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06/12/2003

Devilish Springtime Reflections

What is so rare as a day in June? Today is one of those days
with the sun shining brightly. Unfortunately, such a day has
been rare here not only in June, but also in April and May. If
you watched the failed effort of Funny Cide to bring home the
Triple Crown last Saturday on that rain-soaked track, you’ve
seen the typical weather in New Jersey this spring. And, sure
enough, rain is predicted for the rest of the week. Where can we
go to get away from all this? A Reuters dispatch reports that
spring is arriving in the southern hemisphere of the planet
Neptune. If you’re tempted to check out spring on that planet be
advised that, at close to 3 billion miles from the sun, it’s a bit of a
jaunt.

Furthermore, even the lousy weather we’ve been having is
preferable to that on Neptune. It’s a tad too cold for one thing, in
the neighborhood of minus 279 degrees Fahrenheit. Certainly
not good golfing weather and the 900-mile an hour wind gusts
would play tricks with even Tiger’s booming drives. Why would
the arrival of spring on Neptune warrant mention in a Reuters
dispatch? It’s the discovery that the planet has seasons at all
that’s surprising. Being so far away from the sun, one would
suspect that what little of the sun’s heat reaching the planet
would have no effect on Neptune’s climate. We get roughly 900
times more heat than Neptune receives from the sun.

However, Lawrence Sromovsky and co-workers at the
University of Wisconsin and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
have followed Neptune for six years with the Hubble Space
Telescope. I’ve checked their pretty pictures of the blue planet
on the university’s Web site and, over the 6-year period, there is
indeed a distinct brightening and widening of the cloud patterns
in the southern hemisphere during that period. Clearly, there’s a
change in the weather pattern that takes time to form and time to
dissipate. On Neptune, spring lasts some 40 years or so! I don’t
know what’s under those clouds but I’m sure that a few months
of rain would look good by comparison.

Another planet closer to home has also been in the news this past
couple of weeks. The European Space Agency launched the
Mars Express spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan on June 2. Today, June 10, NASA launched the first
of two Mars rovers. Another rover is in the wings for launch this
month. Let’s hope that NASA redeems itself after the disasters
befalling the three previous attempts to land a craft on Mars. The
European venture also includes a landing by British-built Beagle
2, designed to scout around and look for signs of life by digging
into the Martian soil and sniffing the Martian air for gaseous
byproducts of life.

All this activity is prompted by the fact that Mars is currently as
close to Earth as it will be for a number of years. Hence the
flights will be relatively short and all three rovers should be on
Martian terra firma by early 2004. But another craft has been
winging its way to a rendezvous with Mars ever since its
launching on July 4, 1998. It’s the Japanese Nozomi spacecraft,
which is scheduled to orbit the planet to study how the upper
Martian atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. When it gets
there, Nozomi will join two wildly successful NASA orbiters, the
Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Odyssey.

These two NASA missions have drastically changed our
perception of the planet. Mars has been mapped even more
thoroughly than our own planet Earth. Surveyor’s and
Odyssey’s pictures and other scientific measurements have
revealed the presence of vast amounts of water ice and gullies
and debris that suggest there may even be current sources of
liquid water that aren’t far from the surface. Water ice is now
thought to cover a large portion of Mars outside the equatorial
regions.

The significant amount of water is exciting for those searching
for evidence of life, past or present, on Mars. If we ever travel to
Mars, it’s comforting to know that water for a hot shower awaits
us on landing. Yet, in spite of all this water ice, Mars is like our
deserts, dry and dusty. Dust is a key factor to take into account
when planning rover missions on Mars. For example, dust
buildup on the solar panels is expected to limit the useful life of
the rovers by cutting off the sunlight generating the power.

Surveyor and Odyssey have taken pictures of the mothers of all
dust storms, storms so large that they sometimes seem like one
big storm circling the Martian globe. On a smaller scale, dust
devils are also a common occurrence. Dust devils are also
common here on Earth, for example, on the deserts in
Southwestern USA. In our cities, you may see the urban
equivalent, the “trash devil”, a whirling assortment of paper,
leaves or other debris. A dust devil can be frightening, as I found
in an article entitled “Tiny Tornadoes” by Kathy Svitil in the July
2003 issue of Discover magazine. She cites the experience of
Nilton Renno, now at the University of Michigan, but formerly at
the University of Arizona where he was a glider enthusiast. The
power of a dust devil was brought home to him tragically. A
friend of his was killed when, while sitting beside his sailplane, a
dust devil picked up his sailplane and dropped it on him!

According to Svitil, dust devils weren’t accorded much respect
until scientists realized that dust devils on Mars were much
bigger and “meaner” than they are in our Southwestern deserts.
There, dust devils can appear out of a perfectly clear sky on a hot
summer day. They usually don’t last long, maybe a few minutes,
and don’t exceed more than a few hundred feet in height. Once
in a while, a devil might tower a few thousand feet and swirl
around at 70 miles an hour for an hour or so. These babies can
pick up a small shed (or a sailplane).

A common place for a dust devil to form is where a cool patch of
ground adjoins a hotter area, say at the edge of an irrigated plot
bordering a desert. The cooler air will tend to slide in under the
warm air and warm air will rush in to replace it. You end up
with a rotating tube of air. In an updraft, the rotating tube is
lifted up and you have a dust devil. The dust devil picks up dust
and sand but generally will fling the sand back down to the
ground, while picking up the dust.

In the process, something else happens that you might not
expect. When the sand and the dust grind together in the devil,
electrons are knocked off some particles and picked up on others.
Typically, the heavier particles such as sand lose electrons while
the finer dust particles pick up electrons. So, if the sand gets
flung to the ground, the sand has a positive charge and the dust a
negative charge and there’s the potential for a discharge, that is,
lightning. However, for lightning to occur on earth, you need an
electrical field of a few million volts per meter. In earthly dust
devils the fields are only around 10,000 volts per meter - not
dangerous and no lightning. On Mars, however, you only need
about 20,000 volts per meter and, with much bigger dust devils,
there’s a possibility of lightning. Dry thunderstorms on Mars?

If you want to see some interesting pictures of dust and dust
devils on Mars, visit the June 2003 issue of Scientific American
and the article “The Unearthly Landscapes of Mars” by Arden
Albee. As the subtitle indicates “The red planet is no dead
planet.” Let’s wish all those spacecraft bon voyage and, for the
Beagle 2 and the rovers, a happy landing.

Allen F. Bortrum



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-06/12/2003-      
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Dr. Bortrum

06/12/2003

Devilish Springtime Reflections

What is so rare as a day in June? Today is one of those days
with the sun shining brightly. Unfortunately, such a day has
been rare here not only in June, but also in April and May. If
you watched the failed effort of Funny Cide to bring home the
Triple Crown last Saturday on that rain-soaked track, you’ve
seen the typical weather in New Jersey this spring. And, sure
enough, rain is predicted for the rest of the week. Where can we
go to get away from all this? A Reuters dispatch reports that
spring is arriving in the southern hemisphere of the planet
Neptune. If you’re tempted to check out spring on that planet be
advised that, at close to 3 billion miles from the sun, it’s a bit of a
jaunt.

Furthermore, even the lousy weather we’ve been having is
preferable to that on Neptune. It’s a tad too cold for one thing, in
the neighborhood of minus 279 degrees Fahrenheit. Certainly
not good golfing weather and the 900-mile an hour wind gusts
would play tricks with even Tiger’s booming drives. Why would
the arrival of spring on Neptune warrant mention in a Reuters
dispatch? It’s the discovery that the planet has seasons at all
that’s surprising. Being so far away from the sun, one would
suspect that what little of the sun’s heat reaching the planet
would have no effect on Neptune’s climate. We get roughly 900
times more heat than Neptune receives from the sun.

However, Lawrence Sromovsky and co-workers at the
University of Wisconsin and at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
have followed Neptune for six years with the Hubble Space
Telescope. I’ve checked their pretty pictures of the blue planet
on the university’s Web site and, over the 6-year period, there is
indeed a distinct brightening and widening of the cloud patterns
in the southern hemisphere during that period. Clearly, there’s a
change in the weather pattern that takes time to form and time to
dissipate. On Neptune, spring lasts some 40 years or so! I don’t
know what’s under those clouds but I’m sure that a few months
of rain would look good by comparison.

Another planet closer to home has also been in the news this past
couple of weeks. The European Space Agency launched the
Mars Express spacecraft from the Baikonur cosmodrome in
Kazakhstan on June 2. Today, June 10, NASA launched the first
of two Mars rovers. Another rover is in the wings for launch this
month. Let’s hope that NASA redeems itself after the disasters
befalling the three previous attempts to land a craft on Mars. The
European venture also includes a landing by British-built Beagle
2, designed to scout around and look for signs of life by digging
into the Martian soil and sniffing the Martian air for gaseous
byproducts of life.

All this activity is prompted by the fact that Mars is currently as
close to Earth as it will be for a number of years. Hence the
flights will be relatively short and all three rovers should be on
Martian terra firma by early 2004. But another craft has been
winging its way to a rendezvous with Mars ever since its
launching on July 4, 1998. It’s the Japanese Nozomi spacecraft,
which is scheduled to orbit the planet to study how the upper
Martian atmosphere interacts with the solar wind. When it gets
there, Nozomi will join two wildly successful NASA orbiters, the
Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Odyssey.

These two NASA missions have drastically changed our
perception of the planet. Mars has been mapped even more
thoroughly than our own planet Earth. Surveyor’s and
Odyssey’s pictures and other scientific measurements have
revealed the presence of vast amounts of water ice and gullies
and debris that suggest there may even be current sources of
liquid water that aren’t far from the surface. Water ice is now
thought to cover a large portion of Mars outside the equatorial
regions.

The significant amount of water is exciting for those searching
for evidence of life, past or present, on Mars. If we ever travel to
Mars, it’s comforting to know that water for a hot shower awaits
us on landing. Yet, in spite of all this water ice, Mars is like our
deserts, dry and dusty. Dust is a key factor to take into account
when planning rover missions on Mars. For example, dust
buildup on the solar panels is expected to limit the useful life of
the rovers by cutting off the sunlight generating the power.

Surveyor and Odyssey have taken pictures of the mothers of all
dust storms, storms so large that they sometimes seem like one
big storm circling the Martian globe. On a smaller scale, dust
devils are also a common occurrence. Dust devils are also
common here on Earth, for example, on the deserts in
Southwestern USA. In our cities, you may see the urban
equivalent, the “trash devil”, a whirling assortment of paper,
leaves or other debris. A dust devil can be frightening, as I found
in an article entitled “Tiny Tornadoes” by Kathy Svitil in the July
2003 issue of Discover magazine. She cites the experience of
Nilton Renno, now at the University of Michigan, but formerly at
the University of Arizona where he was a glider enthusiast. The
power of a dust devil was brought home to him tragically. A
friend of his was killed when, while sitting beside his sailplane, a
dust devil picked up his sailplane and dropped it on him!

According to Svitil, dust devils weren’t accorded much respect
until scientists realized that dust devils on Mars were much
bigger and “meaner” than they are in our Southwestern deserts.
There, dust devils can appear out of a perfectly clear sky on a hot
summer day. They usually don’t last long, maybe a few minutes,
and don’t exceed more than a few hundred feet in height. Once
in a while, a devil might tower a few thousand feet and swirl
around at 70 miles an hour for an hour or so. These babies can
pick up a small shed (or a sailplane).

A common place for a dust devil to form is where a cool patch of
ground adjoins a hotter area, say at the edge of an irrigated plot
bordering a desert. The cooler air will tend to slide in under the
warm air and warm air will rush in to replace it. You end up
with a rotating tube of air. In an updraft, the rotating tube is
lifted up and you have a dust devil. The dust devil picks up dust
and sand but generally will fling the sand back down to the
ground, while picking up the dust.

In the process, something else happens that you might not
expect. When the sand and the dust grind together in the devil,
electrons are knocked off some particles and picked up on others.
Typically, the heavier particles such as sand lose electrons while
the finer dust particles pick up electrons. So, if the sand gets
flung to the ground, the sand has a positive charge and the dust a
negative charge and there’s the potential for a discharge, that is,
lightning. However, for lightning to occur on earth, you need an
electrical field of a few million volts per meter. In earthly dust
devils the fields are only around 10,000 volts per meter - not
dangerous and no lightning. On Mars, however, you only need
about 20,000 volts per meter and, with much bigger dust devils,
there’s a possibility of lightning. Dry thunderstorms on Mars?

If you want to see some interesting pictures of dust and dust
devils on Mars, visit the June 2003 issue of Scientific American
and the article “The Unearthly Landscapes of Mars” by Arden
Albee. As the subtitle indicates “The red planet is no dead
planet.” Let’s wish all those spacecraft bon voyage and, for the
Beagle 2 and the rovers, a happy landing.

Allen F. Bortrum