Space Part 1: Our Solar System: Mercury

There is nothing cooler than everything right?  Well, it's a bit presumptuous to say that space has everything.  However I like to think that it does.  Today however, continuing with the theme, I shall be talking about the Planet Mercury.

Mercury:

Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system.  At just 3,032 miles in diameter, it is just over 1/3 the size of the Earth.  Mercury is also the planet that is closest to the Sun, just 36,000,000 miles away, or about 4,500 Earths.

Here is the Earth next to Mercury

Because of Mercury's close proximity to the sun, it does not have an atmosphere.  The sun, in all of its angry power, burns away anything that even resembles an atmosphere.  Because of this, Mercury looks a lot like our own moon: cratered, grey, and dead.

Lacking an atmosphere, Mercury is open to bombardment by meteros, be them small pieces of space dust or large sized meteors.  In addition to being vulnerable to collisions, Mercury has some of the most wild temperature swings in the solar system.  The side of Mercury that faces the sun can get as hot as 900 degrees F.  The dark side on the other hand can get down to as low as -300 degrees F.  These wild temperature differences also last for a good deal of time because of Mercury's proximity to the sun.  As Mercury travels on its orbital path, it rotates only 1.5 times in one orbital period (about 87 Earth days).  For just one complete rotation of the planet, it takes 58 Earth days.  This slow pace keeps one side of the planet facing the sun for weeks on end, ensuring that no kind of comfortable temperature could ever occur on its surface.

Despite these temperatures, scientists believe that water ice might exist on Mercury's surface.  This is because the floors of some of the deeper craters are never actually exposed to sunlight.  Sad and dark, but great if you are ice.  Observations like this give scientists hope for finding liquid water elsewhere in the solar system. 

When a planet travels in front of the sun, it is called the planet's transit period.  Here is an awesome image taken by Nasa of the Transit of Mercury.  Mercury is the small black dot just off of the center.  The larger black dot on the left side of the sun is a sun spot.

Mercury has not been explored that much by humans.  There are many reasons why, but the main one is that it is very difficult to get a satellite orbiting the planet due to its proximity to the sun.  Only two large missions have ever attempted to explore the planet: Mariner 10 and the MESSENGER.  Mariner only gave us pictures of the planet, while MESSENGER is currently in orbit around the planet.  Because of the lack of scientific interest in Mercury, it seems as though the planet is doomed to be the first to die when the sun begins to expand towards the end of its life.  A sad end for the first and smallest planet in our solar system.

Space Part 1: Our Solar System: The Sun

7,926 miles. Can you guess what this number is without reading further?  I'll give you a second......

Well, if you paid attention to the title of this blog, you would figure it has something to do with our solar system.  7,926 miles is the diameter of the Earth.  Meaning, the distance from one point on the equator straight through the Earth to the other; or, the literal "space" our tiny planet takes up in our solar system.  In this blog I hope to put our place in the solar system in perspective.  Often times I find it difficult to imagine the great distances of space, or even the amazing facts about space that I come across.  To begin, as any discussion of the Solar System should, I start with the Sun.

The Sun:
Our sun is the largest single object in our solar system.  With a diameter of 865,000 miles, you could line up close to 110 Earths end to end in this space.

  However when one considers the distances of the planets in our solar system from the sun, the scale of its size and power becomes very real.  There are 93 million miles between the Earth and the Sun, which could also be described as 11,733 Earths.  We here on the Earth, enjoy very happy and enjoyable temperatures, compared to the surface of the Sun, which hovers at about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.  Meaning that, in the 93 million miles between the Earth and the Sun, we are still able to feel the "heat" of our star.  The Sun helps to power our planet and is the provider of food and energy to nearly every living thing on our planet.  We are very lucky to have a star like our sun. In comparison to other stars in the universe, our sun is tiny.  The biggest star discovered by scientists thus far is the red hypergiant star, VYCanis Majoris.  This star has a diameter of about 1.9 billion miles.  Seriously the mother fucker is huge.  If you were to plop it in the center of our Solar System, it would extend to just past Uranus.

Here is a nice size comparison!

But this is a topic for another day.  The point of this is that our sun is small.  But this size works in our favor because smaller stars like our sun live a lot longer than these larger stars, which only live in the 100's of millions of years range.  Whereas our sun, which is about 4.6 billion years old, should live for about 5 to 6 billion more years.  However, for those of you who were thinking of sticking around for the long haul.  In the next billion years or so, the Sun's temperature will have increased so much that liquid water will no longer be sustained on this planet.  Sad, but true.  Luckily, we will have killed ourselves long before that point, so, no worries!  The size of our sun tells us something else about its future.  Our sun will never supernova!  Why do you ask? Well, our sun simply does not have the mass to supernova.  It will however, about 10 billion years into its lifecycle, become what is known as a Red Giant star.  This will happen because as the Sun uses up its fuel, the temperatures and pressures of the gases the sun creates will cause it to swell up, extending to about where the Earth is now.  After about 1-2 billion years in this phase, the sun will begin ejecting some of its mass and will become a planetary nebula (a huge collection of gas and dust in space) with a small, White Dwarf Star (our sun) at it's center.  This White Dwarf phase of its life will continue on and on and on, longer than the life of our galaxy and longer than many other stars in our universe.  This is because a White Dwarf star simply keeps on cooling off pretty much forever and ever. There are many factors that contribute to this, but the coolest one is that White Dwarfs are just extremely dense and thus give off their heat very slowly.  The white dwarf, even though it spewed off a bunch of mass during the red giant phase, has a mass nearly equal to our current sun, in a volume about as big as the Earth.  White Dwarf stars are some of the most intriguing stars out there.

A white dwarf compared to the sun and the Earth

The phase after this part of our Sun's life is only hypothetical and is currently being referred to as the Black Dwarf phase.  This, again hypothetically, is the phase where our sun will no longer give off significant light or heat.  Why is this hypothetical?  Well, to put it simply, our universe has not been around for a long enough time for a white Dwarf star, that we have discovered, to reach the "Black Dwarf" phase.  While our planet certainly will not be around forever, our Sun, with its power and awesome size, will be around for billions of years to come.

This is the first entry on our Solar System.  I will be doing one every day for the next few weeks.  Please enjoy!

The Giant and Colossal Squids

The Giant and Colossal Squids are some of the most badass animals to currently grace the oceans.  Reaching lengths of around 40+ feet for females and 30+ feet for the males, these creatures can certainly be added to the list of things you really don't want to come across during a pleasant oceanic diving trip.  Amazingly, it was not until 2004 that these creatures were photographed alive in the wild.

First ever photograph of a Giant Squid alive in the wild.

Previously, the only reason we had known they existed was from carcasses that had washed up on shore or specimens that were caught in fishing nets.

Here is an image of the Colossal Squid.  This particular squid was captured, frozen, and examined by scientists.  It was the most pristine specimen ever examined by scientists because the fishermen on this boat were able to freeze it almost immediately before its body could collapse outside of the water.

One of the cool things about the Giant and Colossal Squids is that because they live in the water, when brought onto land or on a fishing boat, they begin to collapse under their own weight and die soon afterwards.  2006 gave us the first video footage of one of these creatures when a fishing boat snagged a somewhat juvenile Colossal squid in its nets.  I love that some of the coolest creatures in the Oceans are also some of the most difficult to find and study.  Scientists were able to have this squid frozen solid on the fishing boat and brought back to a lab where it was eventually thawed and examined; the most pristine giant or colossal squid specimen ever examined by scientists.  Why do I find these creatures to amazingly awesome?  Besides the fact that squid are some of the most intelligent animals on the planet, I'm going to talk about what else makes these creatures just so damn awesome.

Giant and Colossal Squid have some pretty key differences in terms of how they look

...and how they kill. First and foremost, the body (or mantel) of the Colossal squid is much heftier than the Giant squid.  While it is currently impossible to estimate the average weight of these animals, due simply to the fact that they have never been able to weigh one while it was still alive, the specimen examined in 2006 weighed about 1,100 pounds and was just a bit over 14 ft long (from head to end of longest tentacle).  Giant squid females (the biggest ones) on the other hand only weigh upwards of 660 to 700 pounds, but have much longer tentacles than their colossal counterparts.

Another difference between these two species is in the tentacles themselves.  Giant squids have the traditional suckers all over their tentacles.  The evil thing about these suckers though is that they each contain small serrated teeth; basically, a suction cup with miniature razor blades in it.  Just when you thought it couldn't get much worse, the Colossal squid, in addition to it's suction cups, has swiveling hooks scattered across its tentacles.  These hooks can rotate 360 degrees and in certain sections are longer and more powerful than those of a lion.

These hooks were an important part in the discovery of the colossal squid because whalers would often find Sperm Whales (the main predator of the Giant and Colossal Squids) with huge scars all over their bodies.  Today, we now know that these scars come from the hooks on the tentacles of the colossal squid.  Speaking of the Sperm Whale and the Giant squid, a new study has very recently come out that describes another awesome part of the squid anatomy, its eyes.  While the Giant and Colossal squid are quite huge, their eyes, even for their body sizes, are ridiculously huge.  Estimates out the average length of the eyes at 11 inches across, basically the size of the average basketball.  Until recently, scientists were perplexed as to why these creatures needed such large eyes.  After all, the main prey of these squids are smaller sized fish.  Meaning that, based on efficiency, it would only make sense for these squid to have eyes about the size of an orange.  However this newest theory sounds like a very strong reality to me.  The eyes of these squid, scientists now believe, must have evolved to detect sperm whales at great depths from a good distance away.  Using computer models, scientists discovered that the Giant and Colossal squid eye is best adapted to see large objects, in the dark, at distances of about 120 meters away.  This means that these squid evolved such large eyes to be able to avoid their most dangerous predators, the Sperm Whale.  The squid found a unique way to detect the whales as well.  Because light from the sun is so diminished in their natural habitat, the squid instead take advantage of the bioluminescence of microorganisms in the water.  As the sperm whales move through the water, they displace the microorganisms, basically creating a whale sized gap in the water.  This allows the squid to hopefully see them coming from 120 meters away and get away to safety.  When your main predator hunts with echolocation (nature's radar system) you need every advantage you can get.

The only problem with these creatures is that I don't see enough of them.  Seriously, who doesn't think that a 45 foot long, tentacled, suction cupped/hooked, parrot beaked, badass animal isn't cool? I challenge you to tell me why.

For more information on these amazing animals, and to see pictures/videos of them, go to google.  Also, Netflix instant streaming has a great documentary on these creatures and another cool one on the Humboldt squid.  Hope this was informative.

We are nothing without Cyanobacteria

One of the most interesting classes I took in college was called Biology of the Algae.  This class was designed for people like me, non-science majors, to be able to satisfy the science distribution requirement to graduate.  Maybe it was because I normally deal in politics and philosophy, but I just loved learning about Algae and how there would be zero life on this planet without them.

The Earth, from what scientists have been able to determine, is about 4.6 billion years old.  It was a volcanically active, inhospitable place.   That was until around 3.6 - 2.8 billion years ago, when the first cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) evolved.  Cyanobacteria were some of the first organisms capable of performing true photosynthesis: the ability to use water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight in order to produce energy for themselves.  The chemical equation works like this : CO2 + H20 + sunlight = glucose and O2. In this process of photosynthesis, cyanobacteria were able to create sugars that they were in turn able to feed upon.  The other biproduct of this process is our handy dandy friend, oxygen.  Currently, about 21% of our atmosphere is made up of oxygen and it without cyanobacteria, this would never have been possible.  They were able to take massive amounts of CO2 out of the early atmosphere and convert it into oxygen.  This allowed for organisms that had once been confined to obtaining oxygen from the sea, to be able to move onto land and use the oxygen that was now present in the atmosphere.  While this was indeed a slow process, it would not have been possible without cyanobacteria.  However this is not the end of the story.  


Cyanobacteria were also amongst the Earth's first nitrogen fixers.  In layman's terms, this means that they are able to convert inorganic nitrogen (N2) into organic ammonia (NH3).  To think about this a different way, the Earth's atmosphere is about 78% N2 which you and I breath in and out each day.  While we need this element to allow our cells to perform the various functions they need, our bodies cannot process nitrogen in it's inorganic (N2) form.  Therefore, we and all other organisms rely on nitrogen fixers to turn N2 into NH3.  So again, every organism that needs oxygen to breath and nitrogen to stay alive, owes its life to cyanobacteria.


Now despite this whole making the Earth a fit place to live for us mouth breathers thing, how else have they helped us?  Well there are these awesome things called photosynthetic plants (trees, grass, whatever) that would never have been able to become photosynthetic without cyanobacteria.  The process of evolution is one that has become ever more complex the more we learn about the world around us and the way it developed.  We are all aware of cases of symbiotic relationships, two or more organisms working together to mutually benefit the other.  Fish that clean the teeth of sharks, birds that peck at rhinos, the list goes on and on.  Millions of years ago, there was a relationship that involved cyanobacteria and the early ancestors of what would become photosynthetic plants.  Cyanobacteria had already developed the ability to harness energy from the sun and other critters wanted to get in on the action.  Some of these organisms paired with cyanobacteria and over millions of years, helped to develop what are known today as chloroplasts.  Chloroplasts are the organelles (organs like your stomach or lungs but on the cellular level) where photosynthesis takes place in the cells of plants.  These are basically the power plants of plants.  When scientists examined the DNA of these chloroplasts, they discovered that in fact these chloroplasts shared a lot of genetic similarities to cyanobacteria.  Meaning that over the course of millions of years, the mutualism that once existed between certain genuses of cyanobacteria and the ancient ancestors of plants, had developed into one organism, or organelle.  This organelle, the chloroplast, is the basis of photosynthesis in plants and would not have developed without the one and only, already photosynthetic, cyanobacteria.  


While this is all well and good for those damn organisms in the past, but what has cyanobacteria done for you lately?  Well despite the whole providing oxygen and nitrogen for us (kind of a big deal still) and helping to develop into chloroplasts, they provide food for literally the entire world.  Cyanobacteria that grow in the oceans provide food for many organisms in the oceans and today, they provide food to millions of people worldwide.  The Aztecs were the first known people to cultivate cyanobacteria as a food source.  They would harvest it, dry it, and use the powdered form to turn into a "flour like" substance which was than baked and consumed.  Today, cyanobacteria provide food to people all over the planet and the United Nations is using it to help combat hunger across the world.  This is because it is relatively easy to produce and contains many essential vitamins.  Its main appeal however is that 70% of its weight is in proteins, exactly what people need to help keep them alive.  It helps sick people get better and put on weight.  It is literally being used to combat global hunger, check out IIMSAM, the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina Against Malnutrition.  As if this all weren't enough, cyanobacteria are being used in experiments to help combat AIDS, chemotherapy induced heart damage, stroke recovery, age-related declines in memory, diabetes, and in combating hay fever.


Seriously, next time you take a walk outside, breath in some of that fresh air and thank those microscopic little guys.  The ones that we all owe our lives too, cyanobacteria.


Link to IIMSAM home page -http://iimsam.org/
Link to a company that produces Spirulina as a dietary supplement -http://www.spirulina.com/

What my blog is about

I would like to preface that I am doing this blog for my own amusement.  I will discuss topics that interest me, from politics, to outer space, to video games.  Nothing is sacred here