Terraforming Venus #2

So, two weeks ago I focused on the issue of the heat on Venus and I made mention of the fact that the planet's rotation isn't really to my liking either. This post is going to focus on methods that could potentially change the rotational speed of Venus. I actually had this idea for a science fair project and I even got the project approved, but since it was my Senior year in high school I never followed through to actually do the project.

Venus is quite an oddball when it comes to rotation, at least compared with the other planets in our solar system. Sure Uranus kind of "rolls" around, tilted on it's side nearly 90 degrees, but Venus not only rotates slower than any of the major bodies of the solar system, it also rotates backwards. Just to be fair scientists say that its axis of rotation is tilted by more than 180 degrees, so it's still in reference to the spin we're all used to. This slow backwards rotation may have been caused by some massive collision in the past or by the gravitational influence of a neighboring planet early in the formation of the solar system. Whatever the cause it means that the planet is unlivable even if the runaway greenhouse affect is taken care of, because the surface of the planet will act more like Mercury, heating up on one side while chilling to the extreme on the other. So how can this problem be solved?

Mass Train
The first idea I had about this involved the use of a rail gun type system to create tracks all the way around the planet in a great circle that would carry massive blocks of metal (or just some really massive things) propelling them via the electromagnetic repulsion of two wires with opposing currents. This would be efficient for one thing, directing a large proportion of the electrical energy straight into the velocity of the blocks. The idea is that once the blocks reach a certain velocity the momentum will have to be conserved somehow and that means that the planet, though significantly more massive than the blocks (though not by too much), will have to start spinning faster in the direction opposing the fast moving mass train. Once the correct velocity is attained by the planet (which might take a very long time depending on the mass train's mass) the mass train would be propelled off the planet by rockets, while still moving at high speed. This would retain the respective momentums of the train and planet, and hopefully the planet could then be habitable.

Space Elevator Rockets
Another idea is to directly attach rockets that would force the planet to change its rotation just by the shear tangential forces. You can't mount the rockets on the surface because that would blow away the atmosphere (these are massive rockets) and they have to be balanced in some way so there have to be at least two (otherwise you might end up changing the planet's orbit instead). I propose that dozens of space elevators be constructed that anchor deep into the planet's crust, very deep, because we don't want parts of the planet breaking off. The rockets would be placed at the Venusian-Synchronous orbits at the tops of the space elevators. Once activated the rockets would provide enough thrust parallel to the planet's surface to change its rotational speed.

Cosmic Collisions
This option is both more difficult and easier than the others. It calls for taking existing massive objects in the solar system (comets, asteroids, small moons if they're available) and slamming them into the surface of Venus at incredibly high speeds. The easy part is altering the orbits of the material so they'll be set on a collision course with Venus. Gravity tractors or rockets could do the trick (unless you're dealing with something like a small moon, which would require something with a little more "oomph") and these could allow you to roughly direct your massive object towards Venus. One problem is getting the trajectory just right, hitting Venus at the correct angle and from the right direction is paramount. I'm sure that rockets on the object could sort it out, but then comes the next hurdle: avoiding destroying Venus, keeping the planet intact as much as possible. Small objects won't dent Venus too much but they won't change its rotational speed too much either. The larger the object the greater the damage it will do, but it makes the job generally easier by reducing the amount of objects needed. It would take a lot of time to bring in enough objects to adjust Venus' rotational speed, but at least it's an option that takes advantage of the given materials. Plus, as a side bonus, it means collisions are less likely on Earth because there are less objects to threaten Earth.

Of course the materials for all of these things would have to be incredibly sturdy, stronger than any current material made by man, but as I've said in previous posts, the scale of these projects are also currently beyond our technology, these are just options for the future.

Terraforming Venus #1

So, like my first post, this one is going to focus on Terraforming one of the planets in our solar system. I think that I'm going to make this a regular thing because it's such a large topic that I can't tackle it all in one post. I'd like to apologize, as my sister did in her last post as well, for not posting more content sooner, I'm going to do my best from now on to post at least once every two weeks, if not more.

One of the major issues with Venus when it comes to sustaining human life is the incredible heat that envelopes the planet. Even though it's covered in reflective water vapor clouds, it also traps quite a bit of the heat that comes from the Sun. This has been termed a runaway greenhouse effect because of the excess of carbon dioxide (the Venusian atmosphere is composed of 90-95% CO₂) and other chemicals in the atmosphere on Venus that trap the heat. There are many ways to go about turning down the heat on our sister planet, and I'll examine a few of these ideas, some of them my own.

My first concern with Venus is that its slow rotation may be one of the causes of this excess heat buildup, one side faces the sun too long, and the winds on the planet carry the heat around. I'll explore specific solutions to the rotation problem in a follow up post, but generally the idea is that somehow Venus needs to be made to have close to a 24 hour period of rotation in any case for permanent human habitation on the surface. The major issue with this is that the energy required for such a feat would be enormous. Venus has a backwards, though almost non-existent, rotation, along with a mass nearly the same as that of Earth, which means that to significantly increase its rotation speed, in either direction, an extremely large force must be used. If there was no rotation issue the heat transferred to the planet might differ and the planet might cool off.

Another solution would be to move Venus into a slightly higher orbit. This would mean less energy from the sun getting to Venus and therefore cooler temperatures. The problem with this is that orbital dynamics would change in the solar system dependent on how far Venus is moved. Though the interactions between planets isn't that large, it could still impact the paths of asteroid and send them hurtling where we'd prefer they wouldn't. Also getting the planet to stay in a roughly circular orbit may prove difficult, and again the energy required is absurd.

An easier idea to carry out would be some sort of sunshade for the planet. By blocking out a significant portion of the light hitting the planet with some sort of barrier or orbiting debris of some kind the energy heating up the planet would reduce and cooling would take place, though it might take some time. Problems with this idea include the question as to where such a massive amount of material to block out the sun would come from. Also if it were only enough to block the sun from one side, placing it in orbit would mean that it wouldn't do its job 100% of the time. I once saw an idea to prevent more global warming on the Earth by launching millions of tiny lenses that would filter out the light hitting the Earth as they orbited around. Such an idea may work for Venus, but the cost is unknown and probably astronomical by today's standards.

Another idea may be that the heat could be converted into other forms of energy. Thermo-electric generators, though they aren't the most efficient, have the ability to turn differences in temperature into electrical output. Water could be turned into steam to power turbines, and many other possibilities like orbital solar power (which may also block some sun) could all lead to cooling down Venus, though probably over a significant period of time.

These solutions are absurd and on an incredibly large scale, but that makes sense when you're talking about terraforming. When I think of terraforming I'm imagining future technologies and capabilities that won't likely come around until at least a century from now. But I feel that thinking ahead on these issues may prove useful, so that we can judge the best ideas and when we do reach planets outside of the solar system we're prepared to make them habitable.

Handheld GPS

Recently I have made a purchase. It cost me around $230. I bought a Garmin Dakota 20.

GPS systems have been haunting me ever since I decided to buy one. When I decide I'm going to buy something and that thing happens to be a little pricey, research must be done. Now all this research will be laid out on this blog. (Sorry for the great span of time in between blogs.)

Image taken from the Garmin website.

What can a handheld GPS be used for?

1) Geocaching

2) Fishing

3) Mapping

4) Fitness stuff...

Since I'm not much of a fisher, we'll ignore that.

1) Geocaching is described by almost any news source as "a high tech treasure hunt".

Basically people hide things and post the global coordinates on the internet and other people with GPS systems take those coordinates and find the hidden things.

2) If someone else has something to add about GPS use with fishing leave a comment and I'll post it here.

3&4) On a lot of higher end consumer GPS units, information can be stored about which track/path you took and notes about different locations. I wanted to use my GPS for tracking bicycle rides and hikes.

Important Things for me:

3-axis compass. I'm a geologist and so I like to stop and look around every once in a while. A GPS that does not have a compass might wander from your position and not be sure which direction you are facing.

Topographic map capability. This type of map shows contour lines which indicate lines of the same elevation, they are very useful for mapping.

This is a topo of an area in Big Bend National Park.

Color screen. I like color more than not color, plus I feel like it's easier to read.

Actual image from my GPS.

 I've used this GPS several times now and I love it. I haven't gotten to use it on any geologic assignments yet, but I'm excited to. I have used it to track many bike rides and walking routes, as well as to find geocaches (I have 19 finds so far.).

Again I apologize for the delay of posts the last half of summer I was occupied with a physics course and I didn't have time until relatively recently to write a blog.

-Abby

The Origin of Ideas

It's been a while since my last post, but I've finally had a good idea for one. My sister suggested that I write about how distraught I was over the fact that an evolutionary biologist had the same idea about why fingers prune as I did almost a year ago. But I decided that a more interesting and less tortuous topic for the reader might be where such ideas come from.

I actually heard a story on NPR earlier today that mentioned how people usually get their best ideas when they are most relaxed, and I only just realized how that influenced my decision to write this post. I suppose I must be relaxed while typing but most of my ideas come in the shower, or as I lay awake at night not really trying but sort of trying to go to sleep. Of course the pruney finger thing came to me in the shower as I clawed at the wall. I thought it would make an interesting science fair experiment to test the force it took to pull on different wet surfaces with pruney versus normal hands, with a control of a dry surface. I forgot the idea, thinking it wasn't really a question for me to tackle because it wasn't in the field of science I was interested in studying, and I thought surely someone had already thought of it before me. So I concede that maybe I should have explored it and researched it more and I'm not that upset over it anymore, but more to the point, I now wonder, how many great ideas are lost because somebody thinks it's already been thought of? Inspiration can come from anywhere but it's wasted when the idea is forgotten. I should write down my ideas more often I suppose.

Many people claim dreams as their inspiration. I can't put myself in that group as every time I've ever been inspired I was either being hygienic, listening to music, watching a show, reading, writing, or thinking through the day's events. But I do find it interesting since I think that ideas are usually initially just subconscious thoughts. This may not be the nature of all ideas, such as small seemingly insignificant ones that happen all the time, but ideas about invention, innovation, stories, rhythms, what have you, those come from a culmination of events that burst out or seep into the primary thinking centers of the brain. Dreams are an extension of the subconscious mind and they are usually related to recent events, they probably help stimulate inspiration in some people because they focus so much information. Just writing about this has somewhat made me interested in studying the idea forming process, I wonder if ideas have ever been seen in an MRI scan? I'll leave this one to the psychologists and neurologists to answer, but it's good that I'm documenting it.

I suppose some people are more suited to inspiration in different forms, they have different processes at work that focus information in different ways. I would bet that there are both genetic factors and environmental factors that help determine those processes, but I wonder how related it is to the layout of the brain. I imagine that the more interconnected a brain's neurons between different sections, the more processing power it has and therefore the more idea prone, though I could be wrong, I'm merely spit-balling my ideas.

Oftentimes ideas will come from associations between certain thoughts I have. I believe that the more associations one can make between different things the more interconnected their thoughts will be. I already know that association is a technique used to memorize things so perhaps more associations would lead to more triggers and therefore more activity in the brain and then perhaps more inspiration. It's not something easy to research but I'm sure one day this will all be understood, and then we'll see whether or not my ideas on ideas were accurate.

The Science of Créme Brûlée

Baking is closely related to chemistry. I like to think of it as the science you can eat. This post is going to be specifically about baked créme brûlée. Sort of recently it was Mother's Day and my mom requested that I make her créme brûlée. This dessert is basically a custard that is baked. Custards are a type of pudding that has about equal parts eggs and milk/cream.

If you would like to make some you will need ramekins, a  pan deep enough to put water halfway up the ramekins and a butane torch.

1 cup heavy cream

1 cup milk

1/4 vanilla bean (split)

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

1/4 cup sugar

brown sugar

cut up fruit and berries

Eggs provide a structure and color to the custard, while milk/cream provide flavor and texture. Both provide fat, which is essential for many desserts. Sugar provides flavor and little else in the custard. At the end sugar comes back to provide a lovely texture and fun activity.

The recipe I used called for a quarter of a vanilla bean to be steeped for 10 minutes in the milk/cream mixture after it had been brought to a boil on the stove. Eggs combined with sugar. Remove the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the milk/cream. Add the milk/cream to the eggs slowly. Strain the final mixture and dispense into ramekins. The ramekins then go into a pan with water in it (halfway up the ramekins) and into a 325˚F oven. 

 The water is to make sure the créme mixture cooks evenly and doesn't dry out. They bake for 25-30 minutes, are removed from the oven and allowed to cool in a refrigerator for 4 hours or more. The créme brûlée should be eaten within two days of baking.

To prepare for consumption remove the baked créme brûlée from the fridge and sprinkle either white sugar or brown sugar evenly on the top. Take a butane torch of some kind and caramelize the sugar on top. This should leave a hard brownish shell of sugar. 

 Place fresh fruit on top and dig in.

 -Abby

Nom nom nom

Driving

Over the past two months I've been learning how to drive. I bought my first car a couple of weeks ago in preparation for getting my driver's license. These recent developments have led me to a new train of thought: What do I want to get out of driving? What features do I want in my car in the future? I've known for some time that I've wanted to make an electric car, which influenced my eventual decision to buy a Toyota Celica (a light, sporty, hatchback(I like hatchbacks)). But what else can I get in my car... I suppose I want my car to speak to me... What about flying capability? Why not, just because it's funny and awesome, plug in a flux capacitor and have a time traveling car(If time travel were possible, and exactly like it is in Back to the Future)? And then I thought, what if everyone actually had these as options...

Electric Car

This is the least absurd idea and actually more reasonable than most people think. I'm not positive of the statistics now with the new Volt and Leaf electric cars on the road, but back when I first started reading up on how to convert a car to electric almost a year ago I learned that most electric cars on the road were home built conversions. So sure, this really is an option for anyone willing to make the change, but one downside is that battery technology still isn't good enough to warrant a major change from gasoline, which is more energy dense.

Knight Rider

I didn't grow up when the crime fighting car was actively airing on television but I am aware, through the magic of pop culture, of the amazing awesomeness that was KITT. When I say I want a car that speaks to me, I don't mean metaphorically, I mean literally, and when I say literally I don't mean like certain cars from the 90s that my Dad described to me that would loudly warn you with a human recording if you left the door open. I want a car with at least a simple artificial intelligence that can make small talk maybe or even help with driving. It may be a challenge for me but I plan to make it a reality some day. But what if everyone had cars like that? I'm sure some people would find it disconcerting, if not a bit creepy. I understand that a car that can play chess with its driver and responds to the name HAL isn't for everyone, but I still think it would be cool. Not really an option for me at this point, but in the future I think my car will have so many voices it will sound like it has a Multiple-Personality Disorder.

Flight

The Jetsons, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, and tons of other Sci-Fi films and shows use the concept of flying cars. Those concepts all had varying understandings of what flying a car meant. For the Jetsons it didn't seem to be much of an issue, I can't recall ever seeing one of those crafts crashing (though that may be from ignorance of the show) and I remember seeing very little traffic unlike in the Fifth Element (or even the new Star Wars Movies) where there seemed to be millions of cars flying every which way. I feel like Blade Runner falls in between those two representations and may in fact be the most accurate vision. I'm not exactly sure if I'd want to have a flying car, but I think it would be fun to try it out, as long as I was assured I wouldn't be killed. Firstly, all the Sci-Fis seem to avoid talking about the mechanism of flight and just accept that it's possible (which is actually close to science fantasy, but whatever). This is probably because it's insanely difficult to make something that heavy just hover in the air, and it's also the reason why only crazy engineers (like me) are messing around with the idea. But just supposing that some easy mechanism is discovered making flying cars a reality for everyone, what would negative effects might we see? Just think of all of the people you know who drive... now how many of them are bad drivers? Now ask yourself, would you really want those people in control of a vehicle that can not only go left, right, forwards, and backwards, but also adds in a third dimension of up and down? I think not. Now of course there would be some sort of test like we have for driving already, but I feel like it's all just a waste of time. By the time we have flying car technology we might have some sort of teleportation, or some other crazy means of transportation, who knows. So, I think we ought to avoid flying cars, even if just to prevent five story traffic jams.

1.21 Jiggowatts

Now this is of course not possible, but I like to play devil's advocate, and so I'm saying "what if?" What if we could travel through time, and not only that but all of our time machines were in our cars? Now I'm sure a TARDIS could transform itself into a car rather easily, but changing a car into a time machine would be a challenge. Assuming you have to bend space-time or create a wormhole to do it for you, the amount of energy required would be far greater than I know how to or am willing to calculate for the sake of this post. A power source of this magnitude, even if we have the technology to build such a generator at this point in time, would certainly be bigger than a bread box, and definitely would not fit in a car. Buuuut, forgetting this issue and any others that I don't feel like addressing at this time I ask, what if we all had time traveling cars? This of course brings back the point about bad drivers. You thought giving them control in three dimensions was bad, what about four? Imagine for just a minute you're a bad driver. You start your day driving to work or whatever it is you drive to in the morning and BAM! You didn't just get T-boned pulling out of the drive way, you got inter-dimensionally-spliced with yourself from tomorrow morning because you were late and hit the wrong button. But even good drivers can make mistakes, especially if their driving at 88 mph and they don't have the luck of Marty McFly. Not only is time travel a bad idea when considering how many time machines would clog up the Universe trying to get to every point in time everywhere, but then just the ones that are driving, crashing into something because they didn't see it until they were inside of it... quite disastrous if you ask me. Ironically though, even if it's less safe than a flying car, I would still want a time traveling one, just because.

James

Big Bang Fist Bumps

I'm talking about one of the nerdiest fist bumps possible. James and I have come up with three variations of the normal fist bump that depict three different hypotheses about the end of the universe.

A fist bump, as you may know, is when two people, as a way of greeting, meet their fists in air sort of like punching each others' fists, like so:

Part 1. Typical fist bump

We took it further than this initial bump. We imagined that right after the bump our hands would move away symbolizing the Big Bang:

Part 2. Expansion!

 The Big Bang is of course the most popular cosmological model for the early universe. Through theory and observation scientists think that our universe started out probably from a single super dense point, created by quantum fluctuations, and then suddenly started expanding. Our fist bump is an accelerated depiction of the universe's timeline. Since we don't know and probably never will know how the universe will meet its end we decided to have three different fist bumps each depicting a popular theory for the demise of the universe. The Big Crunch, the Big Rip, and the Big Freeze.

The Big Crunch

This is probably the most satisfying of our fist bumps but, also the most conventional looking (I've seen "normal" people do something similar before.) The idea behind the Big Crunch is that the universe will eventually start reversing it's current motion and come together in a black hole singularity. After part 2 of the fist bump we extend our arms behind us a bit and then return them to the starting point with a clap.

Part 3a. The Big Crunch

 The Big Rip
This is the silliest fist bump out of the three. It's kind of impossible to do it accurately. This hypothesis states that the universe will continue to expand until even sub atomic particles are split apart by the infinite expansion. Part 3b is done by just continuing to move the hands away from each other until both people just start laughing. It can get pretty ridiculous.

Part 3b. Cannot be photographed well

The Big Freeze
My favorite fist bump and possible outcome of the universe. The universe expands forever reaching close to absolute zero, if it reaches maximum entropy (the amount of energy not available for useful work) then things will pretty much be frozen. No light or anything, all of the energy used up. To get this idea across James and I increase to distance between our hands and after a short period of time we freeze in place and just sit there for a moment.

Part 3c. Freeze!

Here's a video showing all three:

Abby

Martian Solenoids

So my sisters and I were discussing ideas about life on some moons in the solar system when the conversation turned toward terraforming. My oldest sister asked, "What place in the solar system would be the easiest to terraform?" I have a certain fondness for the idea of terraforming and colonizing Venus, so that's what I suggested, maybe with a little tongue in cheek. My other sister then pointed out the atmospheric and rotational issues that you'd have to deal with in order to make Venus habitable... so I nonchalantly brushed these points off and said I'd go with Mars then, because it's day is just over 24 hours (we all figured that changing a planet's rotation might be a little too difficult).

We toyed briefly with the idea of melting the (dry) ice caps to warm up the planet with a nice carbon dioxide atmosphere; but of course there are problems to consider when colonizing Mars as well, namely the lack of magnetic filed and therefore lack of protection for any atmosphere one might be able to produce on the planet. So, what is one to do to terraform Mars? Abby suggested building individual colonies as the easiest solution to the colonization problem, but to really terraform the planet for major inhabitation we all agreed that an artificial magnetic field was necessary.

So how does one go about making a magnetic field strong enough to mimic a planet's? Why, giant solenoids of course! And so I figured that what needs to be done on Mars before any major attempts at atmospheric production are started is that one should drill down as near to Mars' core as possible (assuming the mantle and outer core are mostly solid by now) and construct a set of enormous solenoids to produce artificial magnetic fields.

We all laughed at the total absurdity of it all, but I truly believe in this solution. Once a protective magnetic field can be produced, an atmosphere on Mars wouldn't be so easily stripped off by the solar winds, and permanent colonies could arise anywhere on the planet. Not to mention that plant life could then thrive in the Martian habitat (assuming all their basic needs besides the carbon dioxide had already been met). This in fact would be necessary for oxygen production and thus animal inhabitation.

It was quite a fun discussion and I'm sure there are many more angles to explore, but I think the best part of it all is finding an ingenious (if absurd) solution to these far off problems.

Welcome!

I spontaneously decided to create a blog today. I was inspired by a discussion I had with James (my brother). I thought we need to blog about this and just made it. We wondered what we would call it. The thing we definitely decided needed to be in the title was "science". My brother and I are skeptics & atheists, and thus science is ingrained into our interests and beings. This blog will be a nice outlet for our scientific ruminations. I hope you enjoy reading the posts that follow. :D

Abby