Show
Date: June 15, 2005
Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line
SAILING
THE OCEAN
AND
STORMY WEATHER
Greetings and welcome to The Deep column and the deepest radio
show on Earth. The Deep is the science talk radio program that
takes you from the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches
of the universe. This week on The Deep, aired at 6:00 this evening
on K-57, we’ll talk about traditional navigation with
a master navigator. Maybe we’ll hear from Peter Melyan
in Hawai’i, have an expedition update or two, talk about
the science news updates and of course we’ll be taking
your phone calls. Tune in tonight and join host Jim Sullivan,
Pam Eastlick and our expedition coordinator Peter Melyan for
the latest in scientific news! Then log on to www.thedeepradioshow.com
for more information on all the latest and deepest news!
| INTO THE UNKNOWN |
 |
For all of you “Survivor” fans out there, imagine
this scenario. You are placed on a coral atoll with very
limited resources with a group of friends (or enemies).
It’s obvious that in order to survive, you have to
leave the island and do it soon before the food and water
runs out. Luckily, the producers of the show have thoughtfully
provided a traditional sailing canoe with all the trappings
that’s large enough to hold all of you and some supplies. |
| Photo: Larry Cunningham |
|
There’s only one little
problem. You don’t know where you are and all you can
see around you is boundless ocean. What do you think the chances
are that you’ll stumble across land somewhere before the
food and water run out? Pretty scary, huh?
When you think about this,
you begin to get some idea of what it must have been like four
or five thousand years ago when the first voyagers arrived in
our islands. Most of us have no concept of what it would be
like to step into a canoe and embark on a journey across thousands
of miles of trackless ocean. How did they do it?
You and I are very lucky because we don’t have to speculate
how it was done. There are still people alive today who know
exactly how they did it because they’re still doing it.
And even more wonderful, they’re passing their knowledge
to others so this marvelous part of the human endeavor isn’t
lost. One of the primary teachers is a gentleman named Manny
Sikau.
Manny is from the island of Pulawat in Chuuk state, FSM
and I’m proud to call him friend. He’s a master
navigator that comes from a long line of traditional navigators
and he has founded the Traditional Seafaring Society to
pass his knowledge to anyone who is willing to learn.
So how does he do it? One of the prime tools in Manny’s
traditional box is an encyclopedic knowledge of the sky.
Manny can tell you the season, the time and his current
location just by looking at the night sky. He can also
tell you when it would be a good time to sail and when
you’d better stay home.
Manny and I met because he uses the University of Guam
planetarium to teach his classes. The Planetarium can
be set for any location and any time of year and makes
teaching traditional navigational stars and constellations
much easier. If it’s June and you want to see what
the sky would look like over Pulawat in December or Saipan
in March, that’s no problem in the Planetarium.
|
 |
|
Photo: Larry Cunningham |
But sky lore isn’t all
that Manny uses. Traditional cloud patterns and weather, currents
and the movements of the ocean’s inhabitants are equally
important in the complex lore that allows Manny to put his canoe
in the water at Pulawat and wind up in Guam, six days and 450
miles later.
But Manny is troubled. The last time he brought a class to the
Planetarium he said, “Pam, I’m worried. The stars
are still the same, but the weather patterns my grandfather
taught me don’t seem to work so well anymore. I’m
afraid I’m forgetting what he taught me.” I said,
“Manny, it isn’t you. Weather patterns are changing
world-wide because of the climate change brought on by global
warming.”
Will the activities of man
finally spell an end to traditional navigation? Join us this
week on The Deep as we chat with our very special guest, master
navigator Manny Sikau and learn at his feet.
STORMY WEATHER
There’s a new kind of
storm out there. Luckily for us storm-weary veterans in the
western Pacific, it’s not a new kind of typhoon. It’s
not even here on the Earth, but it could have big consequences
when we begin to travel extensively in space. It’s a proton
storm from the Sun.
 |
Although we are approaching solar minimum
when the Sun is quiet and has few or no sunspots, apparently
no one has explained this to the Sun. Last January a gigantic
sunspot appeared on the face of our local star. Between
15 and 19 January, sunspot 720 produced four powerful
solar flares. When it exploded a fifth time on 20 January,
scientists were not surprised. Then they began to examine
the 20 January blast and realized it wasn’t the
same old solar flare. Sunspot 720 has shaken the foundations
of space weather theory because it unleashed a new kind
of solar storm. Just minutes after the flare on 20 January,
a swarm of high-speed protons hit the Earth and Moon and
we had the most intense proton storms in decades.
|
Protons are particles released
by the Sun and they can cause all sorts of problems. They can
interfere with ham radio communications; and they can zap satellites,
causing short circuits and computer reboots. Worst of all, they
can penetrate space suits and make astronauts sick.
So, what made the 20 January
2005 storm so different? Well, according to current space weather
theory (soon to be revised) this is how a typical proton storm
develops.
It begins with an explosion,
usually above a sunspot. Sunspots are places where strong magnetic
fields poke through the surface of the Sun. For reasons no one
completely understands, sometimes these fields become unstable
and explode, unleashing as much energy as 10 billion hydrogen
bombs. From Earth we see a flash of light and X-rays. This is
the "solar flare," and it's the first sign that an
explosion has occurred. Light from the flare reaches Earth in
only 8 minutes.
Next, if the explosion is
powerful enough, a billion-ton cloud of gas billows away from
the blast site. This is a coronal mass ejection or "CME."
CMEs are relatively slow. Even the fastest ones, traveling one
to two thousand km/s (that’s TWO MILLION mph), take a
day or so to reach Earth.
On their way to Earth (and
the rest of the solar system) CMEs plow through a lot of gas,
first in the Sun’s atmosphere and then in interplanetary
space. The space in our solar system is not empty. The void
between planets is filled with protons and other particles from
the solar wind. Shock waves in front of the CME can accelerate
these protons in our direction causing a proton storm.
Coronal mass ejections can
account for most proton storms, but the proton storm of 20 January
2005 arrived too fast. Those protons arrived in minutes, not
days meaning that they made the trip at close to the speed of
light. How could this storm have happened?
Well, when the explosion occurred,
sunspot 720 was located at a special place on the sun: 60o west
longitude. This means the sunspot was magnetically connected
to Earth. The sun's magnetic field spirals out into the solar
system like water from a lawn sprinkler. (Why? The sun spins
like a lawn sprinkler does.) The magnetic field emerging from
solar longitude 60o W bends around and intersects Earth. Protons
are guided by magnetic force fields so, on 20 January, there
was a superhighway for protons leading all the way from sunspot
720 to our planet. That’s how they got here, but how they
were accelerated to close to the speed of light remains a mystery.
Join us tonight on The Deep to discover what this could mean
for astronauts.
Whether we’re learning
about traditional navigation or sailing an interplanetary sea
of storms, The Deep, hosted by Jim Sullivan with Pam Eastlick
and Peter Melyan is the place to be on K-57 tonight at 6:00
p.m. Don’t miss it!
