| Update:
June 20, 2007 |
| EXPLORING THE DEPTHS and SCALING THE HEIGHTS |
| By Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line |
Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.
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A couple of months ago, I told you about the amazing robot, DEPTHX. This little guy looks sort of like a partially peeled orange and it’s quite the explorer. It’s designed to explore underwater and it doesn’t really need help from the humans who built it. Thanks to the more than 100 sensors, 36 onboard computers, and 16 thrusters and actuators, it decides where to swim, which samples to collect and how to get home. The Deep Phreatic Thermal Explorer (DEPTHX) is a 3,300-pound, computerized, underwater vehicle that makes its own decisions. |
| In this photo from El Zacaton cenote, provided by Carnegie Mellon, research team members release the DEPTHX robot to begin its independent underwater exploration. |
In March, DEPTHX explored the La Pilita cenote in Mexico. The Maya word d’zonot (cenote) means “hole in the ground” and cenotes (pronounced say noh tays) are giant sinkholes in limestone found all over Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
Last month, DEPTHX was taken to El Zacaton, the deepest cenote in the world. No one knew exactly how deep El Zacaton was, but the people who run the robot knew that DEPTHX could tell them.
On May 26, DEPTHX autonomously descended into Zacaton, collected a wall core sample and safely returned to the surface, all without scripted instructions. Two days later, again operating without a tether, DEPTHX further explored and mapped Zacaton, using a novel form of three-dimensional navigation known as Simultaneous Localization and Mapping.
DEPTHX has collected a mother lode of scientific data that includes depth measurements, samples of gooey biofilm and the first-ever maps of El Zacaton. The data will keep scientists busy for months. They also discovered that El Zacaton is 1,099 feet deep. That’s almost as deep as Mt. Lam Lam is tall!
The fact that DEPTHX operates independently of its humans on the surface is just the beginning for a new generation of robotic systems. DEPTHX is funded by NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets program and led by principal investigator Bill Stone of Stone Aerospace, Inc., Austin, Texas, and with the successes at the Mexican cenotes, the project is ready to take the next step in Earth exploration. |
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"The successful tests in Mexico pave the way for a trip to Antarctica's Lake Bonney in late 2008. There, conditions more closely resemble those on Europa," said John Rummel, senior scientist for astrobiology at NASA Headquarters, Washington. "We're learning how to explore Europa by first exploring analogue environments here on Earth."
And just what is Europa, and why would humans want to explore it? The answer to that lies in the most likely spots to harbor life in the solar system beyond Earth. And despite our fascination with Mars, it’s not Mars. Our kind of life requires liquid water and while Mars has plenty of water, as near as we can tell, virtually all of it is frozen solid. Not a place for life to maintain a foothold.
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But there are oceans in space. Big oceans; with more liquid water than Earth’s Mother Ocean. We’ve speculated for years that the ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn contain liquid water because they wobble as they circle their primaries. You can tell if an egg is hard boiled or not by spinning it. If it’s raw, the sloshing liquid causes the egg to wobble as it spins. Jupiter’s Europa and Ganymede (the biggest moon in the solar system; bigger than Mercury) and Saturn’s Enceladus all wobble. And we no longer have to speculate about whether Enceladus contains liquid water; the Cassini spacecraft has seen it erupting from the moon’s surface. |
| Water erupts from the surface of Enceladus |
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Is there life in those oceans? One of the astronomers who studies Europa says “Do you really think you can have a liquid water ocean for 6 billion years and not have life in it?” And, how do you initiate first contact? How do you explore in a completely dark sea? Meet DEPTH-X, our first step in exploring those hidden depths and maybe meeting our neighbors!
WATCHING SCIENCE AT WORK
Someone that meant a lot to me died over the weekend. This person did a lot of subtle shaping of my entire personality and without his influence; I probably wouldn’t be sitting at my computer typing this article. My life would be far different. And the interesting thing is, I never met him. Who was this person? Don Herbert, known to at least a couple of generations of little kids as “Mr. Wizard”.
The culture and the times in which I grew up had very definite ideas about the future of its girls. My mother expected me to grow up, marry a local boy and produce 2.3 children. The expectation was that I would be a stay-at-home mother and never work. That was certainly the expectation for my mother, but even in my childhood that was beginning to change. My mother did work, but she first worked in a library and then as a clerk in a pharmacy. In my childhood, in my hometown, the ultimate ‘career’ for a woman was to be a teacher. There were no women executives, no women engineers, no women scientists among the role models presented to me. The ultimate and cool ‘career goal’ for the girls in my high school was to be a (wait for it!) stewardess.
I was a smart little kid. I got good grades and I loved science but science was for boys. It was the boys who took shop and calculus and physics and went to the Rolla School of Mines and became scientists and engineers. The girls took home-ec and literature classes and music. I could sing and was quite musically inclined, so that was the path I was encouraged to follow. I entered college as a music major. Of course, my parents were unaware that my goal was not to learn music so I could be a music teacher and sing in the church choir but so I could be a rock n’ roll singer.
I left college after a year to get married and I ultimately did become a rock n’ roll singer. I did a lot of other crazy things but after several years, I fetched up against the shores of the University of Guam. The world had changed while I was on the road and I had never quite lost sight of my first love; science.
And that brings us back to Mr. Wizard. I now realize that there was something very interesting about Mr. Wizard’s show on television. For those of you who never saw it, Don Herbert played a science hobbyist, and every Saturday morning a neighbor boy or girl would come to visit. Mister Wizard always had some kind of neat laboratory experiment going that was fun to watch and taught something about science. The experiments, many of which seemed impossible at first glance, were usually simple enough to be re-created by the avid little kids who watched the show.
And what was so important to me? What changed my life? Every Saturday morning a neighbor boy OR GIRL would visit the show. Mr. Wizard had GIRLS on his show. He never made fun of them or told them that science wasn’t for girls or said that they’d be better off to study music.
Thank you Mr. Wizard for showing me that girls could be interested in science too. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that I’m a genuine science geek and the fact that I’m also a girl makes no difference at all.
So if you know a girl who likes science, encourage her, don’t make fun of her. The world needs more women scientists. Women think differently than men and women have made some amazing discoveries that the men would have never thought of.
Help the girls in your life. The world needs more Mr. Wizards.
