Here’s some evidence that things are not so sedate on the surface of our moon.
Photos from the latest gizmo to get a close look at our natural satellite reveal signs of geologic activity sometime within the last 50 million years. In other words, just yesterday. This and yesterday’s Super Tuesday results pretty much put a fork in former Speaker Gingrich’s chances to be our next President. Who wants to spend precious tax dollars building and traveling to Moon Base Newt when all the fun of leaping around in low-G could be ruined by a rolling Moonquake? Next thing you know we’ll discover the destructive tracks of an airless tornado. All the disadvantages of Earth and still nothing green? No thanks, Newt.

But whether or not we ever go there to use it as a leaping off place, the moon will remain a beguiling bauble in our night sky – a maker of songs and silent witness to a trillion wishes. Who knew, during those times when we stood shivering in the moonlight, the moon itself might have been shaking too? Seismic activity is more charming at a safe distance. Now that we know it happens, perhaps exceptionally patient lovers will be able to see the lunar surface tremble.

Blue Moon, you saw me standing alone.
Without a dream in my heart.
Without a love of my own.

Blue Moon, how did you sense what I ache for?
A love I silently spake for.
Is that what you had a quake for?

And then suddenly there appeared above me
a crash of rocks and dust – a lunar din
I heard somebody whisper ‘Can you love me?”
and when I looked the moon had cracked a grin.

Blue Moon, now I’m no longer alone
without a dream in my heart
without a love of my own.

And it so COULD be our way station to Mars! Why, just tonight, in the eastern sky, the Blue Moon will be quite close to the mysterious Red Planet. Almost exactly the distance from one side to the other of your clenched fist when held at arms length.
Why couldn’t we just step across?

What to you like to look at in the night sky?

You generated an impressive conversation on Friday, Babooners. Based on your response to the question-of-the-day, I conclude that this is a group that draws inspiration from the idea of being able to launch and head a government agency. If there was any doubt, that confirms it. The place is full of liberals!

And there’s nothing wrong with that! But it’s good to know who you’re dealing with.

Government agencies do tend to create their own atmosphere and climate – they are not known for being responsive to outside conditions. The market-based model some would impose on government is much more inclined to follow the latest trend and capitalize on the current fashion. If photo views on flickr are any guide, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should immediately re-write its mission and change its name to OPEPA – the Off Planet Earth Photography Agency. If NASA were a movie studio, the moguls running it would most certainly do this – give the people what they want until they lose interest. Right now, the people seem to want distant pictures of our beautiful planet.

Since posting it last week, NASA’s latest photo montage of Earth as seen from a distance has been viewed 3.2 million times. And that’s just for side A, featuring North and Central America. Side B, showing Africa, the Sinai Peninsula and India was posted yesterday. The photos are highly detailed, and were taken by a satellite orbiting much closer to the surface than these photos suggest. Click on one and with patience, you’ll have an opportunity to look at a highly detailed image. It is, frankly, amazing.

The Suomi NPP satellite had to make six passes at a height of 512 miles to get enough information to stitch together an image that looks like it’s orbiting at a distance of almost 8,000 miles. This sophisticated gizmo was launched at the end of October, and already it is delivering startling photos. Take a look.

Sometimes, perspective makes all the difference.

What does it take to see something clearly?

There is a standard type of story often seen in movies where a character is set up as a sure failure – the kind of engaging but doomed loser who faces insurmountable odds and will, under normal circumstances, succumb to a much stronger opponent.

And yet … for reasons that are inexplicable, our hero emerges victorious in spite of it all. We love these tales of amazing, unlikely underdogs.

Add to that list the tale of Comet Lovejoy, a recent discovery by an amateur astronomer in Australia – Terry Lovejoy. Already we are ahead of the game – our sky spotter has a perfectly charming and appropriately seasonal name. My guess is that a comet named after amateur astronomer Neil Grudge-Spite would not get the same kind of global press.

Lovejoy detected the comet in late November – early enough for scientists to train several space based detectors on the object, to track its certain demise as to streaks towards the sun. Here’s one description of the expected chain of events as posted on a Navy website dedicated to Sungrazing Comets just days after news of Lovejoy’s solar approach was announced:

“Welcome to the beginning of the end of Comet Lovejoy’s billions of years long journey through space. In less than 10 hours time, the comet will graze some 120,000km above the solar surface, through the several million degree solar corona, and — in my opinion — completely evaporate. We have here an exceptionally rare opportunity to observe the complete vaporization of a relatively large comet, and we have approximately 18 instruments on five different satellites that are trying to do just that. “

Here’s the amazing part – the comet skitters around the sun … and EMERGES! The comet watchers are dumbfounded. You can see video of the approach and escape here:

And here is the same skeptical Navy observer quoted earlier, delightedly eating crow:

“I don’t know where to begin. I simply don’t know. What an extraordinary 24hrs! I suppose the first thing to say is this: I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And I have never been so happy to be wrong! For the past two weeks I have been saying that Comet Lovejoy would not survive perihelion in “any appreciable form”. When I said this, I envisioned that we would see some very diffuse component maybe last a few hours after perhelion, but not much else. I was spectacularly incorrect!
Last night, between 7pm and 8pm (ET), the SDO team blogged and tweeted live the passage of the comet through SDO’s extreme ultraviolet AIA camera. Not long after the first images were made available came the announcement that the comet was seen plunging into the solar atmosphere. I expected this, but was nonetheless delighted. What I did not expect was that a short time later it was seen to re-emerge!
Somehow it survived being immersed in the several million-degree solar corona for almost an hour …”

Lovejoy, our hero! And here’s the victory parade – a shot of the comet’s tail taken from the International Space Station by Commander Dan Burbank, who called it “… probably the most amazing thing I’ve seen in space ….” The glowing green tail of the comet Lovejoy, emerging just ahead of the sun from behind the Earth’s horizon.

Who’s your favorite underdog?

Having spent the weekend discussing places we’ve lived, let’s turn our attention now to places we may live some day in the distant future. Or, dear baboons, places where other restless creatures already live. Places they may be longing to leave.

Which brings us to Kepler 22b, the most recently discovered “Goldilocks” planet – a place orbiting a different star where the temperature is ‘not too cold’ and ‘not too hot’. Initial observations indicate conditions could be favorable for human-like life.
That is, if the planet has a surface.

Dang! When it comes to the nuts and bolts of existence, there’s always that complicated bit about needing a surface to sit on. Not to mention some of the other necessary valuables, like having to have water to drink, food to eat and air to breathe. Air is especially important.

In writing about the notion of a “Goldilocks” planet, Dennis Overbye of the NY Times identifies an event that had to happen before life as we know it on Earth could get its start – The Great Oxidation.

“The seeds for animal life were sown sometime in the dim past when some bacterium learned to use sunlight to split water molecules and produce oxygen and sugar — photosynthesis, in short. The results began to kick in 2.4 billion years ago when the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere began to rise dramatically.

The Great Oxidation Event, as it is called in geology, “was clearly the biggest event in the history of the biosphere,” said Dr. Ward from Washington. It culminated in what is known as the Cambrian explosion, about 550 million years ago, when multicellular creatures, that is to say, animals, appeared in sudden splendiferous profusion in the fossil record. We were off to the Darwinian races. Whatever happened to cause this flowering of species helped elevate Earth someplace special, say the Rare Earthers. Paleontologists argue about whether it could have been a spell of bad climate known as Snowball Earth, the breakup of a previous supercontinent, or something else.

Eventually though, Earth’s luck will run out. As the Sun ages it will get brighter, astronomers say, increasing the weathering and washing away of carbon dioxide. At the same time, as the interior of the Earth cools, volcanic activity will gradually subside, cutting off the replenishing of the greenhouse gas.

A billion years from now, Dr. Brownlee said, there will not be enough carbon dioxide left to support photosynthesis, that is to say, the oxygen we breathe.

And so much for us.

“Even Earth, wonderful and special as it is, will only have animal life for one billion years,” Dr. Brownlee said.”

Which all seems rather wonderful and dismal at the same time. Clearly the clock is running and as many science fiction writers have already suggested, it is high time we start looking for another place to be before Earth becomes uninhabitable. Is Kepler 22b it? And in this time of ritual celebration, why is it that the major religions have traditional festivals that inspire and create a sense of wonder, while science offers us nothing except another episode of “MythBusters“?

Perhaps scientists should develop something celebretory that can spark the imagination of the unfaithful.

What would be one of the features of a festival built around “The Great Oxidation Event”? “Oxi-Claus?”