What is This World Coming to? 6

Food. We all need it. We all have our favorites. But what will be available for us to eat in the coming much-warmer world?

Like the topic of ‘climate change’, this sub-topic is just as broad a question and just as difficult to sort out.

My initial belief was that the tropics would probably become pretty uninhabitable. After all, at least one city in the Middle East has already come too-d****d-close to that with a temperature of 115°F with 50% humidity. Places that are NOT deserts could be even worse. Deserts at least cool off at night, because they don’t have any cloud cover to hold the heat in. But when the humidity rises, cloudiness increases, so that heat could be held close to the ground. Also, when humidity rises, that ‘drop-dead’ temperature is lowered. At least as low as 96°F.

But the more I’ve researched, the less sure I am of that. I recently spent a few days looking at the countries in Central America, because I figured they were definitely in the ‘heavily tropical’ part of the world. The thing is, Central America is pretty mountainous, so a lot of the land is actually ‘temperate’. The low-lying jungle might not be a place people would want to live, but the highlands could still be habitable.

Crops, on the other hand, might not like the new weather patterns that could come. Even without the global temperature rising, people living in those countries right now have trouble providing food for their families year after year. The rainy season and hurricanes can produce mud slides and flooding. If that doesn’t happen, they could lose their crops because of drought, like the one they’ve been suffering through the last few years.

Anthropologists believe the Mayan civilization crashed because of a severe drought. Now that area is facing another drought, and who knows how bad it will become? None of the articles I read mentioned wild fires like we’ve had in the western states, but will there come a time when Central American starts to burn?

These were my thoughts as I studied this particular area, looking for food crops that might not survive where they have been thriving and will need to be transplanted elsewhere. I don’t have any answers on that yet. The export crops grown here might be okay, as long as they can get enough water. I’ll have to research individual crops - for instance, bananas - in order to take a guess on their prognosis.

Still more to come!

What is This World Coming to? 5

Okay, I did find something to say on this subject, from a totally unexpected source. I was watching an episode on Nova the other night. Our local channel has 2 episodes on Wednesdays, and we usually watch the first, but not the second, because that’s getting too late for my husband, who is an early bird. That night, I heard that the 2nd episode was on Neanderthals, and human evolution has always been an interest of mine, so I stayed up to watch it.

As a whole, the episode explored a lot of different information about the humans known as Neanderthals, but my interest picked up during their talk about the small colony of Neanderthals who lived in caves currently located at the base of the Rock of Gibraltar.

One question this episode was asking is, “Did Modern Humans have any part in eliminating the Neanderthals?” They didn’t have an answer to that question, in the end. Not a simple one, anyway.

Neanderthals lived in the Middle East, Western Asia and Europe for as much as 700,000 years. During all of that time, the world was in an ice age, but the Neanderthals were built for it, and apparently did not find that a hardship.

About 100,000 years ago (maybe as early as 125,000 years ago), modern humans started to populate these same areas. The cold probably made them wear more clothes than the Neanderthals. And maybe there were instances of violence between the 2 sub-species.

However, the scientists said, it was unlikely the modern humans had traveled all the way around the Mediterranean Sea and got to the Rock of Gibraltar before that particular group of Neanderthals died out. What the scientists discovered in those caves showed that the Neanderthals living there not only hunted and gathered, they ate a variety of sea life as well, from seals to clams. Today, the mouths of those caves are practically at the sea line, but during the brunt of the ice age, the water line would have been about 59 feet (18 meters) lower.

Neanderthals lived in small groups. Scientists estimate their entire population may have been about 100,000, scattered in small groups across a quarter of the world. (How big is the town you live in?) And as they studied this particular group, they realized that it died out during a long and severe drought that hit the area.

My thought? Neanderthals were suited for cold. Not so much for heat. They had a short, stocky build that would help them retain body heat. But when the world heats up, that doesn’t do you much good.

If the world were going through the gradual changes of leaving the ice age, the flora and fauna would no doubt evolve in order to survive. But the current rapid pace of warming that we are in doesn’t leave us time for that. Those who currently live in the tropics might manage by migrating north or south to the temperate zones. Those in the temperate zones might find some comfort in the polar regions, although there’s not a lot of land for them to settle on. Once Antarctica thaws, that land would be available. Would it be fertile? Who knows?

It won’t be a matter of the fit being able to survive. Those who can accept what’s happening and deal with it will have a chance to survive.

And I’m back to looking for potential food for that migrating population.

What is This World Coming to? 4

Okay, we’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring melting ice and (some of) the resulting changes to The Oceans As We Know Them. And last time, we touched on the Arctic jet stream, which brings us to the atmosphere. Let’s go ahead and explore (some of) the changes we can expect there.

I just heard on the news tonight that Hurricane Willa - born in the Eastern Pacific Ocean - will tear across the middle of Mexico (despite the mountains) and then hit the south and south-eastern areas of the US. It’s not expected to be a hurricane by the time it gets to the US, but I don’t remember hearing about any Pacific hurricane/cyclone/typhoon doing that before. And anytime hurricanes get mentioned anymore, there always seems to be a cat 5 hurricane that somebody is watching. Some of them have been so strong a cat 5, there has been talk of defining what would make a cat 6.

The average global temperature has risen 1.4° Fahrenheit (0.8° C) over the past 100 years. Now, that’s not 1.4° F for every single location on the globe. Temperatures at the poles have risen faster than other places. But that is a big change over a short period of time, when you are talking about the life of a planet.

Consider the northern plains of China, home to 400,000,000 people, and the place where much of China’s food is grown. It doesn’t get a lot of rainfall, when compared to southern China, so the fields are irrigated during the growing season. Research from MIT indicates that the temperature in this area of China will cross above 95°F several times between 2070 and 2100. At that temperature and with the added humidity caused by irrigation, even young and healthy humans would reach the point where their bodies could not cool off, and death would result within a few hours. And that’s the young and healthy. Old and frail wouldn’t last that long. Do you suppose they’ll farm at night? How would the plants they try to grow fare in that kind of heat?

Shanghai, on China’s central coast, would cross that 95° F threshold about 5 times, and approach it over 100 times during that same time period.

In the Middle East, many areas, especially coastal cities, are in the same mess. In 2015, Bandar Mahshahr in Iran almost reached that ‘death threshold’ when the temperature hit 114.5° F with 50% humidity. Only 50% humidity! But when the temperature gets high enough, the human body can’t function.

What else can we expect? Some areas, like northeast US, may experience an increase in rainfall, while in the northwest US, rainfall will decrease. Washington has been experiencing range fires the last few years, but I don’t remember hearing about them before that. Maybe I wasn’t listening. But I do know that California has been in a drought for several years, and they’ve had fires rampaging across the countryside.

Not a pretty thought, looking at the future and what climate change will do to us. I have a lot of thoughts to piece together for that book I’m thinking about.

I’ll be looking for information about what food will be able to be grown where in the next 50 years. If I find anything interesting on that front - or some other front I haven’t thought of - I’ll continue this series. Otherwise, I’ll wrap this up next time.

https://www.livescience.com/37057-global-warming-effects.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/31/chinas-most-populous-area-could-be-uninhabitable-by-end-of-century

What is This World Coming to? 3

So, what else is the Beaufort Gyre (which, you’ll remember, is north of Alaska) doing to The World As We Know It?

Well, it’s messing up the Arctic jet stream. Being from the midwest US, I’ve heard plenty of winter weather forecasts talking about the Arctic jet stream dipping below the Canadian border and bringing truly frigid blasts to the North American plains. Since I still have friends and family living in that region, I pay attention to the winter weather that happens there. Last year was particularly brutal, with that jet stream going much further south than I remember it doing in the past. It wasn’t just the northern states like the Dakotas, Michigan and maybe Nebraska hunkering down against Arctic-type temperatures, they were reaching into Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana...

How can that possibly mean the climate is warming? Let me remind you that climate and weather are not the same thing. Weather happens on a much smaller scale than climate. As for that Arctic jet stream coming south before returning north, that air gets (relatively) warmed up. Coming so far south, it gets a lot warmer than it normally does, so when it does go north again, it transfers the warmth it gathered to the area it goes; the arctic. More melting.

Earth’s polar ice caps serve a purpose; sunlight is reflected from their white surface, so they act as a ‘cooling’ agent for the entire globe. The more this ice melts and reveals darker-colored water and land, the less cooling is available for the entire planet. Get it? The more snow and ice melts, the more likely more snow and ice will melt. Until there is no more snow and ice to help keep Earth’s temperature moderated.

The really scary part is what happens to the land when all that snow and ice melts. If Greenland’s ice cap melts, the sea level would rise by 20 feet (6.1 m). At its current rate of melt, the Arctic Ocean could be completely ice free by 2040. That’s only 22 years! If all the ice of Antarctica melted, the seas would rise by 200 ft (61 m).

With a sea level rise of only 6 feet (1.8 m), most large cities would be flooded. So, where do you live? I currently live in the center of the Florida peninsula, which would still be here after 6 feet of sea level rise... but loooooong gone by the time all the ice melts. Maybe I should start cleaning out stuff I won’t be needing in my old age, so that it’ll be easier to move north, once that becomes necessary.

By then, New Orleans would be a bay reaching almost as far north as the Missouri boot. The Netherlands would be entirely below sea level, but much of it is now. Hope they have plans for building new, much taller dykes. Australia will be a doughnut, with land surrounding an inland sea. The Amazon rainforest will become the Amazon Sea, and Buenos Aires in Argentina will mean a huge bay. Those are the easy things to notice on the map.

At one time, I found an interactive map showing what parts of the world would be underwater, and the results would change depending on how much you chose to raise the sea level. It didn’t seem too alarming, but I think it only allowed you to raise the sea level by 9 meters.

Alas, I neglected to bookmark that page. When I went looking for it to link to this blog, I found lots and lots of pages with ‘interactive global sea level rise maps’. That means more and more scientists (and others) have been looking at this scenario seriously, and taking the possible sea level rise much higher. Much more ice than that covering Greenland has been and is and will melt, so 9 meters could just be a drop in the bucket.

Water isn’t the only thing that will change. Next time, I’ll examine something else from my research about climate change.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1792312/-Warm-ocean-water-has-penetrated-deep-into-the-Arctic-interior-portending-year-round-loss-of-sea-ice

http://www.softschools.com/facts/environmental_science/polar_ice_caps_facts/2894/

What is This World Coming to 2?

Okay, we were talking about the sea and what climate change is doing to it. My examples last time were in Europe and the US, in the northern temperate zones. Now I want to consider all that ice and water in the extreme north and south, around the poles.

If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember news of huge chunks of Antarctic ice breaking away. I’m talking chunks bigger than some states. Antarctica is receiving warmer weather than it’s seen in millennia, or maybe even millions of years. Some coasts that certain types of penguin have called ‘home’ for countless generations are becoming inhospitable for them. They already live at the bottom of the world, where are they supposed to go from there?

The Arctic Ocean is not doing any better. There is no land under all that ice at the north pole, just water. You might think, ‘That’s okay, because it takes a lot of energy to warm water up.’ Yes, it does. And yet, that water under that thick sheet of ice has warmed up.*

If you look at a map or globe, you’ll see a bunch of islands above Canada. During Europe’s Age of Exploration, several well-provisioned ships made attempts to find a ‘Northwest Passage’ during the summers, trying to find a way to get around the Americas to do trade with the Orient. I don’t remember hearing of any of those excursions ever making it through, nor of any making it home again. At that time, I understand, whatever open channels of water that could be found among all those islands were unreliable and tended to close up and freeze a ship in place, even in summer. The last few years, so much of that ice has melted during the summer, that some cruise lines have offered cruises from one coast to the other, via the Canadian passage.

Something has happened to the Beaufort Gyre. That is a 60-mile-diameter pool of cold freshwater and sea ice located north of Alaska. It used to spin clockwise for 5-7 years, then slow down and start spinning in the opposite direction. This change in direction was caused by periodic cyclones that moved from the Northern Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean. But the North Atlantic has been warming up even faster than other parts of the world, and has failed to get the Beaufort Gyre to change direction in a dozen years or more.

So it’s just been sitting there, spinning and getting larger. And although it contains ‘cold’ water, that’s a matter of relativity. This spinning water contains twice as much heat now as it did 30 years ago. But it’s not sitting on top, like you’d think it would. It extends so deep, it is creeping under the Arctic ice sheet, which I understand can be a mile or more thick. Once it starts melting that ice sheet from below, well, how long before that ice sheet starts to break apart into gigantic icebergs, like the Antarctic ice has already started doing?

And what happens when all that ice breaks up and melts? Right, it raises sea level, which we discussed last time.

I had never heard of the Beaufort Gyre until a couple days ago, but I’m not done with it. From what I’ve been reading, whether it continues its current spin or starts going the other way, somebody’s in for a nasty time. Maybe it will come up next time.

* https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/5/1792312/-Warm-ocean-water-has-penetrated-deep-into-the-Arctic-interior-portending-year-round-loss-of-sea-ice

What is This World Coming to?

I firmly believe in climate change. In my mind, it is here, and it’s going to get bad.

But I’m not here to debate that with anyone. So, for the purpose of this series of blog entries, let’s say I’m trying to figure out what could happen (climate-wise) in the next 50 years, and how it will effect the people who have to live through it. Well, try to live through it.

The sea level will rise. There has been and still is a lot of water on the Earth that is not located in the seas. It’s not a liquid, it’s solid in the form of snow and ice. Glaciers, sea ice, and so on. This has all been melting at an increasing pace, and probably will continue until snow and ice become rare items.

You can already see the sea level rising, if you look; Miami FL has streets that are underwater during high tides. Miami Beach, located on a barrier island that barely qualifies as dry land, is quietly raising its streets, particularly the ones that run along the edges of the island.

After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, there was much talk of how badly the shoreline was being eroded. If I remember right, there is an oil refinery or some such that was built on the shore. Now it is pretty much an island, and the road leading to it may or may not be passable during high tides. Those tides even reach 5 or 10 miles inland, making it hard to get in or out of small towns that dot that road. The road, I understand, has been raised in a lot of places, making it even harder to navigate in those small towns.

Parts of Amsterdam in The Netherlands are 18 feet below sea level. Much of The Netherlands consists of land ‘reclaimed’ from the sea and thus below sea level. They did this by building dikes, dams and canals to control where the water could go. This will be an ever increasing chore, as the sea rises.

So I find myself wondering, what happens when the sea rise reaches that critical point, whatever it is? Will The Netherlands continue building their dikes taller, until they loom and cast an ominous shadow over the land they are intended to protect? Is that possible? Does it make more sense to raise the land they are living on? Is that possible?

At what point do people simply give in to nature and move to higher ground? Do those who are displaced get any assistance from their government, or do they have to abandon the home they’ve had for who knows how long, take what they can to some other place, and try to start over again? I suspect the latter, because the former would probably bankrupt any government.

Even if Earth’s population doesn’t grow beyond what it is now, it’s possible the concentration of that population will increase, because there could be less land for us to live on.

Well, with the next entry, we’ll continue with the water theme. Yes, there is more about water to think about.

Martian Shelters Summation

Okay, so that was pretty much all I found for ideas about Martian shelters: tents of various shapes made of multiple layers of flexible plastic and insulation (probably foam), either buried in the sand or not; tunnels and rooms dug deep underground by robots; and a top-side shelter shaped like half a bagel with a layer of ice between the sheets of plastic.

I did see some reference to making a spun glass (fiber glass) insulation from sorting the Martian sand and melting a particular type of that sand. I’m not sure that would be available for the very first shelters, but maybe it would be a useful building material later on.

For that matter, rocks have been used to build human home for centuries, perhaps millennia. Sand could be combined with other materials to make a type of cement or even mortar. That assumes the colonists can find a supply of calcium silicate nearby, or some other binder to use. If not, they could use polymers, but that would need to be shipped to them from Earth, or they would have to make it on Mars, and I have no idea how complicated a process that might be.

One other idea, briefly mentioned, was to dig holes into a large boulder to create a small shelter, perhaps a type of emergency shelter. I kept thinking about today’s ‘tiny homes’ and thinking a sufficiently large boulder might make a nice small home for someone who really liked his/her privacy.

So, if you are going to be one of those first colonists sent to Mars, don’t expect a mansion. Of course, if you were expecting a mansion, you probably wouldn’t be one of those chosen to colonize Mars. Or anyplace else.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet

https://phys.org/news/2016-12-nasa-ice-house-mars.html

Martian Shelter 5

I was beginning to think we had run out of ideas, but it turns out I was wrong. So, how about an ‘ice home’? They’ve been used in the Arctic Circle for centuries, haven’t they? But, the ones proposed for Mars are a bit more complicated than igloos. They are, once again, inflatable, but... in the shape of a doughnut. The body of the doughnut would be where people would live and work.

The ‘skin’ of the doughnut would be a double-wall, flexible, of course. The interior wall would hold in the air and provide the space for people to occupy. The space between the 2 flexible skins would be filled with water and allowed to freeze. That outer wall and the ice under it would keep the radiation out, and protect the inner sections from any nasty weather Mars can produce.

Despite recent findings of water of Mars, it is not nearly as omnipresent as it is on Earth, so where does that water come from? No, it won’t be shipped from Earth. What they would ship from Earth is robots with the equipment to find, mine, and transport the water to the shelter area so it could be melted, pumped inside the walls and allowed to re-freeze.

Presumably, this store of water could serve a second purpose; that of being turned into fuel when it was time to leave. To me, this seems counter-productive. It assumes the people will be leaving, abandoning their colony to return to Earth. Even if they were ‘only’ there for a shift of a couple years, wouldn’t more people be expected to arrive to take over, like is done with the space station? On the other hand, keeping options open can be a very good idea.

Of course, with proper timing, those robots could be sent out to mine more water to replace what’s been turned into rocket fuel. You’d just need to make sure the equipment doesn’t get clogged with sand in the meantime.

The biggest drawback I see to this design is that it could take 400 days to fill and freeze the shell. So those robots had better know what they are doing in order to get it ready before humans start arriving.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/a-new-home-on-mars-nasa-langley-s-icy-concept-for-living-on-the-red-planet

Martian Shelter 4

We’re going to look at a different style of shelter this time. Something a little more complicated to build, I suppose, but which could be more... comfy, should we say?

This shelter is underground. Deep underground, not just some sand kicked over it. Building it would take tunnel-boring machines, which are quite heavy. Perhaps these would be shipped before people were sent, along with some robots to use the machines to bore out a network of tunnels and living quarters. Yes, apparently, some people are ready to go back to living in caves.

But ‘underground’ does not need to mean dark and unwelcoming. I watched an episode of a science show on Netflicks a couple weeks back, where the people were digging out a series of tunnels under New York City. They had some complicated equipment on the roof of a warehouse that gathered and concentrated sunlight before it was piped into the tunnels. Yes, I did say concentrated and piped. The tunnels they created were fully lighted, and with smooth, level floors, ceilings and walls, seemed far distant from a creepy cave.

The theory about living in man-made tunnels on Mars is that the gravity is weak and Mars doesn’t have any quakes, so you wouldn’t need as much support to hold up the ceilings; and there ‘probably’ would not be any moisture seepage. But, this plan does call for some heavy-duty insulation. Martian air may be thin, but Martian dirt and rocks are cold! Even without that insulation, the dirt and rocks would keep that nasty radiation out.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea. There always are, right? All that equipment would be expensive to get there. And once it finishes digging out that first small habitat, then what? Oh, if there’s a big influx of immigrants, the equipment could be busy for years or decades, forming a city here, a city there... But eventually, one assumes, it will become obsolete or unneeded. A lot of money to just let rust away.

And it’s possible there’s more water on Mars than we think, so seepage could be a problem. With all the insulation installed to keep the internal temperature agreeable, we might not even know if seepage was occurring. I hear some of you thinking ‘Then it’s not a problem,’ but that’s not necessarily true. There could be some kind of mold, fungus or other organism that could start growing, possibly leading to health problems for our colonists. Water flows, and ice can expand and create cracks. This could - over time - undermine (so to speak) our efforts at adequate support.

If you own a house, you know you need to keep an eye open for such things, and if you don’t deal with small problems that crop up, you’ll eventually pay for it with a huge repair bill. But these tunnels would not be for an individual’s use; it sounds more like they would be cities, as least to begin with. Owned by committee, you might say. Would that ‘committee’ have the foresight to watch for and deal with these types of problems while they were small? Or would they be political entities, always kicking the financial can down the road?

Okay, if you don’t like the idea of a cave-dwelling, we’ll keep looking. I’ll see what else I can ‘dig up’ for you to consider.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

Martian Shelter 3

Today, let’s take a look at the 3rd design for a Martian home:

3. A greenhouse-type structure constructed of multiple layers of plastic film, built in such a way that visible light could get in, but infrared light (heat) could not get back out. That type of glass is sometimes used in Earth greenhouses, and could plastic be any more difficult?

Seems a bit unusual, to think of living in a greenhouse. Houseplants are one thing, but to actually live in your garden? I suppose one could get used to it, as long as you don’t grow something that sets off your hay fever. And to avoid the ‘fishbowl’ feeling, you could erect walls in some of the more private areas, even if those ‘walls’ were only curtains.

Have they really thought this through? There’s still all that harsh radiation that doesn’t seem to be considered, and will multiple layers of flimsy plastic keep enough heat in during the Martian night? The dust on Mars gets blown around quite a bit, despite the thin air, and settles onto everything. The rovers using solar panels have to hunker down and conserve their energy whenever a dust storm comes along, some of which encompass the entire planet and last for weeks. If solar panels can’t get enough power to work, how will plants do in constant shadow?

Not too thrilled about this one, either. That under-ground balloon is looking better.

Like I said, no split-level ranches, no colonials or tudors. At least the concept of a greenhouse is familiar, so maybe we’ll find something we can wrap our heads around yet. You never know, the next one might be exactly what you want!

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

Martian Shelter 2

Okay, last time, we looked at the balloon-type house/shelter. It sounded like a lot of work to get it set up, supported, tied down and covered in sand. Not to mention the care that would be needed to see that it didn’t get any holes poked in it. Would it come with a set of ‘instant bandages’ you could use to patch any accidental holes? Personally, I think I’d make that a condition before I agreed to buy, but maybe that’s just me.

Today, we’re going to look at a slightly different possibility, one that apparently does not require shoveling sand around:

2. An above-ground shelter made from multiple layers of plastic film with low density foam between them. The thinking is that the Martian atmosphere is so thin, it would not ‘suck’ heat from the shelter walls. I’m left wondering about the radiation that was considered omni-present and probably deadly in years gone by. And... really? It’s cold, but it’s a thin cold, so that doesn’t count? Right, and 120° in the desert is hot, but it’s dry, so that’s okay.

Can you show me the Heat/AC power consumption on that type of shelter?

We recently visited the Kennedy Space Center, where the display for Atlantis (shuttle) explained that excess heat was disposed of by running tubes of heated liquid into the shuttle bay doors, which were opened to let that heat disperse. There’s a lot less ‘atmosphere’ in space than on Mars, but heat only gets sucked away when you want it to be, and doesn’t get sucked away when you want to keep it? You have to work at it, either way, and I’m just not convinced flimsy plastic and foam is enough insulation.

Also, I have to assume there is some sort of support system for this ‘tent’. Who gets to put that up? And tie the walls down? Once again, it’s going to need air locks, so will those be pre-fabbed and attached to the ‘walls’ before lift-off? But, since there isn’t any mention of burying it in the sand, would there be sections of the plastic film that would be transparent so the new Martians can look outside and see what the weather is like? Of course, the low density foam in those areas would need to be transparent, also, but I’m doubting that foam could avoid distorting the view.

Well, this is a little mind-boggling, isn’t it? You wanted a cottage to raise a family in, maybe with a picket fence, and all we’ve looked at so far indicates your actual choices are either a balloon buried in sand or a tent that may or may not retain any heat when the wind blows. Buck up, we’ve just begun to look at the possibilities. We’ll find something that’s just right for you.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

Martian Shelter 1

People are finally giving serious thought to the possibility of living someplace off the Earth. Thought we’d take a look at what those new house designs might look like. Seeing what might be available, once we get to go. We’ll start with Mars, since everybody’s so excited about the possibility of getting there in the next decade or so.

The first shelters will be shipped to Mars from Earth. Maybe they’ll be shipped ahead of time and need to be activated when humans arrive, but probably, the shelter will arrive with them. After all, it worked on the moon, though the shelter in that case was a piece of space ship. It served the purpose for the short time that anybody was there. They even brought part of it back with them. Kind of like living in your car, do you suppose?

So here’s some of the ideas that are floating around for housing on Mars:

1. One suggestion for an early shelter is an inflated balloon-type structure. Think of some kind of thick, air-tight fabric that could be unfolded and laid out in the desired position, hooked up to a supply of air, and blown up. The fabric could be augmented with support structures, and finally, the entire thing could be covered with sand for extra insulation, both from thermal variance and radiation. The average Martian temperature is -80° F, plus the air is mighty thin, so you have to have plenty of insulation. You’d probably have to tie this puppy down before you started inflating it, or risk it floating away in the breeze, but I’m sure the instructions would point that out.

After reading about this proposal, I’m left wondering how the door would be added. It would have to be an air lock, or else opening the door really would mean you’d let all the heat out! I keep thinking an airlock would be made of metal, but perhaps they could fashion them out of plastic or something similar, and they could be added to the ‘balloon’ before it left Earth. Would they only put one door in this balloon, or would they add a back door, too? And who is going to shovel all that sand on top and around? Would they dig a hole in the ground to hold the balloon? Sounds like a lot of hard work, if the ground is frozen or otherwise solid. What’s the circumference of this balloon? Will they have to walk (or drive) all over it to get the sand distributed?

I suppose it has possibilities, but it really sounds an awful lot like a fixer-upper.

Well, phooey. We’ve only looked at one possibility, and I’m out of words. Can’t make these things too long, or so they tell me. We’ll have to continue this search for a new home next week, because there are definitely other possibilities. But don’t get your hopes up; I didn’t see a single split-level ranch on the list.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zine/mars-makeshelter.html

A Girl’s Best Friend...

...is a Diamond... Planet?

55 Cancri-e was discovered in 2004, circling a star not that far from us. It was called a “super-Earth”, because it was rocky like the Earth and larger. Its radius is twice Earth’s, making its mass about 8 times ours, while it speeds around its star in only 18 hours. To do that, it has to be so close to the star’s surface that the planet’s surface reaches temperatures around 3,900° F (2,100° C). {Just a little warmer than Nebraska in August.}

{By the way, the ‘e’ of 55 Cancri-e means this was the 4th planet found in orbit around this star. (The star itself is designated A.)The other 3 reside even closer. Where does the star end and planet(s) begin? More recently, a 5th planet - ‘f’ - has been discovered, with a year lasting about 261 Earth days.}

If 55 Cancri-e had a planetary chemistry similar to Earth’s, the temperature and mass might mean it was covered with oozing ‘supercritical fluids’ (gases at such a high pressure they would act more like liquids). So it was imagined, at one time. But further study has revealed that it has a planetary chemistry far different.

For one thing, it apparently has no water on it at all.

Astronomers felt 55 Cancri-e was probably composed almost exclusively of carbon (diamond & graphite), iron, silicon carbide and possibly silicates. More than 1/3 of its mass could be pure diamond, which would be more than the entire Earth. Try sticking that into an engagement ring!

However, the diamond part was probably not just one big chunk. They thought the planet’s surface was covered in graphite and diamond rock, rather than our familiar water and granite. Actually, the Earth has far, far less carbon in comparison. So they tried to figure out what that difference meant. This different planetary chemistry could mean 55 Cancre-e could have had a very different thermal evolution than Earth and strange plate tectonic processes, which would mean bizarre types of volcanism, mountain formation and seismic activity.

But a new analysis indicated that 55 CancriA (the star in question) had more oxygen than previously thought. That might mean 55 Cancri-e might not have quite as much carbon as they had thought. Or it might mean nothing. The processes of star and planet formation are not fully understood, but it is known that the composition of a planet does not always match that of its parent. So the studies continued.

In 2016, observers detected hydrogen, helium and possibly hydrogen cyanide in ‘e’s atmosphere. In 2017, they decided there might be a global ocean... made of lava, so no skinny dipping. And that e’s atmospheric pressure was about 1.4 bar, so a slightly thicker atmosphere than ours.

If all this sounds familiar, well... We visited the 55 Cancri system on or about 6Sept2017, in the 2nd episode of my ‘Weird Planets’ series of blogs. But I think I found more details this time, so hope you enjoyed ‘catching up’.

Oh, yes, in July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving ‘proper’ names to some exoplanets and their host stars. The name selected for 55 CancriA was Copernicus, and e was named Janssen. (Yes, all his known siblings got named, too.)

https://www.space.com/18011-super-earth-planet-diamond-world.html

https://www.space.com/23138-diamond-planet-super-earth-discovery.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/55_Cancri_e

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121011-diamond-planet-space-solar-system-astronomy-science/

https://www.cnet.com/news/hubble-probes-atmosphere-on-diamond-planet/

A Never Ending Pit

Depression sucks.

There was a time when people didn’t talk about relatives who suffered from depression. Those doing the suffering were expected to also not talk about it. Nobody wanted to hear you were sad. If you had kidney stones or a broken leg, friends wanted to hear all the sordid details (or at least they said they did) so that they could commiserate, wish you well and internally think, “At least I’m not having that problem!”

But there were no known fixes for depression, or many other mental problems, so no one wanted to hear about them. What good would it do to wish you well when everybody knew there was no way to fix the problem?

There are a number of treatments for depression these days, usually chemical. And it’s good that there’s several treatment options, because some of them won’t work well with your body chemistry, some will have terrible side effects, AND after you’ve found one that works, your body will eventually become used to it, and it will cease to work.

Okay, I’ve been on 4 different anti-depressants in the last 6-9 months. It took me time to realize my ‘old’ pill wasn’t working any more, and more time to make my doctor realize I was serious about needing a new anti-depressant. Then 3 weeks on a new medication (You’re supposed to give each medication 6 weeks to see how well it’s going to work.) that had me sleeping 14 hours a day and groggy the rest of the time, then on a half dose of another medicine, got it upped to a full dose, and now I’ve been on yet another medicine for 1 week.

During that time period, I’ve gotten so used to the major symptoms of depression that they almost seem ‘normal’. I am depressed; I give mostly the same answers to the questions that are intended to see if I’m depressed; I score the same or possibly worse, depending on the day.

I’ve gotten used to the major symptoms. Now I’m starting to notice the little things I don’t remember noticing before:

I can only focus on 1 thing at a time. If somebody interrupts me to ask a question, I can’t shift gears to answer them. I just sit there, engine running (I’m ready to do something) and gears grinding (my thoughts are still on what I was doing, but it no longer makes sense to me, and eventually, I will start wondering why I was interrupted and what did they want me to do?)

Flowers for Algernon. I don’t remember the author’s name. And it’s mainstream fiction; I had to read it in some English literature class, probably in high school. But the last of the story describes the mood that sometimes overwhelms me these days; I can remember that I used to have a brain. One that worked good.

I’d look for the light at the end of the tunnel, but I’m not in a tunnel. I’m in a pit. There is no light shining down into it. Yet. And I’m getting pretty impatient to climb out of it. I hope I’m not running out of medicines to try.

Hiatus

Dear Friends,
Please forgive me. About a month ago, a friend came to me with a request. He had lost the gloves for his Darth Vader costume and needed to replace them. He had the pattern and the leather, so... how hard could it be? Once I figured out the pattern, how to adjust it to fit his hand, and how to keep my (hand) stitches even and straight, it turned out not to be too difficult, just a huge time suck. After 3 days of devoting hours to a fresh start incorporating all the things I'd figured out, I am about half way done with his right glove. But nothing else is getting done in my house. So I need 2-3 days to finish this glove, another week to do the left glove, and then a few days to get a new post ready. So... look for my next post around 23May. Let's hope my hands have stopped cramping by then.

Thanks for understanding.
Trudy

Be Cool, Star

Unfortunately, I only have 1 reference article for this week’s blog, and it was listed as ‘Opinion’. So, if you don’t already, take this week’s blog with 2-3 grains of salt. I did try to follow the link to the original article in the Astronomical Journal, but I’m not subscribed to it, so couldn’t get past their first page. From the looks of some of the titles listed for their current issue, their articles are seriously geeky, which is why I sometimes have to rely on someone else to explain it to me. Having said all that, hand me an ice cube for my drink, and let’s get started.

NASA’s Spitzer space telescope (launched in 2003) has found 14 of the coldest stars known, but it’s expected that far more are waiting to be discovered. These 14 objects are hundreds of light-years away and are thought to have temperatures 350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s bitterly cold for stars.

These are ‘failed stars’, also known as brown dwarfs, which have been known to exist for years. Spitzer and its sister, WISE, could recognize them by the hundreds before too long. Spitzer was assigned specific patches of space to study, but WISE has been tasked with studying the entire sky. WISE’s task is 40 times the size of Spitzer’s.

Brown dwarfs form like any other star, out of collapsing balls of gas and dust. But they are puny things, and never collect enough mass to ignite nuclear fusion and start shining. The smallest known so far are 5 to 10 times the mass of Jupiter, and there are giant gas planets of that mass around other stars. Without nuclear fusion, what little internal heat these bodies started with eventually faded away.

It’s possible that WISE could find an object about Neptune-sized (or bigger) in the far reaches of our solar system. Raise your hand if you’ve heard the story of Planet X, a large planet so far out we can’t see it, but it has some disruptive tendencies for the orbits of the outer planets, dwarf planets and other objects we know of. Some scientists speculate it might even be a brown dwarf companion to our sun.

So are these 14 examples of planets or stars? Well, they’re hot for one, and unbelievably cold for the other. I assume someone will decide what they are, eventually.

www.networkworld.com/article/2231137/nasa-finds-14-new--seriously-chilled-stars.html

Where is Calukmul?

The original paragraph I saw about Calakmul consisted of 39 words, but something caught my attention. Usually, I might find 3 or 4 articles on the subject, each 1-2 pages long, and each repeating (or possibly contradicting) information in the other articles.

Calukmul’s different. The wikipedia article must be over 20 pages, and I don’t rely solely on wikipedia. So, let’s start, keeping in mind that I may have to boil things down drastically.

Calakmul (AKA Kalakmul) was a large and powerful Mayan city in what is now the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the Yucatan greater Peten Basin, 35 km (22 miles) from the Guatemalan border. During the Classic Period, Calakmul administered a large domain known as the Kingdom of the Snake. This region was marked by the emblem glyph of the snake head, read as ‘Kaan’. It is believed that the city existed from 550 BC to 900 AD. It held ‘powerhouse’ status from 500 AD to 800 AD.

Some of the major buildings can be traced back to at least 350 AD, with a 40-foot tall monument built sometime between 400 and 200 BC. This city’s long life gave plenty of time to create huge structures, following the Maya tradition of enlarging existing buildings by adding new layers and extending the lower floors. The earliest dated inscription found there is from 431 AD.

During the height of Calukmul’s existance, the city is believed to have had a population of 50,000, and 6,750 structures have been found there. Structure 2, their great pyramid, is the largest structure, standing over 45 m (148 ft), and contains 4 tombs. As explained in the previous paragraph, in MesoAmerica, the pyramid was increased in size by building upon the existing temple. Calakmul’s central monumental architecture covers about 2 sq km (0.77 sq miles), and the entire city - mostly covered with dense residential structures - is 20 sq km (7.7 sq miles).

Calukmul was linked to allied cities by causeway. It sits on a rise some 115 ft above and east of a large seasonal swamp, which was an important source of water. This seasonal swamp was linked to a sophisticated water-control system that encircled an 8.5 square mile area, considered the inner city. The swamp also provided fertile soil along its edge and access to abundant flint nodules. The rise was a limestone dome which the Maya had leveled. Homes began along the edge of the swamp, but during the Classic period, they were also built on high ground and small islands in the swamp.

But the swamp was not the only source of water, for Calakmul had an extensive system of at least 13 reservoirs, including the largest one found in the Maya world. Together, these held enough water to serve 50,000 to 100,000 people. There’s no sign that these reservoirs were used to irrigate crops, which were apparently dependant on the seasonal swamp, as mentioned before.

From 1 to 1000 AD, this area received regular rainfall, which would have made it fairly easy to support the city’s population of 50,000. Growing up in small towns, this sounds huge to me. But I also spent a large portion of my adult life living in Kansas City and Omaha, either one of which would dwarf Calukmul. When you look at the entire Snake kingdom, there were also 20 secondary cities, tertiary and quaternary sites, and rural areas. The total population of this 5,000 sq mile kingdom is estimated to have reached 1.75 million during the late Classic period. However, during the Terminal Class period, Calukmul’s population dramatically declined, and the rural population plummeted.

Throughout the Classic Period, Calukmul had an intense rivalry with the city of Tikal, which lay 100 km (62 miles) southeast. At one point, Calukmul and its allies defeated Tikal, but 150 years later, Tikal rose up anew, and ultimately, Calukmul not only lost its powerhouse status, but ceased to exist at all. Calukmul’s recorded history ends abruptly in 909 AD, about 200 years after Tikal defeated its king and sapped its power.

The great rivalry between Calukmul and Tikel could have been more than trying to prove which city could grab the most resources. Tikel was a powerful city before Calukmul. Tikal was strongly influenced by the central Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan, and its rulers were male only. Calukmul, on the other hand, seems derived from the city of El Mirador, and both a king and queen often ruled together. However, for whatever reason, when I came across a (partial) list of Calukmul rulers, it assumed all the names were kings, with no explanation of why no queens’ names were included.

The long abandoned Calukmul was rediscovered by air on December 29, 1931. Its current name is Mayan for ‘two adjacent pyramids’. In ancient times, it was Ox Te’ Tuun, which means ‘Three Stones.’ It was visited in 1932-1938, and a map was begun of the city, but work then ceased until 1982-1994. It is now a UNESCO site, contained within a UNESCO biodiversity reserve, and is the subject of a large-scale project of the National Institute of Anthropology and History. Unfortunately, the city was built with a soft limestone, so it is suffering from severe erosion, and many of the earlier inscriptions cannot be made out.

I’m very taken by this information, which was fairly uniform over all 3 articles I chose. In fact, after reading the Wikipedia article, the other 2 I chose were... monotonously uniform with it, although not nearly as heavy with intimate history of battles and the names of warring kings. But given these facts as I’ve gathered them, I can almost picture Calukmul, from start to finish, but particularly during its hey-day. Of course, that doesn’t mean it actually looked like anything I’ve dreamt up, but it’s more than what I’ve gotten from the few Maya ruins I’ve actually visited. What about you? Do you see anything more here than armies at war?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calakmul

https://www.locogringo.com/mexico/ways-to-play/mayan-ruins-archaeological-sites/calakmul-ruins/

http://mayanruins.info/mexico/calakmul-mexico/

Cold and Salty

When you and I think of someplace nice to live, we probably aren’t thinking “really cold and super salty”. And yet, there are organisms that do.

After 18 months of gathering cold salty water from remote lakes located in Antarctica - including during the extreme winter - scientists discovered... microbes! One location was Deep Lake, whose water is so salty, it remains unfrozen down to -20°.

At least one strain of microbes contained plasmids, which are small molecules of DNA which can replicate independently in a host cell and often contain useful genes. A plasmid can also grab a piece of DNA from the host cell and incorporate it in itself. They’re certainly complicated, for being so tiny.

Viruses have a protective protein coat that helps them invade unsuspecting cells. Once inside, the virus forces the cell to replicate virus DNA and package it into protein shells, which are pushed out of the ‘nest’ to find their own host cell and repeat the process. Most viruses damage the host cell.

One particular plasmid - called pR1SE - is so much like a virus, the scientists weren’t sure how to classify it. Before this Antarctica discovery, plasmids were known to move from cell to cell when 2 cells were touching, or they wandered around as a piece of naked DNA. However, pR1SE must have thought it too cold in Antarctica to wander around naked, so it had developed a coating of proteins that could attach to a cell wall. Once attached, the protein coat would produce buds (called vesicles), and those buds broke off, taking bits of plasmid DNA to do the same with other cells of the same species.

Virus? Plasmid? This pR1SE version seemed to be something in between. In fact, having discovered this mechanism, scientists are wondering if possibly viruses are ‘more advanced’ versions of plasmids.

Another microbe found in those hypersaline lakes is a ‘cannibal virus’, or virophage, the 3rd virophage ever discovered. This type of virus only infects cells that are already infected with a ‘regular’ virus. As the regular virus uses the cell’s mechanisms to reproduce copies of itself, the virophage inserts its genome into the virus, thus getting the virus to reproduce virophage DNA. The number of copies of the regular virus is greatly reduced, so damage is reduced.

There’s plenty of tiny life in them there super-cold, super-frigid lakes, from things that hardly seem like life (regular plasmids), to something slightly more advanced (pR1SE), through another advancement (viruses) and right to something (virophage) that can try to limit the damage done by the prior version (viruses). Who could have guessed that life in Antarctica would be so complicated?

So, let’s take a lesson from this. Life is complicated. If you are creating a new planet or even just a new continent, try to make the life cycle complicated. I have problems with a planet of sand that produces butterflies and giant worms, and that’s all. If the giant worms only have butterflies to eat, how do they get so big? And what do the butterflies eat?

https://phys.org/news/2017-08-antarctic-salt-loving-microbes-insights-evolution.html

http://www.sciencealert.com/cannibal-viruses-in-antarctica

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2144518-antarctic-mystery-microbe-could-tell-us-where-viruses-came-from/

Ancient Massacre

Why do humans go to war? It has long been believed that warfare began once early humans abandoned the carefree lifestyle of hunting and gathering in favor of building a home, farming, and establishing villages. People in the next village or the next valley, it was theorized, grew envious of their neighbor’s ‘luxury’, and decided to take it from them.

A single archaeological dig in Kenya may up-end that theory.

The dig site is Nataruk, which is currently dry scrub brush territory some distance from the southwest shore of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya. Human skeletons found at the Nataruk site have been dated to about 10,000 years ago, when Lake Turkana was much larger and the area of the site would have been fertile, perhaps even a marshland. Lots of animals would have used this area to drink, so hunting and gathering would have provided plenty.

What was found at Nataruk are the remains of 27 people, which included 12 skeletons that were relatively complete. When alive, they ranged in age from Old (back then, that meant over 45) to the very young, including one who either had not yet been born, or was an infant being held by one of the women. The archeological team who discovered them believe they died violently or were left to die, and were left unburied. They point to blunt-force trauma to some of the skulls, arrowheads and spear points found embedded in other skeletons, various other broken bones, and indications that some had their hands tied together. Other archeologists debate that these skeletal injuries might have happened after the people were dead.

These 27 people - who all appear to have died at the same time - included 8 men, 8 women and 6 children, with 5 others whose age and gender could not be determined.

Part of the reason why warfare has been assumed to have started after people settled into villages was because - before this - evidence of violence between nomadic groups has been sparse and hard to identify. Researchers mention the Jebel Sahaba graveyard (located in modern Sudan), which is dated to 13,000 years ago and contains the remains of some people obviously killed in violent skirmishes. That this is a cemetery indicates a settled community.

But, my mind says, the entire global population did not start farming and settling into villages at the same time. If food from plants, hunting and fishing were enough to sustain your tribe, and all you had to do was move a few miles every so often, why bother settling down? (Especially if you’ve never heard of such a thing.) Or maybe Nataruk was somewhat more of a settlement than a temporary camp, because the hunting, fishing and gathering was so good.

Whichever way it was, there might have been several ‘nomadic’ groups in the general area. Perhaps some were greedier than others. Or perhaps good eating led to more mouths to feed, and then the climate ‘shifted’ (the wetter late Pleistocene era slid into the drier early Holocene). It wouldn’t take much for the hunting, fishing and gathering to become less bountiful.

I’m not sure I believe that warfare came along only when people settled down, grew crops and started communities. They have found plenty of evidence of violence between nomadic individuals, so I’m not sure why they think warfare (between groups instead of individuals) wouldn’t have happened. They say the earliest group skirmishes happened because one group wanted something the other group had. Why would it be any different if neither group was settled? If a group of nomads were moving, desperately looking for food, and they stumbled across another group’s campfire while they were roasting a few nuts and cutting up a couple rabbits, why would the first group NOT want what the 2nd group had?

It’s something to remember if you are writing about other times and other cultures. We probably have to start by looking humans and their reactions to various circumstances, but I can’t imagine if 2 groups of nomads ran into each other, and neither had enough food to feel their own group, that they’d be very friendly with each other. If you want your alien species to always be friendly, no matter what the circumstances, you’d better figure out how that worked during their prehistory days. Why would sharing resources that really wouldn’t have been enough for 1 group be of benefit to them?

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/21/463835225/discovery-of-ancient-massacre-suggests-war-predated-settlements

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ancient-brutal-massacre-may-be-earliest-evidence-war-180957884/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-35370374

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nataruk