Trudy Myers's Blog, page 30

What is This World Coming to 2?

Okay, we were talking about the sea and what climate change is doing to it. My examples last time were in Europe and the US, in the northern temperate zones. Now I want to consider all that ice and water in the extreme north and south, around the poles.
If you’ve been paying attention, you might remember news of huge chunks of Antarctic ice breaking away. I’m talking chunks bigger than some states. Antarctica is receiving warmer weather than it’s seen in millennia, or maybe even millions of years. Some coasts that certain types of penguin have called ‘home’ for countless generations are becoming inhospitable for them. They already live at the bottom of the world, where are they supposed to go from there?
The Arctic Ocean is not doing any better. There is no land under all that ice at the north pole, just water. You might think, ‘That’s okay, because it takes a lot of energy to warm water up.’ Yes, it does. And yet, that water under that thick sheet of ice haswarmed up.*
If you look at a map or globe, you’ll see a bunch of islands above Canada. During Europe’s Age of Exploration, several well-provisioned ships made attempts to find a ‘Northwest Passage’ during the summers, trying to find a way to get around the Americas to do trade with the Orient. I don’t remember hearing of any of those excursions ever making it through, nor of any making it home again. At that time, I understand, whatever open channels of water that could be found among all those islands were unreliable and tended to close up and freeze a ship in place, even in summer. The last few years, so much of that ice has melted during the summer, that some cruise lines have offered cruises from one coast to the other, via the Canadian passage.
Something has happened to the Beaufort Gyre. That is a 60-mile-diameter pool of cold freshwater and sea ice located north of Alaska. It used to spin clockwise for 5-7 years, then slow down and start spinning in the opposite direction. This change in direction was caused by periodic cyclones that moved from the Northern Atlantic Ocean into the Arctic Ocean. But the North Atlantic has been warming up even faster than other parts of the world, and has failed to get the Beaufort Gyre to change direction in a dozen years or more.
So it’s just been sitting there, spinning and getting larger. And although it contains ‘cold’ water, that’s a matter of relativity. This spinning water contains twice as much heat now as it did 30 years ago. But it’s not sitting on top, like you’d think it would. It extends so deep, it is creeping under the Arctic ice sheet, which I understand can be a mile or more thick. Once it starts melting that ice sheet from below, well, how long before that ice sheet starts to break apart into gigantic icebergs, like the Antarctic ice has already started doing?
And what happens when all that ice breaks up and melts? Right, it raises sea level, which we discussed last time.
I had never heard of the Beaufort Gyre until a couple days ago, but I’m not done with it. From what I’ve been reading, whether it continues its current spin or starts going the other way, somebody’s in for a nasty time. Maybe it will come up next time.

* https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018...

What is This World Coming to?

I firmly believe in climate change. In my mind, it is here, and it’s going to get bad.
But I’m not here to debate that with anyone. So, for the purpose of this series of blog entries, let’s say I’m trying to figure out what could happen (climate-wise) in the next 50 years, and how it will effect the people who have to live through it. Well, try to live through it.
The sea level will rise. There has been and still is a lot of water on the Earth that is not located in the seas. It’s not a liquid, it’s solid in the form of snow and ice. Glaciers, sea ice, and so on. This has all been melting at an increasing pace, and probably will continue until snow and ice become rare items.
You can already see the sea level rising, if you look; Miami FL has streets that are underwater during high tides. Miami Beach, located on a barrier island that barely qualifies as dry land, is quietly raising its streets, particularly the ones that run along the edges of the island.
After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, there was much talk of how badly the shoreline was being eroded. If I remember right, there is an oil refinery or some such that was built on the shore. Now it is pretty much an island, and the road leading to it may or may not be passable during high tides. Those tides even reach 5 or 10 miles inland, making it hard to get in or out of small towns that dot that road. The road, I understand, has been raised in a lot of places, making it even harder to navigate in those small towns.
Parts of Amsterdam in The Netherlands are 18 feet below sea level. Much of The Netherlands consists of land ‘reclaimed’ from the sea and thus below sea level. They did this by building dikes, dams and canals to control where the water could go. This will be an ever increasing chore, as the sea rises.
So I find myself wondering, what happens when the sea rise reaches that critical point, whatever it is? Will The Netherlands continue building their dikes taller, until they loom and cast an ominous shadow over the land they are intended to protect? Is that possible? Does it make more sense to raise the land they are living on? Is that possible?
At what point do people simply give in to nature and move to higher ground? Do those who are displaced get any assistance from their government, or do they have to abandon the home they’ve had for who knows how long, take what they can to some other place, and try to start over again? I suspect the latter, because the former would probably bankrupt any government.
Even if Earth’s population doesn’t grow beyond what it is now, it’s possible the concentration of that population will increase, because there could be less land for us to live on.
Well, with the next entry, we’ll continue with the water theme. Yes, there is more about water to think about.

Martian Shelters Summation

Okay, so that was pretty much all I found for ideas about Martian shelters: tents of various shapes made of multiple layers of flexible plastic and insulation (probably foam), either buried in the sand or not; tunnels and rooms dug deep underground by robots; and a top-side shelter shaped like half a bagel with a layer of ice between the sheets of plastic.
I did see some reference to making a spun glass (fiber glass) insulation from sorting the Martian sand and melting a particular type of that sand. I’m not sure that would be available for the very first shelters, but maybe it would be a useful building material later on.
For that matter, rocks have been used to build human home for centuries, perhaps millennia. Sand could be combined with other materials to make a type of cement or even mortar. That assumes the colonists can find a supply of calcium silicate nearby, or some other binder to use. If not, they could use polymers, but that would need to be shipped to them from Earth, or they would have to make it on Mars, and I have no idea how complicated a process that might be.
One other idea, briefly mentioned, was to dig holes into a large boulder to create a small shelter, perhaps a type of emergency shelter. I kept thinking about today’s ‘tiny homes’ and thinking a sufficiently large boulder might make a nice small home for someone who really liked his/her privacy.
So, if you are going to be one of those first colonists sent to Mars, don’t expect a mansion. Of course, if you were expecting a mansion, you probably wouldn’t be one of those chosen to colonize Mars. Or anyplace else.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 5

I was beginning to think we had run out of ideas, but it turns out I was wrong. So, how about an ‘ice home’? They’ve been used in the Arctic Circle for centuries, haven’t they? But, the ones proposed for Mars are a bit more complicated than igloos. They are, once again, inflatable, but... in the shape of a doughnut. The body of the doughnut would be where people would live and work.
The ‘skin’ of the doughnut would be a double-wall, flexible, of course. The interior wall would hold in the air and provide the space for people to occupy. The space between the 2 flexible skins would be filled with water and allowed to freeze. That outer wall and the ice under it would keep the radiation out, and protect the inner sections from any nasty weather Mars can produce.
Despite recent findings of water of Mars, it is not nearly as omnipresent as it is on Earth, so where does that water come from? No, it won’t be shipped from Earth. What they would ship from Earth is robots with the equipment to find, mine, and transport the water to the shelter area so it could be melted, pumped inside the walls and allowed to re-freeze.
Presumably, this store of water could serve a second purpose; that of being turned into fuel when it was time to leave. To me, this seems counter-productive. It assumes the people will be leaving, abandoning their colony to return to Earth. Even if they were ‘only’ there for a shift of a couple years, wouldn’t more people be expected to arrive to take over, like is done with the space station? On the other hand, keeping options open can be a very good idea.
Of course, with proper timing, those robots could be sent out to mine more water to replace what’s been turned into rocket fuel. You’d just need to make sure the equipment doesn’t get clogged with sand in the meantime.
The biggest drawback I see to this design is that it could take 400 days to fill and freeze the shell. So those robots had better know what they are doing in order to get it ready before humans start arriving.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/langley/...

Martian Shelter 4

We’re going to look at a different style of shelter this time. Something a little more complicated to build, I suppose, but which could be more... comfy, should we say?
This shelter is underground. Deep underground, not just some sand kicked over it. Building it would take tunnel-boring machines, which are quite heavy. Perhaps these would be shipped before people were sent, along with some robots to use the machines to bore out a network of tunnels and living quarters. Yes, apparently, some people are ready to go back to living in caves.
But ‘underground’ does not need to mean dark and unwelcoming. I watched an episode of a science show on Netflicks a couple weeks back, where the people were digging out a series of tunnels under New York City. They had some complicated equipment on the roof of a warehouse that gathered and concentrated sunlight before it was piped into the tunnels. Yes, I did say concentrated and piped. The tunnels they created were fully lighted, and with smooth, level floors, ceilings and walls, seemed far distant from a creepy cave.
The theory about living in man-made tunnels on Mars is that the gravity is weak and Mars doesn’t have any quakes, so you wouldn’t need as much support to hold up the ceilings; and there ‘probably’ would not be any moisture seepage. But, this plan does call for some heavy-duty insulation. Martian air may be thin, but Martian dirt and rocks are cold! Even without that insulation, the dirt and rocks would keep that nasty radiation out.
Of course, there are some drawbacks to this idea. There always are, right? All that equipment would be expensive to get there. And once it finishes digging out that first small habitat, then what? Oh, if there’s a big influx of immigrants, the equipment could be busy for years or decades, forming a city here, a city there... But eventually, one assumes, it will become obsolete or unneeded. A lot of money to just let rust away.
And it’s possible there’s more water on Mars than we think, so seepage could be a problem. With all the insulation installed to keep the internal temperature agreeable, we might not even know if seepage was occurring. I hear some of you thinking ‘Then it’s not a problem,’ but that’s not necessarily true. There could be some kind of mold, fungus or other organism that could start growing, possibly leading to health problems for our colonists. Water flows, and ice can expand and create cracks. This could - over time - undermine (so to speak) our efforts at adequate support.
If you own a house, you know you need to keep an eye open for such things, and if you don’t deal with small problems that crop up, you’ll eventually pay for it with a huge repair bill. But these tunnels would not be for an individual’s use; it sounds more like they would be cities, as least to begin with. Owned by committee, you might say. Would that ‘committee’ have the foresight to watch for and deal with these types of problems while they were small? Or would they be political entities, always kicking the financial can down the road?
Okay, if you don’t like the idea of a cave-dwelling, we’ll keep looking. I’ll see what else I can ‘dig up’ for you to consider.
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 3

Today, let’s take a look at the 3rd design for a Martian home:
3. A greenhouse-type structure constructed of multiple layers of plastic film, built in such a way that visible light could get in, but infrared light (heat) could not get back out. That type of glass is sometimes used in Earth greenhouses, and could plastic be any more difficult?
Seems a bit unusual, to think of living in a greenhouse. Houseplants are one thing, but to actually live in your garden? I suppose one could get used to it, as long as you don’t grow something that sets off your hay fever. And to avoid the ‘fishbowl’ feeling, you could erect walls in some of the more private areas, even if those ‘walls’ were only curtains.
Have they really thought this through? There’s still all that harsh radiation that doesn’t seem to be considered, and will multiple layers of flimsy plastic keep enough heat in during the Martian night? The dust on Mars gets blown around quite a bit, despite the thin air, and settles onto everything. The rovers using solar panels have to hunker down and conserve their energy whenever a dust storm comes along, some of which encompass the entire planet and last for weeks. If solar panels can’t get enough power to work, how will plants do in constant shadow?
Not too thrilled about this one, either. That under-ground balloon is looking better.
Like I said, no split-level ranches, no colonials or tudors. At least the concept of a greenhouse is familiar, so maybe we’ll find something we can wrap our heads around yet. You never know, the next one might be exactly what you want!
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 2

Okay, last time, we looked at the balloon-type house/shelter. It sounded like a lot of work to get it set up, supported, tied down and covered in sand. Not to mention the care that would be needed to see that it didn’t get any holes poked in it. Would it come with a set of ‘instant bandages’ you could use to patch any accidental holes? Personally, I think I’d make that a condition before I agreed to buy, but maybe that’s just me.
Today, we’re going to look at a slightly different possibility, one that apparently does not require shoveling sand around:
2. An above-ground shelter made from multiple layers of plastic film with low density foam between them. The thinking is that the Martian atmosphere is so thin, it would not ‘suck’ heat from the shelter walls. I’m left wondering about the radiation that was considered omni-present and probably deadly in years gone by. And... really? It’s cold, but it’s a thin cold, so that doesn’t count? Right, and 120° in the desert is hot, but it’s dry, so that’s okay.
Can you show me the Heat/AC power consumption on that type of shelter?
We recently visited the Kennedy Space Center, where the display for Atlantis (shuttle) explained that excess heat was disposed of by running tubes of heated liquid into the shuttle bay doors, which were opened to let that heat disperse. There’s a lot less ‘atmosphere’ in space than on Mars, but heat only gets sucked away when you want it to be, and doesn’t get sucked away when you want to keep it? You have to work at it, either way, and I’m just not convinced flimsy plastic and foam is enough insulation.
Also, I have to assume there is some sort of support system for this ‘tent’. Who gets to put that up? And tie the walls down? Once again, it’s going to need air locks, so will those be pre-fabbed and attached to the ‘walls’ before lift-off? But, since there isn’t any mention of burying it in the sand, would there be sections of the plastic film that would be transparent so the new Martians can look outside and see what the weather is like? Of course, the low density foam in those areas would need to be transparent, also, but I’m doubting that foam could avoid distorting the view.
Well, this is a little mind-boggling, isn’t it? You wanted a cottage to raise a family in, maybe with a picket fence, and all we’ve looked at so far indicates your actual choices are either a balloon buried in sand or a tent that may or may not retain any heat when the wind blows. Buck up, we’ve just begun to look at the possibilities. We’ll find something that’s just right for you.

http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

Martian Shelter 1

People are finally giving serious thought to the possibility of living someplace off the Earth. Thought we’d take a look at what those new house designs might look like. Seeing what might be available, once we get to go. We’ll start with Mars, since everybody’s so excited about the possibility of getting there in the next decade or so.
The first shelters will be shipped to Mars from Earth. Maybe they’ll be shipped ahead of time and need to be activated when humans arrive, but probably, the shelter will arrive with them. After all, it worked on the moon, though the shelter in that case was a piece of space ship. It served the purpose for the short time that anybody was there. They even brought part of it back with them. Kind of like living in your car, do you suppose?
So here’s some of the ideas that are floating around for housing on Mars:
1. One suggestion for an early shelter is an inflated balloon-type structure. Think of some kind of thick, air-tight fabric that could be unfolded and laid out in the desired position, hooked up to a supply of air, and blown up. The fabric could be augmented with support structures, and finally, the entire thing could be covered with sand for extra insulation, both from thermal variance and radiation. The average Martian temperature is -80° F, plus the air is mighty thin, so you have to have plenty of insulation. You’d probably have to tie this puppy down before you started inflating it, or risk it floating away in the breeze, but I’m sure the instructions would point that out.
After reading about this proposal, I’m left wondering how the door would be added. It would have to be an air lock, or else opening the door really would mean you’d let all the heat out! I keep thinking an airlock would be made of metal, but perhaps they could fashion them out of plastic or something similar, and they could be added to the ‘balloon’ before it left Earth. Would they only put one door in this balloon, or would they add a back door, too? And who is going to shovel all that sand on top and around? Would they dig a hole in the ground to hold the balloon? Sounds like a lot of hard work, if the ground is frozen or otherwise solid. What’s the circumference of this balloon? Will they have to walk (or drive) all over it to get the sand distributed?
I suppose it has possibilities, but it really sounds an awful lot like a fixer-upper.
Well, phooey. We’ve only looked at one possibility, and I’m out of words. Can’t make these things too long, or so they tell me. We’ll have to continue this search for a new home next week, because there are definitely other possibilities. But don’t get your hopes up; I didn’t see a single split-level ranch on the list.
http://www.imagineeringezine.com/e-zi...

A Girl’s Best Friend...

...is a Diamond... Planet?
55 Cancri-e was discovered in 2004, circling a star not that far from us. It was called a “super-Earth”, because it was rocky like the Earth and larger. Its radius is twice Earth’s, making its mass about 8 times ours, while it speeds around its star in only 18 hours. To do that, it has to be so close to the star’s surface that the planet’s surface reaches temperatures around 3,900° F (2,100° C). {Just a little warmer than Nebraska in August.}
{By the way, the ‘e’ of 55 Cancri-e means this was the 4th planet found in orbit around this star. (The star itself is designated A.)The other 3 reside even closer. Where does the star end and planet(s) begin? More recently, a 5th planet - ‘f’ - has been discovered, with a year lasting about 261 Earth days.}
If 55 Cancri-e had a planetary chemistry similar to Earth’s, the temperature and mass might mean it was covered with oozing ‘supercritical fluids’ (gases at such a high pressure they would act more like liquids). So it was imagined, at one time. But further study has revealed that it has a planetary chemistry far different.
For one thing, it apparently has no water on it at all.
Astronomers felt 55 Cancri-e was probably composed almost exclusively of carbon (diamond & graphite), iron, silicon carbide and possibly silicates. More than 1/3 of its mass could be pure diamond, which would be more than the entire Earth. Try sticking that into an engagement ring!
However, the diamond part was probably not just one big chunk. They thought the planet’s surface was covered in graphite and diamond rock, rather than our familiar water and granite. Actually, the Earth has far, far less carbon in comparison. So they tried to figure out what that difference meant. This different planetary chemistry could mean 55 Cancre-e could have had a very different thermal evolution than Earth and strange plate tectonic processes, which would mean bizarre types of volcanism, mountain formation and seismic activity.
But a new analysis indicated that 55 CancriA (the star in question) had more oxygen than previously thought. That might mean 55 Cancri-e might not have quite as much carbon as they had thought. Or it might mean nothing. The processes of star and planet formation are not fully understood, but it is known that the composition of a planet does not always match that of its parent. So the studies continued.
In 2016, observers detected hydrogen, helium and possibly hydrogen cyanide in ‘e’s atmosphere. In 2017, they decided there might be a global ocean... made of lava, so no skinny dipping. And that e’s atmospheric pressure was about 1.4 bar, so a slightly thicker atmosphere than ours.
If all this sounds familiar, well... We visited the 55 Cancri system on or about 6Sept2017, in the 2nd episode of my ‘Weird Planets’ series of blogs. But I think I found more details this time, so hope you enjoyed ‘catching up’.
Oh, yes, in July 2014, the International Astronomical Union launched a process for giving ‘proper’ names to some exoplanets and their host stars. The name selected for 55 CancriA was Copernicus, and e was named Janssen. (Yes, all his known siblings got named, too.)

https://www.space.com/18011-super-ear...

A Never Ending Pit

Depression sucks.
There was a time when people didn’t talk about relatives who suffered from depression. Those doing the suffering were expected to also not talk about it. Nobody wanted to hear you were sad. If you had kidney stones or a broken leg, friends wanted to hear all the sordid details (or at least they said they did) so that they could commiserate, wish you well and internally think, “At least I’m not having that problem!”
But there were no known fixes for depression, or many other mental problems, so no one wanted to hear about them. What good would it do to wish you well when everybody knew there was no way to fix the problem?
There are a number of treatments for depression these days, usually chemical. And it’s good that there’s several treatment options, because some of them won’t work well with your body chemistry, some will have terrible side effects, AND after you’ve found one that works, your body will eventually become used to it, and it will cease to work.
Okay, I’ve been on 4 different anti-depressants in the last 6-9 months. It took me time to realize my ‘old’ pill wasn’t working any more, and more time to make my doctor realize I was serious about needing a new anti-depressant. Then 3 weeks on a new medication (You’re supposed to give each medication 6 weeks to see how well it’s going to work.) that had me sleeping 14 hours a day and groggy the rest of the time, then on a half dose of another medicine, got it upped to a full dose, and now I’ve been on yet another medicine for 1 week.
During that time period, I’ve gotten so used to the major symptoms of depression that they almost seem ‘normal’. I am depressed; I give mostly the same answers to the questions that are intended to see if I’m depressed; I score the same or possibly worse, depending on the day.
I’ve gotten used to the major symptoms. Now I’m starting to notice the little things I don’t remember noticing before:
I can only focus on 1 thing at a time. If somebody interrupts me to ask a question, I can’t shift gears to answer them. I just sit there, engine running (I’m ready to do something) and gears grinding (my thoughts are still on what I was doing, but it no longer makes sense to me, and eventually, I will start wondering why I was interrupted and what did they want me to do?)
Flowers for Algernon. I don’t remember the author’s name. And it’s mainstream fiction; I had to read it in some English literature class, probably in high school. But the last of the story describes the mood that sometimes overwhelms me these days; I can remember that I used to have a brain. One that worked good.