Suntans and Nuclear Power
Jul 31st
A little bit about the greenest political people in Colorado, an Obesity Tax from The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Germany bans the incandescent light bulb, suntan beds linked to melanoma cancer, and a Big site to see in Boulder.
“The Hurt Locker” A Film of Ultimate Reward
Jul 30th
A Film of Ultimate Reward
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE HURT LOCKER is perhaps the best film on the war in Iraq you will ever see, if not the best film on war itself.
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the story is about the day-to-day experiences of an Army three-man detonation team whose job is to defuse any improvised explosive devices that are found before they can be detonated.
This is more than tricky, because an IED can be exploded on contact, exploded by a timer, or exploded by someone watching from safety who can set it off by using a cell phone.
So, a team consists of two men with rifles who scan the area on the lookout for anything suspicious while the team leader dons a heavy bomb suit and walks up to the bomb, which is usually hidden or covered, and tries to defuse it.
The story begins in 2004 in Baghdad, and one such team has just lost their leader in an explosion, when their company has only 38 days left in their rotation before they can be shipped back to the United States.
Staff Sergeant James, played superbly by Jeremy Renner, joins the team, and he is a “cowboy,” a “wild man” as one colonel calls him out of admiration, and he doesn’t always work by the rules. When he comes across a trunkfull of bombs in a car, he takes off his bomb suit, telling his team, “There’s enough bang in there to blow us all to Jesus. If I’m going to die, I want to die comfortable.”
You have heard of “black humor”? Sgt. James has a sense of humor that could be called “black-hole humor.”
When asked by an officer what the best way is to defuse a bomb, Sgt. James tells him “the way you won’t die.”
As the days and the defused bombs go by, we get a countdown to the number of days left in rotation, and a sense of foreboding envelopes the team and the audience.
The action is not just bombs and defusings and explosions, however, We see the team at work and at play, plus their interaction with other soldiers and civilians, and the music is haunting.
The title of the film is a phrase that refers to “a place of ultimate pain.”
THE HURT LOCKER is a film of ultimate pleasure and reward.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
Skyguy – Why Is Mars Red?
Jul 25th
We call it “The Red Planet.” But how did it get that way? SkyGuy looks at some possible explanations.
Mars! People have always been curious about this next-door neighbor of ours. First, Mars looks really cool. It is a beautiful shade of rusty red and it is often very bright in the night sky. Also, it is similar to Earth in some ways. So people can’t help but wonder whether there’s life there.
If we find evidence, no matter how small, that life once existed on Mars, that greatly increases the odds that there is life elsewhere in the universe. Maybe even intelligent life.
There have been several missions to Mars using robotic landers and satellites. Five years ago, NASA sent two rovers to Mars: Spirit and Opportunity. Those little rovers were designed to last just a few months, but five years later they are STILL GOING! They’ve gathered more information about our brother planet than we could have hoped for.
One of the most important things scientists want to know about Mars is this: is there now, or was there ever, liquid water there? Water is so important because if it is there, that could mean two things:
First, it increases the chances that there was or is some basic life on Mars.
Second, it would make it a lot easier for humans to visit Mars. We wouldn’t have to bring so much water with us from Earth.
The less stuff you have to bring with you, the easier it is to travel!
Scientists know that there is water on Mars, but right now it exists only as ice.
Mars is too cold and the atmosphere is too thin for liquid water to exist on the surface of the planet. But in the past, things might have been very different there. Many canyons and other features on mars sure look like they might have been created by erosion from running water. It’s possible there still is liquid water under the surface somewhere.
A lot of people want to know: Why is Mars red?
The answer to that question ties back to our search for water there — but in a strange way. Mars looks red because the Martian soil is rich in a substance called iron oxide. Iron oxide is just another name for “rust.”
Rust gets made when oxygen (a key part of both air and water) comes in long-term contact with iron. Over time, oxygen combines with the iron at an atomic level. And that turns into iron oxide.
On earth, iron usually gets rusty when it’s exposed to water.
This is why you don’t want to leave iron exposed to the elements and let rain fall on it. Rust is a bad thing for buildings and cars. It causes the metal to become weak and brittle. And if you landed your spaceship on Mars, you certainly wouldn’t want it to rust!
But here’s a puzzle: If there’s no liquid water on Mars, then how did the whole planet get so rusty?
For a long time, scientists thought it was possible that there had been liquid water on Mars billions of years ago. In fact, evidence that Mars was once a very wet planet has been growing steadily. So it seems logical that, if at one time water flowed freely on the Martian landscape, it might have combined with rocks that contain lots of iron — creating the rust that we see today.
But in 1997, NASA’s Pathfinder found that Martian soil contains more iron than Martian rocks. So where did the extra iron come from? Maybe meteorites? Well, that makes sense. We see craters all over Mars. Clearly, lots of meteorites have hit that planet.
I feel kinda sorry for Mars — Getting rocks thrown at it all the time …. that must hurt!
There is another possible answer, though.
Recently, scientists in Denmark suggested that the red dust on Mars might have been formed by a stranger process: the ongoing grinding of quartz and magnetite.
By simply tumbling these two kinds of rocks in a flask for several months, scientists were able to create the same kind of red dust that appears on Mars. No water was needed at all! The only thing you would need is wind, and there’s plenty of that on Mars.
OK, I’m not saying that the rust on Mars definitely comes from wind grinding up certain kinds of rocks. The truth is, we just don’t know for certain why Mars is red.
Yet.
But scientists are still working hard to answer this question.
Hmmm… Who knows, maybe you will be the scientist (or astronaut) who finally figures that out! And how cool would that be?
Personally, I like to think that at one time there was a lot of water on Mars, and that the rust is what’s leftover.
I like thinking of all that water on the surface of Mars.
It is a terribly dry, inhospitable place today and I like to think it looks that way partially because of all that water that used to flow on Mars billions of years ago.
But science doesn’t work like that.
You can imagine all kinds of answers, but the real job is to explore, test, and figure it out for real. That’s fun too.
Mars is a great planet to study. Sure, it doesn’t have oceans and so far it looks very unlikely there is any life there. But by sending these rovers and orbiters, we are learning so much about the planet’s history, its climate, and a lot about the potential for life on Mars in the past.
So remember … the sky is not the limit. You can go a lot farther than that. Just … Maybe pick a cozier place than Mars.
