The top story on today’s UVA Today is about a children’s bilingual astronomy picture book produced as an outgrowth of the “Dark Skies, Bright Kids” outreach program being run by U.Va. astronomy professor Kelsey Johnson and many student volunteers.
I’d like to highlight something from deep down in Fariss Samarrai’s story: the group is trying to win $25,000 in funding from Pepsi to get more copies of the book printed, with the goal of increasing its distribution around the local schools and possibly around the state. (Click on the link above; you can vote up to 10 times a day.)
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
University of Virginia alumnus Phil Plait, who earned a Ph.D. in astronomy in 1994, is hosting a new television series that premieres this Sunday at 10 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.
The show, “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe,” examines question related to astronomy, putting assorted claims to the test. The first show is on asteroid impacts.
Check out the new episode of the UVA Today Radio Show, a weekly five minute segment on WTJU radio. Look for new editions of the show every Wednesday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
Check out the new episode of the UVA Today Radio Show, a weekly five minute segment on WTJU radio. Look for new editions of the show every Wednesday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU. Afterward, all of the segments will be posted oniTunesU.
Read more about the stories featured in this week’s program:
The U.Va. Engineering School’s monthly E-News newsletter posed a question to alumni in June: How has your engineering background helped you to understand the recent oil spill in the Gulf, and what do you see as the most effective preventive and corrective measures?
A sample quote, from a 2007 mechanical engineering grad:
The experience of the Deepwater Horizon should be a reminder to all engineers that, while we may understand a great deal about the devices and technologies that we design and implement, these systems do not operate in the idealized conditions that often simplify our analyses and that they will often fail in ways that we had not foreseen. More pointedly, it is a reminder that the response to engineering disasters will often be governed not by what is technologically feasible, but within the constraints of governmental structures, financial realities, and environmental externalities. Most of us are fortunate to not have such public or catastrophic failures, but that does not mean that we should be any less professional in the exercise of our duties.
We’ve already changed the climate for the rest of this century.
The mechanics of climate change aren’t that complex: we burn fossil fuels; a byproduct of that burning is carbon dioxide; it enters the atmosphere and traps heat, warming the surface of the planet. The consequences are already apparent: glaciers are melting faster than ever, flowers are blooming earlier (just ask Henry David Thoreau), and plants and animals are moving to more extreme latitudes and altitudes to keep cool.
Even more disturbing is the fact that carbon dioxide lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. We have just begun to see the effects of human-induced climate change, and the predictions for what’s to come range from dire to catastrophic.
Today I temporarily turn the blog over to Nicole Gugliucci, a grad student in astronomy (who also blogs for the Discovery Channel, to allow her to shamelessly tout her summer school class:
Are we alone? It is a question that humans have been asking themselves for millennia. The ancient Greek philosophers argued over the plurality of worlds, and whether or not they would be inhabited. Scholars of the enlightenment were sure that the cosmos was populated with reasoning beings like men on Earth. Today, despite 50 years of searching for a radio signal from some intelligent species, an eerie silence leaves us feeling quite alone, despite the hundreds of planets that have been found orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
Are we alone? Will the aliens be like us? Are microbes inhabiting moons and planets of our own solar system? Have we already been visited by space travelers? Will we one day be the aliens on another world?
This summer, at UVa, we will be exploring these topics and more in the class “Life Beyond Earth.” Every day will be a chance to discuss a new facet of this intriguing topic. You don’t have to be a science major, or have even taken an astronomy course before. Go beyond the pop culture movies and the tabloid headlines and investigate the history, sociology and science of extraterrestrial life. Find out which U.Va. professors have searched for ET, and what efforts are going on now to expand the search. Learn even more about our own biology and evolutionary history and how that can focus our search for life. Discuss the history and current progress of human spaceflight, and imagine the places we will go.
(Photo: The 85-foot telescope in Green Bank, W.Va., the very first telescope to look for life.)
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
Last week more than 200 volunteers, organized by U.Va.’s environmental sciences department and the conservation organization Trout Unlimited, sampled about 458 stream sites in 34 Virginia counties, representing about 80 percent of the forested mountain headwater streams in the state that support reproducing brook trout.
This week, the samples are being organized and analyzed at U.Va. for pH, a stream’s ability to neutralize acidity, and for dissolved ions.
This information helps scientists determine the health of headwater streams throughout western Virginia. The data and findings are used by the EPA and other national and state agencies for resource management and to develop, evaluate and recommend national air pollution control policies.
This is the third regional survey conducted by U.Va. and Trout Unlimited. Previous surveys were done in 1987 and 2000. The current plan is to continue long-term monitoring by conducting surveys every 10 years.
For more, you can read the full UVA Today article here.
Brad Cox, a U.Va. professor of physics who has been involved with the planning and instrument design for the LHC since its inception in 1993, said his group “is very gratified and tremendously excited to see that the Large Hadron Collider has achieved proton-proton collisions at the world record energy of 7 TeV, thereby moving into the realm of new physics. I expect new discoveries in the next few years as we accumulate data at these huge energies. This is what we have been waiting for and working toward.”
With today’s snowfall of 3.8 inches, the seasonal snowfall total for the winter of 2009-10 now stands at 55 inches at McCormick Observatory, according to astronomy senior scientist Ricky Patterson.
This is a new season record. The previous record seasonal snowfall was 54.7 inches, set in 1995-96.
Leander McCormick Observatory (which turns 125 years old on April 13 this year) has been the official weather station of record for the Charlottesville area since before 1894, with observations carried out daily by personnel in U.Va.’s Department of Astronomy.
Were the Apollo moon landings faked? Do vaccines actually causes disease? Should Denver establish a governmental commission to investigate UFO sightings? What is the role of the skeptic in society?
Alumnus Phil Plait, who holds two graduate degrees in astronomy from the University, tackles these questions in his “Bad Astronomy” blog, now hosted by Discover magazine. It’s an interesting read; Time.com listed it among its 25 best blogs of 2009.
(Update, 11:46: USA Today did an article last weekend with Plait, assessing the various astronomical threats to life on Earth. Bottom line: You could make a lot of money selling insurance to people worried about death by meteor.)
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a/k/a the federal stimulus package, contained nearly $22 billion in research funds, much of which has already been entrusted to public and private colleges and universities.
In the interests of transparency and accountability, those colleges and universities today joined together and announced a new Web site, “ScienceWorksForUS.org,” which hosts a vast database that details where those funds have gone.
Users can break down grants by state (here’s the page for Virginia), and then further by granting agency. There are also links to stories and press releases about the grants and some of the projects they fund. and you can sign up for e-mail updates.
It’s a good way for Americans to check up on their investments.
This is not the first international prize he has won; two years ago, the French Academy gave him its Gran Prix Moron for for his book for a general readership, “The Ways of Light: Physics and Metaphysics of Light and Darkness.”
Back in 2001, UVA Today’s Faris Samarrai wrote a piece for Inside UVA on another book that he co-authored with a Buddhist monk, Matthiew Ricard, “The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet.”
U.Va. astronomy professor Bob O’Connell, who chairs the oversight committee for the Wide Field Camera 3 at U.Va., was on hand Tuesday as NASA unveiled the first incredible images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.
Here’s AP’s account of the unveiling, including a quote from O’Connell.
This just in from UVA Today science correspondent Fariss Samarrai:
Are we alone? It is a question that humans have been asking themselves for millennia. The ancient Greek philosophers argued over the plurality of worlds, and whether or not they would be inhabited. Scholars of the enlightenment were sure that the cosmos was populated with reasoning beings like men on Earth. Today, despite 50 years of searching for a radio signal from some intelligent species, an eerie silence leaves us feeling quite alone, despite the hundreds of planets that have been found orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
Were the Apollo moon landings faked? Do vaccines actually causes disease? Should Denver establish a governmental commission to investigate UFO sightings? What is the role of the skeptic in society?
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a/k/a the federal stimulus package, contained nearly $22 billion in research funds, much of which has already been entrusted to public and private colleges and universities.
Congratulations to U.Va. astronomy professor T
