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"title": "The Temptation to Treat Hunches As Science in Earthquake Prediction Research",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_6486\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/sunspots.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6486\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/sunspots.jpg\" alt=\"sunspots, washington dc\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6486\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo courtesy \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/ep_jhu/\">ep_jhu\u003c/a> of Flickr under Creative Commons license\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve been following earth science closely for many years through the news and in the literature. One thing I can say confidently is that it is both very human and inhuman. The human side is obvious: geoscientists are some of the most interesting (and interested) people I know. But doing science properly means quashing some of our most human traits as we subject our ideas to cold statistical tests. Case in point: earthquake prediction studies. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans have a wonderful ability to spot patterns in seemingly random information. We acquired the knack long ago because it helped us spot zebras in the savanna and tigers in the grass. It’s amusing because it lets us see faces in clouds. In science, our pattern-seeking ability is both a tool and a handicap: it leads us to exciting hunches, but glues us to wrong ideas despite our best efforts. The occurrence of earthquakes is so troubling and mysterious that it takes a great effort to stifle our human reactions and pay attention to what the cold numbers and their unintuitive statistics say. I take as today’s topic the relationship between earthquakes and sunspots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sun-Earth interface is an exceptionally energetic region, extending over thousands of kilometers from the upper atmosphere into outer space. It conducts electricity and generates complex magnetic disturbances. It’s as changeable and chaotic as the static heard between radio stations or the shimmering displays of the aurora. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It stands to reason that such a sensitive region would respond to changes from below the Earth’s surface just as it does to changes from above. You would think that the release of earthquake energy, in the electrically conducting deep crust, would have effects on this region too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “It stands to reason…” and “You would think that…” are hunches, only the beginning of science. Next comes the inhuman part: holding off on coming to conclusions and running the numbers as carefully as we know how. A trickle of scientific papers have noted apparent relationships between various measures of solar activity and earthquakes. But a recent critique of these papers, \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50211/abstract\">published in March in \u003ci>Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, noted that all of them fell short in one way or another: they used partial sets of data or focused on one region, for instance. They went beyond “It stands to reason,” but only as far as finding an anomaly, something strange—that is to say, “Hmm, look at this.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper’s authors went on to do a textbook, double-checked study comparing the solar records to the earthquake catalogs, including statistical checks and found nothing that chance alone couldn’t explain just as well. (\u003ca href=\"http://geology.about.com/od/eq_prediction/qt/earthquakes-solar-activity.htm\">See my more detailed explanation here.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, most of us find it terribly tempting to go from “Hmm, look at this” to “Hey, look at that.” And once someone who seems to know what they’re talking about does that, many more people will take assertion as certainty. For a good example, consider the BBC’s weather blogger Paul Hudson. He’s a trained meteorologist who can explain scientific thinking well. \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Have-weather-patterns-really-been-unusual\">Last month, for instance\u003c/a>, you can see him deftly handling a common question among the British public: isn’t our summer weather odd? No, he answers, it’s a phenomenon well-known among his fellow scientists: the North Atlantic Oscillation. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then go back on his blog to \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/03/is-solar-activity-to-blame-for.shtml\">the day of the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake in March 2011\u003c/a>. Not being a seismologist, Hudson fell back on human habits: he remarked upon recent sunspot activity, cited a few unnamed papers, and quoted a fellow opinionater in support of his hunch. On this subject, he scored no better than the average layman. Indeed, I think that posting his off-the-cuff musings on the very day of that massive earthquake under the headline “Is solar activity to blame for Japan’s massive earthquake?” was not responsible journalism. Fortunately, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines\">Betteridge-Marr law of headlines\u003c/a> is our friend: “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no.'”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_6486\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/sunspots.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6486\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/08/sunspots.jpg\" alt=\"sunspots, washington dc\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6486\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo courtesy \u003ca href=\"http://www.flickr.com/people/ep_jhu/\">ep_jhu\u003c/a> of Flickr under Creative Commons license\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>I’ve been following earth science closely for many years through the news and in the literature. One thing I can say confidently is that it is both very human and inhuman. The human side is obvious: geoscientists are some of the most interesting (and interested) people I know. But doing science properly means quashing some of our most human traits as we subject our ideas to cold statistical tests. Case in point: earthquake prediction studies. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Humans have a wonderful ability to spot patterns in seemingly random information. We acquired the knack long ago because it helped us spot zebras in the savanna and tigers in the grass. It’s amusing because it lets us see faces in clouds. In science, our pattern-seeking ability is both a tool and a handicap: it leads us to exciting hunches, but glues us to wrong ideas despite our best efforts. The occurrence of earthquakes is so troubling and mysterious that it takes a great effort to stifle our human reactions and pay attention to what the cold numbers and their unintuitive statistics say. I take as today’s topic the relationship between earthquakes and sunspots.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sun-Earth interface is an exceptionally energetic region, extending over thousands of kilometers from the upper atmosphere into outer space. It conducts electricity and generates complex magnetic disturbances. It’s as changeable and chaotic as the static heard between radio stations or the shimmering displays of the aurora. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It stands to reason that such a sensitive region would respond to changes from below the Earth’s surface just as it does to changes from above. You would think that the release of earthquake energy, in the electrically conducting deep crust, would have effects on this region too. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But “It stands to reason…” and “You would think that…” are hunches, only the beginning of science. Next comes the inhuman part: holding off on coming to conclusions and running the numbers as carefully as we know how. A trickle of scientific papers have noted apparent relationships between various measures of solar activity and earthquakes. But a recent critique of these papers, \u003ca href=\"http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50211/abstract\">published in March in \u003ci>Geophysical Research Letters\u003c/i>\u003c/a>, noted that all of them fell short in one way or another: they used partial sets of data or focused on one region, for instance. They went beyond “It stands to reason,” but only as far as finding an anomaly, something strange—that is to say, “Hmm, look at this.” \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The paper’s authors went on to do a textbook, double-checked study comparing the solar records to the earthquake catalogs, including statistical checks and found nothing that chance alone couldn’t explain just as well. (\u003ca href=\"http://geology.about.com/od/eq_prediction/qt/earthquakes-solar-activity.htm\">See my more detailed explanation here.\u003c/a>)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, most of us find it terribly tempting to go from “Hmm, look at this” to “Hey, look at that.” And once someone who seems to know what they’re talking about does that, many more people will take assertion as certainty. For a good example, consider the BBC’s weather blogger Paul Hudson. He’s a trained meteorologist who can explain scientific thinking well. \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Have-weather-patterns-really-been-unusual\">Last month, for instance\u003c/a>, you can see him deftly handling a common question among the British public: isn’t our summer weather odd? No, he answers, it’s a phenomenon well-known among his fellow scientists: the North Atlantic Oscillation. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But then go back on his blog to \u003ca href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/03/is-solar-activity-to-blame-for.shtml\">the day of the magnitude-9 Tohoku earthquake in March 2011\u003c/a>. Not being a seismologist, Hudson fell back on human habits: he remarked upon recent sunspot activity, cited a few unnamed papers, and quoted a fellow opinionater in support of his hunch. On this subject, he scored no better than the average layman. Indeed, I think that posting his off-the-cuff musings on the very day of that massive earthquake under the headline “Is solar activity to blame for Japan’s massive earthquake?” was not responsible journalism. Fortunately, the \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines\">Betteridge-Marr law of headlines\u003c/a> is our friend: “Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word ‘no.'”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Smile! You're On NASA's Cassini Camera",
"headTitle": "Smile! You’re On NASA’s Cassini Camera | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_6081\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/saturn-and-earth-cassini.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6081\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/saturn-and-earth-cassini.jpg\" alt=\"Cassini's portrait of Earth and Moon, taken July 19, 2013\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6081\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cassini’s portrait of Earth and Moon, taken July 19, 2013\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Did you wave and smile at Saturn last week, at the time when NASA’s Cassini probe was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130722.html#.UfA6GdKsh8E\" title=\"NASA Cassini Earth photo-op\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">taking a picture of us\u003c/a>? (As for myself, I think my eyes were closed.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you weren’t at the photo-op, here’s a recap. On July 19, in the mid-afternoon (Pacific Daylight Time), NASA’s Cassini probe captured a picture of the Earth and moon from 900 million miles away at Saturn. NASA took advantage of Cassini’s projected passage through the shadow of Saturn to take a color image of home without the sun getting in Cassini’s high-resolution eye. And, being a well-timed and expected event, they let us know about it in advance — affording us the opportunity to become part of photographic history…sort of. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our instructions were to run outside at the appointed time, turn to Saturn’s position in the sky and wave for one big group photo of humanity (or the 20,000+ who actually looked that way and smiled). Don’t worry that at Cassini’s great distance, Earth isn’t even as large as a camera pixel in the shot; enthusiastic posers can revel in the knowledge that we can pinpoint exactly where we were and what we were doing at the time the picture was taken. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This photo-op event was pitched to us as a chance to run outside and do something fun and historical, in concert with like-minded enthusiasts all over the world and to put the Earth and moon into a perspective we don’t usually think much of: all of humanity and life as we know it are living on a mere dot in space. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What it did for me, however, was to remind me that Cassini is still out there exploring the distant reaches of the solar system. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what has \u003ca href=\"http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" title=\"NASA/Cassini\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cassini \u003c/a>been doing lately? The first spacecraft ever to dwell in the Saturn system, Cassini arrived almost a decade ago and has spent the years in sweeping orbits whizzing past Saturn’s rings and its many moons. It uses high resolution imaging and chemical analysis to bring us a wealth of knowledge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in its mission, Cassini also launched the European Huygens probe onto the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It found a frigid environment wet with mud, weather, river systems, lakes, and seas — the wet provided not by water but methane. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among its many discoveries, one group of observations suggests the presence of liquid water on some of Saturn’s ultra-cold icy moons. First it was the moon \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/04/17/a-shadow-falls-on-the-ice-geysers-of-enceladus/#.UfGDhNKsh8E\" title=\"Bad Astronomy: Geysers on Enceladus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Enceladus\u003c/a>, caught spewing plumes of water frost from deep fissures in its surface ice—indicating the presence of liquid water beneath the surface (either as geyser-chamber-like pockets or possibly even subsurface liquid seas.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Titan is also suspected of possessing subsurface oceans of water, deep beneath the outer crust of the moon. Though no frosty geysers have been observed to flag this ocean’s existence, measurements by Cassini of the deformation of Titan by Saturn’s gravity show characteristics consistent with the crust floating on a liquid layer. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And more recently, Cassini has revealed that the tiny moon \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130529.html#.UfGIFdKsh8E\" title=\"Cassini detects activity on Saturn's moon Dione\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dione \u003c/a>may be active as well. It’s spewing water plumes in a weaker version of Enceladus’ geysers, again suggesting a possible subsurface watery ocean. Being composed in large part of ice, these Saturnian moons certainly have the water to provide for these suspected oceans. It only takes a source of heat energy — such as tidal flexing by Saturn’s strong gravity — to melt it. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So as you look at Cassini’s Earth portrait and admire your good looks, take a moment to think not of the photograph, but of the photographer — a robot photographer on a decade-long assignment a billion miles out in space! \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "Smile! You're On NASA's Cassini Camera",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_6081\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/saturn-and-earth-cassini.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-6081\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/saturn-and-earth-cassini.jpg\" alt=\"Cassini's portrait of Earth and Moon, taken July 19, 2013\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-6081\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cassini’s portrait of Earth and Moon, taken July 19, 2013\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Did you wave and smile at Saturn last week, at the time when NASA’s Cassini probe was \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130722.html#.UfA6GdKsh8E\" title=\"NASA Cassini Earth photo-op\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">taking a picture of us\u003c/a>? (As for myself, I think my eyes were closed.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you weren’t at the photo-op, here’s a recap. On July 19, in the mid-afternoon (Pacific Daylight Time), NASA’s Cassini probe captured a picture of the Earth and moon from 900 million miles away at Saturn. NASA took advantage of Cassini’s projected passage through the shadow of Saturn to take a color image of home without the sun getting in Cassini’s high-resolution eye. And, being a well-timed and expected event, they let us know about it in advance — affording us the opportunity to become part of photographic history…sort of. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Our instructions were to run outside at the appointed time, turn to Saturn’s position in the sky and wave for one big group photo of humanity (or the 20,000+ who actually looked that way and smiled). Don’t worry that at Cassini’s great distance, Earth isn’t even as large as a camera pixel in the shot; enthusiastic posers can revel in the knowledge that we can pinpoint exactly where we were and what we were doing at the time the picture was taken. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This photo-op event was pitched to us as a chance to run outside and do something fun and historical, in concert with like-minded enthusiasts all over the world and to put the Earth and moon into a perspective we don’t usually think much of: all of humanity and life as we know it are living on a mere dot in space. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What it did for me, however, was to remind me that Cassini is still out there exploring the distant reaches of the solar system. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, what has \u003ca href=\"http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/\" title=\"NASA/Cassini\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Cassini \u003c/a>been doing lately? The first spacecraft ever to dwell in the Saturn system, Cassini arrived almost a decade ago and has spent the years in sweeping orbits whizzing past Saturn’s rings and its many moons. It uses high resolution imaging and chemical analysis to bring us a wealth of knowledge.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in its mission, Cassini also launched the European Huygens probe onto the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. It found a frigid environment wet with mud, weather, river systems, lakes, and seas — the wet provided not by water but methane. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Among its many discoveries, one group of observations suggests the presence of liquid water on some of Saturn’s ultra-cold icy moons. First it was the moon \u003ca href=\"http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/04/17/a-shadow-falls-on-the-ice-geysers-of-enceladus/#.UfGDhNKsh8E\" title=\"Bad Astronomy: Geysers on Enceladus\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Enceladus\u003c/a>, caught spewing plumes of water frost from deep fissures in its surface ice—indicating the presence of liquid water beneath the surface (either as geyser-chamber-like pockets or possibly even subsurface liquid seas.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Titan is also suspected of possessing subsurface oceans of water, deep beneath the outer crust of the moon. Though no frosty geysers have been observed to flag this ocean’s existence, measurements by Cassini of the deformation of Titan by Saturn’s gravity show characteristics consistent with the crust floating on a liquid layer. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And more recently, Cassini has revealed that the tiny moon \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130529.html#.UfGIFdKsh8E\" title=\"Cassini detects activity on Saturn's moon Dione\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dione \u003c/a>may be active as well. It’s spewing water plumes in a weaker version of Enceladus’ geysers, again suggesting a possible subsurface watery ocean. Being composed in large part of ice, these Saturnian moons certainly have the water to provide for these suspected oceans. It only takes a source of heat energy — such as tidal flexing by Saturn’s strong gravity — to melt it. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So as you look at Cassini’s Earth portrait and admire your good looks, take a moment to think not of the photograph, but of the photographer — a robot photographer on a decade-long assignment a billion miles out in space! \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Great Space Race Continues On Mars!",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_5462\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/thewheelofopportunity.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5462\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5462\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/thewheelofopportunity.jpg\" alt=\"Simulated image of one of the wheels of NASA's Mars rover Opportunity\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Simulated image of one of the wheels of NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Remember the Great Space Race to the moon, that Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to get there first?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, decades after the Cold War has long since cooled off, and even longer since the last fiery roar of Apollo and Vostok rockets have been quieted, in the midst of the silence of history we may hear a faint sound: a barely audible whir of electric motors and metal wheels slowly and softly rolling over the dusty ground of a very long and wild race track.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s enduring \u003ca title=\"NASA Mars Exploration Rovers\" href=\"http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mars Exploration Rover\u003c/a>, Opportunity, which has been traipsing about and exploring Mars’ Meridiani Planum for nearly ten years, recently broke a record for distance traveled on the surface of another world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The previous record-holder of this extraterrestrial marathon is the manned Lunar Rover of Apollo 17 driven by Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt over 40 years ago—back when the Cold War and Great Space Race were \u003cem>game on\u003c/em>. In December of 1972, they completed a total distance of 22.21 miles across the surface of the Moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a day in May this year, Opportunity put in an 88-yard-dash and its odometer clicked over to 22.22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What has taken Opportunity so far across that ancient (probable) sea bed on Mars? The answer is great engineering! Opportunity, and its sister rover Spirit which landed on the other side of the planet, were designed to carry out a mission of exploration on Mars that was to last 90 days. When that nominal mission came to an end, Opportunity entered an extended mission period, which has now stretched on for almost a decade! Though Spirit gave up the ghost in 2010 after six years, the design and engineering of both robots is testament to how good we have become at exploring outer space by remote control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of Opportunity’s time has been spent \u003ca title=\"Opportunity track map\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/multimedia/gallery/pia13705.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">crater-hopping\u003c/a> and the long miles it has put on is a result of the long-distance crawls between craters. From Eagle Crater–which Opportunity rolled into upon landing–to Endurance Crater, Victoria Crater and now the largest of all, the vast Endeavour Crater, the rover has availed itself the opportunity of examining Martian geologic strata and materials blasted bare by past meteorite impacts. Its studies of holes in the ground, as well as the minerals and rocks along its path, have provided us with strong evidence that Mars had liquid water in the distant past—which of course was the true goal of its mission, not the breaking of distance records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Opportunity’s achievement comes an acknowledgement that it has not yet broken the all-time distance record for travel on an extraterrestrial world. That distinction currently goes to the former Soviet Union’s remote controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which until recently was thought to have traveled a total distance of 23 miles on the Moon’s surface back in 1973. This old official figure is currently\u003ca title=\"Reassessing the Soviet Lunokhod's distance record\" href=\"http://www.space.com/21923-soviet-moon-rover-driving-record.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> under debate and reassessment, \u003c/a>with new estimates putting it as high as 26 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So an echo of the old Space Race can be heard in the grinding whir of Opportunity’s wheels as it crawls steadily forward toward that decades-old Soviet all-time record. Can Opportunity do it? If the robot could talk, I imagine it would say, “No problem!” Whether its itinerary of scientific investigation will give it the opportunity to put on the needed miles is another matter.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_5462\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/thewheelofopportunity.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-5462\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-5462\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/07/thewheelofopportunity.jpg\" alt=\"Simulated image of one of the wheels of NASA's Mars rover Opportunity\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Simulated image of one of the wheels of NASA’s Mars rover Opportunity\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Remember the Great Space Race to the moon, that Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union to get there first?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Well, decades after the Cold War has long since cooled off, and even longer since the last fiery roar of Apollo and Vostok rockets have been quieted, in the midst of the silence of history we may hear a faint sound: a barely audible whir of electric motors and metal wheels slowly and softly rolling over the dusty ground of a very long and wild race track.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>NASA’s enduring \u003ca title=\"NASA Mars Exploration Rovers\" href=\"http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Mars Exploration Rover\u003c/a>, Opportunity, which has been traipsing about and exploring Mars’ Meridiani Planum for nearly ten years, recently broke a record for distance traveled on the surface of another world.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The previous record-holder of this extraterrestrial marathon is the manned Lunar Rover of Apollo 17 driven by Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt over 40 years ago—back when the Cold War and Great Space Race were \u003cem>game on\u003c/em>. In December of 1972, they completed a total distance of 22.21 miles across the surface of the Moon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On a day in May this year, Opportunity put in an 88-yard-dash and its odometer clicked over to 22.22.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What has taken Opportunity so far across that ancient (probable) sea bed on Mars? The answer is great engineering! Opportunity, and its sister rover Spirit which landed on the other side of the planet, were designed to carry out a mission of exploration on Mars that was to last 90 days. When that nominal mission came to an end, Opportunity entered an extended mission period, which has now stretched on for almost a decade! Though Spirit gave up the ghost in 2010 after six years, the design and engineering of both robots is testament to how good we have become at exploring outer space by remote control.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Much of Opportunity’s time has been spent \u003ca title=\"Opportunity track map\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/multimedia/gallery/pia13705.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">crater-hopping\u003c/a> and the long miles it has put on is a result of the long-distance crawls between craters. From Eagle Crater–which Opportunity rolled into upon landing–to Endurance Crater, Victoria Crater and now the largest of all, the vast Endeavour Crater, the rover has availed itself the opportunity of examining Martian geologic strata and materials blasted bare by past meteorite impacts. Its studies of holes in the ground, as well as the minerals and rocks along its path, have provided us with strong evidence that Mars had liquid water in the distant past—which of course was the true goal of its mission, not the breaking of distance records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With Opportunity’s achievement comes an acknowledgement that it has not yet broken the all-time distance record for travel on an extraterrestrial world. That distinction currently goes to the former Soviet Union’s remote controlled Lunokhod 2 rover, which until recently was thought to have traveled a total distance of 23 miles on the Moon’s surface back in 1973. This old official figure is currently\u003ca title=\"Reassessing the Soviet Lunokhod's distance record\" href=\"http://www.space.com/21923-soviet-moon-rover-driving-record.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> under debate and reassessment, \u003c/a>with new estimates putting it as high as 26 miles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So an echo of the old Space Race can be heard in the grinding whir of Opportunity’s wheels as it crawls steadily forward toward that decades-old Soviet all-time record. Can Opportunity do it? If the robot could talk, I imagine it would say, “No problem!” Whether its itinerary of scientific investigation will give it the opportunity to put on the needed miles is another matter.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "It's Dune-Boarding Season on Mars!",
"headTitle": "It’s Dune-Boarding Season on Mars! | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_4779\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/nasa-mro-gullies-in-russell-crater.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4779\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/nasa-mro-gullies-in-russell-crater.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of unusual channels dug on the slopes of a Martian sand dune\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4779\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of unusual channels dug on the slopes of a Martian sand dune\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ah, the yearly refresh of spring. Temperatures are warming, snows are sublimating, large sheets of dry ice are breaking free from dune tops and sliding like giant snow boards down the sandy slopes….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doesn’t sound like the spring thaws of Earth, much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/\" title=\"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter\u003c/a> and its high-powered HiRISE camera, which has been capturing extremely detailed pictures all over the surface of Mars for a few years now, has happened upon a number of surprising, curious and often captivating landscape features, many of which have inferred the action of dynamic weather processes on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Far from being the dead desert world that it first appeared in the 1960’s, images from MRO and other orbiting spacecraft, as well as several landers and rovers, have revealed that Mars is alive with activity—maybe not alive with actual life, but certainly a world that exhibits daily and seasonal weather patterns that we would find familiar, as well as some that we would not. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia17260\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an image\u003c/a> captured by MRO that shows a downhill-slithering brigade of channels that present a different appearance than others that look more like the features of liquid-carved gullies and streambeds. The long trenches gouged in the sandy slopes have an almost hair-like pattern, rooted at the tops of their runs and cascading downhill to blunt ends at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fluid-carved channels typically wind in a side-to-side meander and often end in dendritic fans where the fluid and the solids they carry spread out and dissipate. Whatever dug out these luge-chutes were probably solid, several meters across, and at the end of their run disappeared. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chunks of frozen carbon dioxide — or dry ice — forming in sheets on the dunes over the winter and breaking off during the spring thaw is one process that fits the bill. Their disappearance at the end of the run would be explained by the dry ice doing what we know it does best: simply sublimating away directly into its gaseous state, leaving behind only a dry depression where it came to rest. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And though huge slabs of dry ice sand-boarding down the faces of dunes (full-body sand-boarding is something I enjoyed doing on dunes in Death Valley when I was a kid) is an exotic example of the weather in an alien environment, reports from the Red Planet include other headlines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20120404.html\" title=\"MRO animation of dust devil on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dust devils\u003c/a>, a common sight in the windy deserts on Earth, also seem to be common on Mars—which is almost entirely windy desert. MRO has captured images of \u003ca href=\"http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov/collection/details/mars-dust-devils/\" title=\"Dust devil tracks on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looping and arcing streaks\u003c/a> left behind by packs of roving dust devils, and at least one of the Mars Exploration Rovers not only captured \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer-042105.html\" title=\"Video footage from Mars Exploration Rover of dust devil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">video footage\u003c/a> of some from the ground, it was also run over by one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strange, dark, \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2009/04/24/springtime-on-mars/\" title=\"Springtime on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">burst-like blemishes\u003c/a> have also been imaged in the Martian spring, thought to be outbursts of dust-laden carbon dioxide gas breaking free from layers of water, ice and permafrost as the season grows warmer (or, actually, less frigid). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still more! NASA’s Phoenix lander detected \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html\" title=\"Snowfall on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">aerial snow\u003c/a> from its location near the northern polar ice cap—a snowflake version of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">virga\u003c/a>, perhaps. As far back as the Viking lander missions, we have known of \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jplhistory/captions/vikinglander-t.php\" title=\"Ground frost at Viking lander site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ground frost\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even from Earth, before the first robotic probe was sent to Mars, we witnessed the seasonal cycle of growth and decline of the polar caps, as well as the global wind and dust storms that envelope the planet’s entire surface each Martian year when it passes closest to the Sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not a dead, lifeless planet at all. Meteorologically speaking, Mars is more exotic and often livelier than certain desert realms on Earth. So, grab a board of dry ice and hit the slopes, dude; it’s dune-boarding season!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_4779\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/nasa-mro-gullies-in-russell-crater.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4779\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/nasa-mro-gullies-in-russell-crater.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of unusual channels dug on the slopes of a Martian sand dune\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4779\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image of unusual channels dug on the slopes of a Martian sand dune\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Ah, the yearly refresh of spring. Temperatures are warming, snows are sublimating, large sheets of dry ice are breaking free from dune tops and sliding like giant snow boards down the sandy slopes….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Doesn’t sound like the spring thaws of Earth, much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/\" title=\"NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter\u003c/a> and its high-powered HiRISE camera, which has been capturing extremely detailed pictures all over the surface of Mars for a few years now, has happened upon a number of surprising, curious and often captivating landscape features, many of which have inferred the action of dynamic weather processes on Mars.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Far from being the dead desert world that it first appeared in the 1960’s, images from MRO and other orbiting spacecraft, as well as several landers and rovers, have revealed that Mars is alive with activity—maybe not alive with actual life, but certainly a world that exhibits daily and seasonal weather patterns that we would find familiar, as well as some that we would not. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There’s \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia17260\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">an image\u003c/a> captured by MRO that shows a downhill-slithering brigade of channels that present a different appearance than others that look more like the features of liquid-carved gullies and streambeds. The long trenches gouged in the sandy slopes have an almost hair-like pattern, rooted at the tops of their runs and cascading downhill to blunt ends at the bottom.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fluid-carved channels typically wind in a side-to-side meander and often end in dendritic fans where the fluid and the solids they carry spread out and dissipate. Whatever dug out these luge-chutes were probably solid, several meters across, and at the end of their run disappeared. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chunks of frozen carbon dioxide — or dry ice — forming in sheets on the dunes over the winter and breaking off during the spring thaw is one process that fits the bill. Their disappearance at the end of the run would be explained by the dry ice doing what we know it does best: simply sublimating away directly into its gaseous state, leaving behind only a dry depression where it came to rest. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And though huge slabs of dry ice sand-boarding down the faces of dunes (full-body sand-boarding is something I enjoyed doing on dunes in Death Valley when I was a kid) is an exotic example of the weather in an alien environment, reports from the Red Planet include other headlines. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20120404.html\" title=\"MRO animation of dust devil on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dust devils\u003c/a>, a common sight in the windy deserts on Earth, also seem to be common on Mars—which is almost entirely windy desert. MRO has captured images of \u003ca href=\"http://fettss.arc.nasa.gov/collection/details/mars-dust-devils/\" title=\"Dust devil tracks on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">looping and arcing streaks\u003c/a> left behind by packs of roving dust devils, and at least one of the Mars Exploration Rovers not only captured \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mer-042105.html\" title=\"Video footage from Mars Exploration Rover of dust devil\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">video footage\u003c/a> of some from the ground, it was also run over by one. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Strange, dark, \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2009/04/24/springtime-on-mars/\" title=\"Springtime on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">burst-like blemishes\u003c/a> have also been imaged in the Martian spring, thought to be outbursts of dust-laden carbon dioxide gas breaking free from layers of water, ice and permafrost as the season grows warmer (or, actually, less frigid). \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still more! NASA’s Phoenix lander detected \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phoenix-20080929.html\" title=\"Snowfall on Mars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">aerial snow\u003c/a> from its location near the northern polar ice cap—a snowflake version of \u003ca href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virga\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">virga\u003c/a>, perhaps. As far back as the Viking lander missions, we have known of \u003ca href=\"http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jplhistory/captions/vikinglander-t.php\" title=\"Ground frost at Viking lander site\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ground frost\u003c/a>. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And even from Earth, before the first robotic probe was sent to Mars, we witnessed the seasonal cycle of growth and decline of the polar caps, as well as the global wind and dust storms that envelope the planet’s entire surface each Martian year when it passes closest to the Sun. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not a dead, lifeless planet at all. Meteorologically speaking, Mars is more exotic and often livelier than certain desert realms on Earth. So, grab a board of dry ice and hit the slopes, dude; it’s dune-boarding season!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "The Supermoon Is Coming",
"headTitle": "The Supermoon Is Coming | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>Friday is the longest day of the year. (OK, technically, the longest day started on Thursday night.) But no need to feel all deflated once it’s over: you still have the supermoon to look forward to. That’s when the full moon is especially close to the Earth. And it’s coming this weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://earthsky.org/tonight/is-biggest-and-closest-full-moon-on-june-23-2013-a-supermoon\">EarthSky\u003c/a> explains astronomers call this a perigee full moon, which, granted, sounds less dramatic. Whatever you want to call it, it will be full, and it will be close.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com/21660-supermoon-rises-sunday-full-moon.html\">SPACE.com\u003c/a> has more details. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceItemEmbedly\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://i.space.com/images/i/000/017/211/i01/supermoon-may-2012-tim-mccord.jpg?1336303505\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.space.com/21660-supermoon-rises-sunday-full-moon.html\">Supermoon Rises in Weekend Night Sky Sunday\u003c/a>Sunday’s lunar perigee will be the moon’s closest to Earth of 2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full. The close timing of the moon’s perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a “supermoon.”\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float:right\">\u003ca target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" title=\"Powered by Embedly\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com\" class=\"media-attribution-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Space\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/20/supermoon_big_bright_moon_but_no_more_than_usual.html\">Slate\u003c/a>, Bad Astronomer says the supermoon is all hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceItemEmbedly\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/19/supermoon.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/20/supermoon_big_bright_moon_but_no_more_than_usual.html\">This Month’s Full Moon Will Be Cool, But Not Super\u003c/a>Oh, is it that time again? The time for everyone to overhype the “Supermoon”? Yup. You’ve probably heard about this: on June 23, the full Moon will be the biggest and brightest of the year, so it’s called the Supermoon. Let me be clear: While this is technically true, you’d never notice the difference in size or brightness by eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">via \u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.slate.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Slate\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>But still — in case you need one — it seems like a good enough excuse to get outside Sunday night and look up. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "No need to feel all deflated once the longest day of the year is over: you still have the supermoon to look forward to. That's when the full moon is especially close to the Earth. And it's coming this weekend. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Friday is the longest day of the year. (OK, technically, the longest day started on Thursday night.) But no need to feel all deflated once it’s over: you still have the supermoon to look forward to. That’s when the full moon is especially close to the Earth. And it’s coming this weekend.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://earthsky.org/tonight/is-biggest-and-closest-full-moon-on-june-23-2013-a-supermoon\">EarthSky\u003c/a> explains astronomers call this a perigee full moon, which, granted, sounds less dramatic. Whatever you want to call it, it will be full, and it will be close.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com/21660-supermoon-rises-sunday-full-moon.html\">SPACE.com\u003c/a> has more details. \u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceItemEmbedly\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://i.space.com/images/i/000/017/211/i01/supermoon-may-2012-tim-mccord.jpg?1336303505\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.space.com/21660-supermoon-rises-sunday-full-moon.html\">Supermoon Rises in Weekend Night Sky Sunday\u003c/a>Sunday’s lunar perigee will be the moon’s closest to Earth of 2013. And 32 minutes later, the moon will officially turn full. The close timing of the moon’s perigee and its full phase are what will bring about the biggest full moon of the year, a celestial event popularly defined by some as a “supermoon.”\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float:right\">\u003ca target=\"_blank\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" title=\"Powered by Embedly\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">\u003cspan>via \u003c/span>\u003ca href=\"http://www.space.com\" class=\"media-attribution-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Space\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, over at \u003ca href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/20/supermoon_big_bright_moon_but_no_more_than_usual.html\">Slate\u003c/a>, Bad Astronomer says the supermoon is all hype.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"mceItemEmbedly\">\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly\">\n\u003cp>\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" class=\"thumb embedly-thumbnail-small\" src=\"http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/19/supermoon.jpg/_jcr_content/renditions/cq5dam.web.1280.1280.jpeg\" alt=\"\">\u003ca class=\"embedly-title\" href=\"http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/06/20/supermoon_big_bright_moon_but_no_more_than_usual.html\">This Month’s Full Moon Will Be Cool, But Not Super\u003c/a>Oh, is it that time again? The time for everyone to overhype the “Supermoon”? Yup. You’ve probably heard about this: on June 23, the full Moon will be the biggest and brightest of the year, so it’s called the Supermoon. Let me be clear: While this is technically true, you’d never notice the difference in size or brightness by eye.\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"embedly-powered\" style=\"float: right\">\u003ca title=\"Powered by Embedly\" href=\"http://embed.ly?src=anywhere\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u003cimg decoding=\"async\" src=\"//static.embed.ly/images/logos/embedly-powered-small-light.png\" alt=\"Embedly Powered\">\u003c/a>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003cdiv class=\"media-attribution\">via \u003ca class=\"media-attribution-link\" href=\"http://www.slate.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Slate\u003c/a>\u003c/div>\n\u003cdiv class=\"embedly-clear\">\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003c/div>\n\u003cp>But still — in case you need one — it seems like a good enough excuse to get outside Sunday night and look up. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"title": "Curiosity Prepares to Set Forth From Base Camp At Last",
"headTitle": "Curiosity Prepares to Set Forth From Base Camp At Last | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_4352\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/curiosity-and-mount-sharp.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4352\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/curiosity-and-mount-sharp.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Curiosity Rover and Mount Sharp\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4352\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Curiosity Rover and Mount Sharp\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The exploration of Mars is not like your parents’ science fiction adventure movie, where would-be explorers hit the ground with wheels spinning, flinging up red rooster tails of dust as they motocross their way over the Martian terrain in search of a game-changing plot complication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not like that at all — well, except for the part about the game-changing plot complication, which is the entire thrust of the mission of NASA’s Curiosity rover. The game-changer–assessing if conditions on Mars were ever suitable for the formation of life–is in fact a much desired complication, something we’ve been hoping to determine since we started studying Mars with robotic probes almost 50 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As far as an action adventure goes, Curiosity’s activities since landing on Mars ten months ago might be called conservative. It’s traveled less than half a mile from its landing spot and poked about the rocks and soil in one small area, while what we might assume is the beginning of its true adventure lies five miles and maybe a year or more away. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curiosity’s \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/01/25/mars-mountainclimbing-mashup/\" title=\"Mars Mountain Climbing Mashup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">primary mission\u003c/a> is to study the geology of the layers of sediment that make up Mount Sharp, a large mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater. Gale is an ancient impact crater believed to have filled with sediment over billions of years of erosion and deposition, some of it probably by water action. Like an open book of the geologic history of Mars, its story written in pages of sediment, Curiosity has yet to climb up its slopes to read the conditions of the past. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While I am as anxious as the next Mars geek to see the gravel and stone of Mount Sharp up close (and, I admit, my own sense of the fantastic yearns for Curiosity to find something like, oh, say, fossils), it’s worth mentioning that Curiosity’s work at its “base camp” (an area of crater floor alluvium dubbed “Glenelg”) has proven to be a huge down payment on that game-changer we’re looking for. Three different types of geology converge in this area, which has given Curiosity a variety to sample sources to drill, scoop, and analyze. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in its exploration Curiosity discovered a \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/05/news-from-mars-a-river-ran-through-it/\" title=\"A River Ran Through It\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pebbly matrix\u003c/a> that strongly resembles formations on Earth that are known to have been laid down by past streams of water, hinting at liquid water flowing over the Martian terrain long ago. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using its \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/02/22/mars-rovercuriosity-digs-a-little-deeper/\" title=\"Curiosity Digs a Little Deeper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">drill\u003c/a>, Curiosity has probed deeper into Martian geology than ever in the past—2.6 inches—revealing beneath the weathered, rusty orange outer surface of its target rocks (\u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/05/22/curiosity-drills-a-second-hole-on-mars/\" title=\"NASA's Curiosity drills into Martian rock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“John Klein” and “Cumberland”\u003c/a>) the blue-gray face of a hidden Mars. Analysis of the John Klein rock samples revealed a number of chemical elements found in life on Earth, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Past surface water. The chemicals that comprise Earth-life. Game-changing findings. Not bad for what amount to warm-up exercises at the foot of a mountain that promises to tell us so much more about Mars’ past. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Curiosity is preparing to shift gears and enter a long-distance travel mode to reach the foot of Mount Sharp in the coming months. Mission scientists can’t say when it will reach the mountain, because there is always the possibility that Curiosity will happen upon something so interesting that we must stop to take a closer look, but that’s how exploration goes: often it is along the journey, and not what we find at the destination, that we discover the biggest game-changers.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "After ten months of studying a small patch of Mars half a mile from its landing point, NASA's Curiosity rover pulls up stakes, packs its bags and prepares to set forth on a trek to reach the base of Mount Sharp, a layered mound of Martian geologic history with secrets just waiting to be discovered. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_4352\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/curiosity-and-mount-sharp.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4352\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/06/curiosity-and-mount-sharp.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Curiosity Rover and Mount Sharp\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-4352\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Curiosity Rover and Mount Sharp\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The exploration of Mars is not like your parents’ science fiction adventure movie, where would-be explorers hit the ground with wheels spinning, flinging up red rooster tails of dust as they motocross their way over the Martian terrain in search of a game-changing plot complication.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not like that at all — well, except for the part about the game-changing plot complication, which is the entire thrust of the mission of NASA’s Curiosity rover. The game-changer–assessing if conditions on Mars were ever suitable for the formation of life–is in fact a much desired complication, something we’ve been hoping to determine since we started studying Mars with robotic probes almost 50 years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As far as an action adventure goes, Curiosity’s activities since landing on Mars ten months ago might be called conservative. It’s traveled less than half a mile from its landing spot and poked about the rocks and soil in one small area, while what we might assume is the beginning of its true adventure lies five miles and maybe a year or more away. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Curiosity’s \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/01/25/mars-mountainclimbing-mashup/\" title=\"Mars Mountain Climbing Mashup\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">primary mission\u003c/a> is to study the geology of the layers of sediment that make up Mount Sharp, a large mountain at the center of the vast Gale Crater. Gale is an ancient impact crater believed to have filled with sediment over billions of years of erosion and deposition, some of it probably by water action. Like an open book of the geologic history of Mars, its story written in pages of sediment, Curiosity has yet to climb up its slopes to read the conditions of the past. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While I am as anxious as the next Mars geek to see the gravel and stone of Mount Sharp up close (and, I admit, my own sense of the fantastic yearns for Curiosity to find something like, oh, say, fossils), it’s worth mentioning that Curiosity’s work at its “base camp” (an area of crater floor alluvium dubbed “Glenelg”) has proven to be a huge down payment on that game-changer we’re looking for. Three different types of geology converge in this area, which has given Curiosity a variety to sample sources to drill, scoop, and analyze. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Early in its exploration Curiosity discovered a \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2012/10/05/news-from-mars-a-river-ran-through-it/\" title=\"A River Ran Through It\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">pebbly matrix\u003c/a> that strongly resembles formations on Earth that are known to have been laid down by past streams of water, hinting at liquid water flowing over the Martian terrain long ago. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Using its \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/2013/02/22/mars-rovercuriosity-digs-a-little-deeper/\" title=\"Curiosity Digs a Little Deeper\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">drill\u003c/a>, Curiosity has probed deeper into Martian geology than ever in the past—2.6 inches—revealing beneath the weathered, rusty orange outer surface of its target rocks (\u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/05/22/curiosity-drills-a-second-hole-on-mars/\" title=\"NASA's Curiosity drills into Martian rock\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“John Klein” and “Cumberland”\u003c/a>) the blue-gray face of a hidden Mars. Analysis of the John Klein rock samples revealed a number of chemical elements found in life on Earth, including sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorous, and carbon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Past surface water. The chemicals that comprise Earth-life. Game-changing findings. Not bad for what amount to warm-up exercises at the foot of a mountain that promises to tell us so much more about Mars’ past. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, Curiosity is preparing to shift gears and enter a long-distance travel mode to reach the foot of Mount Sharp in the coming months. Mission scientists can’t say when it will reach the mountain, because there is always the possibility that Curiosity will happen upon something so interesting that we must stop to take a closer look, but that’s how exploration goes: often it is along the journey, and not what we find at the destination, that we discover the biggest game-changers.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_3598\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/nasakepler.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3598\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/nasakepler.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Kepler Spacecraft\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3598\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Is NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, that amazing extrasolar-planet-spotter in the sky, down for the count? No one’s said definitively, but that seems to be the tone of the conversation from those who know best. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/\" title=\"Kepler Home Page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kepler\u003c/a>, that giant space-borne camera that has been staring at a patch of 150,000 stars in Cygnus for the past few years, has encountered technical problems with its \u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/faq/#b7\" title=\"Kepler Thruster Module Reaction Wheels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reaction wheels\u003c/a>. These reaction wheels are somewhat like gyroscopes: heavy disks spun with electric motors, and by speeding up or slowing down their spin the rest of the spacecraft can be turned this way and that, or kept pointing steadily in a desired direction—a function critical to all telescopes that need to point continuously at a specific spot in the sky. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s like a plot twist from a sci-fi thriller movie or TV series cliff-hanger: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, after searching doggedly for a habitable extrasolar planet for the last few years, is just about to reveal the presence of another Earth, when suddenly a malfunction shuts it down, snatching potentially one of the most Earth-shaking discoveries of all time right out from under us!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve gathered you all here to reveal the identity of the mystery person. It is none other than…we regret to inform you that the show has just been cancelled….”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, the back story is Kepler was launched to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars within their habitable zones, just the right distance so that temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. Much more difficult to detect than the first exoplanets we began finding—so called \u003ca href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/24may_hotjupiters/\" title=\"Hot Jupiters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Hot Jupiters”\u003c/a>—Earth analogs are much smaller and orbit their stars far less frequently. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the four years since Kepler was launched, it has found plenty of gas giants planets orbiting close to their stars (Hot Jupiters), as expected. Being large and circling their stars every few weeks or even days, these are the first planets you would notice when looking for the minute dimming of their stars’ light as they pass in front. But finding a planet quantitatively more like the Earth—small, circling its star only once in many months—takes more time and greater attention to details of the data. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as planets around Earth’s size began to emerge from the copious amounts of Kepler data, and just as it seemed Kepler scientists were close to definitively confirming an Earth 2.0 (such as candidates orbiting the stars \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-62-kepler-69.html\" title=\"Kepler 62 and 69\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kepler 62 and Kepler 69\u003c/a>), we must take a step back from that pivotal discovery and wait and take a deep breath….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s important to remember a few things at this time. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, missions in space are risky, not only because of the severe environment, but also the fact that most of the robotic machines we put out there are beyond our practical reach to repair should a failure occur, a few low-orbiting examples like the Hubble Space Telescope notwithstanding. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second, though scientists wanted many more years of Kepler observations (fuel and funding might have taken the mission to the year 2019), Kepler did last for its entire projected mission. In that time it found hundreds of exoplanets, and over 2700 candidates, and changed our understanding of how common planets actually are in the galaxy, outnumbering the stars themselves. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third, in its lifetime, Kepler collected a mass of data that will be scrutinized for probably years to come—and that means the definitive confirmation of that other-Earth, that Earth 2.0, may already be in our possession, and only needs to be found among that data. \u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_3598\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 630px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/nasakepler.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3598\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/nasakepler.jpg\" alt=\"NASA's Kepler Spacecraft\" width=\"630\" height=\"360\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3598\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NASA’s Kepler Spacecraft\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Is NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, that amazing extrasolar-planet-spotter in the sky, down for the count? No one’s said definitively, but that seems to be the tone of the conversation from those who know best. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/\" title=\"Kepler Home Page\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kepler\u003c/a>, that giant space-borne camera that has been staring at a patch of 150,000 stars in Cygnus for the past few years, has encountered technical problems with its \u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/faq/#b7\" title=\"Kepler Thruster Module Reaction Wheels\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reaction wheels\u003c/a>. These reaction wheels are somewhat like gyroscopes: heavy disks spun with electric motors, and by speeding up or slowing down their spin the rest of the spacecraft can be turned this way and that, or kept pointing steadily in a desired direction—a function critical to all telescopes that need to point continuously at a specific spot in the sky. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s like a plot twist from a sci-fi thriller movie or TV series cliff-hanger: NASA’s Kepler spacecraft, after searching doggedly for a habitable extrasolar planet for the last few years, is just about to reveal the presence of another Earth, when suddenly a malfunction shuts it down, snatching potentially one of the most Earth-shaking discoveries of all time right out from under us!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I’ve gathered you all here to reveal the identity of the mystery person. It is none other than…we regret to inform you that the show has just been cancelled….”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, the back story is Kepler was launched to search for Earth-sized planets orbiting their stars within their habitable zones, just the right distance so that temperatures are moderate enough for liquid water to exist on the surface. Much more difficult to detect than the first exoplanets we began finding—so called \u003ca href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/24may_hotjupiters/\" title=\"Hot Jupiters\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">“Hot Jupiters”\u003c/a>—Earth analogs are much smaller and orbit their stars far less frequently. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the four years since Kepler was launched, it has found plenty of gas giants planets orbiting close to their stars (Hot Jupiters), as expected. Being large and circling their stars every few weeks or even days, these are the first planets you would notice when looking for the minute dimming of their stars’ light as they pass in front. But finding a planet quantitatively more like the Earth—small, circling its star only once in many months—takes more time and greater attention to details of the data. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just as planets around Earth’s size began to emerge from the copious amounts of Kepler data, and just as it seemed Kepler scientists were close to definitively confirming an Earth 2.0 (such as candidates orbiting the stars \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepler-62-kepler-69.html\" title=\"Kepler 62 and 69\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kepler 62 and Kepler 69\u003c/a>), we must take a step back from that pivotal discovery and wait and take a deep breath….\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s important to remember a few things at this time. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>First, missions in space are risky, not only because of the severe environment, but also the fact that most of the robotic machines we put out there are beyond our practical reach to repair should a failure occur, a few low-orbiting examples like the Hubble Space Telescope notwithstanding. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Second, though scientists wanted many more years of Kepler observations (fuel and funding might have taken the mission to the year 2019), Kepler did last for its entire projected mission. In that time it found hundreds of exoplanets, and over 2700 candidates, and changed our understanding of how common planets actually are in the galaxy, outnumbering the stars themselves. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Third, in its lifetime, Kepler collected a mass of data that will be scrutinized for probably years to come—and that means the definitive confirmation of that other-Earth, that Earth 2.0, may already be in our possession, and only needs to be found among that data. \u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Giant Asteroid \"QE2\" is Due for a Fly-By",
"headTitle": "Giant Asteroid “QE2” is Due for a Fly-By | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_3620\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/asteroid20130530-full-1024x576.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3620\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/asteroid20130530-full-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"These radar images of QE2, taken from the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., reveal that QE2 has a moon approximately 2,000 feet wide. \" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3620\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These radar images of QE2, taken from the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., reveal that QE2 has a moon approximately 2,000 feet wide.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A rock the size of nine cruise ships will whiz past Earth on Friday afternoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asteroid QE2 was not named after the \u003ca href=\"http://www.qe2.org.uk/\">Queen Elizabeth 2\u003c/a> (though it’s often compared to it) and – settle down – it’s coming nowhere near Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, May 31, at 1:59 PDT, QE2 will pass by at a safe distance of about 3.6 million miles, the closest we’ll get to it for another 200 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>QE2 is about a third of the size of the asteroid or comet that probably killed off the dinosaurs. But (hypothetically speaking!) if it did hit Earth, it’d “ruin your whole day,” says David Morrison, a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, near Mountain View.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nUPDATE: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena is releasing its first radar images of QE2, and has announced that the asteroid has a moon about 2,000 feet wide. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KQEDScience: What’s interesting about this asteroid?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MORRISON: It’s big. This asteroid is one of the biggest ones we’ve found recently. It’s big enough that if it did hit the earth — which it’s very unlikely to do — it would pretty much wipe out civilization, we think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You think?! \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know its orbit. It’s well observed. It’s not going to come anywhere close, this time. It’s going to be something like 15 times farther away than the moon. It won’t come back even that close for another 200 years. And as far as we can project into the future, its orbit simply does not intercept the orbit of the earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMeWUYZBXsE\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s coming close enough to be within range of our big radars – \u003ca href=\"http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/\">JPL at Goldstone\u003c/a> (in the Mojave Desert) and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.naic.edu/\">NSF Arecibo\u003c/a>, in Puerto Rico. They’ll be able to beam very high-intensity, very precise-frequency radio waves at QE2. When (those radio waves) are reflected back, they’ll reveal something about the asteroid’s shape, its roughness, its rotation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sort of like a topographical map.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll end up with a model that you can hold in your hands, like a lumpy potato that will show what it really looks like.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nYou’re an astrobiologist. What interests you about asteroids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asteroids are cool. They’re the leftover building blocks of the planets. They are also capable of hitting us sometimes and doing terrible damage, like the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. So they’re creators and destroyers, of great interest to scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is it possible that life here on Earth actually began on an asteroid?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s very unlikely that any asteroid ever had ancient life because they’re simply too small — too small to have atmospheres, water and weather, which we think are the fundamental ingredients for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they could have brought the pieces of life to Earth, the original chemicals. Those could mix together in the Earth’s much better environment and, we think, give rise to life here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will QE2 be visible with a telescope?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be very difficult to see because it’s not only fairly far away, it’s black. Its surface is as black as soot. So it’s easier to see in radar than with an optical telescope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: Astronomers at \u003ca href=\"http://www.chabotspace.org/visit-chabot.htm\">Chabot Space and Science Center\u003c/a> are more optimistic about catching a glimpse of QE2. The public is invited to take a look through Chabot’s 36 inch telescope, Nellie, anytime between 9:00 PM and when the Center closes at 10:30 PM.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>And PS: Here’s a KQED Quest video on \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/asteroid-hunters/\">near-Earth asteroids\u003c/a> and the scientists who love them.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_3620\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1024px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/asteroid20130530-full-1024x576.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3620\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/asteroid20130530-full-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"These radar images of QE2, taken from the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., reveal that QE2 has a moon approximately 2,000 feet wide. \" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" class=\"size-large wp-image-3620\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">These radar images of QE2, taken from the Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., reveal that QE2 has a moon approximately 2,000 feet wide.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A rock the size of nine cruise ships will whiz past Earth on Friday afternoon.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asteroid QE2 was not named after the \u003ca href=\"http://www.qe2.org.uk/\">Queen Elizabeth 2\u003c/a> (though it’s often compared to it) and – settle down – it’s coming nowhere near Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On Friday, May 31, at 1:59 PDT, QE2 will pass by at a safe distance of about 3.6 million miles, the closest we’ll get to it for another 200 years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>QE2 is about a third of the size of the asteroid or comet that probably killed off the dinosaurs. But (hypothetically speaking!) if it did hit Earth, it’d “ruin your whole day,” says David Morrison, a space scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, near Mountain View.\u003cbr>\n\u003cem>\u003cbr>\nUPDATE: NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena is releasing its first radar images of QE2, and has announced that the asteroid has a moon about 2,000 feet wide. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>KQEDScience: What’s interesting about this asteroid?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>MORRISON: It’s big. This asteroid is one of the biggest ones we’ve found recently. It’s big enough that if it did hit the earth — which it’s very unlikely to do — it would pretty much wipe out civilization, we think.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>You think?! \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We know its orbit. It’s well observed. It’s not going to come anywhere close, this time. It’s going to be something like 15 times farther away than the moon. It won’t come back even that close for another 200 years. And as far as we can project into the future, its orbit simply does not intercept the orbit of the earth.\u003c/p>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutube'>\n \u003cspan class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__embedYoutubeInside'>\n \u003ciframe\n loading='lazy'\n class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__youtubeShortcode__youtubePlayer'\n type='text/html'\n src='//www.youtube.com/embed/pMeWUYZBXsE'\n title='//www.youtube.com/embed/pMeWUYZBXsE'\n allowfullscreen='true'\n style='border:0;'>\u003c/iframe>\n \u003c/span>\n \u003c/span>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>It’s coming close enough to be within range of our big radars – \u003ca href=\"http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/\">JPL at Goldstone\u003c/a> (in the Mojave Desert) and the \u003ca href=\"http://www.naic.edu/\">NSF Arecibo\u003c/a>, in Puerto Rico. They’ll be able to beam very high-intensity, very precise-frequency radio waves at QE2. When (those radio waves) are reflected back, they’ll reveal something about the asteroid’s shape, its roughness, its rotation.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Sort of like a topographical map.\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ll end up with a model that you can hold in your hands, like a lumpy potato that will show what it really looks like.\u003cbr>\n\u003cstrong>\u003cbr>\nYou’re an astrobiologist. What interests you about asteroids?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Asteroids are cool. They’re the leftover building blocks of the planets. They are also capable of hitting us sometimes and doing terrible damage, like the mass extinction that killed off the dinosaurs. So they’re creators and destroyers, of great interest to scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is it possible that life here on Earth actually began on an asteroid?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s very unlikely that any asteroid ever had ancient life because they’re simply too small — too small to have atmospheres, water and weather, which we think are the fundamental ingredients for life.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But they could have brought the pieces of life to Earth, the original chemicals. Those could mix together in the Earth’s much better environment and, we think, give rise to life here.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Will QE2 be visible with a telescope?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It will be very difficult to see because it’s not only fairly far away, it’s black. Its surface is as black as soot. So it’s easier to see in radar than with an optical telescope.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Note: Astronomers at \u003ca href=\"http://www.chabotspace.org/visit-chabot.htm\">Chabot Space and Science Center\u003c/a> are more optimistic about catching a glimpse of QE2. The public is invited to take a look through Chabot’s 36 inch telescope, Nellie, anytime between 9:00 PM and when the Center closes at 10:30 PM.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>And PS: Here’s a KQED Quest video on \u003ca href=\"http://science.kqed.org/quest/video/asteroid-hunters/\">near-Earth asteroids\u003c/a> and the scientists who love them.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "B612 Foundation: Defending the Earth from Merciless Asteroids",
"headTitle": "B612 Foundation: Defending the Earth from Merciless Asteroids | KQED",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2796\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/b612foundation.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2796\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2796\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/b612foundation.jpg\" alt=\"The Gravity Tractor concept.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gravity Tractor concept. Credit: Dan Durda/B612 Foundation\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Pathetic Earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.” – \u003ca title=\"Ming the Merciless\" href=\"http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/23400000/Flash-Gordon-flash-gordon-23432212-1920-1080.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ming the Merciless\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We who watched that movie know what Ming was referring to, but he might just as well have been calling attention to the multitude of space rocks out there—\u003ca title=\"Near Earth Object - Video\" href=\"http://www.space.com/19830-neos-near-earth-objects-the-video-show.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near Earth Objects\u003c/a>; comets and asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit and pose a potential impact risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Envision the Earth plunging through space and passing a sign that warns, “Watch for falling rocks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, we’ve been getting very good with our technology and techniques for finding and tracking NEOs, not only the ones that occasionally explode in an aerial fireball or even gouge out a crater on the ground, but also those near misses that go grazing by, only to plunge back into the darkness until they once again circle back to us, maybe closer than before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been a number of these in the news lately, seemingly with greater and greater frequency. The sizeable asteroid 2012 DA14 crossed within our ring of geosynchronous satellites last February—and on the same date, the \u003ca title=\"Chelyabinsk Meteorite\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1z7D4dOk0U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chelyabinsk meteorite \u003c/a>exploded over the skies of Russia, and another fireball lit up Bay Area skies that same night! Truly, it seemed like the sky was falling. It was an \u003ca title=\"2012 DA14\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/asteroidflyby.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">astronomical coincidence\u003c/a>, but caused quite a stir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"Near Earth Object detection program\" href=\"http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">We are currently tracking \u003c/a>quite a large number of NEOs classified as Potentially Hazardous Objects, asteroids and comets that have a calculable probability of hitting us in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are we to do about it? Last I heard, Flash Gordon was unavailable—and I wonder if Bruce Willis could still fit into the spacesuit he wore when he flew out to blow up that comet…oh, but that was a movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What about the B612 Foundation? I heard they’re all about protecting the planet from cosmic impacts. And I think they’re available! What is the B612 Foundation? Real astronauts, real engineers, and a real plan for deflecting asteroids from collision courses with Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Founded back in 2001, \u003ca title=\"B612 Foundation\" href=\"http://b612foundation.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B612 \u003c/a>(named after the tiny planetoid the storybook Little Prince lived on) is committed to developing spacecraft technology capable of altering the course of an impending impactor–with a tractor, of sorts. The idea is to place a massive robotic spacecraft nearby an asteroid and allowing the gravitational attraction between the two to gently tug the rock off its collision course. By exerting a small force over a long period of time (years, or decades), the nudge would make the difference between a hit and a miss, with Earth. They are even working on promoting a mission to practice the technique on a selected asteroid, though not one that is currently on a crash course with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, if you want to talk to the real astronauts—also co-founders of B612 Foundation—Space Shuttle astronaut Ed Lu and Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart will be at Chabot Space & Science Center on Saturday evening, May 18, to talk about their planetary protection plan and air a planetarium show in Chabot’s full dome digital planetarium. \u003ca title=\"Evening with Astronauts at Chabot Space & Science Center\" href=\"http://www.chabotspace.org/astronauts.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Check out the details \u003c/a>and come talk to some real astronauts who want to save the planet!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2796\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/b612foundation.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2796\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2796\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/b612foundation.jpg\" alt=\"The Gravity Tractor concept.\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Gravity Tractor concept. Credit: Dan Durda/B612 Foundation\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Pathetic Earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror.” – \u003ca title=\"Ming the Merciless\" href=\"http://images4.fanpop.com/image/photos/23400000/Flash-Gordon-flash-gordon-23432212-1920-1080.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ming the Merciless\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We who watched that movie know what Ming was referring to, but he might just as well have been calling attention to the multitude of space rocks out there—\u003ca title=\"Near Earth Object - Video\" href=\"http://www.space.com/19830-neos-near-earth-objects-the-video-show.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Near Earth Objects\u003c/a>; comets and asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit and pose a potential impact risk.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Envision the Earth plunging through space and passing a sign that warns, “Watch for falling rocks.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, we’ve been getting very good with our technology and techniques for finding and tracking NEOs, not only the ones that occasionally explode in an aerial fireball or even gouge out a crater on the ground, but also those near misses that go grazing by, only to plunge back into the darkness until they once again circle back to us, maybe closer than before.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>There have been a number of these in the news lately, seemingly with greater and greater frequency. The sizeable asteroid 2012 DA14 crossed within our ring of geosynchronous satellites last February—and on the same date, the \u003ca title=\"Chelyabinsk Meteorite\" href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1z7D4dOk0U\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Chelyabinsk meteorite \u003c/a>exploded over the skies of Russia, and another fireball lit up Bay Area skies that same night! Truly, it seemed like the sky was falling. It was an \u003ca title=\"2012 DA14\" href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/asteroidflyby.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">astronomical coincidence\u003c/a>, but caused quite a stir.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca title=\"Near Earth Object detection program\" href=\"http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">We are currently tracking \u003c/a>quite a large number of NEOs classified as Potentially Hazardous Objects, asteroids and comets that have a calculable probability of hitting us in the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What are we to do about it? Last I heard, Flash Gordon was unavailable—and I wonder if Bruce Willis could still fit into the spacesuit he wore when he flew out to blow up that comet…oh, but that was a movie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What about the B612 Foundation? I heard they’re all about protecting the planet from cosmic impacts. And I think they’re available! What is the B612 Foundation? Real astronauts, real engineers, and a real plan for deflecting asteroids from collision courses with Earth.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Founded back in 2001, \u003ca title=\"B612 Foundation\" href=\"http://b612foundation.org/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">B612 \u003c/a>(named after the tiny planetoid the storybook Little Prince lived on) is committed to developing spacecraft technology capable of altering the course of an impending impactor–with a tractor, of sorts. The idea is to place a massive robotic spacecraft nearby an asteroid and allowing the gravitational attraction between the two to gently tug the rock off its collision course. By exerting a small force over a long period of time (years, or decades), the nudge would make the difference between a hit and a miss, with Earth. They are even working on promoting a mission to practice the technique on a selected asteroid, though not one that is currently on a crash course with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In fact, if you want to talk to the real astronauts—also co-founders of B612 Foundation—Space Shuttle astronaut Ed Lu and Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart will be at Chabot Space & Science Center on Saturday evening, May 18, to talk about their planetary protection plan and air a planetarium show in Chabot’s full dome digital planetarium. \u003ca title=\"Evening with Astronauts at Chabot Space & Science Center\" href=\"http://www.chabotspace.org/astronauts.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Check out the details \u003c/a>and come talk to some real astronauts who want to save the planet!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"title": "Kepler Scientist: \"A Beautiful Instrument Has Died\"",
"headTitle": "Kepler Scientist: “A Beautiful Instrument Has Died” | KQED",
"content": "\u003cp>One of NASA’s most popular and successful missions has hit a disabling technical snag, the agency \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20130515.html\">announced\u003c/a> Wednesday. A reaction wheel on the Kepler spacecraft has become stuck, say NASA engineers. Without it, scientists can’t aim the telescope as precisely as they need to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kepler space observatory was launched on March 6, 2009 on a search to disprove the notion that Earth is unique in the universe. Over four years, Kepler \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/space/keplers-tally-of-planets.html\">found\u003c/a> more than 100 planets orbiting distant stars. In April, Kepler scientists announced they had found two planets roughly Earth-sized and in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water may flow on the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2797\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/742539main_Kepler-62MorningStar_3x4_1024-768_SCALE.jpg\" alt=\"The artist's concept depicts NASA's Kepler misssion's smallest habitable zone planet. (Credit: NASA Ames)\" width=\"640\" height=\"361\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Kepler misssion’s smallest habitable zone planet. (Credit: NASA Ames)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kepler, which is based at NASA Ames, near Mountain View, has special significance to Bay Area scientists, including \u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/team/coi/geoffMarcy/\">Geoffrey Marcy\u003c/a>, a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and a co-investigator on the Kepler project. Reached in his office today, Marcy told me Kepler’s failure has had him in tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How are you? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Terrible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So it’s as bad as it sounds?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. We knew the friction in Reaction Wheel Four was getting worse and worse. It was [moving] in a sort of hurk-jerky motion. And that’s a tell-tale sign of failure\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, people have wondered whether there were other Earth-like planets. Kepler is the mission that answered that question.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there really nothing that can be done to fix it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The party line is “there are many things to try right now.” Engineers at NASA Ames are going to try and start up the reaction wheel, rock it back and forth – like when your car is stuck in the snow — forward, backwards, hoping it gets unstuck. So there’s hope, but not much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, the spacecraft got its four year nominal mission. That’s all that was expected. But we were hoping for another four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s this like for you?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel awful. I feel dizzy and my eyes are tearing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, it feels funny to to speak emotionally about a telescope, but in the last 2,400 years, since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, people have wondered whether there were other Earth-like planets. Kepler is the mission that answered that question. We found Earth-like planets by the hundreds. And now this beautiful instrument has died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a loss for our species. That sounds dramatic, but we pride ourselves as a species of exploration, seeking answers beyond the horizon, answers about our place in the universe. And Kepler was answering those questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2860\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/615219miniplanetarysystem_scale-288x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2860\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/615219miniplanetarysystem_scale-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"This artist's concept depicts a small planetary system around a red dwarf. Credit: NASA Ames\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2860\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This artist’s concept depicts a small planetary system around a red dwarf. Credit: NASA Ames\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What did Kepler find?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">We haven’t really identified, yet, an Earth-twin planet where we would say “yeah, that one looks like home.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>We now have a very strong measurement of how common Earth-sized planets are, and how many might be habitable. We wanted another two-to-four years to pin it down. We’re left with a good answer, but it’s not as secure of an answer as we had hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve found hundreds of Earth-sized- planets. But not a single planet that’s definitely like the Earth: rocky surface, liquid water, lukewarm temperature, suitable for biochemistry of life. We haven’t really identified, yet, an Earth-twin planet where we would say “yeah, that one looks like home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There is still a lot of Kepler data yet to be processed, right?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, and we’re going to be working nonstop. I’m working seven days a week, evenings; my grad students are working non-stop. We have a team here that uses the Keck telescope in Hawaii to measurer the properties of these planets – their orbits, what their atmospheres might be like. So we still have to answer those questions for the planets we’ve found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Could it be that the mythical Earth-twin planet is still in the data, waiting to be uncovered? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absolutely. And we’re going to work even harder now that the data is even more precious. And we’re gonna try to search for intelligent signs of life on those planets, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Intelligent life? Tell me more. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have funding [from the Templeton Foundation] for a search to look for laser beam transmissions from advanced civilizations. It’s a crazy project and I’m nearly sure I’ll fail. But I have to try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea is you would use lasers to send a message from one civilization to another one on another planet. You can’t stream cable; fiberoptics don’t work over millions of miles. If alien civilizations are communicating with each other in some kinds of great galactic internet, maybe we can read their email.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "One of NASA’s most popular and successful missions has hit a disabling technical snag. The Kepler space telescope was launched on a search to disprove the notion that Earth is unique in the universe. Over four years, it found more than 100 planets orbiting distant stars.",
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"title": "Kepler Scientist: \"A Beautiful Instrument Has Died\" | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>One of NASA’s most popular and successful missions has hit a disabling technical snag, the agency \u003ca href=\"http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/keplerm-20130515.html\">announced\u003c/a> Wednesday. A reaction wheel on the Kepler spacecraft has become stuck, say NASA engineers. Without it, scientists can’t aim the telescope as precisely as they need to.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Kepler space observatory was launched on March 6, 2009 on a search to disprove the notion that Earth is unique in the universe. Over four years, Kepler \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/science/space/keplers-tally-of-planets.html\">found\u003c/a> more than 100 planets orbiting distant stars. In April, Kepler scientists announced they had found two planets roughly Earth-sized and in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” where liquid water may flow on the surface.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2797\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2797\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/742539main_Kepler-62MorningStar_3x4_1024-768_SCALE.jpg\" alt=\"The artist's concept depicts NASA's Kepler misssion's smallest habitable zone planet. (Credit: NASA Ames)\" width=\"640\" height=\"361\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The artist’s concept depicts NASA’s Kepler misssion’s smallest habitable zone planet. (Credit: NASA Ames)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Kepler, which is based at NASA Ames, near Mountain View, has special significance to Bay Area scientists, including \u003ca href=\"http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/team/coi/geoffMarcy/\">Geoffrey Marcy\u003c/a>, a professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley and a co-investigator on the Kepler project. Reached in his office today, Marcy told me Kepler’s failure has had him in tears.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>How are you? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Terrible.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>So it’s as bad as it sounds?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yeah. We knew the friction in Reaction Wheel Four was getting worse and worse. It was [moving] in a sort of hurk-jerky motion. And that’s a tell-tale sign of failure\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, people have wondered whether there were other Earth-like planets. Kepler is the mission that answered that question.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Is there really nothing that can be done to fix it?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The party line is “there are many things to try right now.” Engineers at NASA Ames are going to try and start up the reaction wheel, rock it back and forth – like when your car is stuck in the snow — forward, backwards, hoping it gets unstuck. So there’s hope, but not much.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, the spacecraft got its four year nominal mission. That’s all that was expected. But we were hoping for another four years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What’s this like for you?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I feel awful. I feel dizzy and my eyes are tearing up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>You know, it feels funny to to speak emotionally about a telescope, but in the last 2,400 years, since the time of the ancient Greek philosophers, people have wondered whether there were other Earth-like planets. Kepler is the mission that answered that question. We found Earth-like planets by the hundreds. And now this beautiful instrument has died.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’s a loss for our species. That sounds dramatic, but we pride ourselves as a species of exploration, seeking answers beyond the horizon, answers about our place in the universe. And Kepler was answering those questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_2860\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 288px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/615219miniplanetarysystem_scale-288x162.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-2860\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/science/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2013/05/615219miniplanetarysystem_scale-288x162.jpg\" alt=\"This artist's concept depicts a small planetary system around a red dwarf. Credit: NASA Ames\" width=\"288\" height=\"162\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-2860\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">This artist’s concept depicts a small planetary system around a red dwarf. Credit: NASA Ames\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>What did Kepler find?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">We haven’t really identified, yet, an Earth-twin planet where we would say “yeah, that one looks like home.” \u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>We now have a very strong measurement of how common Earth-sized planets are, and how many might be habitable. We wanted another two-to-four years to pin it down. We’re left with a good answer, but it’s not as secure of an answer as we had hoped.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>We’ve found hundreds of Earth-sized- planets. But not a single planet that’s definitely like the Earth: rocky surface, liquid water, lukewarm temperature, suitable for biochemistry of life. We haven’t really identified, yet, an Earth-twin planet where we would say “yeah, that one looks like home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>There is still a lot of Kepler data yet to be processed, right?\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yes, and we’re going to be working nonstop. I’m working seven days a week, evenings; my grad students are working non-stop. We have a team here that uses the Keck telescope in Hawaii to measurer the properties of these planets – their orbits, what their atmospheres might be like. So we still have to answer those questions for the planets we’ve found.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Could it be that the mythical Earth-twin planet is still in the data, waiting to be uncovered? \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Absolutely. And we’re going to work even harder now that the data is even more precious. And we’re gonna try to search for intelligent signs of life on those planets, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Intelligent life? Tell me more. \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>I have funding [from the Templeton Foundation] for a search to look for laser beam transmissions from advanced civilizations. It’s a crazy project and I’m nearly sure I’ll fail. But I have to try.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The idea is you would use lasers to send a message from one civilization to another one on another planet. You can’t stream cable; fiberoptics don’t work over millions of miles. If alien civilizations are communicating with each other in some kinds of great galactic internet, maybe we can read their email.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "The State of the Universe: Matter and Age Up, Dark Energy Down",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53757\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2013/05/03/the-state-of-the-universe-matter-and-age-up-dark-energy-down/cobe-wmap-planck-maps/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-53757\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53757\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps.jpg\" alt=\"Smile, universe, for your baby picture! Maps of the early universe by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. Image credit: NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smile, universe, for your baby picture! Maps of the early universe by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. Image credit: NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On news that the universe may be 100 million years older than previously estimated, cosmological markets have seen a reduction in the benchmark of universal expansion, the \u003ca title=\"The Hubble Constant\" href=\"http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_expansion.html\" target=\"_blank\">Hubble Constant\u003c/a>, down to a new low of 67.15 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This has led to a drop in the dark energy market, down from initial estimates by 3.1% to 68.3% of the total universal mass/energy inventory. On the brighter side, stocks of the highly sought-after dark matter commodities are up to 26.8%, and good-old reliable normal matter fundamentals have inched upward to 4.9%, up from the previous 4.6%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"NASA Science News\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/21mar_cmb/\" target=\"_blank\">news \u003c/a>comes not from Wall Street but from cosmological observations by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, and analysis of those measurements by European, NASA and Canadian scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do the numbers mean?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That the age of the universe is 100 million years greater than previously calculated is interesting, but it won't force the Barenaked Ladies to change the lyrics in the Big Bang Theory's opening theme song; \"…nearly 14 billion years ago…\" works whether the number is 13.7 or the more recent 13.8 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The small refinements in the percentages of the universe composed of normal matter, \u003ca title=\"Dark Matter and Dark Energy\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/\" target=\"_blank\">dark matter and dark energy\u003c/a> are probably more interesting to scientists as far as the absolute numbers go. But the mere fact that a quarter of the universe is made of stuff we can't see (dark matter) and over two-thirds of the universe is made of stuff we can neither see nor at present understand (dark energy) is a stupefying fact. It means that what we can see in the universe (planets, stars, galaxies—normal matter) is only about 5% of what's actually there. Stupefying!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planck's mission is to measure minute differences in the brightness of the \u003ca title=\"Cosmic Microwave Background\" href=\"http://www.space.com/20330-cosmic-microwave-background-explained-infographic.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cosmic Microwave Background\u003c/a> (CMB) radiation, the faint glow of microwaves coming from every direction in the sky. Originally discovered by accident in 1964, CMB radiation comes from the greatest observable distances in the universe, and from the earliest time that light became able to travel freely through space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Astronomers became very interested in these cosmic microwave emissions, for in collecting and measuring those photons they were essentially taking a picture of the very early universe, not long after the Big Bang (the theory, not the TV show). The CMB is the \"afterglow of creation,\" and for astronomers to discover and study it was something akin to when anthropologists first found fossils of the earliest hominids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look out at distant galaxies you are seeing the light that left them in the distant past—how far in the past depends on how far away the galaxy is. The most distant galaxy that we have seen is a portal back in time over 13 billion years, a time when the universe was barely past infancy. But look a bit farther into space, a bit further backward in time, and you are looking at a time before galaxies had formed from the expanding gaseous universe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The limit of our ability to peer backward is met at the time before which the hot gases of the Big Bang aftermath were too dense for light to travel freely, and instead bounced around within the hot dense soup (those lyrics also need no adjustment) of atomic nuclei and electrons--similar to how light bounces between water droplets in a cloud. We see this far, but no farther because we are looking into an opaque cloud that existed before the universe was 370,000 years young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As our picture-taking of the earliest face of the universe became more refined, a more detailed map of the CMB's variations in brightness was resolved, starting with the relatively blurry blotch-map brought by the \u003ca title=\"COBE mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/\" target=\"_blank\">COBE \u003c/a>mission, to a more detailed all-sky image by the \u003ca title=\"WMAP mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/wmap/\" target=\"_blank\">WMAP \u003c/a>mission, and now the clearest picture yet by \u003ca title=\"Planck mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/planck/\" target=\"_blank\">Planck\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The color variations in the map represent minute differences in the temperature and density of the gases of the early universe—subtle variations that eventually snowballed (so to speak) to become denser concentrations of matter, and the seeds of the earliest galaxies and galaxy clusters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in comparing the blotchy facial features of this infant shot to photos of the universe taken at later times we have assembled a more complete life picture of how the cosmos has grown and developed. And no one had to change the lyrics of their song either!\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "The European Space Agency's Planck mission has generated a map of the infant universe that refines our understanding of what it's all made of and has upped its age by 100 million years. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_53757\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2013/05/03/the-state-of-the-universe-matter-and-age-up-dark-energy-down/cobe-wmap-planck-maps/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-53757\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-53757\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/quest/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps.jpg\" alt=\"Smile, universe, for your baby picture! Maps of the early universe by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. Image credit: NASA\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/39/2013/05/cobe-wmap-planck-maps-400x225.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Smile, universe, for your baby picture! Maps of the early universe by the COBE, WMAP, and Planck missions. Image credit: NASA\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>On news that the universe may be 100 million years older than previously estimated, cosmological markets have seen a reduction in the benchmark of universal expansion, the \u003ca title=\"The Hubble Constant\" href=\"http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_expansion.html\" target=\"_blank\">Hubble Constant\u003c/a>, down to a new low of 67.15 kilometers per second per megaparsec. This has led to a drop in the dark energy market, down from initial estimates by 3.1% to 68.3% of the total universal mass/energy inventory. On the brighter side, stocks of the highly sought-after dark matter commodities are up to 26.8%, and good-old reliable normal matter fundamentals have inched upward to 4.9%, up from the previous 4.6%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The \u003ca title=\"NASA Science News\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/21mar_cmb/\" target=\"_blank\">news \u003c/a>comes not from Wall Street but from cosmological observations by the European Space Agency's Planck mission, and analysis of those measurements by European, NASA and Canadian scientists.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What do the numbers mean?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That the age of the universe is 100 million years greater than previously calculated is interesting, but it won't force the Barenaked Ladies to change the lyrics in the Big Bang Theory's opening theme song; \"…nearly 14 billion years ago…\" works whether the number is 13.7 or the more recent 13.8 billion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The small refinements in the percentages of the universe composed of normal matter, \u003ca title=\"Dark Matter and Dark Energy\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/\" target=\"_blank\">dark matter and dark energy\u003c/a> are probably more interesting to scientists as far as the absolute numbers go. But the mere fact that a quarter of the universe is made of stuff we can't see (dark matter) and over two-thirds of the universe is made of stuff we can neither see nor at present understand (dark energy) is a stupefying fact. It means that what we can see in the universe (planets, stars, galaxies—normal matter) is only about 5% of what's actually there. Stupefying!\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Planck's mission is to measure minute differences in the brightness of the \u003ca title=\"Cosmic Microwave Background\" href=\"http://www.space.com/20330-cosmic-microwave-background-explained-infographic.html\" target=\"_blank\">Cosmic Microwave Background\u003c/a> (CMB) radiation, the faint glow of microwaves coming from every direction in the sky. Originally discovered by accident in 1964, CMB radiation comes from the greatest observable distances in the universe, and from the earliest time that light became able to travel freely through space.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Astronomers became very interested in these cosmic microwave emissions, for in collecting and measuring those photons they were essentially taking a picture of the very early universe, not long after the Big Bang (the theory, not the TV show). The CMB is the \"afterglow of creation,\" and for astronomers to discover and study it was something akin to when anthropologists first found fossils of the earliest hominids.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When you look out at distant galaxies you are seeing the light that left them in the distant past—how far in the past depends on how far away the galaxy is. The most distant galaxy that we have seen is a portal back in time over 13 billion years, a time when the universe was barely past infancy. But look a bit farther into space, a bit further backward in time, and you are looking at a time before galaxies had formed from the expanding gaseous universe.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The limit of our ability to peer backward is met at the time before which the hot gases of the Big Bang aftermath were too dense for light to travel freely, and instead bounced around within the hot dense soup (those lyrics also need no adjustment) of atomic nuclei and electrons--similar to how light bounces between water droplets in a cloud. We see this far, but no farther because we are looking into an opaque cloud that existed before the universe was 370,000 years young.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As our picture-taking of the earliest face of the universe became more refined, a more detailed map of the CMB's variations in brightness was resolved, starting with the relatively blurry blotch-map brought by the \u003ca title=\"COBE mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/\" target=\"_blank\">COBE \u003c/a>mission, to a more detailed all-sky image by the \u003ca title=\"WMAP mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/wmap/\" target=\"_blank\">WMAP \u003c/a>mission, and now the clearest picture yet by \u003ca title=\"Planck mission\" href=\"http://science.nasa.gov/missions/planck/\" target=\"_blank\">Planck\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The color variations in the map represent minute differences in the temperature and density of the gases of the early universe—subtle variations that eventually snowballed (so to speak) to become denser concentrations of matter, and the seeds of the earliest galaxies and galaxy clusters.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, in comparing the blotchy facial features of this infant shot to photos of the universe taken at later times we have assembled a more complete life picture of how the cosmos has grown and developed. And no one had to change the lyrics of their song either!\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"pri-the-world": {
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"info": "Each weekday, host Marco Werman and his team of producers bring you the world's most interesting stories in an hour of radio that reminds us just how small our planet really is.",
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"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/The-World-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
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"radiolab": {
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"info": "A two-time Peabody Award-winner, Radiolab is an investigation told through sounds and stories, and centered around one big idea. In the Radiolab world, information sounds like music and science and culture collide. Hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, the show is designed for listeners who demand skepticism, but appreciate wonder. WNYC Studios is the producer of other leading podcasts including Freakonomics Radio, Death, Sex & Money, On the Media and many more.",
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"reveal": {
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"info": "Created by The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, Reveal is public radios first one-hour weekly radio show and podcast dedicated to investigative reporting. Credible, fact based and without a partisan agenda, Reveal combines the power and artistry of driveway moment storytelling with data-rich reporting on critically important issues. The result is stories that inform and inspire, arming our listeners with information to right injustices, hold the powerful accountable and improve lives.Reveal is hosted by Al Letson and showcases the award-winning work of CIR and newsrooms large and small across the nation. In a radio and podcast market crowded with choices, Reveal focuses on important and often surprising stories that illuminate the world for our listeners.",
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},
"rightnowish": {
"id": "rightnowish",
"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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},
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"id": "science-friday",
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"info": "Science Friday is a weekly science talk show, broadcast live over public radio stations nationwide. Each week, the show focuses on science topics that are in the news and tries to bring an educated, balanced discussion to bear on the scientific issues at hand. Panels of expert guests join host Ira Flatow, a veteran science journalist, to discuss science and to take questions from listeners during the call-in portion of the program.",
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"snap-judgment": {
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"title": "Snap Judgment",
"tagline": "Real stories with killer beats",
"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
"airtime": "SAT 1pm-2pm, 9pm-10pm",
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