Metal Melting Mirrors?

The concept of using a mirrors’ light reflecting properties to harness solar energy into a single point with enough heat to melt steel sounds like the plot device from some James Bond movie but according to some MIT students it seems possible.  As explained in this Discovery News article the students have already constructed a mirror that is capable of using reflected sun light to light wood on fire.  The student hope to use similar mirrors to produce cheap renewable heating sources sometime in the near future.

Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity

Boy, some good stuff today in science history.  Three years before the Tunguska Event, on June 30th, 1905, Albert Einstein’s paper entitled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”  was published.  Now the title of the paper might not mean all that much to a lot of people.  But one of the key concepts contained within this paper later became known as the special theory of relativity, that theory that gives us the famous equation E=MC².

Currently I am about seventy-five, or so, pages in Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson.  This biography, which was just published a few years ago, is really awesome.  It focuses not only on Einstein’s scientific work and discoveries but also looks closely at his personal and private life through examination of multiple correspondences with people around him.  I love it.

Tunguska’s 100 Year Anniversary

On June 30th, 1908 something big exploded above the forests of Tunguska Siberia.  Fortunately there were no humans in the remote region but the event serves as a reminder to us all that our planet is not safe from potentially devastating meteor impact.  Time Magazine provides us with a Slide Show of meteor related images today on the 100th anniversary of the Siberian event.

Birds of a Feather . . . May not Evolutionarily Flock together

The AFP reports today (via Discovery News) about a five year study that is completely redefining our understandings of birds and bird evolution.  I find this absolutely fascinating and wonderful!  A number of reasons why I am amazed by this. 

1. Birds are dinosaurs (well more or less).  They might not look like the big hulking beasts we imagine and see the skeletons of in museums but there is very significant evidence that points to the fact that all birds evolved from dinosaur ancestors.  Further several paleontologists speculate that some dinosaurs such as the dromeosaurids (in which family Velociraptor is categorized) may actually have winged birdlike animals that “lost” the ability of flight to take up hunting on the ground.  Wild right?
2. Often I think it is all too easy to look at birds and just kind of think “Yeah birds, la-di-da, they’ve got feathers and fly but are pretty much all the same.”  Okay, maybe not exactly like that but what I am trying to get at is that we often ignore the vast amount of diversity in other groups of animals.  To us it is pretty obvious that a mouse and a tiger and an elephant are all quite different even if they are all mammals.  When we look at birds it might not dawn on us that some species might have as much genetic diversity between each other as is between a tiger and a mouse.  So yeah, I think that that is really cool.
3. Lastly, I just love birds.  I think they are some of the coolest, most fascinating animals around.  I am not really sure when I started being absolutely amazed by birds but I bet it was when I was pretty young.  Growing up we always kept bird feeders on our back porch and I loved just sitting and watching the different birds come and eat (my favorites were the chickadees and the woodpeckers).  We had this really cool Audubon Center (part of the National Audubon Society which of course is named after John James Audubon who is perhaps the most famous ornithologist in history) not far from where I grew up and there was this old guy who lived/worked there making amazingly detailed wood carvings of birds.  I can’t even begin to describe how accurate  these carvings are, they really look like they could be real birds frozen in time.  I loved going to see the place.  Birds are also one of my favorite things to draw.  Not really sure why, but I just enjoy the way they look and the detail that goes into illustrating them.

So anyways the study is really cool and will, as the article points out, probably change the whole foundations of how birds are consider.

Rocky Planets and Extraterrestrial Life

Natalie Angier has a great little article in the New York Times today talking about some exciting recent discoveries in astronomy.  It seems that other stars in our very own galaxy may harbor earth-like, or at least rocky, planets.  This is exciting because in the past most of the planets detected around other stars have been assumed to be gas giants similar to Jupiter and Saturn (though many of these foreign planets are assumed to be even larger than our huge neighbors).   As Angier’s article points out most of these new planets are entirely too close to their stars to likely harbor any life, but the discovery that rocky planets might be quite common around other stars is making some scientists hopeful of finding potential life harboring worlds in the future.  I think it would be great to hear about the discovery of a distant planet that could potentially posses life, but at the same time it would likely be kind of bittersweet as current technology won’t let us know for certain whether we are encountering life or not.  Personally I think we have a far greater chance of finding some evidence for life beyond Earth in our own solar system (on Mars or perhaps some of the moons of the other planets) before we find anything out by another star.  Still, I am glad that we keep looking.  My personal stance and opinion on life elsewhere in the universe is that it very likely inevitably exists regardless whether we detect it or not (which I suppose raises some philosophical questions about existence but I am not trying to write about philosophy here).

By the way next to Eric Asimov and Olivia Judson, Natalie Angier is one of my all-time favorite writers for the New York Times 

Top Ten New Species of 2007

The title of this post pretty much says all there is to say.  See the National Geographic article and accompanying pictures for more information. 

18 Months of Darwin

July First marks the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s announcement of the discovery of natural selection.  February 2009 will be the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth.  Olivia Judson, one of my favorite writers about all things evolutionary, writes a vast article today in the New York Times giving us all a good history lesson on Darwin and the forces behind his discovery and why it is all still so relevant today.

Utah’s big Dino Find

Paleontologists working in Utah have unearthed a huge fossil bed containing a couple of predatory dinosaurs, several sauropods (long necked dinosaurs like Diplodocus and Apatosaurus), and a possible Stegosaurus.  Also found were a number of fossilized trees and a bunch of fossils of fresh water clams.  As this National Geographic article explains it is unlikely that the site will turn up any new species of dinosaurs but there is optimism about possibly finding fossilized mammal remains or evidence of prehistoric birds.  Still, the fact that many of the skeletons appear to be nearly complete is really exciting. 

Reading the article makes me think how awesome it would be to be on a fossil dig site.  When I was a little kid I used to play around in my grandparents’ dirt driveway pretending to be looking for dinosaur bones.  When I was about ten my family and I went camping at this place called Button Bay on Lake Champlain named after the little fossilized sea critters found in a lot of the rocks in the region (they look like little buttons).  I remember finding some pretty decent looking fossils there.  Sure, I am aware that working at a fossil dig site is probably pretty hot and dusty and tiring but it still sounds awesome, especially the excitement that must be involved when the bones actually start to turn up. 

Tiny and Giant Beavers

I find the fact that there were once beavers alive that were the size of black bears both very amazing and slightly disturbing.  I am glad that beavers now remain rather small.  Read about the giant water rodents and the minuscule relatives in this Discovery News article. 

 (from Discovery News)

Kudzu for the Energy Crisis?

According to this Discovery News article the tenacious vine will likely not be able to alleviate any energy problems in the near future but it may be able to provide some benefits in the production of bio-fuel ethanol.  Personally I think the interest in Kudzu should be what is suggested at the end of the article for use in food stuff (the starches) and as an alternate fiber (like for making fabrics and clothing) source.  I don’t want to point fingers at any one industry but it seems like there are a lot of alternatives plant sources to produce things like ethanol and fibers and such, so I guess I’d like to ask why we are not investing more to checking them out?