solar system superlatives: Mars

Posted on March 20, 2021 by Peter Taylor

Welcome to solar system superlatives – a blog series where we’ll learn about some of the craziest phenomena found in our solar system. First up, Mars.

a large body of water
Olympus Mons from space

Mars is home to some of our solar system’s most impressive geological formations. Olympus Mons, for instance is the largest mountain in the solar system, and, as I am sure you guessed, it is absolutely massive. Standing at over 72,000 feet tall, Olympus Mons is literally taller than Mars’ thin atmosphere, and it naturally dwarfs Mt. Everest, which is just under 30,000 feet tall. Olympus Mons is a shield volcano that formed over a Martian hotspot, and, because Mars has minimal tectonic activity (if any at all), the volcano just kept growing as it stood rooted in place. Also, because shield volcanoes are typically very wide (they grow at an average incline of 5%), Olympus Mons’ height necessitates an equally fantastic base. As such, Olympus Mons covers a geographic area approximately the size of France. In other words, if you stood at the top of Olympus Mons, you would not be able to see the ground, and, in every direction, all you would see is more Olympus Mons.

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Mount Vesuvius and the Pompeiian Disaster: How it happened

Posted on March 20, 2021 by jagobillot
Plate tectonics of Mount Vesuvius

I was watching a documentary about the sheer power and destruction that Mount Vesuvius lay upon those heedless Roman citizens in Pompeii, and it got me thinking about the movement of the tectonic plates. What needs to happen underneath the land to create enough power to bury a city in 15 feet of rubble and ash?

Mount Vesuvius was formed because it is located on the subduction zone at the connection of the African and Eurasian Plates. As you can see in the picture, the Eurasian plate is pushing down onto the African plate, and the sliding of the tectonic plates causes a build-up of extreme subterraneous pressure.

The eruption process really started in 62 A.D, as there was a major Earthquake cause by the sliding of the African Plate underneath the Eurasian Plate. This began a series of intermittent earthquakes over the next 15 years, and with every slide, more gas and steam became compressed in between the plates. The layers of compressed magma, gas, and steam, continued to build, and unfortunately, Mount Vesuvius was the pressure’s release point. In 79 A.D, the pressure became too much, and these layers of toxic gasses and magma came ripping out of Vesuvius. The immense pressure ripped off massive chucks of the volcano itself and blew carnage over 10 kilometers from the site.  

Here is a cool animation of what the explosion would have looked like in Pompeii. Glad I wasn’t there.

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Radioactive Proof of the Earth’s Age

Posted on March 20, 2021 by jagobillot
Oldest dated rocks - Wikipedia

Radioactivity of elements starts with an unstable elemental isotope. An unstable atom on radioactive elements carries too many protons or neutrons, and eventually, it must expel energy from the atom, and become an entirely new stable element through the process of beta decay. This process, for every unstable atom, is completely spontaneous and there is no specific timeline. But in a large group of these radioactive isotopes, scientists have found statistical averages for these element’s half-lives, or the average time required for half of the radioactive isotopes in a sample to decay. From this 50 percent mark, the process starts over, and it will take approximately the same amount of time for the 50 percent of leftover radioactive isotopes to decay. The discovery of radioactive half-lives has led to the discovery of Earth’s age.

The timelines of radioactive half-lives vary greatly between elements. Carbon-14, for example, has a half-life of 5,730 years. It is great for short term dating accuracy, as the percentage of Carbon-14 molecules will tell you how many half-lives the objects has lived. But at around 57,000 years, basically all of the Carbon-14 molecules have transformed. Uranium-235, however, has a half-life of 700 million years. Scientists have found large clusters of this isotope in the Earth’s oldest meteorites, and based on the unstable uranium’s half-live, and the concentration of the decayed elements surrounding it, scientists have dated the oldest existing rocks on Earth to about 4.3 billion years old.

This is just one of so many examples showing us how creative scientists can be in their quest for new information!

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The Ranking System of Solar Flares

Posted on March 20, 2021 by captivatingcomet

Solar flares are solar storms and explosions that release ultraviolet light, x-rays, energy, and very fast, charged particles. They are categorized into classes based on their strength. The classes ranked from smallest to biggest solar flares are: A, B, C, M, and X. Each class increases 10-fold in energy and has a subscale that goes from 1 to 9, where 1 is the weakest solar flare and 9 is the strongest solar flare in its respective class. A, B, and C-class solar flares are not strong enough to greatly affect Earth while M-class solar flares can create temporary radio blackouts at Earth’s poles and minor radiation storms. X-class solar flares can cause magnetic field loops to come from the Sun’s surface that are approximately tens of times the size of Earth. Additionally, X-class solar flares can cause strong and enduring radiation storms that can negatively affect satellites, communication systems, ground-based technologies and power grids.

Recently, in November 2020, the Sun had its largest solar flare in more than 3 years. The solar flare was ranked as a M4.4 and caused a shortwave radio blackout over the Southern Atlantic Ocean. There are some speculations that this solar flare could have actually been an X-class solar flare and it occurring partially behind the Sun could have made it seem like an M-class solar flare from Earth’s perspective.

Photo of solar flare from NASA’s Skylab 4 mission (taken from Britannica)

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Binary Stars

Posted on March 20, 2021 by ben141414
Source: Space.com

A binary star is a star system of two stars that orbit around the central point, called the barycenter. In conversation, binary stars are sometimes casually referred to as double stars. Binary star systems or multiple star systems (3+ stars in orbit in the same system) are actually way more common than you might think. Over four-fifths of the single points of light seen in the sky are binary or multiple star systems. The brighter star of the two in a binary system is deemed the primary star, and the dimmer star is the secondary star.

Binary star systems are important to astrophysics because calculations can be made due to the “pair” structure of the star system. One can calculate the stars’ masses because of their orbits, and the mass allows for other measures to be estimated.

Binary stars are classified based on their orbits. Wide binaries are pairs that stay apart from each other in their orbits. Close binaries orbit close to each other and are able to transfer their mass from one to the other. Visual binaries are wide enough apart that they both appear as distinct stars in a telescope. Spectroscopic binaries appear close when viewed through a telescope. Eclipsing binary stars are aligned at an angle such that one star passes in front of the other, and it causes an eclipse when looking from Earth. Astrometric binaries are stars that seem to be orbiting alone; the pair is too dim to see but its presence is inferred. Double stars are stars that appear to be in the same star system but are in reality not close to one another.

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Comet

Posted on March 20, 2021 by justinboreskyvanderbiltedu

Is it a bird? a plane? a superhero? No it’s a Comet! Comet’s are “cosmic snowballs of frozen gases, rock and dust that orbit the Sun”. Comet’s generally range from the size of 750 meters to 20 kilometers. Currently there are 3,717 comets known to man. Comet’s form from dust particles combining to form icy rocks that are joined together under the force of gravity. Comet’s formed 4.5 billion years ago from the dust and gas of the protoplanetary disk, which was a donut-shaped cloud of debris surrounding our newborn star. In the past civilizations thought that comets were shooting stars, and were memorized by the bright objects flashing through the sky. Comets were thought to potentially have brought “water and organic compounds, the building blocks of life, to the early Earth and other parts of the solar system”. Scientists have wanted to study comets for a while and have come as close as 236 kilometers of the nucleus of Comet Wild 2 in January 2004. Surely as technology advances we will learn more and come closer to the comets.

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Europa and Possible Life

Posted on March 20, 2021 by thestarstudent
Europa’s surface from NASA

Europa is one of Jupiter’s 79 moons and is slightly smaller than Earth’s moon. It’s surface is covered in salty water that is almost twice the amount of water in all of Earth’s oceans combined. Covering all this water is a 10-15 mile thick sheet of ice. The inner part of the moon is thought to be similar to Earth with an iron core and rocky mantle. Because of these traits, Europa appears to be the most likely place in our solar system where life could be found. However, due to its thin oxygen atmosphere and cold temperatures, the organisms would likely be very different from what is found on Earth. Personally, I think if there is life on Europa, it would be in the form of small micro-organisms and bacteria. Do you think there could be life on Europa? Comment below!

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Geological Map of the Moon

Posted on March 20, 2021 by thestarstudent
The geology of the moon’s far (right) and near (left) sides from the United States Geological Survey

The United States Geological Survey Astrogeology Science Center and NASA worked together to create a complete geological map of the Moon in early 2020. The map shows the immense amount of impact craters on the moon’s surface. It was made with information from six maps from the Apollo-era in conjunction with modern data. Specifically, data about the elevation of the equatorial region was from observations of the Terrain Camera on the Selenological and Engineering Explorer from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Information about the topography of the north and south poles was from data from NASA’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter. Overall, it created a more consistent and accurate map. This image is the result of international and interdecadal work! Hopefully it will be able to inform future missions to the moon and research here at home. 

To see a video of the map, click here!

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Climate Change and Animals

Posted on March 20, 2021 by justinboreskyvanderbiltedu

Since the industrial revolution humans have become the most selfish species in the world. With growth in mind we started removing trees and releasing chemicals into the air and water with no regards for it’s potential impact. Now a few centuries later its impact is seen in climate change. Climate change has been caused by something known as the greenhouse gas effect which essentially is that as we release more and more gas into the atmosphere(carbon is up 47 percent in the last few hundred years) the gas blocks heat from leaving the atmosphere which is causing a heating effect. Because of this we are seeing higher average temperatures, which is melting away the ice caps. This combined with us cutting down habitats for expansion is causing many animals to be on the extinction list. This is very sad to see, as we are aware of what we are doing but aren’t stopping. The world is fighting back against us and if we don’t fix it it will surely come back to haunt us. Nasa video

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The Secrets of Perseverance

Posted on March 20, 2021 by lorenzchen14

Solution to Perseverance’s parachute code, posted by Adam Steltzner

When the Perseverance Rover landed on Feb.18, 2021, the parachute that was used appeared very unique, with a combination of orange and white strips. Coupled with the fact that in a conference, Allen Chen (the engineer in charge of the landing system) said, “we leave messages in our work”, it became clear that there was a riddle embedded within the parachute. 

As covered by the New York Times, the man responsible for leaving a message was Ian Clark. He encoded the parachute in 10-digit chunks of binary code in a clockwise fashion that corresponded to numbers and letters of the alphabet. As someone who has no exposure to programming, I have little idea of what this actually means, but the result is that the strips of orange and white could be translated to messages. The inner ring read, “Dare Mighty Things”, which was a saying often used by the Jet Propulsion Lab. Another section of the parachute was code for the longitude and latitude of the JPL visitor center at 34°11’58” N 118°10’31” W. 

The solution to the riddle embedded in the parachute was eventually revealed by Adam Steltzner, the chief engineer of Perseverance in a Tweet and is shown above. What I find particularly amusing is that there were other riddles or “extras” put on the Rover in a practice called “festooning” that dates back to many other Rovers sent by NASA. In the case of the Perseverance, these included almost 11 million names stenciled on a microchip, images of dinosaurs and DNA on calibration instruments, and even parts of a Martian meteorite that finally made their journey home. Lastly, there was a COVID-19 memorial that was placed on a plate for the Rover. I personally think that these are really nice touches on the Rover that are synonymous with “easter eggs” in video games. It shows that even engineers at JPL and NASA of all people, have a good sense of humor.  

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