Life & the Chemistry of Stars

Everybody who has been paying any amount of attention to the hunt for habitable extrasolar planets (AKA exoplanets) has probably heard the term “Goldilocks Zone” in regards to planet location. The Goldilocks Zone refers to a thin band around a star where water can exist in liquid form. Too close, the water boils away; too far and it freezes solid.

However, scientists here at ASU have found that the distance from a star is not the only factor governing potential habitability. The composition of the star itself plays a role as well. Patrick Young and others contend that the abundant elements carbon, oxygen, sodium, magnesium, & silicon are particularly important. Higher concentrations of these elements can cool down a star and slow its growth. This would keep the Goldilocks Zone steady for longer, which means that any planets inside that zone will have longer to develop the proper conditions for life.

It’ll be interesting to see where this research goes from here. Maybe I can asked Dr. Young if I could volunteer! *gasp*

Depressing State of Affairs

Sometimes, stupid lawsuits pop up in the news. Spilled hot coffee on yourself? Sue because the coffee was dangerously hot. Claim a cleaner lost your pants? Sue for $54 million for the value of the pants ($1000), “mental distress” ($2 million) and the cost of renting a car to go to another cleaner ($15,000).

Now a California woman is suing for $1.7 BILLION because smart meters are making her sick. Apparently the radiation from the weak WiFi signal is giving her earaches, back pain, and an irregular period. The payout would also go towards everything she had gone through as a child, when she had received neurological damage in a car accident.

I don’t understand why people are so… intent on suing everybody else. Now I know that sometimes a lawsuit is needed or helps (Stella Liebeck got money to help recover from her 3rd degree burns), but somehow I seriously doubt the puny WiFi signals from these smart meters would really cause all of this woman’s problems when there are bigger things that could be to blame. I’ll be interested to see where this lawsuit goes.

And the Nerds Rejoiced

The Mars Science Lab (AKA Curiosity) is alive and well on its new home (Mars). I got to watch a live feed from JPL’s Mission Control as they got the data from Curiosity. It was surprisingly intense and exciting, and though the audio wasn’t the best, I could tell when important stages were reached and when Curiosity sent back its first message. The room (both the MC and the auditorium they were showing this at) erupted into excitement.

I can’t wait to see what Curiosity might find, and I know that even if it doesn’t find any evidence of life, we’re still going to learn a lot about Mars that we never knew before. I might post some of the findings here, so keep an eye out.

Curiosity Landing

Eight and a half months ago, a rocket launched, and the long wait began. NASA had a mission to send the largest rover and most sophisticated instruments to Mars to find perhaps the evidence of life on our neighbor.

Now, at 10:31 PM (Arizona/Pacific) tonight, the Mars Science Laboratory, known to the public as the Curiosity rover, will land in the Gale crater and begin its mission. The School of Earth & Space Exploration is holding a party at the MOEUR building at ASU’s Tempe Campus later tonight, and I’ll be posting again from there.

Zynga’s New Trouble

I will admit that I once played Farmville, but after having a bit of trouble logging into the game, I sort of went through forced cold turkey. I have seen friends on Facebook still playing Zynga’s games.

Now Zynga is in trouble. EA, the company that owns The Sims, has filed a lawsuit against Zynga claiming that Zynga infringed on EA’s copyrighted game Sims Social in Zynga’s new game The Ville. Of course, Zynga is crying poor sportsmanship over the lawsuit.

Looking at the images on GameDynamo’s article on the lawsuit, I can’t say that I blame EA for filing the lawsuit. No offense to Zynga, but sometimes it feels as though the company creates games that aren’t particularly unique. Even the names don’t feel all that original.

Zynga is arguing that EA is hypocritical, since SimCities Social, a game similar to Zynga’s CityVille, came out after Zynga released their game.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens with this lawsuit.

Olympic Athletes

I saw an article published in PetaPixel about a photographer who used a field camera and 100-year-old lens to photograph various Olympic athletes. The rests were amazing! See them here.

One Step Back for Astrobiology

Astrobiologists around the world are disappointed. The idea that bacteria could live on something other than phosphorus is exciting, and it would expand the possible environments where life could exist. A study published two years ago seemed to prove that arsenic could replace phosphorus (a major component in DNA).

Except… It turns out that the study was wrong.

Two new studies have found that while the study did find bacteria that were really resilient to arsenic in Mono Lake, the bacteria still required phosphorus to survive.

Thus, astrobiologists are completely heartbroken.

Another Check off the Bucket List

I got to see the transit of Venus on Tuesday. So happy that I kept the eclipse glasses from the solar eclipse. I didn’t get any good pictures this time (since my camera’s only got 4x zoom), but I did see it with my “naked” eye. The picture on the left is essentially what I saw.

Considering that a child born for the next 5-25 years (assuming they live to 80) won’t see another transit, I’m excited. It’s a good time to be alive.

Awesome Stuff on Mars

Last fall, I took a course called Fundamentals of Planetary Geology, taught by Dr. Ronald Greeley, whose death was actually the topic of one of my first posts. The majority of the grade came from a semester-long project focusing on some aspect of geology. I chose to do a review of the literature on potentially alluvial deltas in some craters on Mars. Not particularly exciting stuff, I’ll admit.

Another student, Andrew Ryan, chose to study lava flows on Mars. He found strange spiral patterns in the flows. No one had ever seen these types of flows, called lava coils, before on another planet. They have been seen in Hawaii and near the Galapagos rift in the Pacific Ocean.

Ryan made his presentation, and some of the faculty helping to grade the presentations, since this was after Dr. Greeley’s death, told him that he should polish up the report and send it into Science to try and get it published.

The SESE Source, a newsletter for the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU, announced that Ryan did indeed get published in Science on 27 April 2012. Here’s a link to the article’s abstract:
Coils and Polygonal Crust in the Athabasca Valles Region, Mars, as Evidence for a Volcanic History

That lucky bastard.

Growing Up & School

A story on the local news has me bothered. At the end of the year, a teacher was giving out awards to students for various achievements. One student got the dubious award of “most excuses for not having homework done”. Apparently the rest of the 4th-grade class found that funny. The mom did not. She says that the teacher was bullying her child.

Now, I don’t know what elementary school is like nowadays, but quite frankly, the mom needs to grow up. One incident does not equal bullying, and who knows what awards other students got. Also, if it bothers the mom so much that her daughter got “most excuses for not having homework done”, then maybe she should have paid more attention. Studies have found that children of parents who take an active role in their education do better.

Of course, the teacher’s in trouble as well. There’s no news whether or not the teacher will face some sort of disciplinary action, and I hope that if there is, it’s mild. I’m not condoning the teacher’s action, but is it really any different than the “most likely to…” voting in high school. This is just a bit of growing up, and everyone needs to calm down.