What will they think of next?
That's what I find myself pondering after plowing through a typical issue of my favorite science magazines. "They," of course, refers to those scientists who are discovering amazing things about our universe each and every day. For those of us cynics who might have thought that everything worth knowing already has been discovered, this is a refreshing perspective indeed.
A sampling:
In last month's issue of Physics Today I read about scientists who are using radar to measure the winds in the lower portion of Earth's "thermosphere" - the part of the upper atmosphere, about 100 km (60 miles) above ground, where air is so thin that a molecule can often travel an entire meter (40 inches) without bumping into another one. You can't exactly use a weathervane up there! But Meers Oppenheim and his colleagues discovered that you can bounce radio waves off of the air up there whenever the air gets electrically charged - and the reflected waves can be analyzed to measure wind speed. The really clever part is how the scientists energize the upper atmosphere: they just wait for meteors to slam into it. Yet another clever use of "shooting stars" - tiny space rocks that penetrate our atmosphere, creating brief trails of light. (By the way, your best bet for seeing shooting stars comes next month, several hours before sunrise on August 13th.)
Next, there is the amazing story (in this month's Sky & Telescope) about how amateur astronomers - those whose day jobs range from car salesman to schoolteacher - may be the first to discover moons orbiting planets orbiting other stars! Yes, you read that right - not only can backyard stargazers (with a few thousand bucks' worth of off-the-shelf equipment) discover planets orbiting other stars; they can find evidence for those planets' moons! Since the planets in question tend to be super-Jupiters, these moons are the likeliest locales for exterrestrial life in these other solar systems. So it's vital to know whether or not these moons exist, and, if so, what their properties might be.
And then there is U. C. Berkeley scientist Chris Clark, who tricked hummingbirds to dive-bomb in front of high-speed video cameras. As last week's issue of Science News reports, Clark determined that hummingbirds can reach speeds of 60 miles per hour (27 meters per second) for short periods, as they tuck their wings in and drill downward. Adjusted for body length, that's nearly 400 body lengths per second - faster (in relative terms) than a fighter jet.
What will they think of next?
Copyright 2009 Joshua Roth. All rights reserved.