SKY VIEWS

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone! We’re entering that astounding time of year here on Guam when you can see eight of the ten brightest stars, fifteen of the twenty brightest stars, the three most famous constellations and the largest and smallest constellations all at the same time. That’s only possible in the equatorial tropics.

If you face west where the Sun disappeared around 7:30 p.m. tonight, you’ll see Orion the Hunter, the sky’s most famous constellation. That bright star above the Hunter’s feet is Sirius, the sky’s brightest star. Several of those bright stars cluster around Orion.

If you turn completely around and you have a clear view of the eastern horizon, you’ll see two more fairly bright stars close to the ground. The upper one isn’t a star; that’s our only evening planet, Saturn.

You’ll see something else if you stay out and star-gaze tonight. You’ll see satellites, lots of them. Of course, as we discussed a few weeks ago, most of them aren’t satellites; they’re junk.

Nineteen visible ‘satellites’ will pass over Guam tonight in the time frame between 6:55 p.m. and 8:40 p.m. and only two of them are actually satellites. The rest are third stage rockets, the inevitable consequence of our current method of putting things into low Earth orbit.

The two satellites are interesting. The first will appear in the south at 7:07 p.m., pass almost directly overhead at 7:11 p.m. and disappear in the north at 7:15 p.m. It’s called RESURS DK-1. Remember that satellites in polar orbits are almost always spy satellites.

The country of origin for RESURS DK-1 was listed as CIS which was unfamiliar to me. It stands for Commonwealth of Independent States; a designation for the old Soviet Union. But RESURS DK-1, it turns out, is a commercial satellite. A commercial spy satellite whose pictures are for sale to the highest bidder. We live in interesting times.

The second satellite will appear in the west at 7:42 p.m., pass 40 degrees above due north at 7:46 p.m. and disappear into the Earth’s shadow in the northeast at 7:48 p.m. That’s the SWIFT satellite and its traditional trajectory should tell you that it’s not a spy satellite. SWIFT peers into deep space looking for GRB’s. GRB stands for Gamma Ray Burst and therein lies a tale.

Our air is sure nice to breath, but it also protects us from most of the radiation that’s out there in space. Visible light, heat, ultra violet and some radio waves are the only waves that reach Earth’s surface from space. All the gamma rays, x-rays and other high-speed and dangerous wavelengths are blocked by our atmosphere.

But of course, that means that the only way to study these deep space waves is with satellites. With earlier ‘birds’, scientists discovered that several somethings out there were releasing brief but very large amounts of gamma rays. The mystery objects were called gamma ray bursters and the SWIFT satellite was designed to seek out and study them.

SWIFT has detected over 500 gamma ray bursts since it was launched in 2004 and has greatly expanded our knowledge about the kind of stellar event that releases these astounding floods of gamma rays.

So wave at SWIFT tonight! It’s looking the other way, but it’s making new discoveries every day.

TOBACCO GOES BUGGY

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Greetings everyone and welcome to another edition of The Deep. I got an interesting phone call over the weekend. It was a survey by our local public health office and a couple of the questions they asked me were “Have you ever smoked?” and “Do you smoke now?”.

I told the lady that I did smoke at one time but that I quit many years ago. After we hung up, I thought about the two factors that made me quit. One was that I was an asthmatic and the doctor told me that smoking would only make it worse and the other was my houseplants.

I had a houseplant that I was particularly fond of and it wasn’t doing well. I noticed there were little white bugs in the soil of the pot. I asked a friend what kind of insecticide to use and she said “You don’t need to buy insecticide, just take a cigarette and shred out the tobacco into your pot and water the plant.”

I laughed but did it anyway. Hmmmm. No more bugs. And I thought “If the tobacco from a single cigarette can do that to a pot full of bugs, what are cigarettes doing to me?” Which brings us to our latest scientific news.

According to a report published in the journal Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, tobacco which has been used on a small scale as a natural organic pesticide for hundreds of years, is getting new scientific attention as a potential mass-produced alternative to traditional commercial pesticides.

The researchers note that concerns about the health risks of tobacco have reduced demand and hurt tobacco farmers in some parts of the world. A pesticide industry based on tobacco could provide income for farmers, and provide a new eco-friendly pest-control agent, the scientists say.

They describe a promising way to convert tobacco leaves into pesticides with pyrolysis. That process involves heating tobacco leaves to about 900 degrees F. in a vacuum, to produce an unrefined substance called bio-oil. The scientists tested tobacco bio-oil against a wide variety of insect pests, including 11 different fungi, four bacteria, and the Colorado potato beetle, a major agricultural pest that is increasingly resistant to current insecticides. The oil killed all of the beetles and blocked the growth of two types of bacteria and one fungus.

Even after removal of the nicotine, the oil remained a very effective pesticide. Its ability of the oil to block some but not all of the microorganisms suggests that tobacco bio-oil may have additional value as a more selective pesticide than those currently in use, the report indicates.

Still interested in breathing in all that insecticide? If it kills bugs, what do you think it’s doing to you? I say let’s start growing the world’s tobacco for the bugs and NOT the people!

What Tsunami?

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

Well, it’s time to talk about tsunamis again. We’ve just had the strongest earthquake in over 100 years wreck northern Japan and a significant part of the massive damage was caused by the earthquake-generated tsunami. We’ve all seen the pictures of the car sitting on top of the three story building, the containers tossed around like children’s toys and the big freighter sitting on the dock.

The Japanese earthquake-generated tsunami hit the coast of California and did some damage. Here on Guam, a tsunami alert was issued and the coast in Tumon and Agana was evacuated. People gathered on the cliff line above Agana Bay and waited for The Big One to hit. And . . . nothing happened.

So here are some questions to ask yourself. If the waves that were generated by the Japanese tsunami were destructive in California, why wasn’t there any damage here? Agana Harbor faces north where the waves came from. Why weren’t there any reports of boat damage on Guam? Did anyone notice five-foot waves pouring into the harbor? Why weren’t beachside homes flooded? Here on Guam, we’re surrounded by Mother Ocean. How susceptible are we to the devastating effects of tsunamis, the deepest waves on Earth?

Tsunamis are often called ‘tidal waves’ but they have nothing to do with tides. They are caused by undersea earthquakes and landslides that displace huge volumes of water. These gigantic ripples spread across the ocean in excess of 500 miles per hour. Because the water is disturbed at the ocean floor, these waves are as tall as the ocean is deep. The waves aren’t dangerous in the open ocean; ships at sea may not even notice them.

The problem occurs when the tsunami approaches land. The bottom of the huge standing wave is pushed up by rising ground. As the waves approach shallower water, they get taller (their amplitude increases) and run-up occurs. Run-up is a measurement of the height of the water onshore as observed above a reference sea level. and the wave gets higher and higher above the water’s surface. If the sea bottom rises gradually, the wave becomes a wall of water that may crash miles inland and destroys everything in its path.

The key to understanding tsunamis is that they are extremely deep waves and as they enter shallow water all that energy and all that water piles up in tremendous waves. So what’s the point for Guam? It’s that little phrase shallow water.

If you have a look at an underwater topographic of the island of Guam you’ll realize that there is virtually NO shallow water around Guam. Our island rises more or less (mostly more) vertically from the abyssal depths (roughly 13,000 feet [almost three miles] in our area). If you travel away from Guam on a boat, you don’t have to go very far before you’re over water that’s hundreds of feet deep. Guam has no gradually rising slopes where run-up can occur and tsunamis simply curve around our island and travel on to their ultimate landfall. Virtually the only place on Guam where a tsunami can occur is in the river channels in the southern half of the island (and a woman was swept out to sea from the shores of Talofofo River by a tsunami wave in the 1800’s).

Having said this, DO NOT ignore tsunami warnings! And if you’re ever at the beach and the water goes away (i.e. recedes dramatically away from the shore), GET AWAY FROM THE WATER (seek higher ground as fast as you can). It is ALWAYS better to be safe than sorry. But in general, we may have to worry about earthquakes and typhoons here on Guam, but you can cross worrying about tsunamis off your list!

Image credit Pam Eastlik and Hands-On Science class

OVER THE TOP

By Pam Eastlick

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

One of the biggest consequences of global warming is the inevitable rise in sea level as the ice caps melt. This particular eventuality is no longer ‘eventual’ as more and more taro patches on our neighboring islands are abandoned because of salt contamination. The people who live on atolls will be the first victims as the temperature rises.

But Guam is a ‘high island’ and most of the island’s population lives much higher than the predicted ‘eventual’ sea level rise of twenty to thirty feet. We are also no longer dependent on taro and other lowland crops like rice. But wait a minute. We ARE dependent on rice, but we don’t grow it anymore, we bring it in . . . through the port . . . which is at . . . sea level. Hmmmm, maybe we’ve got a bigger problem than we thought.

Here on Guam (and in all the islands), we rely on goods from other places. Our food comes through the port. Our computers come through the port. Virtually every material good you love and depend on arrived here through the port. Although we tend to forget it, shipping is vitally important to us. It turns out that global warming is changing shipping. And shipping just may be changing global warming.

The ice cap at the North Pole is melting faster than the ice on the Antarctic continent. Every summer now, the fabled Northwest Passage opens. Just as the airlines discovered that it’s a LOT faster to go ‘over the pole’, the shipping lines have discovered the same thing. And where the ships go, so does pollution. U.S. and Canadian researchers say that growing Arctic ship traffic will increase air pollution that has the potential to accelerate climate change in the Arctic regions.

The major problem is black carbon, the soot emitted from ship smokestacks. The soot absorbs sunlight and melts the ice beneath it. Other particles released by ship engines also rank high among important short-lived climate forcers, and this study estimates their combined global warming impact potential.

The researchers say that the potential acceleration of global warming depends on how much shipping reroutes through the Arctic and how many ships belch all that black smoke on the ice. But they’re looking at a 20 to 80 percent acceleration.

Why would the shipping lines do this? Because a Northwest Passage and Northeast Passage through the Arctic Ocean would provide a distance savings of about 25 percent and 50 percent. This means you use less fuel in total, but you belch all your smoke over nice white reflective ice.

If the Arctic Ocean continues to warm, new shipping lanes could emerge at the top of the world, as shown in these scenarios. An increase in shipping under current pollution controls in the Arctic could further accelerate warming. (Credit: Image courtesy of Prof. James Corbett, University of Delaware.)

So the Japanese and Chinese get a direct line to Europe and everybody makes lots of profit. But at what cost? And to whom?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. We are messing with things that we do not understand and cannot control. And ultimately, we’ll all pay the price.