Confounded dataset shows...

that record highs outpace record lows during the last decade. Balance that report with the information included in this previous post about the extraordinarily flawed nature of the temperature monitoring network established in the US, while also reading this rebuttal.

Mark Twain said it best: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Sold! Auctioned T. Rex...

finally has a buyer. But who it is, and where the skeleton will ultimately reside, has yet to be announced.

Previous related post.

Geology Club talk this week...

on Thursday, 19 November, at 12 noon in SCI 118, that features your very excitable correspondent's adventure in the Arctic earlier this summer. If you like birds, whales, polar bears, walrus and rocks, you won't be disappointed. Be there or be squared.

Note: This will be a reprise of a presentation I have been invited to deliver tonight, to the EWU-Spokane chapter of Sigma Xi, where I will be the annual banquet speaker. Wish me luck.

Wise words...

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated.

-- Paul Anderson

Visualizing body waves...

propagating through the Earth's interior in three-dimensions (click to enlarge).

Image courtesy the graphic wizards at Wired.com.

NASA clears space shuttle Atlantis...

to launch on Monday on another mission to nowhere to resupply the ISS.

Click into the on-line NASA-TV feed at 11:28 am PST on 16 November to catch the lift-off from Launch Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

UPDATE: It was a successful launch.

End of days is upon us...

as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) ramps up for it's restart according to the CERN Bulletin:

"Six of the eight sectors of the LHC have now been hardware commissioned to allow the passage of beams at 1.2 TeV. The remaining two (Sectors 3-4 and 8-1) will be powered up in the coming week.

If all goes well, in just over one week from now, the beams could circulate in both pipes of the LHC. The first low-energy collisions should follow shortly after."

It's been nice knowin' ya.

This pup needs a hand up...

"Significant amount" of water...

found on the Moon in the debris plume generated by the LCROSS impact last month. Although the event was a visual fizzle, it is clear that the mission is returning huge scientific results. How much water was liberated in the impact?

"Based on the measurements, the team estimated about 100 kilograms of water in the view of their [two spectrographic] instruments — the equivalent of about a dozen 2-gallon buckets — in the area of the impact crater (about 80 feet, or 20 meters across) and the ejecta blanket (about 60 to 80 meters across), Colaprete said."

This is particularly amazing: the water ice volatilized in the ejecta may be billions of years old.

Field work Friday...

occurs today during the first winter storm of the season, while I engage in my monthly acquisition of groundwater levels for monitoring wells in the Rathdrum Prairie, Idaho. Oh well, no hardship is too difficult to endure in the pursuit of science.

It's been a tough year...

for paraskavedekatriaphobics. This is the third and final Friday the 13th this year, and you have a while to relax until its next occurrence in August 2010.

Previous related posts for February and March.

Not a computer generated graphic...

from a recent sci-fi flick but an actual image of Earth acquired by the Rosetta spacecraft (click to enlarge). The European Space Agency mission is on its way to intercept comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko where it will place a lander on the comet’s surface in 2014.

Stunning and ethereal.

Credit: ESA ©2009 MPS for OSIRIS Team MPS/UPD/LAM/IAA/RSSD/INTA/UPM/DASP/IDA.

Wise words...

If you want a certain thing, you must first be a certain person. Once you are that certain person, obtaining that certain thing will no longer be a concern of yours.

-- Zen proverb

Biggest bat in Europe...

survived the Ice Age and persists to this day: Largest Bat In Europe Inhabited Northeastern Spain More Than 10,000 Years Ago. The subject of the article, shown above (click to enlarge), is the Greater Noctule bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus).

Remember: bats need friends.

Um, never mind...

10 Failed Doomsday Predictions

An image of Earth...

from space showing the northeastern United States in true-color during summer (click to enlarge). Lake Erie barely extends into the image from the western edge, and Lake Ontario appears in the enlarged image in the upper left.

The Appalachian Mountain fold belt is the dominant geologic structure in the image, but Pleistocene glacial deposits - terminal moraines - on Long Island, Nantucket and Marth's Vineyard are also evident. Various near shore features can also be observed, including barrier islands along the Atlantic coast, and the very obvious sand spit on Cape Cod.

Image credit: MODIS team; NASA.

October 2009 was third coolest...

on record, with an "average temperature of 50.8°F which was 4.0°F below the 20^th Century average." Link to State of the Climate report at NOAA.

Comment, Mr. Gore?

Now this should be interesting...

department: Plan to Pierce Heart of Urban Monster Volcano. Starting next month, an Italian volcanologist will direct the Campi Flegrei Deep Drilling Project that is planning to drill seven holes in the region of a giant caldera that dwarfs the size of nearby Vesuvius.

While I don't believe this activity will trigger an eruption, it is not without significant risk as similar projects have discovered. We'll just have to watch and wait, watch and waiters.

Toss in an asteroid...

and agitate the ocean, thereby adding oxygen: Asteroid impact could have stirred the ocean. Key bit:

"The Sudbury impact ... happened around 1.85 billion years ago. The event fundamentally affected the concentrations of dissolved oxygen in the deep sea — enough to almost instantly shut down the accumulation of marine sediments known as banded iron formations."

Arachnophobics keep scrolling by...

because this will freak you out: Arachnid Hall of Fame image gallery at Wired.com. I think spiders are fascinating and beneficial creatures, and avoid killing them, even in the house.

Exploration strategies for life...

in our solar system beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Rafting - Hunting Off-World Sea Life.

Faster, please.

Following its seasonal schedule...

my Christmas Cactus (genus Schlumbergera) is starting to blossom as the days grow shorter (click to enlarge).

Enjoy!

Wind energy not so green...

after all, that is, if you care about bats and birds: Wind Energy: A Scare for Bats and Birds.

Previous related post on bat mortality related to wind farms.

Remember, bats need friends.

Meet the geeks at Mozilla Foundation...

and join them in celebration of the five year anniversary of the Firefox web browser, now on version 3.5.5. It is certainly my browser of choice, both at home and at work, and for the majority of readers of this blog.

Congrats, and keep up the good work.

Link to Mozilla.org where you can download the Firefox web browser and show your support for open source software.

Emerging from the blue...

are "Islands Seen From Space" in an image gallery from Wired.com.

Upgrading to Windows 7...

on my home desktop computer took about three full hours this morning, not counting backing up the system prior to the actual upgrade. The changeover seemed to work well with no problems encountered during the transition to the new operating system. Here's my experience:

1.) Back up critical files: I overdid this a bit, creating two backup copies of files to a 500 GB network drive and a 320 GB portable USB drive. I've got a lot of important documents and a load of images, and this took about four hours to accomplish (I let the PC churn on this through the night.)

2.) Rebooted the desktop PC that is running MS Vista Home Premium and turned off the McAfee antivirus program per recommendation. Then another reboot. Time: about 7:00 am.

3.) Placed the MS Windows 7 upgrade DVD in the optical drive and started the process, giving the program permission to first check for updates on-line prior to executing the actual upgrade. Time into upgrade process: 0:00 (hrs:mins).

4.) At 1:00 into the process the PC shut down and rebooted, but the display remained blank for about 25 mins. A new splash screen appeared at 1:30 into the process.

5.) Another reboot at 2:20 with a blank screen for about 10 mins. The new operating system was available for first use at 2:40, prompting for the upgrade key code, then at 2:45 it allowed me to log in under my former username and password.

6.) Several minutes later my old desktop wallpaper appeared at the proper screen resolution, gadgets appeared along the right side of the desktop, and all previous icons were in their usual places. No errors reported. Turned on the antivirus program, and the conversion was finished. Voila.

In sum, the upgrade to Win 7 seems to have worked. I'll post updates as I run some programs and get familiar with the new system.

This elevator going up...

to space: Seattle Team Wins $900,000 in Space Elevator Contest. Despite their sci-fi attributes, space elevators may very well be the most cost effective way of getting heavy payloads into Earth orbit.

Faster, and higher, please.

Near earth object 2009 VA...

(a small asteroid) zipped by Earth yesterday ~14,000 km from the surface, well within the orbits of geosynchronous satellites. Here's the scoop from Spaceweather.com:

"If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. 2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey."

Close shave.

You can't make this stuff up...

department: Baguette Dropped From Bird's Beak Shuts Down The Large Hadron Collider (Really).

The upside of this event is that the life of the universe as we know it has been extended a while longer.

Wise words...

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

-- Albert Einstein

Star birth in M83...

as imaged by the powerful new Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The brightly glowing red regions in the spiral arms of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy are dense bubbles of hydrogen gas in which fledgling stars are developing. This article describes some of the details:

"Gradually, the young stars' fierce winds (streams of charged particles) blow away the gas, revealing bright blue star clusters. These stars are about 1 million to 10 million years old. The older populations of stars are not as blue."

Link to more information and related images at the Space Telescope Science Institute.

Sell crazy someplace else...

Massive Earthquake Predicted for California Within a Month.

OK, the so-called prediction has been made. Let's start the clock. I'll go out on a limb and suggest nothing of any significance will occur, nor will Yellowstone blow its top, during the next 30 days.

Open-air dinosaur tracks museum...

has been proposed north of Moab, Utah. The project, tentatively called "Moab Giants," is located at the turn-off to Dead Horse Point State Park and the Island in the Sky District of Canyonlands National Park.

"The proposal identifies a path winding through displays of casts of dinosaur tracks and replicas of animals from the early Jurassic through the late Cretaceous geologic periods. Participants would be allowed to “dig” for bone replicas."

The proposal has been tabled by the Grand County Planning and Zoning Commission, however, in order to give staff more time to review information provided by the applicant.

Icy plumes of Enceladus...

are seen backlit by the Sun in a recent flyby that occurred on 2 November 2009 (click to enlarge to full resolution). This image was taken while the spacecraft was ~190,000 km from the moon, but at its closest approach it flew merely ~100 km (62 mi) above the surface.

The misty fountains jetting from the south polar region of the diminutive Saturnian moon are believed to be water ice and contain significant amounts of ammonia and sodium. The purpose of this flyby (the seventh) was to gauge the size, mass, charge, velocity and composition of the particles within the geyser-like plume.

This odd world - allowing for the temperature difference - is Yellowstone on steroids.

Image credit: NASA/Cassini team.

Perfect gift for the geek...

in your life for the upcoming holidays: GIANT microbes. News flash: swine flu (H1N1) is now available!

EWU Geology Club...

is meeting on Monday, 16 November, at 2:15 pm in SCI 113. But this Friday, 6 November, members are getting together for pizza at Rosa's Pizza in Cheney at 6:30 pm.

/end public service announcement

An image of Earth...

from space showing the Heiltskuk Icefield in the southern Coast Mountains of British Columbia (click to enlarge). Geomorphology students should be able to pick out a wide variety of alpine glacial features - including valley glaciers, horns, aretes, cirques, moraines - in the enlarged view.

Image credit: Astronaut photograph acquired on 6 August 2009.

Wise words...

If it's green, it's biology. If it stinks, it's chemistry. If it has numbers, it's math. If it doesn't work, it's technology.

-- Unknown

New high-res panorama...

of the Milky Way galaxy has been compiled from 3,000 images acquired over 22 months by Axel Mellinger. Here's the link to his All-Sky Milky Way Panorama 2.0 web site to view the full image.

Quite the project. When I look at stuff like this I feel really, really small.

Water use in the United States...

is lower today than 35 years ago according to the U.S. Geological Survey:

"Despite a 30 percent population increase during the past 25 years, overall water use has remained fairly stable according to a new U.S. Geological Survey report."

Hmm. Maybe I can take that long, hot shower after all.