Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Stay safe out there and make sure your kids have flashlights or other bright markers to identify themselves easily to drivers on the neighborhood streets, especially as it gets dark out. My oldest daughter is transitioning out of trick or treating. Now that she's in 7th grade she's decided she'd rather stay at home and hand out Halloween candy. Our 4th grader, however, is nowhere near close to giving up trick or treating and is geared up for a fun night tonight.

I've written a few Halloween themed posts, so instead of re-writing those posts I'll just point you to a few of them.

Interested in Halloween themed science? There are plenty of great Halloween Science Ideas you can try!

Worried about people poisoning candy or slipping razor blades in candy? Don't be. Turns out there is zero evidence Halloween candy has ever been poisoned. So just enjoy the time trick or treating and the candy that comes with it.

Wondering if I dress for Halloween? Well, it depends on the year and yes, this year I am dressing up, same costume as I wore when I last dressed up in 2017 as a farm animal. :-)

Have a great time tonight!!!

Trip to Maine - Post #16: Maine State Museum

After visiting the Maine State Capitol Building we walked across the sidewalk and visited the Maine State Museum. As self-described by the museum:

"The museum's four floors of world-class exhibits provide a chance to explore and discover the best of Maine, from the Ice Age to the 1960s."

This was a lovely museum and much larger than it looks from the outside. The museum extends several floors into the ground and is filled with Maine history! Apparently we didn't take any picture while we were inside the museum, so here's a stock photo. :-)

We didn't spend more than a partial day in Augusta, but the Capitol Building and State Museum filled several hours of our day and we had a lot of fun learning about the political history and natural history of Maine.

Get Your Flu Shot ASAP!!!

I say this every year and this year is no different. If you have not gotten your flu shot yet, please do so ASAP! Now is the time to get it done for full protection from the flu throughout the full flu season. Cases of the flu are already being reported in many states, so don't delay in getting that protection.

There are many, many misunderstandings regarding the flu. For starters, it is not something to simply brush off. According to the CDC, close to 80,000 people in the United States alone died due to complications from the flu in the 2017-2018 flu season. Most of these were the young, elderly, and those with compromised immune systems, but a few were perfectly healthy adults. The flu can kill you!!!

It is true that the flu vaccine is not 100% effective, but even in years when its effectiveness is lower, getting the flu vaccine still provides protection. If you get the flu, the flu vaccine can help diminish the effects of the flu.

On top of protecting yourself, you getting the flu shot protects others who aren't able to get the shot. Some people are allergic or have compromised immune systems and it isn't safe for them to get the shot. Their only protection is herd immunity. They are only protected by others who have received the flu vaccine. The more who receive the vaccine each year, the less likely the flu is able to spread from person to person, thus protecting those who can't get the vaccine.

So please, please, please, please get the flu vaccine. Protect yourself and the others around you who can't protect themselves.

First All-Female Spacewalk

A week and a half ago, on October 18th, 2019, the first all-female spacewalk took place. It's hard to believe this didn't happen long before this year. The first person went into space in 1961 and since that time, 563 people have been to space. So how is it possible that it took 58 years for the first all-female spacewalk to occur??!!!??!!!

Well, of the 563 people who have been to space, only 65 women have been to space, a staggering low percentage of just 11.5% of all people in space. The first US woman to go to space was Sally Ride in 1983, a full 22 years AFTER the first man in space.

The two women who teamed to become the first all-female spacewalk are Christina Koch and Jessica Meir. A big congratulations to them for this accomplishment!!! Women are playing a greater role in many male dominated fields, but we must continue to do better! Fields dominated by men must take a closer look and why this is. Simply saying there are too few women candidates for available positions is the wrong attitude. Why are their fewer female candidates? Is it because the environment they'd work in discriminates? Most likely, meaning the fault is not the female candidates, but the male-dominated field for not recognizing steps must be taken to promote gender and sex equality.

This Blog's History: The Maine Maritime Museum

For This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to the post I recently wrote detailing our trip to the Maine Maritime Museum this past summer. A great museum filled with history! A stop I highly recommend when vacationing in Maine! For more details, see the original post, linked below.

Maine Maritime Museum

Spring Mill State Park

Approximately two weeks ago we took a mini-vacation and spent two days exploring Spring Mill State Park in south-central Indiana. This was our first visit to this state park and it was a wonderful experience. State parks are a great, relatively low-cost, way of exploring nature and observing science all around us!

The leaves on trees were just starting to turn so it was beautiful in the park. State parks usually have park-led programs taking place all the time, especially on weekends. We went on a 2.5 mile hike with a park volunteer that took about 2 hours as we explored all of the mushrooms growing in the park. Even though it had been very dry and mushrooms were fewer in number, we found them all over! We've all seen mushrooms, but don't always pay close enough attention to notice that they grow on so many trees and fallen branches.

Our second day in the park took us on a tour of the Pioneer Village, a very cool experience showing what life was like in the 1800s.

We walked along a couple of other trails, including a beautiful trail around a small lake. We also toured the Gus Grissom museum, the Twin Caves, and the one-night only Haunted Village, but I'll discuss these three experiences in different posts. The Haunted Village was the Pioneer village all dressed up to scare people! It was a blast and we are definitely glad we waited in line to get tickets and then again to go through the Haunted Village.

The Hate U Give - Book Review

I recently finished reading The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, a book that is commonly found on the "banned book" list at some schools and libraries. We purchased the book so it sits on our bookshelf at home, but I am so, so, so glad our local library doesn't cave into the pressure to ban books. They are proud that all so-called banned books are proudly on display on their shelves, including The Hate U Give.

The Hate U Give follows the life of Starr, a black, female teenager living in a lower income, predominantly black neighborhood, but going to a private, predominantly white high school. She is with a male friend of hers when he is shot and killed by a white police officer. Without giving too much away, the book follows the next several weeks of Starr's life as she navigates through her life and expectations set by others, both black and white.

There is no way this should be a banned book. It should be on EVERYONE's must-read list, but particular those who live in the majority. It is an eye-opener that gives you a glimpse of how those in the minority must live their lives due to majority based societal expectations. 

Trip to Maine - Post #15: Maine State Capitol Building

After finishing the first leg of our trip to Maine in Portland and the surrounding area, we packed up and headed further north along the coast to spend a few days near Acadia National Park. On the drive up we stopped in Augusta, Maine, the state capitol and did a self-tour of the capitol building. I've previously visited the Iowa and West Virginia state capitols and have a goal of hitting all 50 state capitols in my lifetime! I'm 6% finished, LOL! I find state capitol buildings very interesting. They are filled with political history!

The Sergeant at Arms for the Maine State House came by and gave us a personal tour and let us sit and take pictures in the chair of the Speaker of the House. Very cool! I was geeking out asking the Sergeant all sorts of questions. Eventually my kids grew bored, but I had a great time! Touring state capitol buildings isn't for everyone, but if you want to add a bit of history to your trip to Maine, stop in Augusta and spend an hour or two in the state capitol building. Talk to the Sergeant of Arms, a super nice individual!

Niagra Cave

I'm still working through blogging our trip to Maine this past summer, but today I'm taking a break to discuss a more recent fall trip to south eastern Minnesota. While on this trip we visited Niagra Cave. There are very few caves I've visited, with the very first cave visit to my memory taking place just a couple of years ago when we visited Mystery Cave, also in south eastern Minnesota.

Niagra cave is another great cave tour experience I highly recommend. Prices to visit the cave are reasonable for a cave as developed as this. Adults are $17 and kids under 12 are $11. The cave tour takes about an hour and is a 1/2 mile hike in and back (1 mile total). There are a few stairs, but it is a relatively easy walk. This cave has a very cool waterfall and several very cool cave features that are simply amazing! They probably do this at all cave tours everywhere, but it always amazes me when they turn off all of the lights and you can see, pun intended, how dark it becomes!!!

If you are in the south eastern Minnesota area and like caves, Niagra cave is a great opportunity! In the summer months they also have a small mini-golf course that kids will enjoy.

This Blog's History: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

For This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to the post I wrote after finally finishing the sixth book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. If you like massive novels of 1000 pages, this book is for you. :-)

A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Book Review

Dr. Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) on Twitter

Last week I wrote a post saying you should follow Dr. Katherine Hayhoe on Twitter. She is a fantastic climate scientist who does a wonderful job explaining what is often complicated climate science in a very down to earth understandable manner to the general public. Another great climate scientist you should follow on Twitter is Dr. Michael E. Mann, the Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center.

Dr. Mann is famous for presenting the Hockey Stick effect, showing a drastic increase in temperatures recently on Earth such that a plotted graph of temperature vs. time mimics the shape of a hockey stick.

https://skepticalscience.com/broken-hockey-stick.htm

Like Dr. Hayhoe, Dr. Mann does a great job explaining climate science to the general public and has made it his life mission to stress the science of climate change and actively push for government action to save Earth from the worst damages of a hotter planet. I highly encourage you to follow him on Twitter (@MichaelEMann). You won't be disappointed!

Trip to Maine - Post #14: Dolphin Mini Golf

After a visit to the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine, we drove around a bit enjoying the scenery before stopping in Boothbay to do a bit of mini golfing. This was a request by our youngest daughter. She wanted to do some mini golfing so we promised we'd stop at least once. Turns out we stopped twice, but the second course we played will come in a later post.

Dolphin Mini Golf is a well-maintained course with plenty of shade in case it's a hot, sunny day. Not all that different from many other mini golf courses, but a nice break from driving around. None of us made a hole in one on the last hole to earn a free round of golf. This is very common at most mini golf courses and I've never accomplished this feat. Maybe one day!

With mini golf comes a great deal of physics. Newton's laws of motion come into play when striking the ball. How much force is enough? How much is too much? And you can't play mini golf without understanding how angles work! You can never get away from physics, especially when it comes to mini golf! And one playing with kids, you can almost guarantee one of them will knock the ball off the course at least once and probably multiple times!

Trip to Maine - Post #13: Maine Maritime Museum

Our third full day in Maine took us north of Portland to explore various areas. We stopped in Bath, Maine for awhile and visited the Maine Maritime Museum. Well worth the visit! While here we grabbed a geocache to log our first ever find in the state of Maine!

As you can see, we took quite a few pictures! Plan to spend a few hours here. We came at a time that wasn't busy and the volunteer staff was wonderful! We went on a small tour of the grounds, learned about lobster fishing, and visited the boat shop and learned directly about making boats from one of the employees. There's a great indoor museum and several buildings with outdoor exhibits, including a blacksmith's forge! 

If heading north of Portland, definitely check out this museum in Bath. There's a ton of great seafood in the area too! Then again, it's Maine, so there's great seafood pretty much everywhere!

Andromeda is into Cannibalism

We generally don't consider cannibalism a good thing. I mean, eating another human isn't so great for that other human! But when it comes to astronomy, cannibalism is a pretty cool thing! Take the Andromeda galaxy, for example. New data provides evidence showing the Andromeda Galaxy ate up several smaller dwarf galaxies at various points in its lifetime.

Andromeda Galaxy - Picture taken using amateur refractor telescope. Courtesy of Kanwar Singh

The Andromeda galaxy is one of two big galaxies in the area near us. The other big galaxy? Us...the Milky Way galaxy. Galaxy mergers are a way of life out in the Universe. If both galaxies are near the same size, neither really wins the battle and they could merge into one galaxy. Smaller galaxies going to battle against larger galaxies always lose. The smaller galaxies are swallowed and become part of the larger galaxy due to the larger gravitational forces. Don't worry though, the odds of any collision between two individual stars during a galaxy merger are extremely small. Space is so empty that mergers in which billions of stars from one galaxy are merging with another result in no stellar collisions. Okay, the odds are not zero, but they are so small that they are practically zero!

Andromeda Galaxy Swallowed Many Dwarf Galaxies During Its Lifetime

This Blog's History: Float or Sink?

For This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrote 5 years ago on a very cool and very easy science experiment I did with my kids and you can do with your kids. You simply grab random objects (food is always fun) and predict whether they will float or sink based on what you can observe. Then you test it out and determine why your prediction was correct or incorrect. It's a great, simple experiment that gets kids using those critical thinking skills.

For more details on what we did, here's the link to the original post.

Does it Float or Sink?

Rogue Planets

The Kepler Space Telescope, which operated from 2009 to 2018, provided a wealth of data astronomers used and continue to use to search for exoplanets, planets outside of our own solar system. There are now 4000+ known planets outside of our solar system, most of which were found with this telescope. New telescopes are coming online soon that will continue the search for exoplanets, helping astronomers further understand planetary and solar system formation.

Two of these telescopes are WFIRST and EUCLID. Together astronomers may be able to use the two telescopes to search for rogue planets. Rogue planets are planets that were flung out of their solar systems and are wandering through space, no longer gravitationally attached to a star. Because they are not in a solar system, they are very difficult to detect. The Kepler Space Telescope used the light curve of a star to find new planets. Without a star, Kepler couldn't detect these planets. But WFIRST and EUCLID may be able to do this.

Hundreds of rogue planets could be discovered with upcoming space telescopes

Rogue planets are another opportunity for astronomers to gain further understanding of how the cosmos work!

Trip to Maine - Post #12: The Holy Donut

If you are in Portland, Maine, you MUST stop at The Holy Donut! There are a couple of locations in Portland and we stopped at one for breakfast on the morning we were leaving Portland to head north up the coast of Maine. Trust me, you don't want to miss this bakery/restaurant!

The donuts are not cheap, but they are delicious! They are potato cake donuts made with real Maine potatoes! My kids were not as impressed as I was, but I thought the donuts were fantastic! They are kids, so what do they know?!?! LOL! Anyways, I highly recommend a stop at The Holy Donut if you are in the Portland, Maine area. A great breakfast stop before you head off to your destination. 

Dr. Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) on Twitter

There are so many wonderful people to follow on Twitter and so many wonderful people sharing and advocating for science. It's impossible to truly follow all of them and pay attention to what they tweet, but some are moved to the front of the line in my book. One of those is Dr. Katharine Hayhoe.

Photo Credit: Chris Soldt

Dr. Hayhoe is a climate scientist at Texas Tech University. She does a magnificent job advocating for climate science and explaining climate science to the general public. Her contributions to the field will help us combat increasing global temperatures. I recently had a chance to hear her speak in person and as expected, it was a great presentation! 

If there is too little climate science in your Twitter feed, one of the easiest ways to remedy this is to follow Dr. Hayhoe (@KHayhoe)

Executive Power - Book Review

After taking nearly a month to finish reading an Outlander novel my reading pace has picked back up. It only took a few days to read Executive Power by Vince Flynn. This is the sixth book in the Mitch Rapp series, and as with all of the others, this was another political spy thriller.

This was another good book in the series, but in my opinion, it didn't have quite the same thrill as the previous books. Part of this was due to the "to be continued" format of the fourth and fifth book that tied together. The fourth book ended on a cliffhanger, but the fifth book had some definite finality to it, meaning the sixth book was starting from scratch. Regardless, a good book, even though it wasn't as thrilling as the previous books. 

I enjoy reading a wide variety of books, and a political spy thriller is a good mix with the science books, science fiction books, zombie books, fantasy books, etc. I often read. After this book, I've read 37 books into my 40 books read in 2019 goal. Almost there!

This Blog's History: Long Sands Beach

In case you missed it last time, for This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to the post I wrote on our visit to Long Sands Beach in Maine this summer. My 9 year old insisted on a day at the beach and Long Sands was a great place. Parking a bit tight, but plenty of beach space. Cold water and hungry seagulls, but still a great time! For more detail, click the link below to the original post.

Long Sands Beach

Trip to Maine - Post #11: Old Orchard

Our day touring southern Maine took us through many small towns and brought us many amazing views of the ocean landscape. On the way back to Portland for the evening, we drove through and took a quick stop in Old Orchard. We had been warned this was a very touristy area and oh boy were those warnings correct. Old Orchard is very, very different than anywhere else we visited in Maine. There's a small amusement park, shops, restaurants, a pier, and a beach. Packed with people, but it seemed to be a very dirty place.

Above is a look at the pier, which itself was kind of dirty. Old Orchard simply held no appeal for us. Honestly, the only reason we stopped is we had some time before we needed to get home, so we thought we'd check out a couple of shops. Not much more than thousands and thousands of T-shirts.

My advice, especially if you are strapped for time, is to skip Old Orchard. There is nothing here you'll regret later on. Even the used bookstore was selling used books at a far too expensive rate for used books! Take the time to visit pretty much anywhere else in Maine. :-)

Minnesota Twins - 2019 AL Central Champions!!!

I'm stepping away from books and science for a day to brag a bit about my favorite baseball team from my youth, the Minnesota Twins. The regular season ended and the Twins won the AL Central for the first time since 2010 and hit 100 wins in a season for only the second time in franchise history!!! Along the way they were the first team ever to hit 300 homers in a season and set several other offensive records. A truly great season. They do not go into the playoffs as favorites as the New York Yankees and Houston Astros had a better record. The Twins will play the Yankees later this week. The Twins have had a horrible track record against the Yankees in the playoffs, but it's a new year, so maybe they can break free and win. We shall see. Even if they can't get past the Yankees, it was still an amazing season for a team that was predicted to do much worse than this!

A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Book Review

My latest book read was A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon. This is the 6th book in the Outlander series I started reading in 2017 after seeing it in stores while we were in Scotland on vacation.

I've done it six times now (6 books read thus far), but each time I finish an Outlander book, I feel as if I've finished a marathon! The books are 900-1000 page behemoths and they slow down my books per year reading rate. LOL! It took me 3 full weeks to finish this book, much longer than my typical pace. But the book was a good one.

In Outlander #6, Jaime and Claire are living their lives prior to the start of the revolutionary war. Knowing what is to come, the two carefully work through their relationships will fellow Scots living in the soon to be United States who are choosing to side with the British in the upcoming war. Then their granddaughter is born with a heart condition that will kill her within a few years. Yet to fix the heart, surgery is required, something not possible in the late 1700s. The only option is for the parents, Roger and Brianna, to travel through the stones to the 1960s. A long, but good book!