Month: April 2024

New Volcano, Old Crater

On By rolcottIn Astronomy: Planetary Science, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Now Eddie’s dealing the cards and the topic choice. “So I saw something on TV about a new volcano on Mars. You astronomy guys have been saying Mars is a dead planet, so what’s with a new volcano? Pot’s open.”

Vinnie’s got nothing, throws down his hand. So does Susan, but Kareem antes a few chips. “I doubt there’s a new volcano, it’s probably an old one that we just realized is there. We find a new old caldera on Earth almost every year. Sy, I’ll bet your tablet knows about it.”

I match Kareem’s bet and fire up Old Reliable. A quick search gets me to the news item. “You’re right, Kareem, it’s a new find of an old volcano. This article’s a puff‑piece but the subject’s in your bailiwick, Cathleen.”

Cathleen puts in her bet and pulls out her tablet. “You’re right, Kareem. It’s a volcano we all saw but no‑one recognized until this two‑person team did. Here’s a wide‑angle view of Mars to get you oriented. North is up top, east is to the right just like usual.”

“Gaah. Looks like a wound!”

“We’ll get to that. The colors code for elevation, purple for lowlands up through the rainbow to red, brown and white. Y’all know about Olympus Mons, the 22‑kilometer tallest volcano in the Solar System, and there’s Valles Marineris, at 4000 kilometers the longest canyon. The Tharsis bulge is red‑to‑pink because it’s higher than most all the rest of the planet’s surface. Do you see the hidden volcano?”

“It’s hard to tell the volcanos from the meteor craters.”

“Understandable. Let me switch to a closer view of the canyon’s western end. This one’s in visible light, no color‑coding games. The middle one of the three Tharsis volcanos is to the left, no ginormous meteor craters in the view. Noctis labyrinthus, ‘the Labyrinth of Night.’ is that badlands region left of center. Lots of crazy canyons that go helter‑skelter.”

“That’s more Mars‑ish, but it’s still unhealthy‑looking.”

“It is a bit rumpled. Do you see the volcano?”

“Mmm, no.”

“This should help. It’s a close-up using the elevation colors to improve contrast.”

“Wow, the area inside that circle sure does look like it’s organized around its center, not higgledy-piggledy like what’s west of it. That brown image had something peaky right about there. What’s ‘prov’?”

“Good eye, Susan. The ‘prov’ means ‘provisional‘ because names aren’t real until the International Astronomical Union blesses them. The peak is nine kilometers high, almost half the height of Olympus Mons. The concentric array of canyons and mesas around it certainly make it look like a collapsed and eroded volcano. But IAU demands more evidence than just ‘look like.’ Using detailed spectroscopic data from two different Mars orbiters, the team found evidence of hydrated minerals plus structural indications that their proposed volcano either punched through a glacier or flowed onto one. Better yet, the mesas all tilt away from the peak, and the minerals are what you’d expect from water reacting with fresh lava.”

“Did they use the word ‘ultramafic‘?”

“I don’t think so, Kareem, just ‘mafic‘.”

“From underground but not deep down, then.”

“I suppose.”

Cal bets. “You said we’d get back to wounds. What was that about?”

“Well, just look at all that mess related to the Tharsis bulge — higher than all its surroundings, massive volcanos nearby, the Noctis badlands, Valles Marineris that doesn’t look water‑carved but has that delta at its eastern end. Why is all of that clustered in just one part of the planet? Marsologists have dozens of hypotheses. My own favorite centers on Hellas basin. It’s the third largest meteor strike in the Solar System and just happens to be almost exactly on the opposite side of Mars.”

Eddie looks a bit gobsmacked. “A wallop like that would carry a lot of momentum. Kareem, can a planet’s interior just pass that along in a straight line?”

“Could be, depending. If it’s solid or high‑viscosity, I guess so. If it’s low‑viscosity you’d get a doughnut‑shaped circulatory pattern inside that’d turn the energy into heat and vulcanism. How long was Mars cooling before the hit?”

“We don’t know.”

Cal’s pair of jacks apologetically takes the pot.

~~ Rich Olcott

Soggy Euclid

On By rolcottIn Astronomy, UncategorizedLeave a comment

It’s Cal’s turn to deal the cards and topic. “Water, water everywhere, especially where you wouldn’t expect it.”

Eddie bets a few chips. “Say what, Cal?”

“Oh, this article in one of my Astronomy magazines, says Euclid has an ice problem.”

“None of Euclid’s problems are nice. I barely got out of Geometry class alive.”

“Not that Euclid, Eddie. The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope that’s gonna catalog whatever it can see in a third of the sky. They’re looking to pick up everything out to 10 billion lightyears. S’posed to help us chase down dark energy, get a better handle on really big structures and voids, stuff like that. Anyhow, it’s in a potato‑chip orbit around the Earth‑Sun L2 point like JWST does but twice as far out. The ESA engineers noticed that Euclid‘s readings of some calibration stars were dropping and they figured out it was ice getting in the way.”

“Ice? In space?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. Turns out all our space missions bring water out with ’em even if they don’t want to.”

Vinnie’s bet doubles the pot. “Ain’t gonna happen. Every ounce of payload gotta have a good excuse or they don’t let it ride.”

“No, really. This ain’t payload, it’s like a stowaway. Mostly in the thermal insulation which has a lot of surface area inside with nooks and crannies where water molecules can stick. Makes no difference to most missions, but when you’ve got world‑class optics that you’re pushing to their limits, a layer of ice a few dozen molecules thick in the wrong place can hurt.”

“Okay, I get there’s problems if the ice is in the optics but you said it was in the insulation. And what’s it even doing there in the first place? If they know it’s gonna be a problem they can just bake it out during construction.”

Chemist Susan chucks a handful of chips into the pot. “Water molecules are small and sneaky. They always surprise you, especially when you don’t want them to. When they’re frozen‑solid ice you’d think they’d stay there, right? Oh, no, they evaporate without going through a liquid phase which lets them migrate around. It’s called sublimation. And do they migrate — just try to keep them out of somewhere. Pour absolute ethanol through humid air, it’s not absolute any more. Dry solids? If the substance has any surface oxygens you’re guaranteed to have water molecules hanging onto them even after you bake the stuff. So, Vinnie — that insulation wrap in the telescope? If it ever saw humidity the fibers are carrying water that could migrate to the optics.”

“Oh yeah, there’ll be humidity. Okay, Baikonur’s pretty much in the middle of a near‑desert, but the Guiana Space Center that France uses is right by the ocean and have you ever looked at a map of Cape Canaveral? That insulation’ll be soggy enough to spew water molecules onto the optics even at space temperatures. C’mon, Kareem, you gonna bet or what?”

“I’m deciding whether to talk about watery moons or the deep‑down Earth water we’re discovering. Jupiter’s moon Europa, for instance. We now know it has a kilometers‑thick shell of ice surrounding an ocean with twice as much water as our oceans put together. Meanwhile,” <meets Susan’s bet> “there’s another huge ocean beneath our feet.”

“Not our feet. This place is built on bedrock.”

“Think below the bedrock, Cal. We live on top of crust, maybe a couple dozen kilometers thick, floating on molten magma. You guys know about subduction, right, where chunks of sea-bottom crust are forced under the edges of continental crust. The further down you go, the hotter things get. The sea‑bottom stuff eventually melts to form lighter magma that ultimately rises to make volcanoes. Thing is, the sinking crust drags water with it, either in cracks or as water of crystallization. A melting chunk releases its water into a kilometers‑thick layer of steamy silicate slurry roughly 400 kilometers below us. That water ‘rains’ upward into our oceans, completing the cycle. Full house, queens and aces. Any challengers?”

Kareem’s surprisingly impatient for a geologist. Nobody counters so the pot’s his. Eddie gets next deal.

~~ Rich Olcott

No Symphony on Mars

On By rolcottIn Astronomy: Planetary Science, Physics: Waves, Uncategorized2 Comments

“Evening, Jeremy, a scoop of your pistachio gelato, please. What’re you reading there?”

“Hi, Mr Moire. It’s ‘A City on Mars‘ by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. One of my girlfriends read it and passed it along to me. She said it’s been nominated for a Hugo even though it’s non‑fiction and it argues against the kind of go‑to‑Mars‑soon planning that Mr Musk is pushing.”

“Is she right about the argument?”

“Pretty much, so far, but I’m not quite done. You get a clue, though, from the book’s subtitle — ‘Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?‘ Here’s your gelato.”

“Thanks. Not just Mars, space also?”

“That’s right. It’s about the requirements and implications for people living in space and on the Moon and on Mars. The discussion starts with making and raising babies.”

“That first part sounds like fun.”

“Well, you’d think so, but apparently you need special equipment. Hard to stay in contact if there’s no gravity to key on. But that’s only the start of a problem cascade. Suppose the lady gets pregnant. The good news is in zero gravity it’s easy for her to move around. The bad news is we don’t know whether Earth gravity’s important for making babies develop the way they’re supposed to. Also, delivering a baby isn’t the only medical procedure that’d be a real challenge in zero‑g where you need to keep fluid droplets from bouncing around the cabin and into the air system.”

“Whoa. Hmm, never thought about it in this context before, but babies leak. Diapers can help, but babies burp up stuff along with the air. Yuck! Tears they cry in space would just stay on their eyes instead of rolling down cheeks. So … we’d need OB/GYN clinics and nurseries somewhere down a gravity well.”

“For sure, although no‑one knows whether even the Moon’s 1/6‑g is strong enough for good development. I know my little cousins burn up a lot of energy just running around. Can’t give a toddler resistance bands or trust it on a treadmill.”

“So we need an all‑ages gym down there, too, with enough room for locals and visiting spacers.”

“You’re coming round to the Weinersmiths’ major recommendation — don’t go until you can go big! Don’t plan on growing from a small colony, plan on starting with a whole city that can support everything you need to be mostly self‑sufficient.”

“So you’re young, Jeremy. Are you looking forward to being a Mars explorer?”

“I’ll admit all that rusty landscape reminds me of Navajoland, but I think I’d rather stay here. On Mars I’d be trapped in tunnels and domes and respirators and protective coveralls. I wouldn’t be able to just go out and run under the sky the way I was brought up to do.”

“Wouldn’t be able to do a lot of things. Concerts would sound weird, according to a paper I just read.”

“Sure, wind instruments wouldn’t work with bubble helmets. We could still have strings, percussion and electronics, though, right?”

“Sure you could have them. But it’s worse than that. Mars atmosphere is very different from Earth’s. Its temperature measured in kelvins is 25% colder. The pressure’s 99% lower. Most important, molecule for molecule Mars’ mostly‑CO2 atmosphere’s is 50% heavier than Earth’s N2‑O2 mixture. Those differences combine to muffle sounds so they don’t carry near as far as they would on Earth. Most sounds travel about 30% more slowly, too, but that’s where a CO2 molecule’s internal operation makes things weird.”

“Internal? I thought molecules in sound waves just bounced off each other like little billiard balls.”

“That’s usually the case unless you’re at such high pressures that molecules can start sticking to each other. CO2 under Mars conditions is different. If there’s enough time between bounces, CO2 can convert some of its forward kinetic energy into random heat. The threshold is about 4 milliseconds. A sound wave frequency longer than that travels noticeably slower.”

“Four milliseconds is 250 Hertz — that’s a middle B.”

“Mm-hm. Hit a cymbal and base drum simultaneously, your audience hears the cymbal first. Terrible acoustics for a band.”

~~ Rich Olcott

Marconi Would Be Proud

On By rolcottIn General: Fun Stuff, Physics: Quantum Mechanics, UncategorizedLeave a comment

A warmish Spring day.  I’m under a shady tree by the lake, waiting for the eclipse and doing some math on Old Reliable.  Suddenly there’s a text‑message window on its screen.  The header bar says 710‑555‑1701 . Old Reliable has never held a messaging app, that’s not what I use it for, but the set-up is familiar. I type in, Hello?

Hello, Mr Moire. Remember me?

Of course I do.  That sultry knowing stare, those pointed ears.  Hello, Lieutenant Baird.  It’s been a year.  What can I do for you?

Not Lieutenant any more, I’m back up to Commander, Provisional.

Congratulations. Did you invent something again?

Yes, but I can’t discuss it on this channel. I owe you for the promotion. I got the idea from one of your Crazy Theories posts. You and your friends have no clue but you come up with interesting stuff anyway.

You’re welcome, I suppose. Mind you, your science is four centuries ahead of ours but we do the best we can.

I know that, Mr Moire. Which is why I’m sending you this private chuckle.

Private like with Ralphie’s anti‑gravity gadget? I suggested he add another monitoring device in between two of his components. That changed the configuration you warned me about. He’s still with us, no anti‑gravity, but now he blames me.

Good ploy. Sorry about the blaming. Now it’s your guy Vinnie who’s getting close to something.

Vinnie? He’s not the inventor type, except for those maps he’s done with his buddy Larry. What’s he hit on?

His speculation from your Quantum Field Theory discussion that entanglement is somehow involved with ripples in a QFT field, ripples that are too weak to register as a particle peak. He’s completely backwards on entanglement, but those ripples—

Wait, what’s that about entanglement?

Entanglement is the normal state for quantized particles. Our 24th‑Century science says every real and virtual particle in the Universe is entangled with every other particle that shares the same fields. It’s an all‑embracing quantum state. Forget your reductionist 20th‑Century‑style quantum states, this is something … different. Your Hugh Everett and his mentor John Archibald Wheeler had an inking of that fact a century before your time, though of course they didn’t properly understand the implications and drew a ridiculous conclusion. Anyway, when your experimenting physicists say they’ve created an entangled particle pair, they’ve simply extracted two particles from the common state. When they claim to transmit one of the particles somewhere they’re really damping out the local field peak linked to their particle’s anti‑particle’s anti‑peak at the distant location and that puts an anti‑anti‑particle‑particle peak there. Naturally, that happens nearly instantaneously.

I don’t follow the anti‑particle‑anti‑peak part. Or why it’s naturally instantaneous.

I didn’t expect you to or else I wouldn’t have told you about it. The Prime Directive, you know. Which is why the chuckle has to be private, understand?

I won’t tell. I live in “the city that knows how to keep its secrets,” remember?

Wouldn’t do you any good if you did tell and besides, Vinnie wouldn’t think it’s funny. Here’s the thing. As Vinnie guessed, there are indeed sub‑threshold ripples in all of the fundamental fields that support subatomic particles and the forces that work between them. And no, I won’t tell you how many fields, your Standard Model has quite enough complexity to <heh> perturb your physicists. A couple hundred years in your future, humanity’s going to learn how to manipulate the quarks that inhabit the protons and neutrons that make up a certain kind of atom. You’ll jiggle their fields and that’ll jiggle other fields. Pick the right fields and you get ripples that travel far away in space but very little in time, almost horizontal in Minkowski space. It won’t take long for you to start exploiting some of your purposely jiggled fields for communication purposes. Guess what a lovely anachronism you’ll use to name that capability.

‘Jiggled fields’ sounds like communications tech we use today based on the electromagnetic field — light waves traveling through glass fibers, microwave relays for voice and data—

You’re getting there. Go for the next longer wavelength range.

Radio? You’ll call it radio?

Subspace radio. Isn’t that wonderful?

~~ Rich Olcott

Welcoming April

On By rolcottIn General: Fun Stuff, UncategorizedLeave a comment
Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, two of my favorite fools

The last time I posted in this blog on April 1 was in 2019. That time I was serious. This time I’m honoring a long and semi‑honorable Fool’s Day (or Fools’ Day) tradition in many countries across the world.

If you’re not familiar with the work of Laurel and Hardy, you’ve missed out on a lot of laughter. There’s a reason they had a long career with Hal Roach. Here are a few samples to get you started

Slapstick? Oh, yes, but world‑class slapstick. The 2018 biopic, Stan & Ollie with Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, recreates some of their pieces as it follows the two after the peak of their career.

Want Science on April Fools’ Day? <HAW> April Fool!

Photo by Val Olcott

~~ Rich Olcott