1933.

Dark matter is thought to be some sort of subatomic particle that doesn't interact much with ordinary matter like you and me. Think of neutrinos with mass. Because it doesn't interact directly, the only way to detect its presence is by the gravitational effect of its mass.

Even more interesting is how the dark matter is organized:

"A filamentary web of dark matter is threaded through the entire universe, and acts as scaffolding within which the ordinary matter - including stars, galaxies and planets - can later be built," Dr Massey said. "The most surprising aspect of our map is how unsurprising it is. Overall, we seem to understand really well what happens during the formation of structure and the evolution of the universe," he said.

Astronomers have long been aware of various structural symmetries in the visible universe. For instance, they've identified a "supercluster" known as the Great Wall, a sheet of galaxies 500 million light years long, 200 million light years wide and 15 million light years deep. Another is the Great Attractor.

Such structures are exceptions to theory, which expects a more uniform distribution of galaxies resulting from the Big Bang. Dark matter, it turns out, may be one reason such structures exist.

Cool stuff. And one reason why generous funding of space exploration (manned, robotic and telescopic) should continue.

astrophysics, astronomy, science, space, politics, midtopia

To the moon!

NASA has long been committed to returning to the moon on a regular basis by 2020. What they were unclear on is what exactly they would do after that.

Now we know.

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.

The south pole was chosen for several reasons, notably the suspected presence of water ice and the fact that it's almost always in sunlight -- an important consideration since the station will be largely solar-powered.

Why go? Well, beyond the scientific reasons, a permanent base on the moon would be both a demonstration project for extraterrestrial habitation and a first step toward exploring and eventually colonizing the rest of the solar system. It could be used as a way station and refueling point for expeditions to Mars, for instance, reducing the amount of mass such missions would need to lift out of Earth's gravity well. Looking way ahead, a truly self-sustaining colony could perform a lot of heavy industrial tasks -- mining, refining, even spaceship construction -- without needing to worry about pollution and in much lighter gravity.

In addition, the base would have relatively easy access to the dark side of the moon. Beyond learning more about that poorly understood area, the far side would make an excellent place to set up gigantic telescopes -- far bigger than anything we can orbit and far more sensitive than any Earthbound observatory, which must contend with distortions caused by atmosphere and light pollution.

It won't be cheap -- $100 billion or so over the next 20 years -- but given the time frame and the potential payoffs, it's worth it. It certainly will provide far more return on capital than, say, blowing $500 billion in a horribly mismanaged war. Or $400 billion on a badly designed prescription-drug plan.

And if the international fusion reactor project pans out, the moon base could eventually use all the Helium-3 lying about to provide hot showers.

space, science, moon, NASA, politics, midtopia

Power to the fusion!

Under the category of "playing catchup from the long holiday weekend", this was a really cool development:

Nations representing half the world's population signed a long-awaited $12.8 billion pact last week for a nuclear fusion reactor that could revolutionize global energy use for future generations.

The ITER project will build a small-scale tokomak reactor, which uses a magnetic field to contain a plasma within which the fusion reaction occurs. It's the most promising of various proposed designs for a fusion reactor.

It's not something to hold your breath over. The reactor will take eight years to build, and even if it works a prototype power plant would not be built until about 2040.

But it's good to see countries putting serious money behind a project that could revolutionize energy production and even space exploration. This is thinking big. And while if it fails it will be called a boondoggle, if it succeeds it could mean seeing a working fusion plant in my lifetime -- something I frankly never expected.

fusion, energy, politics, midtopia

Space shuttle set for launch tomorrow

The shuttle Discovery is scheduled to blast into space tomorrow, weather permitting.

The weather delay nonetheless served as a reminder of the bleak forecasts for launch day. NASA predicted a 60 percent chance that weather conditions will ground the shuttle Saturday. The prospects aren't any better Sunday or Monday, as clouds from area thunderstorms are expected to continue threatening rain and lightning.

Regular shuttle flights are needed if we're to complete the International Space Station and keep the Hubble telescope operating until the James Webb telescope is launched in 2013.

In other recent space news, two moons of Pluto discovered by the Hubble telescope have been named: Nix and Hydra join Charon as Plutonian satellites.

That still doesn't settle whether Pluto is actually a planet -- and if it is, whether that means we have more than nine planets after all, because there are several nonplanetary objects in the solar system that are as large or possibly larger than Pluto.

Fun stuff.

I hope tomorrow's launch goes well and that the astronauts go and return safely.

Pluto, space station, space shuttle, Hubble, NASA, politics, midtopia

Bird language

A researcher has found that birds understand complex linguistic structures. If the findings hold up, it demolishes yet another ability that supposedly is unique to humans, joining "tool use" and "abstract thinking".

Researchers trained starlings to differentiate between a regular birdsong ''sentence" and one that was embedded with a warbled clause, according to research in today's issue of the journal Nature.

This ''recursive grammar" is what linguists have long believed separated man from beast.

(snip)

While many animals can roar, sing, grunt, or otherwise make noise, linguists have contended for years that the key to distinguishing language skills goes back to our elementary school teachers and basic grammar. Recursive grammar -- inserting an explanatory clause like this one into a sentence -- is something that humans can recognize, but not animals, researchers figured.

This news will probably present some conservatives with a cognitive problem. On the one hand, it directly attacks the notion that humans and animals are somehow separate. On the other hand, it debunks a major linguistic assertion by many conservatives' favorite punching bag, Noam Chomsky. So do they accept the former in order to jump on the latter, or defend the latter in order to attack the former?

As an aside, while in Chicago we visited the Field Museum. They have an outstanding exhibit on the evolution of life, which I urge everyone to go see if you have the chance; it's a hugely informative and multilayered explanation of what scientists know, how we know it, and the conclusions drawn from that knowledge.

But what struck me most was the exhibit on Sue, the almost complete T Rex skeleton that is the centerpiece of the Field's collection. The skull was in such good shape that they were able to do a scan of her braincase and build a picture of her brain structure, showing the sinuses, olfactory bulbs and other regions. Judging from the scan, Sue had an excellent sense of smell.

One of the things you can examine is Sue's wishbone. It's a lot bigger and cruder than the one you pull apart after Thanksgiving dinner. But the exhibit notes that there are only two groups of animals that have wishbones: birds and meat-eating dinosaurs. And that is one of the reasons we think birds are the only living descendants of dinosaurs.

Likewise, humans are clearly descended from earlier animals. I don't see why people think this somehow lessens our humanity, disproves God or makes us less amazing. No other species has accomplished what we have in our short existence. And our having emerged from earlier species is far more wondrous than the idea that we were created as is.

dinosaurs, linguistics, language, evolution, politics, midtopia

The oil alternatives

Popular Mechanics has done what it often does best: break down an issue into the basic facts. In this case, they tackle alternative fuels.

It's long, and the good information is in the downloadable pdfs. But the executive summary is that, in the short term, "alternative fuels" will mean mixing other things with gasoline in some fashion. And most alternatives are more expensive per mile than gasoline. The exceptions are biodiesel (running cars on used vegetable oil) and electricity (which uses plentiful domestic coal instead of oil).

The alternatives have their problems. In cold temperatures biodiesel turns to a waxy solid (though fuel additives could fix that). Electrical cars take a long time to recharge and have limited range, rendering them unsuitable for distance driving. And the coal we'd burn to produce the electricity is both a fossil fuel and has pollution issues of its own. Still, when couched in terms of energy independence, it starts to look very good.

The holy grail, hydrogen, is some ways off technologically, and will initially be four times as expensive as gasoline. But the DOE projects that hydrogen will fall to the equivalent of $2/gallon by 2012. After that the major obstacle is infrastructure: having hydrogen-capable filling stations, as well as developing safe ways to transport and store the highly-pressurized explosive gas.

Anyway, check it out.

alternative fuels, oil, energy, politics, midtopia

DNA tests free man after 18 years behind bars

yet another example of the fairly high error rate in our criminal justice system:

Based on a second round of DNA tests, the convicted killer of a restaurant manager may be granted a new trial -- or possibly even cleared of the crime -- after spending nearly 18 years behind bars.

In 1989, Drew Whitley was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life for killing Noreen Malloy, 22.

Our justice system will never be perfect, of course. But the large number of cases like this highlight just how error-prone the system can be. Perhaps we can never totally fix that, but we can limit the damage.

For example, I don't have a big ethical problem with the death penalty. But I have all sorts of practical problems with it, from the expense to racial and economic bias to the error rate I mention above. For all those reasons there should be a requirement that the death penalty can only be applied if there is unequivocal evidence of guilt. And by that I mean an uncoerced confession, videotape or (preferably) DNA evidence. Eyewitness testimony, other forensic evidence, circumstantial evidence -- it's all too unreliable. If that's all the prosecutor has, they can still go for life in prison. But the death penalty should be off the table.

We should reserve the death penalty for truly heinous crimes in which there is no credible doubt about the defendant's guilt. I'm talking Timothy McVeigh here, or serial killers, or cold-blooded executions. Because the true crime would be if we executed an innocent person (as we undoubtedly have done). Life behind bars is cold comfort to the wrongly imprisoned, but at least they're still alive and able to continue challenging their conviction.

If that means that executions almost entirely cease, I'm okay with that. The success of the death penalty should be measured in how accurately it is applied, not how often.

We should also have a compensation program for the wrongly convicted. We stole their life from them; the least we can do is try in some small way to make it up to them.

death penalty, Drew Whitley, DNA, crime, politics, midtopia

New probe arrives at Venus tomorrow

The Venus Express, a $260 million mission to find out why Venus is a broiler and earth is not, is scheduled to go into orbit early tomorrow morning. It is designed to answer some specific questions.

Chief among them is what happened to turn Venus into a child's vision of hell, with a superheated toxic soup of an atmosphere that is 90 times denser at the surface than Earth's -- about the same pressure as the ocean at a half-mile depth. ...

There is a lot to understand. Measurements taken by early probes of Venus have made scientists all but certain that the planet once had extensive oceans that heated up and finally boiled off.

Quite probably the resulting cloud of water vapor provided the initial atmospheric blanket that turned the planet into a hothouse. "But where did [the water] go?" asked University of Michigan planetary scientist Stephen Bougher. "Nobody knows."

If they can figure out what happened on Venus, it might do one of two things: rule out the same thing happening to Earth, or provide a glimpse of what our future might be like if things go bad.

Given that Venus once had oceans, it also would be interesting to design a probe to land on the surface and search for fossilized evidence of life. Assuming all the hyperactive volcanism didn't erase the evidence in the eons since the oceans disappeared.

And there are other mysteries:

Another puzzle that has mystified scientists for decades is Venus's winds, which are negligible on the surface but reach speeds of 220 mph in the upper atmosphere, much faster than the planet rotates. Venus, the slowest-spinning planet in the solar system, has a "day" that is the equivalent of about 224 Earth days.

I can't wait for the data to come back and get analyzed.

Venus Express, solar system, Venus, space, midtopia

Gasohol vs. gasoline

Here in Minnesota, all gasoline is required to contain ethanol. If you're like me, you've probably wondered just what we accomplish by doing so. Is the total energy cost of ethanol lower than gasoline? What about greenhouse gasses?

Which is why I was glad to see a very straightforward commentary by biology professor Peter Wyckoff in Monday's Star Tribune.

The main point of the article is Wyckoff advocating that we start using switchgrass as a source of ethanol instead of corn. But for me the most interesting facts were these:

Weighing all the factors -- the fossil fuel needed to grow and ferment corn vs. the cost of drilling oil, the lower energy content of ethanol vs. gasoline (and the resulting lower mileage) -- ethanol helps, but not a whole lot. Gasoline containing 20 percent ethanol will cut a vehicle's total greenhouse emissions by about 2 percent.

That may not be much, but it's something. Unless ethanol costs significantly more -- and Wyckoff doesn't get into that -- increased ethanol use is worth pursuing.

But it does suggest that the strongest argument for ethanol is energy independence, not global warming. The more ethanol we use the less oil we need, which is an absolute good in my book. Because what we pay at the pump for a gallon of gasoline doesn't reflect the political, military and moral cost of that gallon. The sooner we can stop subsidizing repressively medieval regimes, the better.

E-20, greenhouse, oil, Wyckoff, ethanol, politics, midtopia

Some options on global warming

Here's a decent roundup on global warming -- what scientific consensus is regarding what will happen, what might happen, and what we can do about it.

The upshot: It's too late to stop global warming, but not too late to avoid the worst-case scenarios.

Scientists say it's too late to stop people from feeling the heat. Nearly two dozen computer models now agree that by 2100, the average yearly global temperature will be 3 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit higher than now, according to Gerald Meehl, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Even if today the world suddenly stops producing greenhouse gases, temperatures will rise 1 degree by 2050, according to NCAR.

A British conference on "avoiding dangerous climate change" last year concluded that a rise of just 3 degrees would likely lead to some catastrophic events, especially the melting of the Greenland's polar ice. A study in the journal Science last month said the melting, which is happening faster than originally thought, could trigger a 1- to 3-foot rise in global ocean levels.

So the idea now is to accept that we'll have at least a century of global warming, but take immediate steps to avoid the extreme cases while taking long-term steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Even naysayers are coming around, sort of:

Many of the scientists who have long been vocal skeptics of global warming now acknowledge that the Earth is getting hotter and that some of it is caused by people. Even so, this minority of scientists, such as John Christy of the University of Alabama at Huntsville, contend that the warming is "not on this dangerous trajectory."

Okay. Forgive me if your credibility on this isn't the highest at the moment.

environment, global warming, politics, midtopia

Global warming evidence No. 10,512

Coral reefs are dying at a record pace, as disease moves in on reefs weakened by rising ocean temperatures.

"It's an unprecedented die-off," said National Park Service fisheries biologist Jeff Miller, who last week checked 40 stations in the Virgin Islands. "The mortality that we're seeing now is of the extremely slow-growing reef-building corals. These are corals that are the foundation of the reef. ... We're talking colonies that were here when [Christopher] Columbus came by have died in the past three to four months."

I'm a scuba diver, so I've seen coral reefs up close. Besides being the basis for multibillion-dollar tourism and fishing industries, they are islands of incredible biodiversity. And large reefs help protect shorelines from storms and waves.

But most corals require relatively cool water to survive, and it takes millennia to build up the massive reefs. Once they're gone, they won't be coming back any time soon.

Take global warming seriously, because it's real. There are reasonable questions about what we can or should do about it, but simply ignoring it is no longer a responsible option.

coral reef, global warming, midtopia

Asteroid mission is a go

NASA has reversed itself, restarting the $446 million Dawn mission to orbit Ceres and Vesta, two of the largest asteroids in the solar system.

The mission is well worth the money. Besides the scientific benefits of studying two of the largest chunks left over from the creation of the solar system, it will be another test of an ion engine, and thus one more step toward bootstrapping ourselves into a more permanent and widespread presence in space.

To find out a lot more about the Dawn mission, visit the Dawn home page.

Vesta, Ceres, asteroid, exploration, space, NASA, midtopia

Inflation -- the good, cosmic kind

A group of physicists says it has direct evidence of how the universe expanded immediately after the big bang.

Physicists announced Thursday that they now have the smoking gun that shows the universe went through extremely rapid expansion in the moments after the big bang, growing from the size of a marble to a volume larger than all of observable space in less than a trillion-trillionth of a second.

Not only does this provide confirmation of current thought, it provides an opportunity to consider some really cool questions. For example, during the expansion the universe grew many, many times faster than the current speed of light. Does that indicate that the universe itself is not subject to the same laws of physics that hold sway *within* the universe? It also refocuses attention on questions like "what's outside the universe?"

If pondering imponderables fascinates you, this provides a lot to chew on.

physics, universe, big bang, midtopia

A continent splits apart

This is just too cool for words.

Normally changes to our geological environment take place almost imperceptibly. A life time is too short to see rivers changing course, mountains rising skywards or valleys opening up. In north-eastern Africa's Afar Triangle, though, recent months have seen hundreds of crevices splitting the desert floor and the ground has slumped by as much as 100 meters (328 feet). At the same time, scientists have observed magma rising from deep below as it begins to form what will eventually become a basalt ocean floor. Geologically speaking, it won't be long until the Red Sea floods the region. The ocean that will then be born will split Africa apart.

Basically, Africa will lose its horn once the land slumps enough to let the ocean in.

Visit the link. There's a lot more there, including photos and maps.

Thanks to Centerfield for pointing out this story.

Afar Triangle, Africa, geology, midtopia

Another Mars probe arrives

Another Mars probe achieved orbit around the Red Planet on Friday.

Scientists cheered after the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter emerged from the planet's shadow and signaled to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the maneuver was a success.

The two-ton spacecraft is the most sophisticated ever to arrive at Mars and is expected to gather more data on the Red Planet than all previous Martian missions combined.

It will explore Mars in low orbit for two years and is expected to churn out the most detailed information ever about the planet. In the fall, the orbiter will begin exploring the Martian atmosphere, scan the surface for evidence of ancient water and scout for future landing sites to send robotic and possibly human explorers.

What I'm most excited about is the ground-penetrating radar that can look for underground water and ice.

And coming up:

It is expected to serve as a communication relay for the Phoenix Mars Scout, which will explore the icy north pole in 2008 and the Mars Science Laboratory, an advanced rover scheduled to launch in 2009.

Let's get it on.


science, space, Mars, NASA, midtopia