My favourite piece of artwork - my periodic table

Ok, so I'm a nerd, I accept that, actually, its a compliment rather than an insult.
I love art, particularly real life photography, thats the kind of art I like to hang - but this giant periodic table is the best piece of art I have.  It is so huge it covers half of my study wall.

Why do I find it so fascinating, well if you REALLY don't know, I will tell you.

'The periodic table is basically the universal catalog of everything you can drop.  There are some things such as light, love, logic and time that are not in the periodic table, but, these things you cannot drop either!

The Earth - your PC - everything tangible is made of elements.  We are mainly made of oxygen with quite a bit of carbon jointing us, giving structure to the organic molecules that define you as an example of carbon-based life..... if you are not carbon based life, then greetings from the human species, nano nano.... 

Oxygen is a clear colourless gas, yet it makes up three-fifths of the weight of your body.  How can that be?  Elements have two faces, no they don't talk about you behind your back, they come in their pure state, and a range of chemical compounds they form when they combine with other elements.  Oxygen is a pure gas right, but when it reacts with silicon, they become together the strong silicate minerals which compose the majority of the earths crust such as Quartz, Feldspars and Micas.
When oxygen combines with with hydrogen and carbon, the result can be anything from water to carbon monoxide to sugar.  Oxygen atoms are still present in these compounds, no matter how unlike pure oxygen the substance may appear, and oxygen atoms can always be extracted back out and returned to pure gaseous form.

But (short of nuclear disintegration) each oxygen atom can never itself be broken down or taken apart into something simpler.  This property of indivisibility is what makes an element an element.  

Theodore Grey, Poster

The periodic table outlines every single element that is known to man, 94 naturally occurring and the rest man made.  Everything that makes up the entire Universe comprises of these elements, especially Hydrogen.

This poster is like a bible as well as a piece of artwork - the information it tells you is basically explaining everything about everything. 

"There is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements"  Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, 50 BC

No such thing as time travel? Just look up!

I am probably telling you something you already know? I was just out looking through my telescope, however the conditions are not the best for viewing at the moment, so I just stood in the garden, starring up at the stars, thinking how amazing they are but also knowing that I was actually looking into the past.  When we look into the night sky, we see things as they were long ago, not as they are today. 
The investigation of deep space is also an exploration of deep time, how awesome is that!

Light is the fastest entity in the universe, but it does take time to reach us from the far reaches of space.  We see celestial objects as they were when they released the light that has subsequently travelled across the universe and reached our telescopes.

The further away an object is, the further back in time we see it, and unsurprisingly, the more distant an object is, the fainter the light.  As we push at the boundaries of time, it becomes that much harder to discern the objects in question, but we can see the dim and tiny glints of light from objects that existed more than thirteen billion years ago, when the universe was a fraction of its current age.

During the past few years, the Hubble Space Telescope has obtained long-exposure images of the faintest objects ever detected.  Some of these are galaxies in their early stages, when they were rich in young, hot stars.  To look even back through time, we will need a new generation of telescopes that can detect extremely low intensities of infrared light from the faintest and weakest end of the spectrum resolvable to telescopes with mirrors and lenses.

Even though that light was emitted in visible energies, it has been stretched by the expansion of the universe, and so appears to us as infrared light. 

Check out the Hubble website for some truly amazing pictures.

http://hubblesite.org  http://www.space.com/18317-universe-first-stars-light-seen.html

Biomes

I love Earth science, I love Environmental science, I love Astronomy, I love Geography, I love Sustainable development, I love Social Psychology - damn there's not much I don't love.  I also love to educate people who want to learn more on these subjects.  So when I decided to start a blog, I wanted to write about all kinds of topics on these subjects......  I seem to have spent some time on social psychological topics, so I think for my next several blogs I will pay a little more attention to some Environmental science - such a vast field of study its hard to know where to start.  This is what makes the study of environmental science so exciting though!  I thought this evening I would like to write about Biomes, the study of the way plants and animals are distributed across the globe.

This field of study is called Biogeography.  Climate and soil determine which plants thrive in a particular region, similar types of vegetation, as well as the animals associated with them, occur in places with climates that are similar.  These places, occupying large areas and identified by their vegetation types, are known as biomes.  For example, the belt of mainly evergreen coniferous forests that runs across Canada and northern Eurasia constitutes a biome known as boreal forest in North America and taiga in Russia.  The character of this forest is essentially the same throughout the biome, but the plant and animals species found there vary.  Im a recent blog of WA I wrote, I spoke about the fact that WA had plants that no where else in the world had.

There are twelve biomes in the world.  Although biomes can be identified by general vegetation types, the vegetation in any biome is in fact quite varied because of a number of local differences in land use and environment.  Tropical biomes occur between the tropics of Cancer (north) and Capricorn (south).  Temperate biomes can be found in temperate regions, and polar biomes are located near the poles.  Other biomes are more difficult to define precisely, because not all plant communities have clear boundaries.  The range of plants in each biome make it possible to draw the boundaries in different ways.

Around the poles, the polar ice biome supports no plant life.  The climate is exceedingly harsh and there is neither soil nor liquid water at the surface.  Bordering the polar ice is the tundra biome, where the ground is exposed and the temperature rises above freezing for a short time in summer.  Along its edges, tundra gives way to boreal forest or taiga.  Tundra and boreal forest are mainly confined to the Northern Hemisphere, because there is little land at the correct latitude in the Southern Hemisphere.

Closer to the equator, deciduous trees become more common among the conifers of the boreal forest.  The biome changes and temperate deciduous forest becomes more widespread.  This biome is restricted to the continental regions with moist climates, while temperate rain forest is found only in the wettest regions.

As climates grow hotter and drier, the biome changes again.  Temperate grassland, the prairies, steppes, pampas and veld, replace the temperature deciduous forest.  In a few parts of the world there is a biome typical of Mediterranean climates, dominated by dry woodlands and chaparral shrublands.  A belt of subtropical deserts lies across both hemispheres.  Deserts vary according to their locations, with some found along western coasts and some in the interiors of continents.  Where climates are a little moister, subtropical deserts merge into savanna grassland.  On either side of the equator there are tropical dry forests and rain forests.  The last biome, mountain grasslands and shrublands, is not confined to particular latitudes.  

Pretty cool stuff huh, id encourage you to read up more on this fascinating topic, there is so much more to learn.....

Fremantle demonstrating sustainability leadership

Renewable energy resources offer many advantages to an energy-hungry world.  They can be used in many ways, offer minimal environmental problems, and can be harnessed with appropriate technology. They particularly offer hope to the developing countries who's economic growth rates are seriously hampered by high energy costs.

The potential offered by these resources is immense.  Everyday, the earth receives thousands of times more energy from the sun than is consumed in all other resources.  
In view of these facts, one might wonder why renewable energies have been so underused.  The primary reason is economics, especially competition with lowered-priced commercial fuels.  There have been technical and economic uncertainties, inadequate documentation and evaluation of the many solar projects that have been undertaken worldwide, lack of coherent government strategy, and just plain scepticism on the part of many energy decision makers - all obstacles to the employment of renewable energy.  

However, I am very excited about the City of Fremantle that is really starting to demonstrate sustainability leadership.   The city is doing this as part of their low carbon plan with a key focus on making the city a more sustainable one and doing this by being active leaders in renewable energy.

Our very active and sustainability focused Mayor of Fremantle Dr Brad Pettitt is one of the key players that is pushing the city in the direction of demonstrating sustainability leadership.  Here is a link to his blog to read the full story.

Onward and upward for Fremantle with the hopes many other governments will actively follow.

http://cofremantle.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/solar-on-the-town-hall/

October 29th - 1999, a day to remember in our history of natural disasters

Sometimes, our lives are so busy that we tend to forget about certain dates in history when devastating things happened.  Its not that we forget, its just we are so pre-occupied with our own lives that these events just simply vanish into the deep depths of our memory.

Early on October 29th, 1999, a super-cyclone swept out of the Bay of Bengal and devastated the Orissa   State Coastal region.  With some of the strongest winds ever recorded in the area ranging from up to 161 miles per hour (259 km/h) and storm surges up to 20 feet (6 m), Tropical Cyclone 05B was one of the worst storms in India's history.

Tropical Cyclone 05B slammed into the Orissa coast slightly north of the cities of Bhubaneshwar and Cuttack at about 5.00 am on October 29.  The Cyclone raveged for nearly 24 hours.  Over 1,500 villages were destroyed and more than 2 million people were left homeless and the death toll was over 9,900.  The Orissa state economy is based on agricultural industry that accounts for nearly 80 percent of the populations livelihoods and provides over half of the states income.  The massive tidal surge from Tropical Cycle 05B reached approximately 9 miles (14.5 km) inland, destroying some 800,000 acres of crops and polluting soils with salt and debris in the process.  The flooding caused massive livestock losses, vital to many families in the area.

The lack of fresh water, salvageable food, and the looming health threats from contamination and rotting corpses in the days after the cyclone hit led to hundreds more deaths by dehydration, starvation, and the spread of disease.  Anger over the slow and inadequate government response to the crisis let to looting and riots among the remaining survivors.

Surviving each type of natural disaster requires a different strategy.  Many disasters are difficult, if not impossible, to predict, and even so there may not be much opportunity to act.  Fate and chance play a very big role in determining the final outcome.  There is, however, a need for all nations to come together and assist in urgent and quick responses to such crisis to help save as many people as possible. This, again, is our ethical duty as a human species!

The making and death of stars

Its starting to get really hot here in Australia.  I cannot handle the heat - have lived here over 8 years now and still have not acclimatised... i'm not a fan of the summer in all honesty, most people think I am mad - their not far wrong :)

So, after this boiling sweaty day, it got me thinking about one of my favourite subjects Astronomy.  It amazes me that there are some people out there that still do not realise that our Sun is a star, seriously, but this is not their fault, maybe they didn't do physics at school, maybe they didn't go to school, maybe they didn't care or maybe just were not taught it.  It really doesn't matter why they don't know, but, I really think that a good understanding of our Sun and the fact that it is already middle aged, may give people a better appreciation of how lucky we are to be at the right distance away from, to us, a perfect sized star.  Anyway, I am going to share with you, in brief, how these billions of stars out there are made and what happens once they have used up all their energy.  I hope you find it as amazing as I do, if not amazing, I hope it makes you at least appreciate how amazing the process is.

First of all, some basic facts about our Sun:
Our Sun is a G2 V  type main sequence dwarf star (medium sized), at the centre of the solar system and  contains nearly 99.9% of the solar systems mass.  It is a near perfect sphere with a diameter of ~1.3 km.
The colour is white but appears yellowish due to the scattering of blue light in the atmosphere.  It is a population I star, rich in heavy elements ( a high metallicity).  The Sun was probably formed from a high proportion of material from prior supernova events (death of super massive stars way bigger than our own).  Its composition is ~74% Hydrogen, ~24% Helium, ~0.8% Oxygen, ~0.3% Carbon, ~0.2% Iron.  Its gravity is about 28 x Earth and is about 150 million km away from Earth, or just over 8 light minutes.  Pretty cool so far huh?

Each star is different, but starts life the same way in clouds and dust called Nebulas, stella nurseries for stars.  To name a few you may have heard of before, Orion, Eagle, Horse head.....
To make a star, all you need is gravity, Hydrogen and time.

Gravity pulls the Hydrogen gas into a swirling vortex.  Gravity brings matter together and when you 'squeeze' things together in smaller spaces, they heat up - with me so far?  Basically when you compress something, you drive the temperature up.  Over 100's and 1000's of years the cloud gets thicker, a large spinning vortex as big as our solar system and at the centre a large dense spinning ball where the pressure builds until large jets of gas burst out at the sides.  Eventually a star ignites, throwing off any remainder gas out.  This is at a temperature of 15 million degrees at the core, atoms of gas fuse together.  BOOM! A star is born :)

So, we now know how a star is created, what about what drives a stars energy then?  Atoms of Hydrogen smash into each other, this process is called fusion.  Hydrogen atoms naturally repel one another, chemistry 101, but if they travel fast enough, really fast, they crash into each other, fusing together to make Helium, there go - heat with a small amount of pure energy.  The Hydrogen gas weighs slightly more than Helium, it looses mass during the collision and this mass turns into energy.
Stars are huge, and to drive this you need gravity to compress the star to create nuclear fusion at its core.  

What happens when the fuel runs out?  Well, eventually it will run out, bigger stars use their fuel more quickly so the bigger the star the shorter life.  Gravity is in a constant battle with the stars fusion process that they balance each other out, however gravity eventually wins the battle. Our Sun is no exception.  Every second it burns 600million tonnes of its Hydrogen fuel.  As Hydrogen gets used up, the core slows down giving gravity the edge, with less fusion pushing outward, gravity pushes inward and as fusion fights back the star begins to expand.  This is called the red giant stage that consumes all the inner rocky planets, and most likely even the Earth.  This is the end of our Earth at this point.  

With no Hydrogen left to fuel it, the star starts to burn Helium and fusing it with Carbon.  Blasting energy from its core to the surface, these energy waves blow away the stars outer layer, slowly, it disintegrates into a white dwarf.  White dwarf is so dense, that is a sugar cube amount was placed on Earth, it would fall right through!!  Astronomers believe that in the core of a white dwarf is solid Carbon, literally a diamond in the sky!

This is the outcome of our star, but what about bigger ones?  Larger stars have a much more violent ending than our G type star.   The gravity of these stars are so massive that they can smash together bigger and bigger atoms.  The core of these stars are like factories, manufacturing heavier and heavier elements which leads to the stars destruction.  Gold, Silver, Nickel and other elements are all created in these stars.  The next time you wear your gold chain or ring, just think, it wasn't created here on Earth, but in the death of a super massive Nova - how bloody cool is that huh!!!

Once the star starts making Iron, this is the end.  Iron absorbs the energy in a 1000th of a second, robbing it of its remaining fuel until gravity wins and the star collapses.  It creates such a huge explosion, a supernova, the single most violent event in the Universe.  Spewing everything out into space.  Then, the whole process of star formation begins again.  If it wasn't for these massive explosions, our Sun wouldn't be hear, therefore so wouldn't we.

There is only so much Hydrogen in the Universe, Astronomers believe that eventually, the entire universe will simply run out of the star forming gas and eventually, the lights will all go out.  Thankfully, we will not be around to see this, nor see the death of our own star in about 4.57 billion years, its already 4.57 billion years old, middle aged.  We have a long time to appreciate it and, also complain about it when it feels too hot - but, really, its not the suns fault that I am hot today, it is our atmosphere and environment that causes the temperature - really we should just be thankful that its rises, sets and rises again, because without it - its goodnight sweetheart :)

Carbon, Oxygen, Iron in our blood

Everything around us came from the belly of a star

We are in a 'golden age' of the universe

A good time to be here, seeing the best of all stages of the universe, filling the darkness with light

For we are all made of stardust 

Janine Marshall

We Are Children of the Pleistocene

I want to share another beautiful poem with you... I love it:


Whether it is clear to us or not we are a children of the Pleistocene
Our genes give us away
Nearly invariant over more than one hundred thousands years of deep time

We remain connected to nature in many fascinating and mysterious

Vision connects us with our universe 
Children playing
Star light
Sunrise and set

Natural sounds make us feel alive
Music of frogs at night flow of stream over pebbles on streamed
Swish of water on the beach 
Rustle of leaves from wind crunch of grass from foot steep
Howl of wolf
Scream of mountain lion
Shriek of hawk
Rattle of snake
Scratch of predator claw on rock

Quiet places comfort us deep valleys
Forest floor
Snow covered wild land
Silence of night

Smells awaken our senses
Wet forest soil following rain
Salty air kicked up by waves
Morning mist
Fresh barriers
Our loved ones
We are more at ease in nature than with the horn screech of tires and jackhammer

Fire provokes an image of contentment safety and community
We dance play instruments sing and tell stories about other tribes and predators perhaps another football team around a fire as we always have

Hike with a group during the day we spread out
At night hike we group together with flashlights on
We feel safer when closer together

We walk our property
Making territory with signs and acts

We seek romantic places such as meadows beaches or forests to be with our mate at intimate times

When we are not connected to nature we deprive ourselves and our children of our heritage and our souls suffer
We are children of the Pleistocene
Embrace our heritage and our souls sing


E.A. KELLER