Star formation: Our evolving universe. 6500 light yrs away
Maybe I'll share some of the stuff I'm learning from new classes this week, cause it's very cool. My courses are Glacial Geology, Volcanology, Glaciology, Geothermal Energy and Life in the Universe. It's a full course load. Oh well :)
Glacial Geology: My Glacial Geology professor, Ólafur Ingólfsson, has worked over 30 yrs on glaciers in Antarctica, Greenland, Svalbaard & Iceland. He's in love with glaciers. We do a 5-day field trip early May, to go on and in front of two southern Iceland glaciers to learn research methods and stay in huts to work in the evenings in teams. Another course, Glaciology, taught by four glaciologist, is more the physics of glacial dynamics, with the physics and math of it which I’ve learned to appreciate and love physics cuz it really stretches the brain haha. It's cool 'seeing' it in a new way, how snow metamorphoses into ice, why temp may be warmer or colder upper or lower areas and how it behaves. The deepest glacier is 4.6 km deep, in East Antarctica!! There's over 16 million km2 ice glaciers (33 million km3 of 'locked up' fresh water), which is 10% of Earth's surface that regulates the climate of the entire planet. Silently, but surely. The largest areas are Antarctica (13.5 Million km2) and Greenland (2 Million km2). Only recently, 18,000 years ago, glaciers covered 25% of Earth. There was a LIA (Little Ice Age) following the Medieval Warm Period not long ago, 1350 to about 1850 in the 16th to 19th century. Over 30 glaciations have occurred over the past 2-3 million yrs – it’s a natural cycle. If all present glaciers melt, eustatic sea level will rise about 70 m. Glaciers 'push down' on continental crust, so when it melts the continent moves up isostatically over thousands of years (because the crust is ‘floating’ on the hotter mantle below). For every 1000 m of ice, land is pressed down 300m. Scandanavia and Canada are STILL isostatically rising due to glacial melt that occurred a long, long time ago. Glaciers are not all the same temperature. Temp is dependent on pressure, so a 1000m glacier in Greenland may have a melting temp of -2 degrees C because of the high pressure. Iceland's glaciers are more temperate. One Ice Shelf in Antarctica is 4 times the size of Iceland, that’s massive! Being around people who love glaciers, volcanoes, nature, etc with a never-ending curiosity is contagious. If you're interested in them, this glaciology research site is one suggested we use.
Life in the Universe: Astrophysics...hmmm sounds interesting....?!? This Life in the Universe course has four parts - first, astrophysics as the process from creation of stars to their orbiting planets and galaxies. The birth of stars involves a process of fusion to get all of the elements in the periodic table from the lightest, Hydrogen, Helium (our Sun), up to Fe, Iron = what (the elements) our bodies and earth are made of; the next 3 parts are chem, biology & geology to get to where our Earth and Sun are today. From May 2009 - Jan 2013, new telescopes based mostly in Chili & outer space found 2740 candidate planets in what's called Keplar mission. Methods to find earth-like planets are detecting transits (a planet orbit in front of a star, the change in light is measured), radial velocity (a 'wobble' in a star means a planet(s) orbiting it's centre of mass) uses spectrum of light to measure orbital velocity, and Gravitational Lensing (view from Earth's line of sight has a Galaxy in between Earth & distant Quaser Star; the Galaxy mid-way creates a huge 'lens' somewhat like our eye that gives the image of the star to Earth). A few other methods are used. We listened to the transit orbit of a planet around the star 100's light years away, they can actually record the sound vibrations! Only 4.6% of matter is seen (atoms), whereas 70% dark energy and 25% dark matter is unseen. I always have been amazed that there is much more to the unseen than the seen. Supernovas (explosions of old massive stars), black holes, methods to detect all these planets & stars in other galaxies is so new we have no textbook. It really is new stuff. There's a new mission starting this year called Gaia, sent to space to watch over one Billion stars for exoplanets, especially in 'habitable' zones. Planets are only considered potentially habitable if they're 0.8 to 2.0 size of Earth, otherwise it's too close to it's sun with no water or too far and loses it's gravity effect & spins away from the star or too cold for life (just ce or gas). Who knows, maybe there's a good chance of life on another planet when looking at it this way, altho we are in such delicate balance it's even more of a miracle to think of our life, heart & soul inside a living body!!! The Sun loses over 4 M tons energy per second, it is doing what stars do - slowly burn out over millions/billions of years - eventually the star we orbit, our Sun, will expand as it burns out slowly. What a mystery.
Volcanology: I'm learning to look at the Earth in a new way, all of the volcanos under the ocean, buried deep, the islands never heard of, how they become active and later become extinct. There's a volcano in the Juan de Fuca fault off Vancouver Island that's very active under the ocean, and was the first time volcanic eruption on ocean flr was witnessed. The whole ocean flr is covered in active volcanos, much no one knows about. Google Earth is my new best friend to see them!