Posted on by Anne Minard

Solar Cycle Triggers La Nina, El Nino-like Climate Shifts

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Researchers have discovered a link between the 11-year solar cycle and tropical Pacific weather patterns that resemble La Niña and El Niño events.

When it comes to influencing Earth’s climate, the Sun’s variability pales in recent decades compared to greehouse gases — but the new research shows it still plays a distinguishable part.

The total energy reaching Earth from the sun varies by only 0.1 percent across the solar cycle. Scientists have sought for decades to link these ups and downs to natural weather and climate variations and distinguish their subtle effects from the larger pattern of human-caused global warming.

Co-authors Gerald Meehl and Julie Arblaster, both affiliated with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, analyzed computer models of global climate and more than a century of ocean temperature records. Arblaster is also affiliated with the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

In the new paper and a previous one with additional colleagues, the researchers have been able to show that, as the sun’s output reaches a peak, the small amount of extra sunshine over several years causes a slight increase in local atmospheric heating, especially across parts of the tropical and subtropical Pacific where Sun-blocking clouds are normally scarce.

That small amount of extra heat leads to more evaporation, producing extra water vapor. In turn, the moisture is carried by trade winds to the normally rainy areas of the western tropical Pacific, fueling heavier rains.

As this climatic loop intensifies, the trade winds strengthen. That keeps the eastern Pacific even cooler and drier than usual, producing La Niña-like conditions.

“We have fleshed out the effects of a new mechanism to understand what happens in the tropical Pacific when there is a maximum of solar activity,” Meehl said. “When the sun’s output peaks, it has far-ranging and often subtle impacts on tropical precipitation and on weather systems around much of the world.”

The result of this chain of events is similar to a La Niña event, although the cooling of about 1-2 degrees Fahrenheit is focused further east and is only about half as strong as for a typical La Niña.

True La Niña and El Nino events are associated with changes in the temperatures of surface waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean. They can affect weather patterns worldwide.

Although the Pacific pattern in the new paper is produced by the solar maximum, the authors found that its switch to an El Niño-like state is likely triggered by the same kind of processes that normally lead from La Niña to El Niño.

The transition starts when the changes of the strength of the trade winds produce slow-moving off-equatorial pulses known as Rossby waves in the upper ocean, which take about a year to travel back west across the Pacific.

The energy then reflects from the western boundary of the tropical Pacific and ricochets eastward along the equator, deepening the upper layer of water and warming the ocean surface.

As a result, the Pacific experiences an El Niño-like event about two years after solar maximum — also about half as strong as a true El Niño. The event settles down after about a year, and the system returns to a neutral state.

“El Niño and La Niña seem to have their own separate mechanisms,” Meehl said, “but the solar maximum can come along and tilt the probabilities toward a weak La Niña. If the system was heading toward a La Niña anyway,” he adds, “it would presumably be a larger one.”

The study authors say the new research may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.

In an email, Meehl noted that previous work by his team and other research groups has shown that “most of the warming trend in the first half of the 20th Century was due to an increasing trend of solar output, while most of the warming trend in the last half of the 20th Century and ever since has been due to ever-increasing GHG (greenhouse gas) concentrations in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels.”

The new paper appears this month in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society. (Sorry, it’s not yet available online.)

Source: Eurekalert

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Welcome “Copernicium,” Our Newest Element

Nicolaus Copernicus

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The newest element on the periodic table will likely be named in honor of scientist and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. Element 112 will be named Copernicum, with the element symbol “Cp.”

“We would like to honor an outstanding scientist, who changed our view of the world”, says Sigurd Hofmann, head of the team who discovered the element.

Element 112 is the heaviest element in the periodic table, 277 times heavier than hydrogen. With that distinction, several interesting suggestions for a name have recently been floating around the blogosphere (Fat Bottomum was my favorite; another was naming it to honor Carl Sagan). But the scientists said they wanted to honor the scientist who paved the way for our view of the modern world by discovering that the Earth orbits the Sun. Our solar system is a model for other physical systems, such as the structure of an atom, where electrons orbit the atomic nucleus. Exactly 112 electrons circle the atomic nucleus in an atom of copernicium.

Thirteen years ago, element 112 was discovered by an international team of scientists at the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung (Center for Heavy Ion Research) in Darmstadt, Germany.

The element is produced by a nuclear fusion, when bombarding zinc ions onto a lead target. As the element already decays after a split second, its existence can only be proved with the help of extremely fast and sensitive analysis methods. Twenty-one scientists from Germany, Finland, Russia and Slovakia have been involved in the experiments that led to the discovery of element 112.

A few weeks ago, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, IUPAC, officially confirmed their discovery. In around six months, IUPAC will officially endorse the new element’s name. This period is set to allow the scientific community to discuss the suggested name “copernicium” before the IUPAC naming.

Since 1981, GSI accelerator experiments have yielded the discovery of six chemical elements, which carry the atomic numbers 107 to 112. The discovering teams at GSI already named five of them: element 107 is called bohrium, element 108, hassium; element 109, meitnerium; element 110, darmstadtium; and element 111 is named roentgenium.

Source: PhysOrg

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Device Makes Radio Waves Travel Faster Than Light

Polarization Synchrotron. Credit: Singleton, et al., via Current.com

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A scientist has created a gadget that can make radio waves travel faster than light. Einstein predicted that particles and information can’t travel faster than the speed of light, but phenomena like radio waves are a different story, said John Singleton, who works at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The polarization synchrotron combines the waves with a rapidly spinning magnetic field, and the result could explain why pulsars — which are super-dense spinning stars that are a subclass of neutron stars — emit such powerful signals, a phenomenon that has baffled many scientists.

Singleton said the polarization synchrotron basically abuses radio waves so severely that they finally give in and travel faster than light. This may be what happens in pulsars, as well.

“Pulsars are rapidly rotating neutron stars that emit radio waves in pulses, but what we don’t know is why these pulses are so bright or why they travel such long distances,” Singleton said. “What we think is these are transmitting the same way our machine does.”

The device consists of a 2 meter-long gently curving arc of alumina (a dielectric material), with a series of electrodes fitted at regular intervals along its length. Applying a sinusoidal voltage across each electrode and displacing the phase of the voltage very slightly from one electrode to the next generates a sinusoidally-varying polarization pattern that moves along the device. By carefully adjusting the frequency of the voltage and the phase displacement the researchers say they can make the wave travel at greater than the speed of light. However no physical quantity of charge travels faster than light speed.

And beyond explaining what has been a bit of a mystery to the astronomical community, Singleton’s discovery could have wide-ranging technological impacts in areas such as medicine and communications, he said.

“Because nobody’s really thought about things that travel faster than light before, this is a wide-open technological field,” Singleton said.

One possible use for faster than light radio waves — which are packed into a very powerful wave the size of a pencil point — could be the creation of a new generation of cell phones that communicate directly to satellites, rather than transmitting through relay towers as they now do.

Those phones would have more reliable service and would also be more difficult for hackers to intercept, Singleton said.

Speedy radio waves could also revolutionize the computing industry. Data could be transferred more quickly, and if used in semiconductors, it would mean faster caches and the ability to communicate across separate pieces of silicon nearly instantly.

In the health field, faster than light radio waves could be in extremely targeted chemotherapy, where a patient takes the drugs, and the radio waves are used to activate them very specifically in the area around a tumor, Singleton said.

Read the paper on the Polarization Synchrotron.

Sources: Current, Geek.com, Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends

Posted on by Brian Ventrudo

Have Astronomers Discovered A New Type of Supernova?

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A team of astronomers at the University of Warwick think they’ve finally explained what caused the bizarre transient object SCP 06F6.  By comparing the optical spectrum of SCP 06F6 to that of carbon-rich stars in our own galaxy, the team concludes the sudden outburst was not a low-energy local event but a supernova-like explosion within a cool carbon-rich atmosphere some 2 billion light years away.  If they’re right, it means the collapse of carbon-rich stars may lead to supernovae unlike any yet seen.

First observed in 2006 by U.S. researchers on images from the Hubble Space Telescope, SCP 06F6 flashed suddenly then faded from view over some 120 days.  The U.S. team published their findings in September 2008.  But they had no idea what might cause this outburst.  The event was so unusual, if fact, that astronomers had didn’t know whether SCP 06F6 was located in our own galaxy or at the other end of the universe.  Talk about experimental uncertainty!

The Warwick team noticed the optical spectrum of SCP 06F6 looked a lot like light from cool stars with molecular carbon in their atmosphere.  But to get a close spectral match with SCP 06F6, the team had to apply a redshift to the spectra of the carbon stars to correspond to a rapidly receding object some 2 billion light years away.  The large distance and the sudden appearance of SCP 06F6 suggest the object may be related to the sudden collapse of a carbon-rich star.  If so, it’s a brand new type of supernova.

But questions remain.  SCP 06F6 seems to be alone in space… it has no known visible host galaxy.  And the 120-day time scale of the object’s rise and fall in brightness is four times longer than most Type-II supernovae (the kind caused by the core-collapse of a massive star).

What’s more, X-ray observations by the European satellite XMM-Newton show the object blasts out up to 100 times more X-rays energy than expected from a typical Type-II supernova.

The strong X-ray emission may suggest the star was ripped apart by a black hole rather than exploding on its own.  But according to Boris Gansicke, the lead researcher of Warwick team, “The lack of any obvious host galaxy for SCP 06F6 would imply either a very low black hole mass (if black holes do exist at the centres of dwarf irregular galaxies) or that the black hole has somehow been ejected from its host galaxy. While neither is impossible, this does make the case for disruption by a black hole somewhat contrived.”

The findings were published in the June 1, 2009 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Source:  University of Warwick

Also see the Universe Today article about the discovery of SCP 06F6

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Finding Shows Super-Huge Space Tornados Power the Auroras

Space tornadoes span a volume approximately the size of Earth or larger. Credit: Keiling, Glassmeier and Amm

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If you think tornadoes on Earth are scary, newly found “space tornadoes” sound downright horrifying. But they are likely the power source behind the beautiful Northern and Southern Lights. A new finding by a cluster of five space probes – the THEMIS, or Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms show that electrical funnels which span a volume as large as Earth produce electrical currents exceeding 100,000 amperes. THEMIS recorded the extent and power of these electrical funnels as the probes passed through them during their orbit of Earth. Ground measurements showed that the space tornadoes channel the electrical current into the ionosphere to spark bright and colorful auroras on Earth.

Space tornadoes are rotating plasmas of hot, ionized gas flowing at speeds of more than a million miles per hour, far faster than the 200 m.p.h. winds of terrestrial tornadoes, according to Andreas Keiling, a research space physicist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.

Keiling works on THEMIS, which was built and is now operated by UC Berkeley. The five space probes were launched by NASA in February 2007 to solve a decades-long mystery about the origin of magnetic storms that power the Northern and Southern Lights.

Electric currents in the funnels power auroras. Credit: Keiling, Glassmeier, and Amm
Electric currents in the funnels power auroras. Credit: Keiling, Glassmeier, and Amm

Both terrestrial and space tornadoes consist of funnel-shaped structures. Space tornadoes, however, generate huge amounts of electrical currents inside the funnel. These currents flow along twisted magnetic field lines from space into the ionosphere where they power several processes, most notably bright auroras such as the Northern Lights, Keiling said.

While these intense currents do not cause any direct harm to humans, on the ground they can damage man-made structures, such as power transformers.

The THEMIS spacecraft observed these tornadoes, or “flow vortices,” at a distance of about 40,000 miles from Earth. Simultaneous measurements by THEMIS ground observatories confirmed the tornadoes’ connection to the ionosphere.

Keiling’s colleagues include Karl-Heinz Glassmeier of the Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics (IGEP, TU) in Braunschweig, Germany, and Olaf Amm of the Finnish Meteorological Institute.

The findings were presented today at the general assembly of the European Geosciences Union (EGU) in Vienna, Austria.

Source: EGU

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Major Utility Company Makes Agreement for Space Based Solar Power

Solar Collecting Satellite. Image courtesy of Mafic Studios.

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One of the largest utility companies in the US has decided to look towards space to find more power. Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) in California announced a proposed agreement with startup company Solaren Corporation to provide 200 mega watts of space based solar power (SBSP) starting in 2016. PG&E is now seeking approval from California state regulators for permission to sign this agreement. While PG&E is not making any financial investment at this time, the announcement shows that SBSP is being taken seriously as a viable energy source. PG&E and the two other California utilities are required by the state to source 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2010 and 30 percent by 2017. None are producing the required amount so far.

Solaren Corporation is a small, 8-year-old company based in California whose executives have experience working for Boeing and Lockheed Martin. According to PG&E’s website, Solaren says it plans to generate the power using solar panels in earth orbit, then convert it to radio frequency energy for transmission to a receiving station in California. From there, the energy will be converted to electricity and fed into PG&E’s power grid

The proposed agreement is for the delivery of 200MW starting in 2016 for 15 years.

Earlier this year Universe Today interviewed Peter Sage from Space Energy, another SBSP company. Sage said in a statement released today that this announcement is a
“huge step forward for both Solaren and Space Energy as it highlights to the investment community that utility firms are willing to recognize Space-Based Solar Power as a credible and viable source of energy.” Sage added that while the 200 mega watts Solaren is planning to provide represents only 20% of the planned capacity of one of Space Energy’s satellites, it successfully validates the overall business case for SBSP within the larger energy industry.

The U.S. Department of Energy and NASA began seriously studying the concept of solar power satellites in the 1970s, again in the 1990’s and in 2007, a major study by the Defense Department’s National Security Space Office gave the concept another boost, concluding that “there is enormous potential for energy security, economic development, improved environmental stewardship … and overall national security for those nations who construct and possess a SBSP capability.”

It seems like a win-win situation for PG&E. They told their customers, “If Solaren succeeds, PG&E’s customers have a great opportunity to benefit from affordable clean energy. There is no risk to PG&E customers; PG&E has contracted only to pay for power that Solaren delivers.”

PG&E has 5.1 million electric customer accounts and 4.2 million natural-gas customer accounts in Northern and Central California.

Sources: Space Energy press release, PG&E website

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Small Engine For the Big Job of Testing Theory of Relativity

The FEEP. Credit: ESA

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Researchers from the European Space Agency are testing what they describe as the smallest, yet most precisely controllable engine ever built for space. Measuring 10 centimeters (4 inches) across and making a faint blue glow as it runs, the Field Emission Electric Propulsion, or FEEP, engine produces an average thrust equivalent to the force of one falling hair. But its thrust range and controllability are far superior to more potent thrusters, and will be important for a future space mission that will test Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.

“Most propulsion systems are employed to get a vehicle from A to B,” explained Davide Nicolini of the agency’s Scientific Projects Department, in charge of the engine research. “But with FEEP, the aim is to maintain a spacecraft in a fixed position, compensating for even the tiniest forces perturbing it, to an accuracy that no other engine design can match.”

Watching how objects behave when separated from all outside influences is a long-time ambition of physicists, but it can’t be done within Earth’s gravity field. So a next-decade mission called the LISA Pathfinder (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) will fly 1.5 million km (900,000 miles) to one of the Lagrangian points, L-1. There, the Sun and Earth’s gravities cancel each other out, so that the behavior of a pair of free-floating test objects can be precisely monitored.

But to detach the experiment fully from the rest of the Universe there will still be some remaining per-turbations to overcome, most notably the slight but continuous pressure of sunlight itself. That’s where FEEP comes in. It operates on the same basic principle as other ion engines flown aboard ESA’s SMART-1 Moon mission and other spacecraft: the application of an electric field serves to accelerate electrically-charged atoms (known as ions), producing thrust.

But while the thrust of other ion engines is measured in millinewtons, FEEP’s performance is assessed in terms of micronewtons – a unit one thousand times smaller. The engine has a thrust range of 0.1 – 150 micronewtons, with a resolution capability better than 0.1 micronewtons in a time response of one-fifth of a second (190 milliseconds) or better.

The engine uses liquid metal caesium as propellant. Through capillary action—a phenomenon associated with surface tension—caesium flows between a pair of metal surfaces that end in a razor-sharp slit. The caesium stays at the mouth of the slit until an electric field is generated. This causes tiny cones to form in the liquid metal which have charged atoms shooting from their tips to create thrust.

Twelve thrusters will be used for the LISA Pathfinder. Working together with another propulsions system designed by NASA, the thrusters should yield directional control at least 100 times more accurate than any spacecraft before; down to a millionth of a millimeter.

LISA involves three satellites up to five million km (three million miles) apart and linked by lasers, orbiting the Sun. The aim is to detect ripples in space and time known as gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity but so far undetected. The waves would cause tiny variations in the distance measured between the satellites.

The engine was tested last month, and once the tests are analyzed and the concept is proven, the FEEP technology has been earmarked for a broad range of other missions, including precision formation flying for astronomy, Earth observation and drag-free satellites for mapping variations in Earth’s gravity.

Source: ESA

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

New Array Captures Redoubt Volcano Lightning

Redoubt lightning. Credit: Bretwood Higman

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When Redoubt Volcano in Alaska started rumbling in January, a team of researchers from New Mexico Tech hurried to south central Alaska to deploy a series of radio sensors. When the volcano began erupting overnight on March 22 and 23, the Lightning Mapping Array started returning clear and dramatic information about the electricity created within volcanic plumes and the resulting lightning. This is the first time ever anyone has been able to record data from a volcanic eruption right from the start. “We’re getting all the data we hoped to get and a lot more,” principal investigator Dr. Ron Thomas said. “Absolutely, the quality and quantity of the data will allow us to better understand the electrical charge structure inside a volcanic plume.”

Lightning is a frequent occurance during volcanic eruptions. The Lightning Mapping array allows scientists, meteorologists and storm chasers to pierce the veil of clouds to “see” lightning as it occurs.

“With each lightning flash, we’ll be able to monitor how it moves through the clouds and where it goes,” Thomas said. “If we take all our theories about lightning created in thunderstorms, we can learn about both types of lightning.”

Photo of lightning from Redoubt Volcano during its 11:20 p.m. eruption on March 27, 2009. Photo by Brentwood Higman.
Photo of lightning from Redoubt Volcano during its 11:20 p.m. eruption on March 27, 2009. Photo by Brentwood Higman.

Redoubt erupted explosively about 20 times in the first seven days of activity. Most volcanic eruptions have several distinct stages. In the case of Redoubt, a stage of explosive activity is followed by a second stage that includes dome-building and slow venting of ash, rock and gasses. Within the individual explosive eruptions, different phases of electrical activity are observed.

“First, we see an eruptive or explosive phase,” physics professor Paul Krehbiel said. “Electrical activity is continuous and strong. We see a lot of small electrical discharges as hot gasses come out of the volcano.”
The second phase involves the ash cloud as it drifts away from the volcano with the wind. This phase is punctuated by discrete lightning – or lightning bolts.

“After the explosion is over, there is a subsequent phase of plume lightning,” Krehbiel said. “Full-fledged lightning occurs in the cloud of ash and water both above and downwind of the volcano.”

During a week’s time, Redoubt has had several major eruptions that have produced prolific lightning, Krehbiel said.

“The lightning activity was as strong as or stronger than we have seen in large Midwestern thunderstorms,” Krehbiel said. “The radio frequency noise was so strong and continuous that people living in the area would not have been able to watch broadcast VHF television stations.”

View north into the summit crater of Redoubt volcano where recent eruptions have removed a significant portion of the glacial ice. A remnant shelf of ice remains on the west (right) side of crater, and in this view, fumaroles are rising from near the ice/wall-rock contact. Image Creator: Payne, Allison
View north into the summit crater of Redoubt volcano where recent eruptions have removed a significant portion of the glacial ice. A remnant shelf of ice remains on the west (right) side of crater, and in this view, fumaroles are rising from near the ice/wall-rock contact. Image Creator: Payne, Allison

The Redoubt eruptions are not over yet. After quieting down and appearing to go into a dome-building phase, just before sunrise Saturday, April 4, the volcano blew its top in the biggest eruption so far.
Thousands of individual segments of a single lightning stroke can be mapped with the Lightning Mapping Array and later analyzed on high-end computers to reveal how lightning initiates and spreads throughout a thunderstorm … or within a volcanic plume.

“We receive radio bursts of noise generated from sparks of lightning, just like the static you hear on your car radio during a thunderstorm,” Thomas said. “We will use our sensing stations to locate the lightning and track its path.”

Source: New Mexico Tech press release

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Could Astrophysics Save Lives?

Artist’s impression of the proto-planetary disk, courtesy of NASA.

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Who would have guessed astrophysics could save lives? But it’s true. Planetary geologists studying how molten metal coagulates at the center of planets while they are forming have discovered that their research can also be used to investigate blood flow in the human heart. Using the methods developed by astrophysicists, surgeons were able to find the location of a potentially life-threatening blood clot in a patient’s heart.

Planetary geologists use sophisticated computer modeling to explore the flow of liquid metal through rocks. Using the same type of model, the scientists were able to show doctors in the UK where the patient’s blood was gathering in a pool in their heart due to a blood clot. Doctors confirmed the clot and successfully treated the patient.

The researchers now hope to conduct more detailed clinical studies on the technique to see if it could be used routinely as a way of identifying dangerous blood clots in heart patients.

Professor Nick Petford, a geologist at Bournemouth University, who led the research, said, “We were examining how liquid metal accumulates in the core of a planet like the Earth over just a few million years, which is quite fast in geological terms. The metal flows through cracks and fissures that open up in the rock as the planet is deformed by impacts from outer space during its early period.”

Petford said he and his colleagues by chance were talking with clinicians at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, and found commonalities in that the vascular system was just like the cracks and fissures they were studying in meteorite samples. “We were able to look at blood flow in the same way we looked at the flow of metal,” he said.

The technology uses a computer to scan images of cracks in a meteorite or arteries in the heart to produce an accurate simulation of how liquid will flow through them.

Petford worked with radiologist Dr. Roger Patel to use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of a patient’s heart to analyze the blood flow.

Surgeons already suspected there was an area of stagnant blood that could cause a blood clot but could not be sure where. By scanning the images from the MRI scan into the computer simulation, the researchers were able to predict the clot’s location.

Professor Petford said: “All vascular systems are different so previous attempts to model the heart don’t give information on what is going on in that individual patient, particularly if their heart is irregular or deformed in some way.

“By using real MRI scans we are able to produce an exact replica of what is going on in the patient’s body.”

Doctors now hope the technology can be developed so it can be used routinely to analyze scans from heart patients. “We are hoping to improve the model over the next few years and perhaps have a technique that can be used alongside scans in the next five to ten years,” said Patel.

Heart disease is the UK’s biggest killer and accounts for around 200,000 deaths each year, and in the US, the someone dies from the disease every 34 seconds.

Source: The Telegraph

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Follow the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference at AC LIVE

Dr. Pamela Gay from Astronomy Cast is attending the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference this week and is blogging from the conference. You can catch her updates at Astronomy Cast Live . She’s already posted some very interesting reports on how the Martian north pole region — where the Phoenix lander sits — may currently be habitable, and the debate on how planets should be classified. Great stuff — check it out!