Spaces with Space with Volcanoes on the Pacific Rim

As you are approaching your final exams (not all of you...I'm looking at you grade 11s) with less than enthused study sessions, may I present to you some beautiful finds in the past month.

GoPro and SpaceX
SpaceX attached a GoPro camera to their falling module.  Just to see the Earth in all of its beauty in the resolution and motion that a GoPro can capture makes me feel like I myself am floating on the edge of the atmosphere.  The waltz music almost makes me forget about the heat and friction that accompany the falling back towards Earth - I was kind of looking forward to seeing that portion of the fall, but SpaceX elected to cut that out.

Feast your eyes, and then please go back to studying.

Star Party
Around 20 parents and students came on out two nights ago to watch Chris Vaughan of the Dunlop Observatory setup three telescopes to watch the night sky for almost 3 hours.  He was such a wealth of knowledge taking us from a pair of binary stars to swans to even spotting the ISS.  He masterfully had us observe Venus, then Jupiter, and then followed the ecliptic to find a third planet - Saturn!  I look forward to working with Chris again, and hopefully we can book him for another season to observe a different night sky.

Volcanoes

Remember how the study of Earth is also a part of the course?  Did you hear that our guest Chris Vaughan (see above) couldn't get a summer job after first year when he didn't have any geology courses, but after second year in university where he elected to take geology courses, he and all of his friends got summer job offers?  Don't neglect the geology portion of the course ladies and gents.  Here is a reminder of the power of our very own Earth shown in this Mount Shindake volcano video in which Japan raised the volcano alert level to 5, which is the highest on the scale.

NASA Mission to Europa

Looks like there's a mission to Jupiter's moon and they've chosen 9 instruments to help determine if this moon is habitable.  Guess which instruments they are?  (we've studied a couple of them in class!)

Hey, you're still here?  You should be studying...or blogging.  

Quakes, a Creationist Geologist, and Table Turning Planets

It's been a while, hasn't it? Senioritis is hitting the grade 12s in our class pretty hard, and it seems to be taking a toll on my blogging frequency as well.  No matter how hard senioritis hits the students though, plate tectonics keep building stress, magma is rolling, and disasters strike.  One must always work hard and be prepared.

I learned a lot this week from your presentations on past earthquakes and volcanoes.  Great job everyone.  The MA and OH's Chilean volcano coverage and LL and JL's Tongshan earthquake presentation really had me engaged throughout the twenty minutes.

Nepal

Nepal had a second major earthquake with a Richter magnitude of 7.3.  It's been very difficult for help to reach the more remote areas of the mountains, and the transportation of emergency supplies has been slow as a result.  An article was brought to mind as BL was performing his presentation where he creatively prepped us as volunteers:  random volunteers of students, church congregations or anyone else who go to help out but who also lack skills or coordination can actually slow down the aid process.  Sending money is the best thing we can do according to this article at the Guardian.  Read this reflection on how volunteers who attempted to help out in Haiti may have slowed down the process.

Texas

1 earthquake in 58 years prior to 2008.  Once fracking began, there have been over 100 mini earthquakes reported since 2008.  An interesting correlation, is it not? Read more at CNN

A Refreshing Perspective

Finally, a creationist has stood up in our class to counter the views - albeit on paper, and not in class. One day, I hope to see a serious, respectful discussion regarding how a creationist views some of these scientific ideas we learn about.  Nevertheless, here's a very different perspective - a geologist, who understands and believes in the stories that rocks tell us in terms of age (4.5 billion year old earth) and is bent on trying to reconcile Noah's great flood story with the rocks he studies.  Read more here on his journey.

The Tables have Turned

Our current theory and understanding of planetary formation has been called into question by Australian National University as they have found found a larger exoplanet orbiting a smaller sun.  Check it out here, on discovery.com!

The 2015 Spring Blog Awards

The 2015 Spring Blog Awards are Out

Believe it or not, blog awards are a very important aspect of the digital ecosystem.  Just check out the swankiness of the UK blog awards that rewards individuals for their social media achievements, and it's no different in Shin's class either!  (minus the swank)

Most In-Depth yet Easy to Read Blog

You can tell that AL really enjoys writing about the latest from Rosetta and Philae, the adventures of the European Space Agency's (and humanity's) first mission to a comet.  Not only is it filled with jaw dropping pictures, it's littered with analysis dotted with his own reflections.  His personality shines through while he overviews the latest discoveries, and it's a good one to read.  Check it out at the  Space Buddha! 

Most Colourful Blog

Now, while it is colourful,my title also points out that this particular student challenged herself to stay on the topic of the unit (rocks) and was able to colour her words well to keep me engaged.  Her words engaged me and kept me going on a journey through to Australia and painted out a most interesting rock that I never knew existed.  She may have added a destination to my bucket list with this post on Uluru.

Most Learned Blog

Now JL asked a very important question in his blog that I'd bet all of us observed, but have probably never asked.  He went in deep and researched some profound analysis that brought me back to my electrical engineering university days and wow, I came out of that post a more learned man.  Now it might go over your heads a little, but it's one heck of an interesting post.  I'll bet you didn't know this! 

Most Unique Blog Posting

This student demonstrated his learning of rocks and the rock cycle in a way that I've never seen before. He must be recognized for writing something entirely different!  The number of concepts he runs through through his story is impressive.  

Best All-Round Blog

MA has created a succinct, yet jam packed informative post on the latest discovery about those ice crystals.  Her ability to hook you in, convey loads of information, and keep you engaged can be experienced right here.  

The Earth and her Power

This week there has been tons of happenings with the Earth.  Tragedies abound and the number of people displaced  grows each day- it is quite unfortunate, but we have no choice but to bow to Earth's power.  We will try to learn from these tragedies and improve our ability to predict but at the same time there are those of us that look out to space and try to find a new home.

Volcanoes

                                          April 22:  The smoke rose t o over 10km in the sky

Authorities in Chile declared a red alert and evacuated 1500 residents around Calbuco volcano.  The last known eruption was in 1972 and it has covered the sky with ash.  Check out the Atlantic for mesmerizing pictures.  Cool from far, but far from good for the Chileans.

Another less known Sarychev volcano along the Pacific Rim of Japan occurred and this time it was captured from outer space from those in the International Space Station.  They have their first projector installed, and the first movie they watched was Gravity.  

Do you see the similarity of the movie and reality?

Earthquakes

Because of the seismic gap that was in the Himalayas, an earthquake was predicted by many to occur in this area.  The devastating impact of this earthquake itself has a large capacity to destroy the light infrastructure of villages and surrounding area.  See more  from BBC of the collapsed temples and buildings that had its foundations destroyed and hope the best for the people of Nepal and surrounding villages.

It's been said by many that earthquakes are tremendously difficult to predict, but someone designed an app for smartphones named ShakeAlert  that can detect motion that can help with earthquaek prediction. If thousands of people have this app installed, all of us can serve as mini detectors of foreshocks which when appended all the information together can perhaps predict earthquakes in the future.

Liquefaction

In today's lecture I will be talking about liquefaction and its potential for destroying beach side infrastructure.  Here is the animated gif ahead of time.  

Creating Crystal Methods in the Lab

In the past two weeks we spent some time developing a good procedure and adjusting the procedure to grow the biggest crystal we could given a set amount of material.  Here are some of the results.

Chemical #1:  Cupric Sulfate

The characteristic blue of this copper really had me excited as it would have been interesting to see a large blue crystal.  The majority of the crystallization occurred at at the bottom of the beaker instead of the hanging crystal seed, so it didn't turn out as large as ED, RQ, and SC had hoped.

Picture 1: Crystallization occurring on hanging seed crystal with simultaneous crystals growing along bottom of beaker. 

Picture 2:  Crystallization happening on bottom - due to impurities at the bottom of beaker

Chemical #2:  Sodium Chlorate

The cubic structure of sodium chlorate was really evident in this jar.  As you can see in the pictures below, the layers of cubic sodium chlorate that accumulated on top of one another was absolutely breathtaking.  

 Picture 3:  Crystallization occurring on seed crystal as well as some impurities at bottom of jar.  If you look really closely, you can see the crystals growing on the nylon string near the top of  the beaker.  

  Picture 4:  ED, RQ, and SC decided to make multiple crystals and were able to grow multiple in different jars.  Of particular interest are the two cubes that have joined together.  

    Picture 5:  ED happy with his baby crystals. One is named Jerry, the other is a John Doe.  

  That's a picture of a proud father, right there.   

Chemical #3: Chromium Alum

Unfortunately, this beautiful black crystal suffered the same fate as the cupric sulfate.  

 Picture 6:  Crystallization at the bottom of beaker.  =( 

  Picture 7:  OH and MA were able to crack some crystals from the bottom.  

 Picture 8:  Some of the larger crystals that were extracted.  

Picture 9:  My favourite crystal. You can see its shape is almost perfectly octahedron.  The math teacher in me is quite pleased at the almost perfect symmetry of this crystal.

Picture 10:  OH and MA with their chromium alum octahedron crystals.  

Picture 11:  The rest of the class' sugar and salt crystals in a contest.  

I look forward to reading their reports that will maybe offer some reasons as to why certain crystals were able to grow well and others not so well.  Their recommendations in improvements to the procedure will be especially interesting, and I'm considering passing on their observations on to the next group next year to enlarge the crystals.

Class Happenings Part 1: Best Formative Blogs of 2015

If I had to choose one blog that put together the most entertaining whilst still informing the audience, it'd had to be BL's blog.  It was thought provoking (at least for me), and I will definitely be commenting on his written piece to give my opinion of his exaggeration and bias.  His written work engaged the audience and had me talking about it.  He expanded upon what was covered in class and had me looking up some of his statements.  In essence, he has succeeded in writing in a bit of a sensationalist style.

At the same time, everyone has different writing styles and are writing not for sensationalism, but for of a intellectual style.  Just remember to always try and engage your audience, whichever tone you choose to use.

Earth's Layers, Trillions of Carats, and the Perfect Life Conditions

Earth's New Layer

The simplified layers of the Earth only have the inner and outer core, mantle and crust.  However, today, there is a layer of molten or pliable rock that is found to be quite stiff in Earth's mantle.  What's interesting is that they used diamond anvils to apply massive amounts of pressures to rocks to simulate conditions deep in the Earth to find this layer.  Read more here @ popular science.  

Raining Diamonds

Imagine a meteorite containing more diamonds than all of the deposits known on Earth just landing your country.  Apparently, that's what happened.  These diamonds are also claimed to be harder than Earth diamonds due to the immense amount of pressure and temperatures at the moment of impact which was a crater 100 km wide.  Can you please picture that for a moment?  Driving in a crater for an hour at 100km/hr.  That's how big the explosion was...35 million years ago.  Check out more from the Huffington post.

Checking out the Rings

Saturn's 6th largest moon, Enceladus, the source of Saturn's outermost ring now tops the list as most probable world to contain life.  Sean Hsu, from Boulder University in Colorado lead a team to study the rings and discovered that the silica point to WARM waters.  It's hard to imagine that something warm could exist so far out, but the small uniformity of the silicate materials serves as evidence.  Their work has been published in Nature and can be further read about here on Popular Mechanics.

Post March Break

Advertisements for Other Exoplanets

As Mars One whittles down to its finals to sending humans on a one way mission to Mars, NASA has already started advertising for other exoplanets outside of our solar system but seem to have habitable environments.  Here is my favourite.  Which one is yours? 

Extent of Human Broadcasts

You know, sometimes I wonder if aliens will come and visit our Earth because of the recording on Voyager 1 that is "rolling out the red carpet" by giving the directions to our Earth blindly to any extra-terrestrial life out there.  Then, I remember, even though our radio broadcasts are moving at the speed of light, our first radio broadcast in the early 1900s has only reached this far in our milky way galaxy:

There are 100 billion galaxies out there, and our radio broadcasts haven't even reached the edge of our one galaxy yet.  

4/9 Boundaries Crossed...Until Planetary Destruction

So, apparently, we're almost halfway to human destruction.  The speed with which the diversity of living beings is decreasing (biodiversity loss) and the amount of nitrogen we are taking out of atmosphere have also been passed.  It's like we're slowly checking off things to our own extinction...check...check...

Well - I'm doing my best to reduce my carbon footprint after my wife and I purchased a hybrid.  

I like Earth.  "If you like it, put a ring on it".  The closest ring I can put on Earth is:

                                                        (from reddit...of course)

We are creating minerals and identifying minerals this week.  I can't wait to see who wins the crystal growing competition!  

Ginormous Black Hole 

A couple of weeks ago, the largest black hole with an ultraluminous quasar has been found.  You can see how many times bigger it is than anything else that we've found by looking at the graph below.  Props to the international team lead by Xue-Bing Wu of Peking University.  Check out more here!  

Creating a Different Kind of Life

A team of Cornell University researchers has successfully modeled a methane based, oxygen free life form that can metabolize and reproduce.  This points to the possibility of life on other places that are really cold with methane, like Saturn's moon Titan.   

Emotional about Space

I hope you guys get professors like this who absolutely love their job in the next few years.  This professor Tom Burns really gets emotional talking about space.  Couple that with an Inception soundtrack, and then maybe some goosebumps may rise.    

Mars and Water

Using the riverbeds of Mars mapped out by the rovers, artists have created an image of Mars when it was covered in water.  

Gravitational Lensing

Whoa, those presentations were quite impressive last week. We had tremendous discussions involving gravitational lensing; its effect has also given us a rerun of a supernova.  Check it out!

Exciting Stuff on Earth and in Space

Large holes of ground continue to disappear into the depths of Earth somewhere in Siberia.  There were many hypothesis behind the sudden collapse of ground - ranging from nuclear testing to the end of the world.  Check out more on iflscience!

The Mars' Rover, Curiosity, recorded a long burst of methane that lasted about 2 months.  Methane is a molecule that points to either 1)  the existence of hydrothermal systems or 2) some bacteria or alien cows farting.  It's an exciting development that may point to life on Mars.  Current life.

Curiosity, the rover, takes a selfie

Nacho Average Cheese.  The oldest piece of cheese has been found.  Using dating techniques that we will study in 2 months from now, the cheese, from 1615 BC, was discovered in clumps on mummies of Bronze Age people buried under wooden boats wrapped in cowhide.  This burial ritual created a vacuum packing effect that's better than our ziplock bag in our kitchens!  Read some more here on popscience.

I shall end off this post with a tremendous video from NASA.  NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory released time lapse videos of extreme violet, ultraviolet, and visible light.  We get to see solar flares and prominences up close and personal:

Welcome, Class of 2015

Whoa, another Earth-like planet was discovered, and some NASA scientists say it has probable life!  It is 'only' about 500 ly away from us, and its orbit is in the 'habitable' zone, a similar distance as we are away from the sun!    Check out the video below for further details.

A question was asked to me the other day - how do super massive black holes come into existence? Well, one way for a black hole to be a billion times bigger than our sun, is to merge black holes, of course!  Behold, a simulation of two merging black holes.

Oh my - some research into Einstein's equation has some scientists claiming that there was no big bang and that this universe has always existed.  Their math has the universe at a finite size, and thus an infinite age.  We will see how much traction this gets, if other scientists jump on board or find some error in their assumptions, or even their math!  Read more here at phys.org.  

The big four of Jupiter's moons were on display last month.  Take a look at this spectacular footage. Make sure you don't mistake the shadows on Jupiter for moons!  Read more at one of the more popular space blogs, Bad Astronomy. 

With so many questions in class regarding dark matter, I just wanted to post this oldie from popular science that really showcases how hard our scientists are at work trying to find dark matter.

An amazing animated GIF showcasing the powers of our current telescopes shows the pillars in monkey head nebula.  It starts with the constellations we see in the night sky, and demonstrates how far back in space/time we're able to see.  It's beautiful and really a sight to take in.  

Ok - now it's your turn to blog!  Find ONE topic and start going in depth.  Good luck!

2015 - Here we go!

Another year, another post.  This year's a little different than most with all of your applications to university due and you're wrapping up your 7/8 of your high school career.  Exams are coming up as well as a multitude of final assignments and projects.  You're probably experiencing stress as you have never felt before. I respond to you with this:

Colleges in the US and universities in Canada are turning to puppy therapy to help relax their students.  Puppies can be found in libraries and study halls throughout the university as a proven stress reliever. 

Here's an article on McGill University with their puppy room. 

Now that you're a little more relaxed, you're ready to catch up with the latest in science news! 

This professor can't get funding for his warp drive research because it's "too far out there".  It doesn't  stop David Pares though as he's willing to continue his research in his garage after a full day's work of teaching.  He's convinced of all that anecdotal evidence of veteran pilots who have traveled through serious electrical storms around the world and in the Bermuda triangle and find themselves 100 miles away from where they should be.  It's happened too often to far too many pilots in the past half decade that this man believes there's a correlation between high electrical activity and the ability to bend space.  Some physicists actually believe he's on to something.  Read more here.  

Some person wondered what would each of the planets look like if they were as close as the Moon.  Here's an animated GIF that I cannot corroborate on its authenticity but it's fun to look at nonetheless.

 A 5,500 year old fossil of an aboriginal woman found in Canada has its DNA analyzed.  It was found in BC's northern coast where many members of the indigenous First Nations currently live and apparently have lived for many years according to their history.  Their claim of living there has been verified by matching the DNA of that fossil with a living person who is now scientifically the 200x great-grandaughter.  That's a lot of generations.  Take a look! 

Remember those infographics and concept maps I assigned?  They're an increasingly important method of visually communicating information and its shown in WIRED's top 2014 science visualizations of the year.  Above what we see is a computer animation of a coronal mass ejection from the sun with the Earth in the background.  Make sure to look at the rest and make sure to read the captions. 

A mathematician has found a better way to get to Mars on less fuel.  Instead of aiming at the intended target and using extreme brakes (fuel) to arrive safely, the mathematician has shown a method of slowing down earlier at a proper speed enough to be gently pulled into orbit by the gravitational pull of the target.   It will be slower, but it's much cheaper. 

Again, I've shown versions of this before, but here's a video version that came out xmas eve with extreme font to annoyingly hammer it home that we live in a very, very, small portion of the universe.  Have fun in your last few days of holidays - I know I will, because I'm marking.