Category Archives: General

Mercury – NASA’s Fifth Planetary Conquest

Image of Mercury from previous Messenger missions. From NASA.

After years of planning and development, NASA’s space probe Messenger finally fell into Mercury’s orbit Thursday evening. At 9:10 p.m. of March 17, when the last rocket that projected Messenger shut off and the probe fell into Mercury’s gravity pull, scientists at the control room in John Hopkin’s University started in a round of applause.

Mercury is the fifth planet that NASA spacecrafts have orbited. Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and lacks an atmosphere. This means that Mercury’s surface is super heated by the sun during daytime but drops to hundreds of degrees below freezing at night. Also, without an atmosphere, Mercury’s surface is heavily cratered. The vast temperature different implies that ice could be found inside the craters. The Mercury probe hopes to bring back a year of photography that would help in the research of the creation of Mercury and its composition. With this goal in mind, surveillance of the probe is needed for the next few days. Constant checks on the probe’s health systems, testing of the scientific equipment that is on board is essentially so that the vast amount of data can be collected and  transmitted back to Earth.

This massive project started in 2004 with a budget of $446 million. Hopefully, the probe will bring back valuable data that would useful for planetary scientists to determine the evolution of Mercury.

Messenger also hits close to UBC as one of the Earth and Ocean Science professors, Dr. Catherine Johnson, participated in the project. Dr. Johnson is a participating scientist in the project and hopes to discover the reasons behind Mercury’s magnetic field. The probe Messenger hopefully will gather data that will be of use to Dr. Johnson.

The Keys to Longevity

Longevity is a goal most of us strive for, and in most of our minds the keys to accomplishing this consists of being happy, eating healthy, and not stressing too much. However, it appears that these common assumptions made by people are in fact wrong. In a recent article published by Science Daily (which can be found here), they reported the findings of a twenty year study about longevity and the results are not what we would expect.

Image from: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0511/feature1/index.html

The study, which is called “The Longevity Project”, was conducted by a group of scientists at the University of California, Riverside (UCR). These scientists examined, and refined previously collected data by Stanford University. The data which was initiated back in 1921, documented the lives of over 1500 children as they grew, starting from the age of ten. The children were studied throughout their lives, and information regarding family histories, relationships, hobbies, pet ownership, job success, education levels, military service, and numerous other details were collected. The scientists at UCR discovered many similarities in the data and they concluded that personality characteristics and social relations from childhood can predict one’s risk of dying decades later.

On average, it was discovered that test subjects who were the most cheerful and had the best sense of humor as kids lived shorter lives. While, individuals that were most prudent and persistent stayed the healthiest and lived the longest. This is definitely counterintuitive to what most people think. It appears that the subjects that were cheerful as kids tended to take more risks with their health across the years, hence risky or dangerous activities shortened the lives of many. Those that were prudence and persistence on the other hand, often developed many important and beneficial habits throughout their lives. The scientists found out that happiness is not a cause of good health, but instead happiness and health are related because they have common roots.

Image from: http://www.forbes.com/2002/08/07/0807sport_8.html

Furthermore, some of these intriguing key findings include that marriage may be good for men’s health, but it does not really matter for women. Men who remained in long term marriages generally lived longer than single or divorced men. As well continually productive men and women lived much longer than their more laid-back counterparts. Lastly, people who felt loved and cared for reported a better sense of well-being, but surprisingly it did not help them live longer. The clearest health benefit of social relationships comes from being involved with and helping others. The groups you associate with often determine the type of person you become, healthy or unhealthy.

These results are definitely interesting, and hence we should keep them in mind when we are trying to extend our longevity. In fact, it would probably be beneficial if we started to incorporate some of these findings in to our daily lives. For instance, we should all be more productive, and we should all be more involved. Hopefully in the future, the average life expectancy of people can exceed 100 years old.

Are we headed towards extinction?

Is it true? Although it is highly debated, our current understanding of science shows that we are facing the next  mass extinction event of the Earth. Many palaeontologists agree that the dinosaurs went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. This mass extinction event called the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) Extinction wiped out more than 50% of all species on the planet.

The KT Extinction was caused by a giant asteroid of diameter greater than 10km  that hit the Yuccatan Peninsula of Mexico 65 million years ago, leaving the Chicxulub Impact Crator of more than 180 km in diameter! Initially, this impact vaporized everything close to its vicinity instantaneously, and created an enormous tsunami. A dense cloud formed of debris from the impact created a series of long term effects.  One of which was a global acidic rain phenomenon killing many plants on the surface of the land and causing over 80% of the  marine species.

The KT Extinction was the last mass extinction the Earth has had, but there had been four others beforehand: Late Ordovician, Late Denovian, Late Permian, and Late Triassic. It has been suggested that we are heading towards the 6th mass extinction with our current rate of species going extinct (for example, the Dodo bird, and the Marsupial wolf). Extinction of different types of species on our planet suggest that a smaller variance of creatures will have the ability to survive the next type of mass extinction event whether it be a flood, giant meteor or global climate change.

Marsupial Wolf

Dodo Birds From Ice Age!

In 1984, D. Raup and J. J. Sepkoski analyzed the number of asteroid extinctions during the history of Earth and concluded that there was a mass extinction event every 25 million years. This landmark paper has been cited in over 400 scholarly sources and has led the start of many theories of possible mass extinction scenarios.

So if Raup and Sepkoski’s prediction is true, and our human race faces the next mass extinction event, will we be able to survive?

http://www.pnas.org/content/81/3/801.full.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event