Science & Technology
Physical Sciences Archive
EARTH SCIENCE LITERACY PRINCIPLES.
Earth Science Literacy Initiative and National Science Foundation. June 2009.
Full Text: [PDF format, 13 pages]
Earth's rocks and other materials provide a record of its history. Our solar system formed from a vast cloud of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago. Earth's crust has two distinct types: continental and oceanic. These and other concepts are the major ideas of Earth science that all citizens should know, according to the report. Even modest changes to Earth's systems have had profound influences on human societies and the course of civilization. Understanding these systems and how they interact is vital for our survival, the report states.
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AA09057
Frumkin, Howard; Hess, Jeremy; Vindigni, Stephen ENERGY
AND PUBLIC HEALTH: THE CHALLENGE OF PEAK PETROLEUM Public Health Reports, vol. 124, January-February 2009, pp. 5-19
Full Text: [PDF format, 15 pages]
The
authors, with the Centers for Disease Control and/or the Emory Medical
School in Atlanta, note that "dramatic improvements in human health
during the last 150 years have coincided with unprecedented economic
growth and prosperity." Many of the advances in public health have been
made possible by intensive energy use, largely from fossil fuels such
as coal, oil and natural gas; they note that the modern health-care
sector is heavily dependent on petroleum and natural gas for
pharmaceuticals, medical supplies and equipment, the energy
requirements of hospitals, transportation and food production. They
highlight the growing consensus that the global production of petroleum
is expected to peak and go into terminal decline in the next few
decades; this will have a profound effect on health care. While the
health-care sector has dealt with short-term energy shortages in the
1970s, a long-term and terminal decline in energy supply over decades
has little precedent, and will require collaboration with those in the
energy, transportation, urban planning and other fields. Modern
medicine and health care will need to completely rethink its approach
to public health, such as the types of products and procedures it
employs, how it obtains energy, how food is produced, and how
low-income households obtain access to health care.
AA07359
Collins, William, Et Al. THE PHYSICAL SCIENCE BEHIND CLIMATE CHANGE (Scientific American, vol. 297, no. 2, August 2007, pp. 64-73)
Full text available from your nearest American Library
The authors, all scientists who participated in Working Group I of the 2007 IPCC assessment, write that the growing record of observations and study show that over the past twenty years, evidence that humans are affecting the climate has "accumulated inexorably", and that scientific community is more certain of this than ever. The authors summarize the findings of the latest IPCC report, noting that 11 of the past 12 years have been the warmest since reliable records began around 1850, and that concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today are roughly 35 percent above preindustrial levels. They discuss some of the uncertainties, noting that climate model predictions become cloudy out beyond a century or so -- but the earth "will be living with the consequences of climate change for at least the next thousand years."
AA07345
Greer, John Michael SOLVING FERMI'S PARADOX (Archdruid Report, September 19, 2007)
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In 1950, nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi noted that there is a serious mismatch between our faith in technological progress and the universe revealed through our satellites and telescopes. Given the hundreds of billions of stars and planets in our galaxy, the chances are good that, by now, at least a few intelligent species would have developed the ability to embark on interstellar travel, and would have left traces detectable from Earth; however, we so far have not discovered any. While Fermi's puzzle has been the subject of considerable debate, the author believes that it sheds important light on the current crisis of our industrial civilization: the notion that technological progress is unlimited "flies in the face of thermodynamic reality." Unlimited technological progress requires ever-more concentrated sources of energy -- thus Greer believes that "we are at the end of our rope." The U.S. space program required a significant diversion of our resources to send astronauts across what, in galactic terms, is a hair's-breadth distance; it is possible that a species elsewhere in our galaxy has accomplished a similar feat, but given the fantastic amounts of energy required, the chances that they would attain deep-space travel is close to zero. Greer says this raises the possibility that we have misguided ideas of what an advanced technological civilization looks like; as the earth's stored energy resources peak and decline, a "truly mature technology may turn out to be something very different from our current expectations."
AA07331
Ratterman, Walt SOLAR ELECTRICITY FOR THE DEVELOPING WORLD (Home Power, no. 119, June/July 2007, pp. 96-100)
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The author, with the Oregon-based SunEnergy Power Corp. and a veteran of overseas solar installation projects, writes that installing solar-electric systems in developing-nation communities is as much about "training yourself" as it is about training others, and is fundamentally about helping local villagers improve their lives in a manner in which they choose. He notes that before any hardware is installed, his group first travels to a village to teach the residents the basics of energy management and to develop an energy budget. Training villagers to troubleshoot and repair the systems, and fostering a sense of ownership, to include fiscal management strategies is vital; quality control and adherence to National Electrical Code standards is especially important when installing systems in remote areas. The article illustrates projects installed in India, the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ecuador, Peru, Rwanda and the Thailand-Burma border areas.
AA07054
SEEING STARS IN IRAQ Simmons, Mike Scientific American, vol. 296, no. 1, January 2007, pp. 23-25
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Started in 1973, the Iraqi National Astronomical Observatory, located on Mt. Korek in Iraqi Kurdistan, near the Iranian border, would have been the only major observatory in the Middle East once completed, but it became a military target in the 1980s and 1990s. The author writes that there are proposals to rehabilitate the damaged and neglected facility, and refit it with a state-of-the-art telescope. A renovated observatory could lure Iraqi astronomers back from abroad, and become the centerpiece of a scientific research facility that would help revitalize the scientific community in Iraq.
AA05082
Krajick, Kevin FUTURE SHOCKS: MODERN SCIENCE, ANCIENT CATASTROPHES, AND THE ENDLESS QUEST TO PREDICT EARTHQUAKES (Smithsonian, vol. 35, no. 12, March 2005, pp. 38-46)
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The combined findings and calculations of U.S. and Japanese researchers have proven than a devastating tsunami swept ashore in what is now the Pacific Northwest state of Washington in January 1700. The discoveries of paleoseismologists -- those who study earthquakes of the past -- are shedding new light on the risks that the region faces for future earthquakes and tsunamis, and the devastation that could come with them. Hundreds of bridges and tall buildings in the metropolitan areas of Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon could be at risk if a quake of similar magnitude were to occur again. Though scientists are finding that earthquakes defy predictability, they are learning much more about their likelihood from clues that seismic events left behind centuries ago. That information is invaluable for urban planners and engineers to better assess construction safety requirements and emergency planning.
AA04333
Stix, Gary THE PATENT CLERK'S LEGACY (Scientific American, Vol. 291, No. 3, September 2004, pp. 44-49)
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In honor of Albert Einstein's astonishing contributions to science, the international physics community has declared 2005 the World Year of Physics, the centennial of the year 1905, when Einstein published all his most important theories. From the "musings of a patent slave" at the Swiss patent office came insights that would change the world forever: if light moved at a constant speed, no matter the speed of the observer, then distance and time had to be altered to accommodate it. If all energy and mass are conserved, then the "mass of a body is a measure of its energy content," and the faster something travels, the more massive it becomes. His insight that light could act as both a wave and a discrete packet of energy gave rise to quantum mechanics. When he saw that gravity, the gentlest of forces, is a function of mass, and is able to curve both space and time around it and yet is also affected by it, he developed his general relativity theory. Einstein developed all his theories via "thought experiments;" their validation, and the consequences of them, would come later. His ideas fundamentally altered the course of physics in the past century, but he was ultimately frustrated by his inability to come up with a Unified Field Theory, or "theory of everything." Toward the end of his life, he became an outspoken pacifist and opponent of nuclear weapons. Were he to come back, the author believes that Einstein would "undoubtedly be pleased to see that physics is pushing beyond his mark." This is the introductory article to a series devoted to Einstein and his ideas.
AA04231
Goho, Alexandra SPACE INVADERS (Science News, Vol. 165, No. 18, May 1, 2004, pp. 280-281)
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Space was once viewed as a cold and sterile environment. It has only been within the past several years that a new picture has emerged of a chemically complex and diverse universe that may provide clues to the Earth's chemical heritage and the processes that gave rise to life. This article provides a snapshot of NASA's research into the molecular components of stars, comets and other space matter, leading a NASA astrochemist to conclude that life could be widespread in space.
AA04107
Cowen, Ron BARE-NAKED GALAXIES (Science News, Volume 165, No. 8, February 21, 2004, pp. 119-122)
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The concept of galaxies, huge clusters of gas and literally millions of stars, colliding with each other in the vast emptiness of space is one that is hard for the non-specialist to imagine. This article does a superb job of explaining how scientists use the full array of analytical tools: radio telescopes, x-ray telescopes, space-based instruments and observations from optical telescopes spread around the world, to formulate hypotheses that explain what to many of is almost unexplainable. In this account William Keel, of the University of Alabama, and colleagues have constructed a theory that explains observations of the galaxy C153. Accompanying illustrations show how the various images produced by these complementary instruments have given life to a view of what is described as a "cosmic slam dance" in which a "grand spiral" galaxy like our own Milky Way has become an "eviscerated body" destined to turn into a featureless disk of old stars over the next 100 million years.
AA04027
Wakker, Bart P.; Richter, Philipp OUR GROWING, BREATHING GALAXY (Scientific American, Vol. 290, No. 1, January 2004, pp. 38-47)
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Since scientists first identified the Milky Way as a distinct object in the 1920's, depth perception has posed a problem for understanding our home galaxy. Orbiting telescopes, and newer ground-based ones, are finally yielding a three-dimensional perspective. Investigations of high-velocity hydrogen clouds (HVCs) on the galaxy's outskirts reveal a evolving, dynamic system, expanding through the breakup of satellite galaxies, stripping gas from the Magellanic Clouds, and forming a halo of stellar streams. A corona composed of ionized gas, dark matter, and neutral hydrogen extends for a few hundred thousand light years. As the galaxy absorbs gas from space and smaller galaxies, heavy elements are expelled into the halo. Simulations provide evidence for intergalactic HVCs dispersed through space, forming a reservoir for new star formation. These filaments potentially contain more matter than all galaxies combined. While theoretical conceptions of their behavior vary, high-velocity gas clouds offer strong evidence that the Milky Way is a work in progress.