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 EXPLORE & OBSERVE
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Edition #37: As luck would have it | |
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#01 ANTARCTICA ROCKS
+ Geologists in Antarctica spent weeks in the bitter cold working to bore through a 3,000ft thick sheet of ice to sample mud-like sediment at the bottom of the seafloor. As luck would have it, they hit the one thing that would ruin the experiment: a rock. “It’s like, bloody hell! It's just one big boulder in the middle of a relatively flat seafloor. It’s not as if the seafloor is littered with these things.” The geologist couldn't get the samples they wanted, but on the bright side, the rock was covered with animal life that no one thought could survive deep under an Antarctic ice sheet. "Not to tell life its business, but it’s got no right being here." |
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#02 MARS
+ Life shows up in all sorts of unexpected places on earth, but has it ever been on Mars? That's one thing we hope to learn from NASA's Perseverance Mars rover which successfully landed on Thursday. In case you missed the mission guide I sent out earlier this week, you can still read it here. The operations team will now spend a couple of weeks commissioning the rover before driving off to do science. Expect the helicopter to fly a month or two from now. As for now, we're all anxiously awaiting the release of the pictures and video from Perseverance's harrowing descent to the surface. There will a press conference Monday at 11am PST that you can watch on NASA TV. I have a feeling it will be a good one!
+ There is a lot of good commentary on the landing out there, and one of my favorites comes from Future Crunch: "Watching Perseverance arrive this morning, what struck us wasn't the technical prowess, or the mind-boggling statistics, or even the raw emotion on the masked faces of the JPL crew. It was the openness of the endeavor, the willingness of NASA to have its efforts shown to the entire world, in real time, despite a very good chance that something might go wrong... No other country on the planet comes even close to pulling off stuff like this. When it comes to space exploration, America's unique culture of can-do attitude, risk-taking and transparency is a gift to the rest of the world." |
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#03 OCEANXPLORER
+ Take a tour of the world's newest and possibly most advanced oceanic research vessel: the OceanXplorer. The vessel is the new flagship of the OceanX initiative, "a mission to explore the unseen ocean, map uncharted areas of the world, observe rare deep-sea creatures, pursue scientific and medical breakthroughs, and then bring all of these wonders back to the wider world through cutting-edge media." Their new ship "features state-of-the-art onboard dry and wet marine research labs, cutting-edge media equipment and a top-of-the-line production and media center, manned and autonomous deep-sea submersibles and helicopters and drones." Sounds nice. |
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#04 RADIO GARDEN
+ Tired of being stuck in your apartment with nowhere to go? Try out an audible adventure for a change. Radio.garden is a very cool online app that allows you to tune into radio stations that are located literally anywhere in the world using a sleek google maps style interface. A perfect way to experience an exotic locale without ever leaving your sofa! (Note that it didn't load properly in my Chrome browser, but seems to work fine in Firefox.) |
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#05 WALK IN THE PARK
+ Meet America’s 63rd National Park! New River Gorge National Park and Preserve encompasses over 70,000 acres of wilderness in southern West Virginia. "The New River plunges 750 feet over 66 miles, resulting in long stretches of violent rapids that can reach a class five level" and the "canyon walls, which soar as high as 1,600 feet, offer miles of cliffs that rank among the best in the East Coast for rock climbing." Fossil evidence indicates the river itself could be as much as 320 million years old, making it one of the oldest in the world. The national park designation marks a striking turnaround for the canyon which saw active coal mining as recently as the 1950s. |
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#07 A GOOD BOOK
This week's book recommendation is our first ever guest post! It comes from Kirsten H. who is a librarian passionate about children's and young adult literature, and also happens to be my fiance. Thanks for contributing Kirsten!
+ We live in both a golden age of informational texts for children and a wildly popular time for national parks. Grand Canyon, written and illustrated by Jason Chin, merges these disparate elements in a glorious picture book exploration of one of the most impressive natural features in the United States. The book follows the author and his young daughter as they hike from the Colorado River at the bottom of the canyon to the South Rim, exploring the geology and present-day ecology of the Grand Canyon along the way. In an author’s note, Chin writes that his illustrations follow his actual hike along the South Kaibab trail, interspersed with interpretations of what the world looked like at different points in the Grand Canyon’s rock layers. This gives a thrilling sense of “you are here” to anyone lucky enough to visit the Grand Canyon while helping children connect present-day rocks to the deep past. Share this book in preparation for a trip to the Grand Canyon, to learn about geology, to prompt questions and observations during hikes, or even as a bedtime book for a nonfiction-inclined kid. Essential reading for a science- or outdoor-inclined household, grownups and kids alike. |
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That's all for this week! You can respond to this email to tell me about anything you liked or didn't like, tell me about a project you're working on, or suggest a story. You might also forward this email to a friend so they can subscribe too!
- Evan Hilgemann |
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This newsletter was produced as a private venture and not in the author's capacity as an employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/California Institute of Technology or of Griffith Observatory. Any views and opinions expressed herein or on exploreandobserve.com are his own and not those of his employers. |
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