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| So you're into sci fi? But what about sci fact? Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction... Each month our very own Voyager Science Queen* will bring you interesting, quirky and downright bizarre tasty morsels from the world of science. And its all completely, totally, 100% true! February Sci-Facts |
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Last year, we had scientists firing probes into comets to make observations on the matter inside of these stellar wanderers. This year, we have the triumphant return of the Stardust capsule, with a treasure in its inner canister: a pure thimbleful of comet samples. As mentioned in a previous Science Page, it is theorised that comets are made from the original components of the solar system. The Stardust spacecraft was launched on the 7th of February, 1999. The probe achieved its goal in January 2004, when it collected dust from the gaseous nucleus of Comet Wild 2. After an epic round trip, 4.7 billion km all told, the capsule made a safe return to Earth on the 16th of January, falling to a muddy landing in Utah, USA. The canister was promptly retrieved, taken to a clean room, and flooded with ultra-pure nitrogen gas to prevent contamination Comet dust falls to Earth all the time, hundreds of tonnes of it on a yearly basis, but this dust is contaminated. The pure sample will be studied for years to come. One of the goals for the scientists is to discover if key ingredients for life are contained in the sample.
A Movie with a real Star! NASA has been making a very different kind of movie. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, it has been filming the Crab Nebula over several months. The ‘film’ shows changes in the Nebula that wouldn’t be noticeable in real time. The scientists have captured images of gaseous streamers travelling at half the speed of light, and a magnetic pulsar ‘wind’ in the body of the nebula creating shifting patterns of light. Such a dramatic results weren’t expected…it was thought it might take years to capture subtle changes in the nebula. The powerhouse for these changes is the neutron star at the centre of the Crab Nebula. A neutron star is the remnants of the exploding star that created the nebula. The star that created the Crab Nebula exploded 900 years ago, an event noted by Chinese Astronomers of the day. The unexpected results should promote a better understanding of a variety of high-energy phenomena in the universe.
Bad News for Cat Lovers On a sombre note, the World Conservation Union has released it annual list of the Top Ten Endangered Species. Three of the ten species were big cats. You might notice there are no Australian animals on this list. This is not a reason to rejoice. We are a terrible environmental record in Australia; basically, one recognised species has gone extinct for every year of Western occupation… And, we might not have made the list for the World Conservation Union, but here is a sad list of our own. Here are five Australian animals with populations under two hundred individuals: Gilbert’s Potoroo, Brush-Tailed Rock Wallaby, Western Swamp Wallaby, Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat and the Western Swamp Tortoise. All of these animals are likely to go extinct in the near future – and once they are gone, we can’t get them back. I hope I’ve made you sad. I hope I’ve made you think. I really hope that you might be interested enough to go and do something about it…
Biography – Isaac Asimov For those of you that didn’t know, Isaac Asimov was a biochemist as well as an author. I thought he would be perfect for a biography. Isaac Asimov was born around the 2nd of January, 1920. The exact date is unknown as records were in Russia. His parents were Anna Rachel Berman Asimov and Judah Asimov, and they were millers by profession. The Asimov family moved to Brooklyn, New York, America when Isaac was three. The family ran a small general store, and it was in this store that Isaac discovered the pulp magazines; the pulps were to draw him into writing Science Fiction. The Good Doctor always referred to the genre as Science Fiction, or SF at a pinch. He loathed having it called Sci-fi, and he wasn’t thrilled with the term Speculative Fiction, as he preferred keeping the Science Fiction genre separate from Fantasy genre. He wrote and respected Fantasy, and considered it the original form of all fiction. He graduated from Columbia University in 1939 and took a doctorate in chemistry in 1948. He was to become a full time writer in 1958, when his writing income exceeded his academic salary. He wrote over 250 books during his career, not just on the Science Fiction Genre, but Fantasy and Detective fiction, and non-fiction works in Science and History. Uncle Isaac was quite phobic about flying, though he did learn to drive. He was also claustrophobic, and yet – ironically - created adventures in tiny spaceships that travelled enormous distances. He was close friends with Kurt Vonnegut Jr and Gene Roddenberry. He was president of the American Humanist Association from 1985 until his death. Isaac Asimov was a humanist and a rationalist. He was a non-practising Jew, yet he did not oppose genuine religious conviction in others, while was against superstitious or unfounded beliefs. He was a feminist before it was fashionable or politically correct. All human rights were important to him. And he was writing about global warming and environmental destruction long before they became newsworthy. He was my hero. Even now, I feel terribly sad that he died before his time, because he wasn’t just a good writer, he was a good man.
Concept of the Month Neutron stars the remnants of a nova event, the end result of stellar evolution of massive stars. They are small (ten to twenty km in diameter), very dense (so dense, a teaspoon of neutron star matter would outweigh the Earth), and rotate at enormous speeds (some rotate several times a second). They are often surrounded by a gaseous remnant of the explosion; these sometimes form nebula -a cloud of dust and gas.
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| *The Voyager Science Queen is also known as Lynne Green So, who is this woman who attempts to entertain us with Science? Well, I really am a scientist. I have a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Queensland, in Zoology. And, at the moment, I am working in a Pathology laboratory. I have always been intensely curious about every aspect of our universe, from the teeny tiny workings of the gene right up to the mind-bending forces that are twisting and knotting inside a blackhole. So, now I am sharing a brain stuffed full of trivia...and hopefully entertaining people at the same time. As well, I write Fantasy stories and novels. One day, I hope to have a book published, but don't hold your breath. Reading is my other major love, and my favourite authors are Terry Pratchett and Isaac Asimov, though I could list hundreds of others. If I had one wish, I ask for more time to write! Read previous Sci-Facts: Mari Lwyd Looking for more scientific oddities? Have you checked out Dr Steven Juan's website? He is, quite literally, the wizard of odds! |
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