[Unmuseum_newsletter] Science Over the Edge - May/June 2019

Wed May 1 22:10:21 EDT 2019

Science Over the Edge - May/June 2019
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In the News:

Hubble Snaps A Crowded Cluster - This sparkling burst of stars is Messier 75. It is a globular cluster: a spherical collection of stars bound together by gravity. Clusters like this orbit around galaxies and typically reside in their outer and less-crowded areas, gathering to form dense communities in the galactic suburbs. Messier 75 lies in our Milky Way galaxy in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), around 67,000 light-years away from Earth. The majority of the cluster's stars, about 400,000 in total, are found in its core; it is one of the most densely populated clusters ever found, with a phenomenal luminosity of some 180,000 times that of the Sun. No wonder it photographs so well. Discovered in 1780 by Pierre Méchain, Messier 75 was also observed by Charles Messier and added to his catalog later that year. This image of Messier 75 was captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Mystery Of The Universe's Expansion Rate Widens With New Hubble Data - Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they have crossed an important threshold in revealing a discrepancy between the two key techniques for measuring the universe's expansion rate. The recent study strengthens the case that new theories may be needed to explain the forces that have shaped the cosmos. A brief recap: The universe is getting bigger every second. The space between galaxies is stretching, like dough rising in the oven. But how fast is the universe expanding? As Hubble and other telescopes seek to answer this question, they have run into an intriguing difference between what scientists predict and what they observe. Hubble measurements suggest a faster expansion rate in the modern universe than expected, based on how the universe appeared more than 13 billion years ago. These measurements of the early universe come from the European Space Agency's Planck satellite. This discrepancy has been identified in scientific papers over the last several years, but it has been unclear whether differences in measurement techniques are to blame, or whether the difference could result from unlucky measurements. The latest Hubble data lower the possibility that the discrepancy is only a fluke to 1 in 100,000. This is a significant gain from an earlier estimate, less than a year ago, of a chance of 1 in 3,000. These most precise Hubble measurements to date bolster the idea that new physics may be needed to explain the mismatch. "The Hubble tension between the early and late universe may be the most exciting development in cosmology in decades," said lead researcher and Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland. "This mismatch has been growing and has now reached a point that is really impossible to dismiss as a fluke. This disparity could not plausibly occur just by chance."

Holy Pleistocene Batman, The Answer's In The Cave - Let's say you wanted to solve a 20,000-year-old mystery, where would you start? Perhaps archaeology and geology come to mind. Or, you could sift through a 3-metre pile of bat faeces. Researchers from James Cook University in Cairns, Australia, chose the bat poo in their quest to answer to a long-standing question: why is there some much biodiversity on the islands of Sumatra, Borneo and Java, when not so long ago (geologically speaking) they were all part of one vast continent? One theory has been that the former continent (Sundaland) was dissected by a savanna corridor. "That might explain why Sumatra and Borneo each have their own species of orang-utan, even though they were linked by land for millions of years," Dr Chris Wurster said. "The corridor would have divided the two separate rainforest refuges, as the sea does now." The corridor theory has been boosted by millions of insect-eating bats, which have gathered evidence about the landscape over millennia and deposited it in layers in their caves. "Bat poo is highly informative, and especially so in the tropics, where the climate can make some of the more traditional modes of investigation less available," Dr Wurster said. A three-metre pile of bat faeces at Salah Cave in Borneo gave the researchers a 40,000-year-old record composed of insect skeletons. "We can't tell what insects the bats were eating throughout that time, because they're in tiny fragments, but we can read the chemistry," Dr Wurster said. "Eating insects that have been feeding on tropical grasses results in faeces with a characteristic chemical imprint. It's quite different from the result you'd get from eating insects that fed on tropical trees." According to the bat record the landscape around Saleh Cave (now featuring lush rainforest) was once dominated by tropical grasses. "Combined with other cave studies in the region, this leads us to support the corridor theory, and also gives us some confidence as to the extent of the corridor," Dr Wurster said.

Studies Link Earthquakes To Fracking In The Central And Eastern US - Small earthquakes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Oklahoma and Texas can be linked to hydraulic fracturing wells in those regions, according to researchers speaking at the SSA 2019 Annual Meeting. While relatively rare compared to earthquakes caused by wastewater disposal in oil and gas fields in the central United States, Michael Brudzinski of Miami University in Ohio and his colleagues have identified more than 600 small earthquakes (between magnitude 2.0 and 3.8) in these states. Brudzinski said these earthquakes may be "underappreciated" compared to seismicity related to wastewater disposal since they appear to happen less frequently. He and his colleagues are studying the trends related to the likelihood of induced seismicity from hydraulic fracturing or fracking, which could help industry and state regulators better manage drilling practices. Unconventional U.S. oil production, which extracts oil from shales and tight rocks using a variety of drilling techniques, has been linked to an increase in human-induced earthquakes across the mid-continent of the United States for nearly a decade. Researchers studying the increase in places such as Oklahoma think that the main driver of this increase in seismicity is the injection of wastewater produced by extraction back into rock layers, which increases pore pressure within rocks and can affect stress along faults in layers selected for disposal. Hydraulic fracturing uses pressurized liquid to break apart or create cracks within a rock formation through which petroleum and natural gas can flow and be more easily extracted.

Which Car Crashes Cause Traumatic Brain Injury? - Motor vehicle crashes are the most common cause of emergency room visits, hospitalizations and deaths related to traumatic brain injury among people aged 15 to 34, according to a 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, makes up about 30 percent of all injury deaths in the United States, and early diagnosis and treatment is one of the most important ways to prevent these deaths. Aerospace and mechanical engineering professor Samy Missoum, who is also director of the Computational Design Optimization of Engineering Systems, or CODES Laboratory, and graduate student Seyed Saeed Ahmadisoleymani recently published a paper in Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering that details a new method for calculating the probability of a TBI due to a car accident. "Unlike with American football or military applications, there has not been much research done into the link between car crashes and TBI," Missoum said. "We have developed the first steps of a method to assess the probability of TBI based on crash conditions, such as impact velocity and angle." TBI research has traditionally involved experimental methods, such as conducting tests on animals or collecting data on football players. Other approaches are purely computational -- for instance, using finite element models, which are mathematical tools to predict how a system like the brain will behave when subjected to external forces. Missoum's approach fuses experimental and computational data. He uses experimental data to simulate how a dummy moves in a car crash and applies motion data from the simulation to a computer model of the brain to see how it would be affected. This fusion of data provides the basis for a method researchers hope will eventually be able to calculate the probability of TBI after a car crash. The method can even make predictions if researchers are unsure about the collision speed and angle of impact, or if they don't have much information about the brain of the person involved in the crash. "From a scientific point of view, the novelty here is how we're combining computational data and experimental data, while also accounting for several sources of uncertainty," Missoum said. "From a practical point of view, the method provides a tool to determine the probability of TBI."

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Science Quote of the Month - "The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom." - Isaac Asimov

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What's New at the Museum:

Paestum: Greek Temples that Somehow Survived into Modern Italy - In southern Italy, just a few miles south from famous and dramatic Amafi Coast, lays the ruins of three Greek Temples. Visited by few sightseers, even today, they are perhaps the best preserved Doric Style Temples in the world and well worth a trip off the beaten Italian tourist track. > Full Story<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unmuseum.org%2Fpaestrum.htm&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1c0140f1b9d24dc54cd708d6cea2d7f8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636923596136600280&sdata=2uynLpNsIn6s9EMN%2BfBvjm9MFYldUpXncCvfRr2lJAU%3D&reserved=0>

Mysterious Picture of the Month - What is this?<http://www.unmuseum.org/big_bugs.htm>

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Ask the Curator:

BC, AD, BCE, and CE- Why are the years are called by BC and AD and how exactly did the year change to BC to AD'? Did ancient people follow this? - Gajendra K.

The B.C./A.D. numbering system is based on the presumed year of the birth of Jesus Christ. Years before his birth are given the abbreviation B.C. ("Before Christ") designation and are numbered backwards so the further back in time you go in time the higher the number. For example, the Great Pyramid is thought to have been built 2560 years before Christ was born which would be expressed as 2560 B.C..

The A.D. stands for "Anno Domini" which is Latin for "In the year of our Lord." All recent dates are expressed in the number of years after Jesus's birth. This year is A.D. 2008 which translates to "The year of our Lord 2008" or 2008 years after Christ was born. Technically the A.D. abbreviation should go before the number, but more recently it has become common to put it either at the beginning or the end, for example "2008 A.D.".

Some people prefer to use the designation C.E. (for "Common Era") instead of A.D. so there is no religious connection (though C.E. can also thought of as "Christian Era."). The same thing can be done changing B.C. - Before Christ - to B.C.E which means "Before Common Era."

This dating system wasn't invented until A.D. 525, and was not commonly used until the 8th century. Before then dates were typically numbered years based on the start of the reign of the current king. For example, Babylon was established as the center of the Babylonian Empire during the 30th year of King Hammurabi's reign. In some cases dates were not established by the beginning of the reign of the current king, but the beginning of the dynasty of kings to which he belonged.

A few early calendars (like the Hebrew Calendar) tried to base their dates of the number of years since the world was created, but given that different religious scholars disagreed about when this occurred, the number system was never universal.

While previous number systems were adequate in ancient times when there were few contacts between different peoples and little shared history, as interactions between cultures spread, it became difficult to constantly match the years of different king's reigns together to establish correct dates. The A.D. system first became popular in Western Europe and is now the defacto standard though out most of the world. Its popularity can also be attributed to the success of the Gregorian calendar (our system of months and days) to which it has been closely tied.

Historical re-examination of the birth of Christ in the last century suggests Jesus was actually born several years before A.D. 1, but given that the system is now so well established there has been no attempt to fix it. Another quirk with the system is that there is no "year zero." This means that if you go one year backwards from A.D. 1 you will find yourself at 2 B.C.. Incidentally some people incorrectly attribute the A.D. to the abbreviation of "After [Christ's] Death" but this is incorrect as it would yield dates 33 years too low - The length of Jesus' life.

Have a question? Click here to send it to us.<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.unmuseum.org%2Fpostmail.htm&data=02%7C01%7C%7C1c0140f1b9d24dc54cd708d6cea2d7f8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636923596136610291&sdata=YaxM6puhyWgK6hPnJR%2F6GIxn227qYGldcjrYOc7eJL8%3D&reserved=0>

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In History:

First U.S. TV Broadcast - On May 11th, 1928, the radio station WGY, located in Schenectady, NY, began the United States first regularly scheduled television broadcasts. The program only ran from 1:30 to 2:00 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and the audience was mostly on the technical staff at nearby General Electric. Why such a limited set of viewers? Well, GE had designed the system and used the broadcasts to test its system. Only a handful of do-it-yourselfers, who had constructed their own receivers, were also able to see what was going on. The screen size was somewhat limited compared to today's standards as it was only three-inch-squares, with a 24-line screen resolution. Today's HDTV screens have at least 720 lines of resolution, in comparison.

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In the Sky:

Eta Aquarids Meteor Shower - The Eta Aquarids runs from Apiril to May 28th and is capable of producing up to 60 meteors per hour at its peak from the night of May 6 and the morning of May 7th. While most of the action will be seen in the Southern Hemisphere, in the Northern Hemisphere, the rate can still reach about 30 meteors per hour. The shower is produced by particles left behind by comet Halley. A thin crescent moon will set early in the evening of the 6th leaving dark skies for better viewing. The best part of the show will be after midnight with meteors radiating from the constellation Aquarius.

Observed:

Monster Prop in PA Causes Monster Fear - A quiet neighborhood in Fountain Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, was upended when piece of Godzilla's skin landed on a resident's doorstep according to The Bravarian website. The object was in a clear, glass jar, filled with liquid. When the residents, Michael and Tara Conner opened it, they weren't sure what they had, and called 9-1-1 getting a police response. Mike had forgotten, however, that he had contributed to a kickstarter fund for a "Godzilla Heritage" a low budget SciFi flick being produced in Batavia, New York. This had gotten him a sample of Godzilla skin, a harmless prop from the film. The prop was constructed by Rashaad Santiago, who lives in Batavia and was a contestant on the reality TV series "Face Off" where contestants compete in making monster costumes, makeup, and props. Santiago was both amused that his monster created a hullabaloo in the small Pennsylvania town.
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LGM:

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Copyright Lee Krystek, 2019.

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