Smithsonian.com

It’s happened. We’re in the early 21st century, and it’s now possible for a space suit to look hopelessly outdated. I mean, would you pilot a 1950s vehicle off the planet in something that looks like it recently came off a baked potato? I think Devo once made a music video in more sophisticated space apparel than this.

But it’s fun looking at the progression of space suit fashion in this NASA slideshow (link is at lower left of page). You even get some glimpses of the future, both conceptual drawings and shots of astronauts testing out the new designs on a dusty Washington lake bed. There’s also the famous 1984 shot of the first untethered spacewalk - a prospect that still makes me shiver.

The slideshow doesn’t offer any pics of women in space (even though 40 American women have achieved escape velocity). If you hanker for a break from all the manliness, check out NASA’s tribute to Sally Ride, who last week celebrated her 25th anniversary as the first American woman in space.

On the fashion side, keep your eyes peeled for the next major development. On July 4, Mattel rolls out “Space Camp Barbie.” Who says we’re losing our edge in science and technology?

(Image: NASA)

One of the most talked-about outcomes of climate change is global sea-level rise–perhaps because the effects are straightforward and tangible: If sea level rises by this much, wipe this much of Florida (Bangladesh, Venice, Vancouver, Togo, the U.K., etc.) off the map. That’s a lot more immediate than envisioning the effect of a 3 degree rise in temperature on, say, the location of the world’s intertropical convergence zones.

Records show that on average, sea level has risen by about 1.7 millimeters (the thickness of a quarter) per year over the last century, for a total of more than 6 inches so far. But like many natural records, a graph of sea-level rise over time gives you a jittery line. Sea-level rise accelerated around 1930, slowed in 1960, and sped up again around 1990.

That is, until a correction arrived last week, when two Taiwanese scientists, writing in the journal Science, calculated that worldwide dam construction in the 20th century had kept nearly 11,000 cubic kilometers of water from reaching the ocean. The effect of all that withholding has been to slow the ocean’s rise by about 0.55 millimeters, or nearly a third of the total, per year.

The researchers went on to trace the timeline of dam construction, using a database of more than 29,000 of the world’s largest dams. They allowed for contradictory effects such as reservoirs not filling completely, water seeping into the ground below and small dams not being reported in the database. When they were finished, they added up the dam volumes year by year and superimposed the amounts on the historical, jagged graph of observed sea level rise.

The result: a much straighter line. It seems that the great dam-building bonanzas of the 1950s through the 1980s changed the Earth’s runoff patterns enough to be felt (admittedly, somewhat minutely) at sea level. Without dams, sea level would have risen at an average 2.46 millimeters per year. You can take this news as good or bad.

Good: it means sea-level rise may not have accelerated as sharply in recent years as it seems to have done. Bad: scientists can’t account for where all the rising seawater is coming from, and these new numbers mean there’s even more water to be accounted for. Which reminds me: new models suggest melting ice could raise sea levels by 4 feet this century, New Scientist reports. That’s nearly three times more than in the worst-case estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

(The Hoover Dam in 1933; Ansel Adams/Wikipedia. Hat tip: Zan)

It’s Charles Darwin’s 199th birthday, and folks around the world are celebrating the life of the man behind the theory of evolution. I’m an advocate of expanding Darwin day to include Alfred Russel Wallace, who was something of a wonder naturalist himself. Through years spent in the Amazonian and Indonesian jungles, Wallace independently came up with the idea of natural selection and nearly beat Darwin to publication without really trying. And his 185th birthday was just a month ago - January 8 - so why not a double celebration?

Darwin was exceedingly conflicted about the religious implications of his theory, since it essentially relieved the Creator of all the detail work involved in creating species. And alas, he’s no less contentious two centuries on - Wired has news of still-raging debates in Florida and possibly Texas about whether school science courses should broach the fact that evolution happens.

It’s puzzling to me, since plenty of scientists have been happy to marvel at evolution while retaining their faith in a Creator. Recently in Antarctica, I got to visit the huts where Victorian explorers risked their lives to research penguin evolution and look for geological clues to the age of the Earth. Yet each Sunday they dressed for church and held services, entirely unconflicted.
A new, free book by the National Academy of Sciences (Science, Evolution, and Creationism) addresses the conflict head on, including an FAQ section that kicks off with “Aren’t evolution and religion opposing ideas?” The answer’s a pretty good one - although since it is Darwin day and all, you might just want to head straight over to the Origin of Species itself. Darwin was a lucid writer, and he devoted an entire chapter to raising all the major objections to his theory before anyone else did.

It’s great reading and a needed reminder of why natural history is as important for understanding the world as any other kind of history. For example:

Can a more striking instance of adaptation be given than that of a woodpecker for climbing trees and for seizing insects in the chinks of the bark? Yet in North America there are woodpeckers which feed largely on fruit, and others with elongated wings which chase insects on the wing; and on the plains of La Plata, where not a tree grows, there is a woodpecker, which in every essential part of its organisation, even in its colouring, in the harsh tone of its voice, and undulatory flight, told me plainly of its close blood-relationship to our common species; yet it is a woodpecker which never climbs a tree! … He who believes that each being has been created as we now see it, must occasionally have felt surprise when he has met with an animal having habits and structure not at all in agreement.

He even raised the prospect of intelligent design some 130 years ahead of its time:

It is scarcely possible to avoid comparing the eye to a telescope. We know that this instrument has been perfected by the long-continued efforts of the highest human intellects; and we naturally infer that the eye has been formed by a somewhat analogous process. But may not this inference be presumptuous? Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?

Darwin’s was buried in Westminster Abbey in recognition of his contribution to science and society. I like to think the funeral was also a small, early step in reconciling evolution with religion, commemorating how Darwin gave us a clearer understanding of the miracles of existence, and nothing more threatening than that.

Now please pass the cake, we’ve got a lot of candles to blow out.

(Images: Wikipedia; Wallace on the left, Darwin on the right.)

In a region prone to earthquakes, a little warning could make a big difference. Though current early warning systems—such as those in Japan, Mexico and Taiwan—can only give a few to tens of seconds warning before the ground starts to shake, this is enough time to allow some short-term mitigation. Trains and elevators can be slowed or stopped, utilities and factories can put into safe modes, and people indoors and out can move to safer areas. Damage will still occur, but it could be lessened.

Japan is particularly earthquake prone (above, Tokyo devastated after a 1923 earthquake), so it’s no surprise that the country would develop an earthquake early warning system. After years of development, it went online in October. However, the success of the system has been called into question. On January 26, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake shook the Noto Peninsula in the Ishikawa Prefecture about 200 miles northwest of Tokyo. No warning had been issued for the quake, and the Japanese media claimed that system had failed. But did it?

The Japanese system is designed to issue a warning only if the predicted intensity of the earthquake will reach lower 5 or above. (Intensity—see here for an explanation of the Japanese scale—is a measure of the strength of seismic motion at the surface, whereas magnitude is a measure of the energy released at the source of an earthquake.) An earthquake with an intensity of 4 will shake books off the shelf; in a lower 5, the bookshelf will fall over. For the January 26 earthquake, the system predicted an intensity of 4, but in one town, Wajimamonzen, the intensity reached lower 5. Government officials from the Ishikawa Prefecture, though, received no reports of injuries or damage from the earthquake. And a representative of the Japan Meteorological Agency told the journal Nature that this kind of variation was within expected limits.

It can be argued that, technically, the system did fail and there should have been a warning. With a system still in its first year of operation, it is no surprise that it still needs perfecting. However, if there was no serious damage from the earthquake, and the system is meant to mitigate damage, doesn’t this also call into question where they have placed the cutoff? If warnings are given too often for quakes that don’t do much damage, is there a danger people would grow complacent and begin to ignore them? And then what would happen when Japan’s equivalent of the “big one� (see Tokyo Tremors in Earthquake!) occurs?

(Image: USGS Photographic Library, George A. Lang Collection)

On August 30, while metal-detecting in Djurhamn, Sweden, archaeologist Martin Rundkvist unearthed a real treasure: a 36-inch 16th-century sword. The double-edged, single-hand grip weapon was “unusually designed,” Rundkvist wrote on his blog, Aardvarchaeology, “but similar in details to the so-called rikssvärden, or ’swords of the realm,’ ceremonial weapons commissioned by King Gustaf I.” (Read more about how his team dug it up.)

Since then, conservationists at the Studio Västsvensk Konservering, in Göteborg, have been cleaning up the sword, and in the process, learning more about its history. The photograph above was recently taken by the studio’s Vivian Smits. “The blade bears traces of at least three ‘fresh’ sword blows,” she told Rundkvist, indicating that the weapon was probably lost during combat (that is, before its owner had a chance to repair it.)

Moreover, since 16th-century Djurhamn was a large and busy harbor, Rundkvist guesses that the sword’s owner dropped it into water from a nearby bank. (Today the area is a marshy forest.)

Makes sense…though one of Rundkvist’s commenters proposed an intriguing alternate theory:

After a night of drinking and partying in the Atlantic City of 16th century Sweden, the owner of the sword found that he had lost his cabin key when he went abord his ship. In anger he banged the sword repeatedly on whatever he was nearest which awokened the big burly ship mate, who wrestled the sword from the inebriated aristocrat and hurled it overboard.

(Vivian Smits)