FREAKY FLOWERS

By Pam Eastlick

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

We’re going to dip into one of the most important files in the info box, but we haven’t been there in ages because it’s the file on a group of living things that doesn’t get a whole lot of press. Just as I say that the insects are the real rulers of this planet and not humans, we tend to forget the living things that make it possible for us animals to be here at all: the plants. You may not eat too many vegetables, but trust me, the animals you eat live on plants and you wouldn’t be here without them.

Plants can be food and they can be ornamental and both our stories delve into the latter category. When we look around us, we see lots of pretty flowers especially the lovely hibiscus. You see white ones and red ones and even yellow ones (Pago) but have you ever seen a blue hibiscus?

The hibiscus plant is common here but it’s tropical and researchers in Texas were trying to develop a hibiscus that can survive a Texas winter. In the process of doing so, they created a blue hibiscus flower.

The new hybrids actually range in color from white through different shades of pink, lavender, bluish, red and magenta tones, and some of them have combinations of two or even three colors. It took four years of work and more than 1,000 crosses among three winter-hardy hibiscus species to achieve the goal of creating an almost-blue flowering hibiscus.

The next goal? The Texas researchers want to create a winter-hardy hibiscus that’s orange.

A blue hibiscus

So we have a whole new color for a hibiscus flower. How about a whole new protein? How about a whole new bizarre protein? Read on!

Not only is the tropics home to the widespread hibiscus plant; they’re also the home of the flower that says “tropical” to many people: the Bird of Paradise. Now Florida researchers have found the pigment bilirubin in this famous flower.

Why is this strange? Because bilirubin is an animal pigment that’s produced in the liver and is best known as the pigment that produces the yellowish hue associated with bruises and in the skin of jaundice sufferers and people with liver failure.

The Bird of Paradise plant is a South African native known for its vibrant orange and blue flowers that look like brightly colored birds. When the plant’s seed capsule breaks open, the seeds are encased in an bright orange aril. And that color can remain unchanged for decades after the plant dies.

The researchers used liquid chromatography to discover that the prime coloring agent for those orange arils is bilirubin and they also found the animal pigment in lower concentrations throughout the plant.

Why is there a mammalian liver pigment in a tropical flower? Just another of those wonderfully strange stories that confirms what Sir Isaac Newton said. He said we’re sitting on the shore playing with pebbles while the vast ocean of knowledge stretches before us.

Bilirubin has been discovered in the beautiful and iconic Bird of Paradise flower. (Credit: Photo by David Lee)

News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings All,

I’m sure from the number of inquiries I’ve been getting that you’re all wondering about the UARS satellite and if it will come raining down on our collective heads.

They’re now predicting that UARS will come down sometime Friday afternoon Eastern Daylight Time which is Saturday morning for us on Guam.

According to Heaven’s Above, the satellite site I use, the last predicted pass near Guam is tomorrow morning (Friday, 23 September) starting at 5:05 a.m. UARS will pass several hundred miles to the east of us and never get more than 13 degrees above the eastern horizon as it passes from north to south.

UARS has been steadily cycling to the east of us for the last several days, and this implies that it will, indeed, come down in the open ocean somewhere between us and Hawaii sometime early on Saturday morning, our time.

The bad news: no spectacular fireballs. The good news: large chunks of metal won’t land on your personal roof!

(I’m working on a brand new show for next month. Wish me luck that I get it finished in time!)

Pam

ABOVE AND BELOW

By Pam Eastlick

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

It’s been a long time since we dipped into the archeology file and there’s some interesting news from the Middle East. British archeologists have found evidence that some of our earliest civilizations may lie buried beneath the Persian Gulf.

Jeffrey Rose, an archaeologist with the University of Birmingham in the U.K., says that the area in and around the Persian Gulf may have been the home to humans and their civilizations for over 100,000 years before the area was flooded by the Indian Ocean some 8,000 years ago.

Archaeologists have recently found evidence of a wave of human settlements around the Gulf that date to about 7,500 years ago. There were only scattered hunting sites in the area before but (to quote Rose) "over 60 new archaeological sites appear virtually overnight." The sites have well-built, permanent stone houses, evidence for long-distance trade networks, elaborately decorated pottery, domesticated animals, and traces of one of the world’s oldest boats.

But archeologists have wondered where these highly developed settlements came from because there were no primitive sites that preceded them. Dr. Rose believes that evidence of those preceding populations has disappeared beneath the Persian Gulf.

Evidence shows that what is now the Persian Gulf was flooded by the waters of the Indian Ocean around 8,000 years ago. Dr. Rose thinks the new colonists may have come from the heart of the Gulf to escape the rising water levels that plunged the once fertile landscape beneath the water.

Historical sea level data show that, prior to the flood, the Gulf basin would have been above water beginning about 75,000 years ago. And it would have been an ideal refuge from the harsh deserts surrounding it, with fresh water supplied by the Tigris, Euphrates, Karun, and Wadi Baton Rivers, as well as by underground springs. When conditions were at their driest in the surrounding desert, the Gulf Oasis would have been at its largest in terms of exposed land area, about the size of Great Britain.

The area now beneath the Persian Gulf would have provided a sanctuary for humans through the latest Ice Ages and may have been where civilization first developed. The clues to our human cultural roots may lie buried beneath the water of the Persian Gulf.

And now here’s a quick story about something else we hope is also buried beneath the water. There is a LARGE satellite in orbit around the Earth called the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). UARS is about the size of a school bus and weighs around six tons. Why do we care? Because it’s coming down!

The now defunct satellite has been in a decaying orbit for several years and NASA’s best estimates are that it will enter the upper edge of Earth’s atmosphere sometime this weekend. Best estimates? Why don’t we know for sure?

Well, there’s no guiding rocket to take it down and the experts estimate it will come down somewhere between “northern Canada and southern Africa” and have a debris field that’s at least 500 miles long. Well, at least all the penguins in Antarctica are safe!

So . . . water covers 70% of the Earth and the odds are that those 500 miles will be over the open ocean. But my suggestion is that you keep a closer eye on the sky than usual for the next few days or so. This baby is so big that its debris will make fireballs that will be visible in daylight, if that’s when it comes in. Heads UP!

Coming to an ocean near you? UARS is headed down this weekend!

REMEMBERING 9/11

By Pam Eastlick

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

As you all know, this is the anniversary week of the terrorist attacks on the United States ten years ago. Although I certainly wasn’t at the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001, I do have a story to tell because I was in the air between Tokyo and Detroit when the planes hit their targets.

Our first inkling that something was wrong was when the pilot came on the intercom and said “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret to inform you that our flight has been diverted to Vancouver.” Loud sighs, some moans. In conversations with my seatmates, I found that we all assumed someone had an inflight medical emergency.

We landed at Vancouver, rolled to the terminal and sat there. And sat there. And sat there. After about an hour, the pilot came on the intercom again and told us what had happened, an announcement that was greeted by stunned silence.

We’d been in the airplane for about three hours when we were told we’d be deplaning, five at a time. When my turn came, I entered the jetway and saw five people sitting on the jetway floor. We were directed to sit down in front of one of them and completely empty everything we had brought on board. All electronics had to be opened or turned on. All bags were thoroughly inspected.

But that wasn’t the really interesting part. At the top of the jetway, completely blocking the entrance to the terminal was a very large young Mountie in full uniform. He had some kind of large rifle or machine gun and he was pointing it down the jetway . . . at us. The end of the gun was constantly moving from passenger to passenger. It was the first and hopefully the only time in my long and adventurous life that I’ve ever been searched at gunpoint.

After we repacked our bags we were escorted into the terminal by our searchers where we were all given a very thorough pat down. One of the men in the jetway with me was escorted into another room and we never saw him again.

We were eventually taken to a hotel in Vancouver and I must say at this point that every Canadian I met treated me and everyone that was with me with the utmost courtesy and respect. I think we were all in shock.

We spent the night in Vancouver and were bussed across the border to Seattle the next day. From there, the routine trip to two science conferences deteriorated into a two-week nightmare of long lines, hotel rooms and trying to get home. Everyone else, you see, got to take a bus or a train or rent a car, but me? I was stuck in the mainland until American air space was opened again.

I eventually wound up in Chicago (the final destination of my checked bag) staying with the friend I was supposed to be with for two days. It wound up being over a week. Although I was never in harm’s way, I have my own reasons for never forgetting 9/11!

And now I’d like to tell you a little story about an unsung tribute to the people who died on that dreadful day. As you know if you’ve followed this column for a while, we have two car-sized robots Spirit and Opportunity on the planet Mars. What you probably don’t know is that each robot has a grinder that bores into Martian rocks and those grinders were being built in lower Manhattan by employees of Honeybee Robotics in September 2001. Although they weren’t directly affected by the crashes, the people building the grinders found a find a special way to pay tribute to the thousands of victims who perished in the attack.

An aluminum cuff that serves as a cable shield on each of the rock grinders on the Mars robots was made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers and the cable shield on both rovers bears the image of an American flag.

Stephen Gorevan, Honeybee founder and chairman, and a member of the Mars rover science team said “That shield on Mars, to me, contrasts the destructive nature of the attackers with the ingenuity and hopeful attitude of Americans.”

Since landing on the Red Planet, both rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Although Spirit went silent last year, Opportunity is still going strong, and researchers plan to use its rock abrasion tool on selected targets around a large crater that the rover reached last month.

One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environment of Mars, the onboard tributes to the victims of 9/11 could remain in good condition for millions of years and be the most lasting memorial of them all.

Bright ISS pass News from your Planetarium

By Pam Eastlick

Greetings Everyone,

One of the brightest passes of the International Space Station I can remember is happening TONIGHT 7 September 2011 and here’s hoping the clouds let us see it. One of the reasons it’s bright is that it will pass virtually straight over the island, so be sure to wave!

To see this pass (its magnitude is an awesome -3.6) get an accurate time check for your watch (time.gov) and go outside and face west at 7:30 p.m.

Look to your right and locate the Big Dipper. It will be standing on its bowl and the bottom star may already be below your horizon. At 7:33 p.m.

the ISS will appear just below the Big Dipper’s bowl.

The ISS will track virtually straight up from the northwestern horizon and it will be so bright, it will burn through thin clouds. It will be five fist-widths above the horizon at 7:37 p.m. and at 7:37:26 it will pass very close to Vega, the fifth brightest star. At 7:37:47 it will be about a fist-width from straight overhead.

At 7:37:56 it will pass very close to Altair, which like Vega, is one of the stars of the Summer Triangle. Just before it reaches the same altitude above the southeastern horizon as the waxing Moon (full Moon is next Monday), it will disappear into the Earth’s shadow.

Here’s hoping it’s clear enough to let us see this pass. If we miss it, make sure you read my column in the Pacific Daily News on Friday because there’s another pass Friday night. It won’t be as bright as the one tonight, but it will be another great opportunity!

And . . . if you miss the PDN article, come to public shows on Friday night because we’re going to try to see the pass from the Science Building parking lot!

Pam