Surface Tension - Book Review

With the close of 2019 upon us today, I quickly knocked off another book, a science fiction short story titled Surface Tension by James Blish. This story is part of the first volume of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame collection.

It's an interesting short story that starts with a crash landing of a crew on a inhospitable planet. The crew are doomed to death, but before dying, they plant offspring embryos adapted to survive the planet. These new humans are tiny, bacteria sized humans, that go through a process of evolving from water dwelling creatures to land dwelling creatures, following the steps of evolution on Earth.

Not the greatest science fiction short story, but an interesting, if odd, short read. 

Memorial Day (with Mitch Rapp) - Book Review

One of the last books I read in 2019 was Memorial day by Vince Flynn. This is the seventh book in the Mitch Rapp series and is another excellent spy thriller written by Flynn. I know I always say that I don't agree with Flynn's politics (Note: Flynn died in 2013 from prostate cancer), but I do enjoy his books. If you are a fan of spy thrillers, you really need to check out the Mitch Rapp series. Forget the politics and sit down with a good, exciting story.

Memorial Day is another page turning, a book that I finished very quickly because I was delaying doing anything else until I finished. LOL! Mitch Rapp is at it again. He's upset with the day to day politics and is part of a team to stop a terrorist plot to kill the President and take down hundreds of thousands to millions of Americans. Oh, and nukes. He has to stop nukes from going off in Washington D.C. An exciting read!

Although good, the sixth book in the series, Executive Power, didn't quite live up to the previous books in the series. Not so with the seventh book. The seventh book is what the sixth book wasn't!

This Blog's History: Eating in Maine

ICYMI when I posted it last month, we had a great trip in Maine and had a vast amount of excellent food! Here's a list of all the places we ate!

Eating in Maine!

What Is #31: The Kuiper Belt?

The day after Christmas is a great day for astronomy. Today I return to the What Is series and take a look at the Solar System's Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a region in the Solar System that extends from about 30 astronomical units (A.U.) to about 50 A.U. from the Sun. For reference, the Earth is 1 A.U. from the Sun. There are many leftover parts from the early ages of the Solar System that never collected into a planet or with one of the existing planets. Given the larger distance from the Sun, many of these objects are more icy and less rocky in composition.

Short period comets, such as Halley's comet, which orbits the Sun once every 76 years, originate from the Kuiper Belt. Pluto, and several other dwarf planets, are in the region of the Kuiper Belt in the Solar System. 

The Kuiper Belt is named after astronomer Gerard Kuiper, although he did not discover the Kuiper Belt. He did a great deal of work in planetary astronomy, including the discovery of a couple of moons of Uranus. The Kuiper Belt was discovered two decades after Kuiper's death as technology improved and non-planet objects were discovered in increasing numbers in this distance range.

Is the Kuiper Belt the edge of the Solar System? Nope! Far from it. Coming soon we'll talk about the Oort Cloud which is very far out in the Solar System, far more distant than the Kuiper Belt. 

Snowpeople Against Solar Energy!

Have an excellent Christmas day no matter how you choose to spend it. Here's a bit of humor, following yesterday's Christmas Eve humor.

Yes, never trust a snowperson! They are against using the Sun's renewable energy source for solar energy on Earth! Apparently solar energy doesn't treat them well. :-)

Christmas Eve Science Cartoon

It is Christmas Eve and here's a bit of Christmas plus Science humor to brighten your day in a world filled with far too many climate change deniers.

Found on the skepticalscience.com website, a fantastic source for climate change science.

There you go, we can blame Santa Claus for climate change. He's the one that kept handing out coal, a fossil fuel that polluted our atmosphere with additional carbon dioxide and increased the temperature of this planet. Had Santa given the bad kids a renewable energy source, like solar or wind, climate change wouldn't be a problem. :-)

As the caption to this image states, Skeptical Science is a great source for high quality climate change science. A vast resource for anyone wishing to know more about climate change, including the common arguments climate change deniers often make.

Throw Throw Burrito!

Some board games have a significant learning curve and can take hours to play. Other board games are learned in 60 seconds and provide a few minutes of hilarious fun. Both type are needed. We recently played Throw Throw Burrito over Thanksgiving Break, a game I supported on Kickstarter when it was first announced. The game was created by The Exploding Kittens group, which includes Matthew Inman, also knows as creator of The Oatmeal comics.

The goal of the game is to earn points and whoever earns the most points wins. Oh, and you get to throw foam burritos at each other. Seriously. You throw foam burritos at each other!!!

There are foam burrito wars and foam burrito duels. The duels are your standard duel where two people each grab a foam burrito, stand back to back, take three steps, turn, and throw! First to get hit by a burrito loses! We had some epic duels as a family with missed throws, laundry hamper lids serving as shields, running from room to room, etc. And a whole bunch of laughing. LOL! Each game takes maybe 15-20 minutes, although an epic, drawn out duel could add a few minutes to that. 

Throw Throw Burrito is a great party game. If you own two packs, which I do, you can combine them and play up to 12 players at a time. Haven't done that yet, but I imagine a 12 player game of Throw Throw Burrito is quite the sight!

This Blog's History: Becky Smethurst

For This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to a recent post I wrote on Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist you should definitely follow on Twitter. Seriously, follow her @drbecky_ You're not following her yet? What is taking so long? Follow her!!!

Becky Smethurst (@drbecky_) on Twitter

Trivial Pursuit Family Edition

Over Thanksgiving break we had a chance as a family to play several board games. One game we played several times was Trivial Pursuit Family Edition. I loved playing trivial pursuit as a kid and there are many, many different versions out there. The family edition has a good mix of parent question cards and kid question cards. In addition, it is up to date with more modern questions that are relative to the times we live in now that it is 2019.

In our first game, I teamed up with my oldest daughter and we competed against my wife and youngest daughter. It was a neck and neck game, but my oldest daughter and I won. The best part? The answer to the final question was Frank Herbert's Dune! My geekiness paid off! LOL! 

Board games are a great way to spend family time that isn't in front of a screen. Trivial Pursuit Family Edition will keep parents and kids interested. The questions are not necessarily easy, but they aren't too difficult that it takes forever to play either. I remember some very, very long games of Trivial Pursuit back when I was a kid as we played the original edition. 

Star Wars: The Old Republic #4 - Annihilation: Book Review

Now that I've reached my 2019 reading goal of 40 books, each additional book is an added bonus! With The Rise of Skywalker hitting theaters tomorrow, I'm kind of on a Star Wars kick of late. Over Thanksgiving we watched The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi to get ready for The Rise of Skywalker. :-) We also watched Rogue One again, but hey, who's counting. :-)

I've slowly been reading Star Wars books over the last couple of years and my latest Star Wars read was the last book in The Old Republic series, titled Annihilation.

These aren't literary classics or anything, but sometimes you just need a good Star Wars book and this book serves that purpose. Action, adventure, science fiction, Sith, Jedi, etc. The perfect quick read to fit between more lengthy novels on my to-read list. 

Shout Out to my Dad on His Birthday

Today is my dad's birthday and today he would have turned 69. This year marks the third holiday season without him with us. He was diagnosed with an inoperable rain tumor, glioblastoma, in January 2014. Glioblastoma, a very fast growing brain tumor, accounts for about 15% of all brain tumors and is terminal. Average survival rates are very short, at under 15 months with treatment. Five year survival rates are essentially non-existent.

He had a great team of doctors and responded very well to initial treatments. Unfortunately there are no cures and no treatments that prolong life beyond a few years. How long one survives depends on how well one responds to the first set of treatments. Treatment, typically a combination of chemotherapy and radiation, is not easy and can leave you very sick and tired. My dad never complained, at least not openly. He always came across to me as living each day positively and not worrying about the end. If he had worries, he never shared those. I hope, that if I am ever faced with a similar diagnosis, I handle it as well as he did.

My dad responded very well to treatments and survived for 3.5 years, finally losing his battle with cancer in June 2017. The quality of life was strong for the first three years, tailing off in the last few months, as always happens with this type of cancer. Glioblastoma steals away your cognitive and physical abilities. It requires 24 hour around the clock care at the end. Fortunately we had the means to place my dad in a home for the last couple of months, but many families don't have this option. In addition, many people with glioblastoma do not want to die the way this cancer forces you to die. They would rather die on their own terms before their quality of life drops dramatically.

I won't get into too many details here, but a few states offer "death with dignity" options that allow you to take medication to allow you to die painlessly on your own terms. You cannot just walk up to a pharmacy and pick up these medications. There are many, many safeguards in place and you have to pass a series of standards before you qualify. Unfortunately most states, including Iowa where my dad lived, do not offer this. The reason? Too often it comes down to religion and "this is how God chose you to die". Sorry, I don't buy that. It was once rare for humans to live past 30, but that didn't stop us from finding cures for common ailments that used to kill us. We didn't say that God chose us to die at 30 and call it good. The same rationale should apply to end of life in terminal cases. We treat our family pets at the end of their lives far better than we treat our fellow human beings.

If you don't know about death with dignity or have heard others denounce it, please, please, please, do a bit of research. One of the best documentaries I have ever watched, How to Die in Oregon, makes it clear that death with dignity is not a way for someone to just kill themselves on a whim. You can watch the documentary on Netflix. Death with dignity requires multiple doctors agreeing that the health problem is terminal and death, without the possibility of recovery, is a few months away.

Would my dad have chosen to die by taking medications? I don't know. Many people who have the option do not choose to take it. Some go as far as getting the medication but choose not to take it. The point is they had a choice. My dad did not. Currently, where I live, I do not. As of this writing, only Oregon, Washington, Colorado, California, DC, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, and Vermont have death with dignity laws in place. Death with dignity is not the easy way out. I argue it's even a harder decision to choose to take the medication. Would I choose it if in a similar situation? I don't know. But I want the option.

Happy Birthday Dad! I hope I am as strong as you when my time comes.

How Many Supermassive Black Holes???!!!???

I saw the headline to the following article and had to read it three (pun intended) times to convince myself I was reading it correctly.

Astronomers Find a Galaxy Containing Three Supermassive Black Holes at the Center

That's right, three...THREE supermassive black holes at the center of this galaxy. A single, supermassive black hole is usually found at the center of a galaxy. This supermassive black hole, around a few million of our suns combined, is created as the galaxy forms. As the galaxy forms from a large cloud of gas and dust, enough mass gets packed into a tight enough space that gravity becomes so large that not even light can escape. Thus the name, black hole. But how did this galaxy get three supermassive black holes?

Image Credit: P Weilbacher (AIP), NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University)

It turns out this galaxy is the result of three galaxies merging, each with their own supermassive black hole. The black holes have not yet merged and are all seen separately. Now that's cool! The image above, taken from the linked article, maps out the location of the three black holes. 

Astronomy never ceases to amaze!

This Blog's History: Power Plays! Newsletter

In case you missed it last month, for This Friday in This Blog's History I point you back to the post I wrote detailing a very excellent newsletter devoted to gender inequality in sports, Power Plays! Check it out. Author Lindsay Gibbs does an amazing job! Quality journalism covering an area that is rarely, if ever, covered by the major media sources.

Power Plays! Newsletter

What Is #30: A Supernova

In the 30th installment in this "What Is" series, I want to spend a few moments talking about supernovae, plural for supernova. A supernova is the final stage of a high mass star that has several times the mass of the Sun. These stars end their lives in a spectacular 'explosion'. I've put explosion in quotes because it really isn't an explosion as we think of an explosion.

This composite shows the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant across the spectrum: Gamma rays (magenta) from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope; X-rays (blue, green) from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory; visible light (yellow) from the Hubble Space Telescope; infrared (red) from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope; and radio (orange) from the Very Large Array near Socorro, N.M. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration, CXC/SAO/JPL-Caltech/Steward/O. Krause et al., and NRAO/AUI.

As a high mass star nears the end of its life, it begins to fuse more massive elements all the way up to iron in the core. Iron, the element with the greatest mass per nuclear particle, cannot be fused. At this point, fusion in the core stops and the core collapses very quickly until it reaches a point in which the neutrons cannot be packed in any tighter. The star doesn't have enough mass to break through neutron degeneracy. All of this material rushing in to the center hits this 'wall' and rebounds violently, creating what we call a supernova explosion. Unlike a bomb exploding, a supernova still has a leftover core, which we call a neutron star, an object I discussed in this series a while back.

If the star has even more mass, it could break through neutron degeneracy and leave behind a black hole, but this is only for the most massive of massive stars.

The supernova explosion creates many heavier elements beyond iron on the periodic table, but it doesn't appear as if a supernova has enough energy to create the heaviest elements. To create these elements, such as gold, even more energetic astronomical events are needed, to be discussed in a future post in this series.

A supernova releases a great amount of energy, so it is best to not be near one when it goes off. It is estimated that a supernova within 100 light years of us will greatly harm life on Earth by heating the atmosphere several degrees very quickly and wiping out a good chunk of the ozone layer. Not good for those of us who need this atmosphere to live! Fortunately we do not have any stars within 100 light years of us that show signs of reaching a supernova stage any time soon! Phew! There is some evidence, however, of past supernovae explosions linking to mass extinctions on Earth.

The World Revolves Around...

I saw this comic shared on the March for Science Facebook page the other day and couldn't help but share!

I won't explain it because then it wouldn't be funny. :-) Astronomy humor in cartoon format! If only everyone's Facebook feed was filled with more astronomy humor and less blatantly false political "news" and memes. 

Merlin TV Series - The Finale

About a year and a half ago I shared on this blog my enjoyment of the Merlin TV series, the series in which Merlin is young and King Arthur has yet to be king. As I shared in that post, I love pretty much any fantasy or science fiction based TV series. Magic, dragons, good, evil, etc. What's not to enjoy!

Merlin, which you can stream on Amazon Prime as of this writing, lasted five seasons and aired 65 episodes and ended in 2012. I recently watched the series finale and wow! What a great series and a great ending to the series. I won't give it away, but a very, very good last couple of episodes to tie everything up. There were negotiations for a sixth season, but the series was canceled after the fifth. Fortunately the cancellation was early enough to provide time to tie up all of the loose ends and end the series appropriately.

My kids watched some of these episodes and asked me all about the finale. LOL! They were just as caught up as I was in it. But alas, all good things must come to an end and Merlin is no different.

What's next? Not exactly sure, but I'm thinking of watching Black Mirror next.

What Is #29: The Pleiades Cluster

After recently discussing globular clusters and open clusters in this "What Is" series, let me talk briefly about a specific star cluster that is easy to see with the naked eye in the northern hemisphere, the Pleiades.

Pleiades star cluster - NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar Observatory The science team consists of: D. Soderblom and E. Nelan (STScI), F. Benedict and B. Arthur (U. Texas), and B. Jones (Lick Obs.)

The Pleiades is an open cluster of a few thousand stars with several very bright, blue stars that make it a very easily observed star cluster, even with the naked eye. It's best observable in the winter months in the northern hemisphere, and you can see it from part of the southern hemisphere, but if you get too far south it's always hidden by the horizon.

The Pleiades is a naked eye object for several reasons. One is the make up of stars. These very large, very blue stars emit a lot of light. On top of that, they are very close to Earth, at only 444 light years. This may seem a large distance, but in astronomical terms, 444 light years is very close given the Milky Way galaxy itself is approximately 100,000 light years in length.

The Pleiades is one of the top objects I have my students look at when we head outside in the late fall of the first semester. It's an easy object to find and very impressive through the telescope. You can see the mixture of stars and gas, along with the very bluish color. Very impressive!

These are young stars, with an age of around 100 million years. Much longer than the 75-85 year expected lifetime of a human, but very young when compared to the age of the Earth at 4.5 billion years old.

The next time you are outside in the evening, take a look up. Even if it is summer and the Pleiades are not up, something else that is just as cool is! Look up and enjoy the sights!

This Blog's History: What is a Globular Cluster

In case you missed it when first posted, for This Friday in This Blog's History, I point you back to a post I wrote on globular clusters. What is a globular cluster? You'll have to read the article by clicking the link below! :-) Hint: They are cool things involving stars!

What is a Globular Cluster?

Trip to Maine #24 (Finale!) - Eating in Maine

Today marks the last post detailing our family vacation to Maine this past summer. We had an amazing time, ate some amazing food, and made some amazing memories we'll never forget. I highly, highly recommend taking a vacation to Maine. We didn't eat at a single place I didn't enjoy, so to end this series on our trip to Maine, I offer you a list of most of the restaurants we ate at and and loved!

Vermont Country Deli (In Vermont)
Quiet Side Cafe and Ice Cream Shop
Perry Long's Lobster Shack
The Independent
Bar Harbor Lobster Company
Union River Lobster Pot
Amato's
Sprague's Lobster
The Holy Donut
Cape Porpoise Chowder House
Scoop Deck
Arabica Coffee House
J's Oyster
Gilbert's Chowder House
Knucklehead's Brewhouse (In New York)
Chico's Travelers Inn (In Pennsylvania)

There's a big seafood theme in the above list. And coffee. And ice cream. LOL! Some great food found at all of the above!

Ashes to Dust - Book Review

I may have exceeded my goal of reading 40 books in 2019, but that isn't stopping me from reading! I first visited Iceland in 2014 with my wife, and four years later, in 2018, we went back to Iceland with our kids. While there I searched for Icelandic authors to add to my to-read list, coming across Yrsa Sigurdardottir (sorry, leaving off the accents). Ashes to Dust is the third book in the Thora Gundmundsdottir series. These books fall into the genre of Icelandic noir, or more generally Nordic noir, murder/mystery/detective books written from the point of view of those doing the investigation.

Ashes to Dust is another great book in the series and kept me on the edge of my seat, especially the last 100-125 pages. There was quite the unexpected twist at the end! Wow! Another reason I enjoy reading this series is the knowledge I pick up about Iceland. Iceland is an amazing country and it won't be long before I'm itching to go back for the third time. In this book I learned quite a bit about the volcanic eruption on the island of Heimaey in 1973. No one was killed, but over 400 homes were destroyed during the eruption. 

A volcanic eruption combined with a fictional murder-mystery with a twist! Good reading!

Closest Planet to Earth?

What is the closet planet to Earth? At first glance this may seem an easy question. Venus, at closest approach is only about a third of an astronomical unit away. Mars is only about half of an astronomical unit away, but neither is the closest planet to Earth most of the time. That honor goes to Mercury, yes Mercury! But how is that possible? At closest approach Mercury is farther from Earth, at about two-thirds of an astronomical unit, than both Venus and Mercury!

The above chart, found in a tweet by Brian Brettschneider, plots the distance of Mercury, Venus, and Mars from Earth. Given that the four planets are not always on the same side of the Sun, their distance to Earth varies. Because Mercury has a quicker orbit around the Sun, it catches up to Earth faster than Venus catches up to Earth and even faster than Earth catches up to Mars in its orbit. Therefore, Mercury actually spends more time closer to Earth than Venus and Mars do! Just under half of the time, Mercury is closer, followed by Venus about a third of the time and Mars at about sixth of the time.

This makes sense, but it isn't immediately obvious when at closest approach, Mercury comes in third to Mars and Venus. Interesting! 

Becky Smethurst (@drbecky_) on Twitter

Not every science communicator needs a blue check mark on Twitter to be worthy of a follow. I recently discovered Dr. Becky Smethurst on Twitter and immediately added her to my science list of individual science communicators I want to see each and every tweet.

Dr. Smethurst, who you can follow on Twitter @drbecky_, is an astrophysicist studying supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. She has a book out that I still need to check out titled "Space: 10 Things You Should Know". That's a hint for anyone looking at sending me a birthday or holiday gift. :-)

For some excellent science, specifically astronomy, give Dr. Smethurst a follow on Twitter. Better yet, add her to your own private list so you never miss out on a tweet!