Blog 3: Climate Change Startups!

Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing humanity today. With each passing year, the evidence of its devastating impacts becomes more apparent, from extreme weather events to biodiversity loss. Addressing this crisis requires urgent efforts across various sectors. In recent years, startups have emerged, helping fight against climate change, leveraging innovation and technology to develop solutions that mitigate carbon emissions and promote sustainability. In this blog post, I will discuss two startups: Circulor and Heirloom.

Circulor Logo

Founded in 2007, Circulor is on a mission to revolutionize supply chain transparency using blockchain, IoT, and AI technologies. Circulor enables real-time tracking of raw material composition changes, allowing professionals to monitor emissions and support a circular economy. This innovative approach not only enhances sustainability but also promotes accountability across supply chains, empowering companies to make informed decisions that reduce their carbon footprint.

Heirloom Logo

Heirloom takes a different approach to carbon emission reduction by focusing on enhancing naturally occurring minerals’ ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Through carbon mineralization, Heirloom accelerates the absorption of CO2, turning minerals into highly effective carbon sinks. By combining engineering expertise with nature’s mechanisms, Heirloom offers a scalable and cost-effective solution for Direct Air Capture, helping to remove CO2 from the atmosphere extremely quickly.

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Tectonics, plate tectonics, and Pangea

Something that is interesting is the difference between plate tectonics and tectonics. Tectonics is the faulting or folding or other deformation of the outer layer of a planet. This goes hand in hand with volcanism because of the required internal heat. A good example of this in our solar is mars having the Tharsis region volcano, the largest in our solar system. Plate tectonics is something that may just be unique to Earth. It is a scientific theory in Earth’s lithosphere where a number of large tectonic plates have been slowly moving for the past 3.4 billion years. These plates move at approximately the same rate as your fingernails grow. So, it will take many thousands of years for us to notice any type of change. This is where the theory of Pangea, or supercontinent, gets its basis. The continents look like they connect like puzzle pieces. About 300 to 335 million years ago, Pangea formed due to platonic shifting, and began to break apart about 200 million years ago. This was about 194 million years before the first ancestors were on Earth.

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Carbon Dating

Carbon Dating

Ever wonder how we know how old dinosaurs were? Or how long humans have been on the Earth? Well, it all comes down to a technique that scientists use called carbon dating. The process starts with the Sun’s radiation colliding with a N-14 causing a proton to fall off and creating C-14. This C-14 reacts with oxygen in the atmosphere to create CO2, which then follows the food chain. The interesting part is that when an animal dies, it stops consuming C-14. C-14 is an unstable isotope meaning that it will eventually go through radioactive beta decay to become N-14 with a half-life of 5,730 years.

This means that by looking at the ratio of the amount of C-14 to C-12 left in the remains of organic life, you can tell roughly how old long ago that specimen lived. C-12 is notably stable meaning its concentration will remain and will not decay any further. Carbon dating does have a limit as beyond a certain half-life the concentration of C-14 becomes too small. However, if you want to date much older things the same principle of carbon dating applies to other radioactive isotopes with much longer half-lives.

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Lightspeed Travel

The Nine Planets

To many, the speed of light is an obscure thing – only really used in theory, a factor in equations, c. And that’s totally fair. It’s very relevant in study and in theory but how often are you able to see the speed of light. Sure you flip the switch and you see the lights come on immediately but what does that really mean? Most people know that the speed of light is known as “The Universal Speed Limit,” and that comes out to about 3e8 m/s or about 299,792,458 m/s. Ever seen a video of an f1 pilot? Or people on amusement park rides? You know the types, where their cheeks get puffed up and their eyelids peeled back and their eyes bulging out. All that comes from a speed that is relatively infinitesimal to the speed of light. So what would happen to our bodies traveling at that speed? Will it ever really be possible?

If you ask me, the answer is no. I simply cannot fathom that we will ever be able to travel that fast without our bodies being torn to shreds. But this isn’t about what I believe, what about science? No surprise, science also says no… lol. Traveling at the speed of light would mean you could circle the earth 7 times in just one second. If you think about our current means of travel, going to Korea by plane right now would take nearly 15 hours. How long would it take going the speed of light? Less than four hundredths of a second. Yeah, I don’t think so. As fun as it is to think about, I wouldn’t get your hopes up anytime soon.

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What Americans Think of Space

The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying NASA’s Crew-5 Dragon spacecraft

In 2023, the Pew Research Center surveyed over 10,000 American adults to understand Americans’ views of space issues

Here are a few of Pew’s findings : 

  • 69% of Americans say it is essential for the U.S. to be a leader in space exploration.  
  • 55% of Americans think people will routinely travel to space as tourists in the next 50 years.
    • Regarding whether or not they would travel to space, 35% say they would be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft and 65% would not be interested.
  • 47% of Americans report that they have done at least one of these four space-related activities in the last year:
    • Watched a space launch
    • Looked at an image from a space telescope
    • Visited a planetarium or space museum
    • Seen an astronomical event such as an eclipse or meteor shower

Pew also asked respondents how they would rate priorities for NASA’s space efforts. The survey listed the nine priorities in the image below for respondents to rank. I think it is interesting that in 2018 63% said that monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system should be a top priority for NASA but in 2023 the number dropped to 50%.

Pew Research Center Findings

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NASA’s MAVEN mission

The MAVEN spacecraft

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft (MAVEN) is studying Mars’s atmosphere. MAVEN was launched in November 2013 and arrived and arrived at Mars in September 2014. The MAVEN mission is helping scientists learn about how Mars loses its atmosphere and how/when the planet lost its water. 

MAVEN is an orbiter spacecraft so it orbits Mars and collects data using instruments it has on board. MAVEN used a mass spectrometer to detect solar wind entering the upper atmosphere. Spectrometers determine what elements make up materials that pass through it. MAVEN also has a magnetometer that measures the electrical charge of when solar wind hits atmospheric particles. These collisions create a magnetic field that pushes the particles away from Mars. MAVEN’s observations showed scientists that elements that used to be part of water and carbon dioxide (hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon) on Mars’ surface, were leaving the planet’s atmosphere.

In chapter 7, we read about the different types of spacecraft and how they compare to each other. Orbiter spacecraft are more expensive than flyby spacecraft, orbiters allow for longer-term study. The MAVEN mission cost a total of $582.5 million, and the average annual cost of operating is $20.5 million. Something I found interesting is that since MAVEN has enough fuel to last until 2030, NASA also uses it to replace the communication relay duties of older satellites.

Other sources: Textbook chapter 7

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Blog 4: Interstellar Travel?

Hazards and benefits of interstellar travel

Whether you’re an astronomer, scientist, or in a completely unrelated field, the idea of interstellar travel probably intrigues you in some way. Why wouldn’t it? The universe is so grand and diverse that venturing outside of our solar system would likely yield fascinating results. There is only one problem: feasibility. With our current technologies, we are likely roughly one hundred years or more from being able to create an interstellar mission. If we were to send a probe, it would likely take hundreds of years and unfathomable amounts of energy to get the probe to arrive successfully at its destination. You can read more about the logistics here. Our nearest star other than the Sun is roughly 4 light years away, which is an enormous distance given our current technological limitations. The reality that we must unfortunately come to is that it is more than likely that we will not live to experience interstellar travel. If you’re hoping that perhaps a scientist will make a breakthrough that will suddenly allow it to happen, think again. It will take hundreds of technological innovations to even make a trip like this possible, and that’s not to mention the cost and materials it will take. For now, we will have to have to allow Hollywood and our own imaginations to guide our conceptions of what it looks like outside our solar system.

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Blog 3: Lander probes

Landing of Mars Perseverance Rover

The lander probe is a fascinating feat of human engineering. These probes are designed to do a multitude of tasks in order to properly carry out their mission. Let’s work our way backwards. Lander probes, once on the surface of the targeted celestial body, are designed to gather a multitude of data from temperature, to surface composition, to atmospheric make up, and so on. These data can provide us with information such as what organic materials are present on these celestial bodies, and even whether or not life could potentially exist. While other spacecrafts such as orbiters and flybys can produce valuable data, landers are the only spacecrafts that provide data related to the surface itself, using drills, cameras, and other tools to capture this information. Getting these probes to reach the surface of these celestial bodies, however, is a challenge. As you can see above with the Mars Perseverance Rover, in order to successfully land the probes, they must tend with the various atmospheric and surface conditions that certain celestial bodies will present. Perseverance, for example, required a guided entry into the atmosphere (which is very hot compared to space), parachute deployment, a powered descent from rockets attached to the rover, and a sky crane to assist in a smooth landing on the surface. The various terrains, atmospheric conditions, weather, etc of different celestial bodies where rovers are deployed must be taken into account by the engineers of the rovers in order to ensure a smooth landing and proper data collection upon landing.

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THE SUN

OK K.O.!

To put it simply, the Sun is fascinating. A simple symbol that all children put in the upper corner of their drawings is actually so much more.

The Sun is what holds together our Solar System. Standing at a whopping size with a diameter of 865,000 miles (over 100 times bigger than that of Earth’s!). The Sun’s immense size and mass is what holds our Solar System together, allowing all the planets and debris to orbit around it.

The Sun is known for being incredibly hot, with the Sun’s core being its hottest part. The Sun’s core is a scorching 27 million°F which is just a mild 225,000 times hotter than what most consider to be a “hot” shower. Mind-blowing!

Sun History
The Sun formed 4.6 billion years ago from a spinning cloud of dust and gas known as the Solar Nebula. Most of that nebula’s material ended up being sucked into the center to form what is now known as our Sun, which is so massive that it accounts for over 99% of our Solar System’s mass!

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Blog 4: All Things Venus!

Venus is the second planet from the sun, as well as the second of the Terrestrial planets, meaning it is high density, low radius, and low radius compared to the Jovian planets.

Some quick facts about Venus include the following:

  • Venus has no moon
  • It is made of rocks and metal
  • It is identical in size to earth
  • It rotates slowly and in the opposite direction of Earth
  • It has an extreme greenhouse effect that bakes the surface to 880 degrees F
  • Has bizarre bulges and off volcanoes
  • Its surface is searing hot with brutal pressure
  • Its entire surface is extensively contorted and fractured by tectonic forced
  • Venus’s clouds obtain sulfuric acid → sulfur dioxide must have entered the atomsphere through volcanic outgassing 
  • It has weak erosion because it is too hot for any type of rain or snow on its surface

As described above, Venus’s atmosphere is incredibly thick, which makes circulation efficient in transporting heat from the equator to poles, so its surface temperature is the same everywhere on its planet. Additionally, there are no season on Venus since it has no axis tilt. The primary reason Venus is so hot, aside from its proximity to Earth, is because of its strong greenhouse effect. It has lots of carbon dioxide in its atmosphere. In fact, it has 200,000 times as much as Earth. Additionally, without any water on earth (neither liquid or even chemically bound to surface rock), CO2 can’t dissolve or be locked away in rocks.

Additionally, Venus’s proximity to the Sun is instrumental in explaining its high temperature of atmosphere. Even though Earth and Venus are the same size, because it is 30% closer to the Sun than Earth, it gets greater intensity of sunlight which raises the temperature, increases evaporation, and allows the atmosphere to hold more water vapor before vapor condenses to make rain. This increase in evaporation combined with greater atmospheric capacity for water vapor leads to an increase in the total amount of water vapor increased, and the greenhouse gas is therefore elevated. This makes Venus such a unique planet because of its incredibly hot temperature.

Video source

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