We take a look at hibernation, suspended-animation, Apollo 11 Engines, Earth in pixels, updates, Curiosity news, and as always take a peek back into history and up in the sky this week.
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— Show Notes: —
2013 Summer SciByte
- A HUGE thank you to Nikki for joining me as a special science co-host
- SciByte YouTube Channel
Hibernation
- Lemur Hibernation
- Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs are the only primates that can hibernate
- Lemurs are unique in that they can go the entire hibernation period-up to eight months-without fully sleeping
- During hibernation, a lemur’s breathing can slow to one inhalation every 20 minutes, and its heart rate drops from a normal 200 beats per minute to just 4 beats per minute
- Lemurs can hibernate, surviving three-quarters of a year without deep sleep,
- When lemurs hibernate, scientists speculate that they experience only REM sleep. Though no one can prove whether lemurs actually dream
- Lemurs in captivity often don’t hibernate
- In the wild some of [the lemurs hibernated] 40 feet off the ground in the middle of the forest in coastal Madagascar
- So the team that visited the primates in their natural habitat-Madagascar had a hard time getting data
- By placing the lemurs in special nesting boxes and attaching EEGs to their tiny foreheads while they hibernated, they were able to record their vital signs
- Researchers found that when it was warm outside, close to 72 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), the primates would only hibernate in REM sleep.
- Sleep Deprivation Study
- A 1989 study by sleep scientist demonstrated the lethal consequences of sleep deprivation
- When the researcher kept ten rats awake, depriving them of non-REM sleep, they developed skin lesions, lost weight, and experienced an erosion of their gastrointestinal tracts.
- After 32 days, all of the rats were dead
- Rats Induces Into Hibernation / Suspended Animation
- Rats spent hours in a state of chilly suspended animation after researchers injected a compound into the animals in a cold room
- The animals’ heart rates slowed, brain activity became sluggish and body temperature plummeted.
- Lowering Body Temperature
- Lowering the body temperature of a non hibernating mammal is really hard
- As temperatures inside the body fall, several failsafe systems spring into action
- Blood vessels near the skin squeeze tight to hold warmth in, the body starts to shiver and brown fat, a tissue that’s especially plentiful in newborns, starts to produce heat
- The scientists in the study bypassed the rats’ defenses against the cold with a compound that’s similar to adenosine, a molecule in the body that signals sleepiness
- Suspended Animation Experiment
- After about an hour in a room chilled to 15* Celsius, the rats grew lethargic
- Their brain waves slowed, their blood pressure dropped and their heart grew sluggish, occasionally skipping beats
- The rats’ core temperature dropped from about 38* to about 30* C, or 80* Fahrenheit
- The researchers measured even lower temperatures in further experiments – rats’ core body temperature reached 15* C or about 57* F.
- The rats weren’t in a coma, nor were they asleep or truly hibernating
- Hibernating animals’ metabolisms plummet and their temperatures sink much lower
- The Arctic ground squirrel, for instance, cools to about -3* C when it hibernates
- This is a new state that the scientists don’t really know what it is
- In the experiment, loud noises and tail pinches failed to arouse the rats.
- They didn’t eat or drink. Occasionally, one would slither into a corner, but for the most part, the animals stayed still for up to 6 hours
- In unpublished experiments, Tupone has kept the animals in the unresponsive state for 24 hours, he says.
- Warming the room coaxed the rats out of their torpor, the recovery process takes about 12 hours, during which the animals ate and drank voraciously
- After recovering, the animals were alert, moved around their cages normally and slept when tired
- Further Reading / In the News
- Could People Hibernate? Lemurs Give Clues – News Watch | newswatch.nationalgeographic.com
- Rats induced into hibernation-like state | Life | Science News | sciencenews.org
— NEWS BYTE —
Apollo 11 Engines Found! || Summer SciByte August 01, 2013
- Previously on SciByte
- Summer SciByte | August 01, 2013 | SciByte
- SciByte 98 | Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy | ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available | June 18, 2013
- SciByte 40 | Apollo 11 and James Cameron – Apollo 11 Engines found at the bottom of the ocean | April 3, 2012
- Recovery Expedition
- In March 2012, Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos funded an expedition to find and recover Apollo engines
- Following the flight paths of the various missions they tried searching in the area where they thought the Apollo 11 engines might have landed
- In March 2013, Bezos revealed that his team had raised the parts for at least two F-1 engines although they weren\’t sure what mission the engines were from
- Multimedia
- Photos | First look at Amazon CEO\’s historic moon rocket engines | collectSpace.com
- YouTube | Apollo F-1 rocket engines raised off ocean floor by Amazon CEO | collectSPACE
- YouTube | Clip – Uncovering Thruster | collectSPACE
- YouTube | Clip – Lifting Thrusters | collectSPACE
- YouTube | Apollo-Era Saturn V F-1 Engines Arrive at Cape Canaveral | collectSpace
- Identification
- Because of the launch conditions, their fall to the ocean, and the heavy corrosion from 43 years underwater accurate identification was difficult
- A conservation team at the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center in Hutchinson, Kansas took on that task
- While scanning one of the components with a black light and a special lens filter they discovered a Rocketdyne [company] serial number that correlates to NASA \”Unit No 2044\”, which is the serial number for F-1 Engine #5 from Apollo 11
- Restoration
- The Kansas Cosmosphere expects that it will take about two years to complete the conservation of the engines
- During that time, the public can view the parts and see the work being done to preserve them through a special tour offered at the museum\’s SpaceWorks facility, a website with a live camera view of the same facility is also being developed
- Ownership
- While NASA retains ownership of the artifacts and will ultimately decide where they go on museum display, Bezos has expressed an interest in having one of the engine\’s parts displayed at The Museum of Flight in Seattle
- Further Reading / In the News
- Rocket Engine Part Recovered by Amazon CEO Has Apollo 11 History | Space.com
- Rocket engine part recovered by Amazon CEO has Apollo 11 history | collectSpace.com
— TWO-BYTE NEWS —
Earth in Pixels || Summer SciByte August 01, 2013
- As Seen On
- Summer SciByte | August 01, 2013 | SciByte
- The Image
- On July 19 the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn took a picture of every living thing on Earth.
- At 898.4 million miles away scientists turned the spacecraft to take a picture of Saturn eclipsing the Sun, in the background was the Earth and Moon.
- It reminded me of the famous \’pale blue dot\’ image. Bringing the entirety of human history, and all life that we know of into a few pixels reminds me that we are only one tiny corner of a grand universe.
- Further Reading / In the News
- What the Earth and Moon Look Like From Saturn | UniverseToday.com
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— Updates —
ARKYD Telescope
- Last Time on SciByte
- SciByte 98 | Strange Exoplanet & Cancer Therapy – ARKYD Telescope Upgrade Available
| June 18, 2013 - SciByte 96 | Mammoth Blood & Crowdsourced Telescope – Crowdsourced Telescope | June 3, 2013
- Crowdsourcing Telescope
- Planetary Resources raised more than $1.5 million in 33 days to launch a small space telescope into low Earth orbit in 2015
- 17,614 people donated money for the crowdsourced Arkyd-100
- The company hit that goal June 19, then raked in another $505,366 in the final 10 days of the campaign, including $100,000 on June 30 from Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson.
- Planetary Resources, Bellevue, Wash., began a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign May 29 seeking to raise at least $1 million by June 30
- 14,919 space selfies, according data from Kickstarter
- Kicktraq.com, shows that Planetary Resources raised an average of $45,614 a day, with the 17,614 donors contributing an average of $85 each
- Multimedia
- YouTube | ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
- YouTube | Planetary Resources Announces ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone | PlanetaryResources
- YouTube | Planetary Resources Kickstarter Community Event with Star Trek\’s Brent Spiner (Lt. Cmdr Data) | PlanetaryResources
- Further Reading / In the News
- Planetary Resources Raises $1.5M for Crowdfunded Space Telescope | Space.com
- Asteroid Miners\’ Crowdfunded Space Telescope May Hunt Exoplanets | Space.com
- ‘Space Selfie’ Telescope Could Hunt Alien Planets … If It Raises A Cool $2M | UniverseToday.com
— CURIOSITY UPDATE —
- Phobos Creates a Annular Eclipse
- Phobos does not completely cover the sun as seen from the Red Planet\’s surface, so the event was technically an annular or \”ring of fire\” eclipse
- Even though Phobos is just 22 km (14 miles) on average it appears relatively big against the sun because the moon orbits so close to Mars, at a mere 6,000 km (3,700 mi)
- The distance from Michigan, Detroit to Lisbon Portugal is 6,073 km (3,774 mi)
- GoogleMap | Michigan, Detroit to Lisbon, Portugal
- Multimedia
- YouTube Curiosity Rover Report (Aug. 23, 2013): The Odometer Keeps Turning
- YouTube Mars\’ Moon Phobos Eclipses the Sun, as Seen by Curiosity | NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Image Galleries at JPL and Curiosity Mulimedia
- Social Media
- Curiosity Rover @MarsCuriosity
- Further Reading / In the News
- Curiosity Rover Snaps Best Mars Solar Eclipse Photos Ever
SCIENCE CALENDAR
Looking back
- September 17, 1822 : 191 years ago : Rosetta Stone decyphered : At the French Academie Royale des Inscriptions, Jean-François Champollion read a paper, Lettre a M. Dacier, describing his solution to the mystery of the triple inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone which had been unearthed July of 1799, by Napoleon\’s army near the Rosetta branch of the Nile. (Baron Joseph Dacier, to whom he addressed the letter, was Secretary of the Academie.) Champollion\’s work to decipher the hieroglyphics had began in 1808. Thomas Young did some preliminary fragmentary work, but otherwise it was Champollion\’s major accomplishment. In 1823 he gave more details in a series of memoirs read at the Institute, published the following year
- Rosetta Stone – Wikipedia
Looking up this week
- Keep an eye out for …
- Friday, Sep 13 | ~ 1 hour after sunset | In the W-SW Saturn is 6* to the upper left of Venus (5* is roughly three fingers held at arms length
- Planets
- Venus and Saturn | Evening Twilight | Low in the W-SW, Venus the brighter of the two, and Saturn to the upper left and getting a little closer as the week goes by
-
Mars and Jupiter | Before / During Dawn | In the E, Jupiter being the brighter with the dimmer Mars to the lower left and getting further apart
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Further Reading and Resources
- Sky&Telescope
- SpaceWeather.com
- StarDate.org
- For the Southern hemisphere: SpaceInfo.com.au
- Constellations of the Southern Hemisphere : astronomyonline.org
- Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand : rasnz.org.nz
- AstronomyNow
- HeavensAbove