Caught on Film: The Cat’s Paw

A stunning new image of a vast star nursery at the heart of our galaxy has just been released by the ESO

In 1837, at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, the English astronomer John Hershel discovered the Cat's Paw Nebula, an emission nebula in the constellation Scorpius about 5,500 light-years away near the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

Now the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released this striking new image of the Cat's Paw, officially known as NGC 6334.

"NGC 6334 is one of the most active nurseries of massive stars in our galaxy and has been extensively studied by astronomers," according to an ESO press release.

"The nebula conceals freshly minted brilliant blue stars -- each nearly ten times the mass of our Sun and born in the last few million years. The region is also home to many baby stars that are buried deep in the dust, making them difficult to study. In total, the Cat’s Paw Nebula could contain several tens of thousands of stars."

"Particularly striking is the red, intricate bubble in the lower right part of the image. This is most likely either a star expelling large amount of matter at high speed as it nears the end of its life or the remnant of a star that already has exploded."

The ESO is the leading intergovernmental astronomy organization in Europe and known as "the world's most productive astronomical observatory."

GET INVOLVED

• Visit ESO's Picture of the Week Web page
  
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Buy a telescope from the Discovery Channel store

RELATED POSTS

• Intergalactic Metal (December 4, 2009)
• The Leonids (November 16, 2009)
• Sailing Through Space on Sunshine (November 13, 2009)
• The Lost Siblings of the Sun (November 6, 2009)
• A Message from the Universe's More Youthful Days (October 30, 2009)
• Galaxy IC-10 (October 9, 2009)
• Reclaiming the Night Sky (October 2, 2009)
• Star Light, Star Bright (September 25, 2009)
• Seeing the Mother of Mars (September 18, 2009)
• Hubble Captures a Butterfly (September 11, 2009)
• Looking Into Space from the Coldest Place on Earth (September 3, 2009)
• Viewing Victoria (August 31, 2009)
• Let There Be Light (August 19, 2009)
• The Tears of St. Lawrence (August 12, 2009)
• Empire of the Sun (August 7, 2009)
• Where Stars Are Born (July 16, 2009)

image: ESO

Remembering Challenger

Today in 1986, seven American astronauts gave their lives exploring the last frontier

At 5:00 p.m. EST on January 28, 1986, President Reagan was scheduled to deliver a State of the Union address.

Instead, he delivered a somber speech about an event that happened barely six hours earlier that shook the nation to its core: the loss of seven astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.

On 11:39 AM EST, just 73 seconds after lift-off and about 150 nautical miles above the Earth, a ruptured O-ring in Challenger's right solid rocket booster caused an explosion that tore the shuttle apart, killing Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, Judith Resnik, Michael J. Smith, Francis "Dick" Scobee and Ronald McNair.

Mission STS-51-L was the twenty-fifth flight of the America's space shuttle program. It was Challenger's tenth mission, meant to deploy communication satellites, carry our experiments on observing Halley's Comet and give a series of lessons as part of the Teacher in Space Program.

At the time, the American public had become accustomed to viewing the televised launches. Indeed, nothing since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy had gripped the entire country as did the Challenger disaster.

"We've grown used to wonders in this century," said President Reagan in his televised address from the Oval Office.

"It's hard to dazzle us. But for 25 years the United States space program has been doing just that. We've grown used to the idea of space, and perhaps we forget that we've only just begun. We're still pioneers. They, the members of the Challenger crew, were pioneers."

On February 1, 2003, another space shuttle disaster occurred when the Columbia disintegrated over Texas upon its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. All seven of its astronauts were killed. In 131 missions, 14 lives have been lost along with the two shuttles that carried them.

Exploration is dangerous. But without it, we might still be living in caves. Or perhaps, still underwater.

"The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave," said Reagan.

"The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we'll continue to follow them."

GET INVOLVED

• See what's in the sky tonight
• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• Download SETI@Home to help in the search for extraterrestrial life
  
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form

RELATED POSTS

• It Came from Outer Space (January 18, 2010)
• Hunt for Earth 2 (January 8, 2010)
• How the Sun Will Die (December 18, 2009)
• Saturnian Hex (December 11, 2009)
  
• Planet Hunters (October 6, 2009)
• Hubble Captures a Butterfly (September 11, 2009)
  
• Kepler and the Gate to the Black Forest (February 15, 2009)
• Basic Chemistry of Life Found on Exoplanet (December 14, 2008)
• Reclaiming the Night Sky (October 2, 2009)
  
• Empire of the Sun (August 7, 2009)
• Sailing Through Space on Sunshine (November 13, 2009)
• The Lost Siblings of the Sun (November 6, 2009)
• Where Stars Are Born (July 16, 2009)
• Star Light, Star Bright (September 25, 2009)
• A Message from the Universe's More Youthful Days (October 30, 2009)

image: NASA

The Raft of the Lemurs

A new study reveals that Madagascar's animals arrived there by hitching rides on rafts

Located in the Indian Ocean about 300 miles from Africa's southeastern coast, Madagascar is an island nation whose main island, also called Madagascar, is the world's fourth largest-island. It is home to 5% of the world's plant and animal species, 90% of which are endemic to the island. Lemurs -- all 70 different kinds of them -- are found nowhere else.

Madagascar has been an island for some 120 million years. But animals did not start arriving there until much later -- about 55 million years after the island was born. For generations of scientists, it has been a mystery as to how this extremely isolated island was populated by such a diverse array of life.

One theory was that the animals arrived via a land bridge that has since disappeared from shifts in the Earth's tectonic plates. In 1915, scientists came up with an alternate theory: The animals arrived on rafts. Now a three-year study of ancient ocean currents is giving weight to this idea.

Professors Matthew Huber of Purdue University and Jason Ali of the University of Hong Kong, in a study to be published in the February 4 issue of the journal Nature, have found that "the prevailing flow of ocean currents between Africa and Madagascar millions of years ago would have made such a trip not only possible, but fast, too," according to a Purdue press release.

"Rafting would have involved animals being washed out to sea during storms, either on trees or large vegetation mats, and floating to the mini-continent, perhaps while in a state of seasonal torpor or hibernation."

"Huber and Ali's work supports a 1940 paper by George Gaylord Simpson, one of the most influential paleontologists and evolution theorists of the 20th century. Simpson introduced the concept of a "sweepstakes" process to explain the chance of raft colonization events taking place through vast stretches of geological time. Once the migrants arrived on the world’s fourth largest island, their descendants evolved into the distinctive, and sometimes bizarre forms seen today."

Additionally, Huber said that the Madagascar study was also a test case that demonstrated the ability of computer models to mimic the interactions of the ocean and the atmosphere in a greenhouse climate from the distant past.

GET INVOLVED

• Support Conservation International campaigns to protect biodiversity hotspots around the world
• Support the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Countdown 2010 to save the world's biodiversity
• Sign a petition to the United Nations to show your support of biodiversity

RELATED POSTS

• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Of Whales and Shrimp (October 13, 2009)
• New Kids on the Block (June 4, 2009)
• The Sands of Time (May 22, 2009)
  
• The Missing Link (May 21, 2009)
• The Air That We Breathe (April 15, 2009)
• The Shadow Lives of Others (March 3, 2009)
• Fighting Where the Wild Things Are (February 27, 2009)
  
• The Common Ancestor of All Life on Earth (December 21, 2008)
• More Than 100 Whales Stranded Off Madagascar (June 10, 2008)
  

image: Black-and-white Ruffed Lemur (Varecia variegata) (credit: jo-h)

The World's Most Important, Most Destructive Edible Oil

Cookies. Lip gloss. Shampoo. Our taste for products containing palm oil is contributing to climate change, destroying animal habitats and putting millions of people at risk

Indonesia is the world's third biggest greenhouse gas polluter, behind China and the United States. One of the sources of this pollution is deforestation, which represents 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

But climate change isn't the only effect of deforestation. In Indonesia, it has not only destroyed the habitats of orangutans, Sumatran tigers and elephants, but has also put some 20 million of the nation's indigenous and forest-dependent people at risk.

A primary reasons for this rampant deforestation is the need to create space for palm oil plantations.

Palm oil is derived from the fruit of the oil palms, two species of the Arecaceae (palm family), one native to west Africa, the other native to Central and South America.

"Oil palm is now the world’s most important edible oil when ranked by global production and consumption," according to the Australian environmental group PalmOilAction.org.

"In the 2006/2007 year, it held approximately 32% of the market share of all edible oils by production in comparison to soybean oil, which held approximately 29% of the world market for oils."

One of Indonesia's biggest palm oil purchasers is General Mills, a Fortune 500 corporation that markets some of the most popular consumer food brands and products, including Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Nature Valley, Cheerios, Yoplait, Colombo, Totinos, Jeno's, Green Giant, Old El Paso, Häagen-Dazs, Lucky Charms and Wanchai Ferry.

Palm oil is found in their Betty Crocker and Pillsbury products, as well as Nature Valley Granola Bars and Yogurt Burst Cheerios.

"Palm oil is a globally traded agricultural commodity that is used in 50 percent of all consumer goods, from lipstick and packaged food to body lotion and biofuels," according to non-profit environmental group Rainforest Action Network (RAN).

"Demand for palm oil in the U.S. has tripled in the last five years, pushing palm oil cultivation into the rainforests and making this crop one of the key causes of global rainforest destruction."

"Indonesia's government plans to convert up to 18 million hectares of land into palm oil plantations by 2020," notes RAN campaigner Ashley Schaeffer, adding that, "While General Mills has expressed concern about recent reports of rainforest destruction for palm oil and has begun to engage its suppliers, this leading company must take stronger action to ensure the protection of rainforests, communities and the climate, as other companies have already done."

"The people driving the bulldozers and excavators told Jamaludin and his family that they were going to build a road," wrote Michael Brune, executive director of RAN, in a recent email describing the plight of an individual in Indonesia whose livelihood depends on a healthy rainforest.

"Instead, they burned down the Indonesian rainforest Jamaludin's community had called home for centuries. In its place: a sprawling palm oil plantation that has ravaged the local and global environment."

"The forest provided us with many ways to earn money: fish, honey, pigs, rattan vines," said Jamaludin.

"Now, everything our grandparents left us is gone."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a RAN letter to General Mills CEO Kendell Powell urging him to make a commitment to source socially and environmentally responsible palm oil
• Download a RAN list of products that contain palm oil
  
• Download a PDF of "Do I Dare Eat That Banana," a document created by RainforestRelief.org that outlines rainforest products to avoid
  
• Protect an acre of rainforest through Conservation International
• Donate to the Rainforest Action Network
• Take these seven steps to help save the Amazon rainforest

RELATED POSTS

• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Gone Bananas (October 12, 2009)
  
• Don't Cry for Trees Argentina (September 28, 2009)
• Happy Markets, Happy Forests (April 27, 2008)
• Plight of the Penan (September 14, 2009)
• Lost World (September 9, 2009)
• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
• Environmental Showdown in the Amazon: Big Oil vs. Native People (July 21, 2009)
• The Rare Animals of the Amazon (June 13, 2009)
• Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans (June 8, 2009)
  
• Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud (May 30, 2009)
• Blowing Noses Into Dead, Ancient Trees (February 29, 2009)
  
• Dismembering the Earth's Heart and Lungs (January 25, 2009)

image: oil palm (Elaeis_guineensis)

The Fall of the Giants Down Under

It seems that climate change didn't push Australia's prehistoric megafauna to extinction. It was probably humans

Forty thousand years ago, Australia's megafauna -- giant-sized mammals, reptiles and flightless birds -- went extinct.

"Debate about the possible cause of these late Pleistocene extinctions has continued for more than 150 years, with scientists divided over whether climate change or the arrival of humans has been responsible for their demise," says Barry Brook from Australia's University of Adelaide in recent press release.

According to a study published last week in the journal Science by Brook and Richard Roberts from Australia's University of Wollongong, new evidence adds weight to the theory that humans pushed these massive creatures to their extinction.

The scientists used improved dating methods on the bones and teeth of extinct animals to show that megafauna existed for only a short time after the arrival of humans.

"Given that people arrived in Australia between 60,000 and 45,000 years ago, human impact was the likely extinction driver, either through hunting or habitat disturbance," Roberts says.

It seems that animal extinctions caused by human activity is not a modern story. We've been doing it for millennia.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a petition to the United Nations to show your support of biodiversity
• Sign a World Wildlife Foundation petition to support the protection of the penguins and other wildlife of Antarctica with the establishment of Antarctica as an actual animal sanctuary by 2018
• Support the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Countdown 2010 to save the world's biodiversity
• Download the Environmental Defense Fund's "Pocket Eco-Friendly Fish Selector" to make choices that help prevent overfishing
• Support the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)
  
• Support BirdLife International's "Preventing Extinctions" Program

RELATED POSTS

• The Vanishing Penguins of Adélie (January 20, 2010)
• The Marines vs. the Dugongs (December 22, 2009)
• Less Species = More Disease (December 10, 2009)
• Elephants in Vietnam: Just 80 Left (December 3, 2009)
• Año Nuevo (November 30, 2009)
• Exit Koala (November 19, 2009)
• Slipping Away: The Polar Bear (November 17, 2009)
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner (November 10, 2009)
• Numbers Don't Lie (October 19, 2009)
• Bye Bye Biodiversity (October 15, 2009)
• Farewell from Christmas Island (September 10, 2009)
• Last Days for the Leatherbacks (September 5, 2009)
• Last Chance to Save the Saola (September 4, 2009)
• Dethroning the Emperors of the South Pole (August 21, 2009)
• Extinction Crisis in Oceania (August 3, 2009)
• The Head of Thoth (September 30, 2009)
• Exclusive Interview with Francois Hugo, Founder, Seal Alert-SA (July 15, 2009)
• Dying for Daggers: Zimbabwe's Black Rhinos (May 20, 2009)
• The Beautiful Lady Without Pity (March 22, 2009)
• The Albatross and the Rising Sea (February 12, 2009)
• From Snakes on a Boat to Guam's Silent Forests (February 7, 2009)
• The Sixth Extinction (October 10, 2008)
• A Six-Step Plan to Save the Oceans from An Extinction Crisis (August 17, 2008)
• Elephant Extinction Possible by 2020 (August 3, 2008)

image: Palorchestes azael, an extinct Australian giant marsupial which was similar to a ground sloth

Ring of Fire

Last week, some people looked in the sky and saw the moon upstaging the sun

On January 15, the Moon's shadow raced across parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, giving the thousands of people caught in it a rare treat: an annular solar eclipse, a partial eclipse in which the moon's diameter appears to be contained completely within the Sun's edge, creating a dramatic ring of fire.

A slideshow on the Washington Post Web site includes images of the eclipse itself, as well as photographs of people in India, China, Kenya, Jordan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and South Korea who viewed the event.

The eclipse lasted a little over 11 minutes, the longest such eclipse for the next 1,000 years.

GET INVOLVED

• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars

RELATED POSTS

• Hunt for Earth 2 (January 8, 2010)
• How the Sun Will Die (December 18, 2009)
  
• Planet Hunters (October 6, 2009)
• Kepler and the Gate to the Black Forest (February 15, 2009)
• Basic Chemistry of Life Found on Exoplanet (December 14, 2008)
• Reclaiming the Night Sky (October 2, 2009)
  
• Empire of the Sun (August 7, 2009)
• Sailing Through Space on Sunshine (November 13, 2009)
• The Lost Siblings of the Sun (November 6, 2009)
• Where Stars Are Born (July 16, 2009)
• Star Light, Star Bright (September 25, 2009)
• A Message from the Universe's More Youthful Days (October 30, 2009)

image: the Moon's silhouette just before mid-eclipse taken within the eclipse path from the city of Kanyakumari at the southern tip of India; the telescopic image was made through a filter that blocks most visible light, but still transmits light from hydrogen atoms (credit: Mikael Svalgaard)

The Vanishing Penguins of Adélie

One hundred and seventy years ago today, a land full of penguins was discovered. It's not so full anymore

On January 20, 1840, French explorer and naval officer Jules Dumont D'Urville discovered a 350 km stretch of Antarctic coast covered mostly in ice. He named it Adélie Land after his wife, Adélie Pepin.

Since 1956, Adélie Land has been the home of a permanently staffed French research station.

This frozen landscape was the filming location of the 2005 French nature documentary March of the Penguins, which followed the grueling yearly journey of Antarctica's emperor penguins.

In the late 1970s, a prolonged period of increased temperatures caused a significant loss of sea ice. As as result, the population of Adélie penguins was cut in half.

In the last quarter of a century, 65% of the Adélie penguins have disappeared in northern Antarctica due to overfishing, the loss of sea ice due to anthropogenic climate change and the negative impact of tourism in the area.

Emperor penguins can live for up to 50 years. But not at the rate that their habitat is being threatened by man.

"We show that if the sea ice shrinks, as projected by climate models, the population will decrease -- we show a dramatic decrease -- by the end of the century," said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution ecologist Stephanie Jenouvrier in a recent episode of Science Nation, the online magazine of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

"The population will decline from about 3,000 breeding pairs to date to 400 breeding pairs by the end of the century."

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a World Wildlife Foundation petition to support the protection of the penguins and other wildlife of Antarctica with the establishment of Antarctica as an actual animal sanctuary by 2018
• Adopt a penguin from Defenders of Wildlife for $20
• Find out how you can help keep Antarctica cool and prevent global warming

RELATED POSTS

• Terra Australis (December 1, 2009)
• Dethroning the Emperors of the South Pole (August 21, 2009)
• Solving Antarctica's Tourist Problem (October 1, 2008)
• Dead Baby Penguins Appear on Brazil's Shores (July 22, 2008)
  
• Penguin Decline Is Bad Sign for Oceans (July 3, 2008)

image: Samuel Blanc

The World's Least Known Bird

An enigmatic little bird has eluded ornithologists for over a century. Not anymore

The large-billed reed warbler is known as "the world's least known bird," a title it received from BirdLife International in 2007.

The first specimen was discovered in India in 1867. The second time a single bird was discovered was more than a century later in Thailand in 2006.

But earlier this year, researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) found a breeding area in the Wakhan Corridor in the remote and harsh Pamir Mountains in war-ravaged Afghanistan.

They managed to capture, study and release almost 20 of the birds, using field observations, DNA sequencing and the first known audio recording of its call. These birds represent the first known breeding population of the species.

"Practically nothing is known about this species, so this discovery of the breeding area represents a flood of new information on the large-billed reed warbler," said Colin Poole, executive director of WCS’s Asia Program, in a January 10 press release.

"This new knowledge of the bird also indicates that the Wakhan Corridor still holds biological secrets and is critically important for future conservation efforts in Afghanistan."

According to the press release, "WCS is currently the only organization conducting ongoing scientific conservation studies in Afghanistan -- the first such efforts in over 30 years -- and has contributed to a number of conservation initiatives and activities in partnership with the Afghanistan Government, with support from USAID (United States Agency for International Development)." (The Wakhan Corridor also supports a wide array of mammal species, such as Marco Polo sheep, ibex, lynx and wolf.)

In being found, is the large-billed reed warbler losing its slippery touch?

Perhaps it can take some notes from another famously elusive animal that shares its habitat -- the snow leopard.

GET INVOLVED

• Support the Wildlife Conservation Society
  
• Sign a BirdLife International petition to stop the killing of protected birds in Malta
• Support BirdLife International's "Preventing Extinctions" Program
• Join the Great Backyard Bird Count, a 4-day "citizen-science" project taking place across the United States starting on February 12, 2010
• Check out these 15 ways to attract birds -- and birdsongs -- into your backyard
  
• Read "What You Can Do to Help Birds" (StateOfTheBirds.org)
  
• 25 Things You Can Do to Help the Birds in Your Backyard
  
• Sign an Audubon petition urging Congress to take action on global warming based on Audubon's "Birds and Climate" report which clearly shows that climate change is affecting birds

RELATED POSTS

• Patrick Martins: About a Bird (November 20, 2009)
• The Rime of the Modern Mariner (November 10, 2009)
• Putting for Birdie (November 4, 2009)
• The Albatross and the Rising Sea (February 12, 2009)
• The Head of Thoth (September 30, 2009)
• An Avian Strutter Gets to Keep Its Home (August 18, 2009)
• Return of the Fisher King (July 19, 2009)
• Queen of Kings (July 14, 2009)
• The Return of Minerva's Owl (June 2, 2009)
  
• The Beautiful Lady Without Pity (March 22, 2009)
• The Canary in the Coal Mine Is Actually A Purple Finch (February 21, 2009)
• From Snakes on a Boat to Guam's Silent Forests (February 7, 2009)
• Coffee Made in the Shade? It's for the Birds (January 2, 2009)

image: Wildlife Conservation Society

It Came from Outer Space

A decade ago today, a rock that probably contains the stardust that created our Sun landed on a quiet lake in the Yukon

Over 60 miles long, a little over a mile wide and situated in a pristine wilderness of vast spruce forests in Canada's sub-arctic Yukon territory, Tagish Lake endures long, dry winters. Lake trout, jackfish and arctic grayling ply its chilly waters.

But this placidity was broken at 4:43 PM on January 18, 2000, when a massive fireball streaked across the sky and crashed into Tagish's frozen surface.

It was a meteoroid, a piece of cosmic debris.

Meteoroids range in size anywhere from a tiny speck of dust to a massive boulder. The one that exploded in the upper atmosphere on that particular Tuesday a decade ago -- somewhere between 20 and 30 miles above the surface of the Earth -- was a big one.

The Tagish Lake meteoroid is estimated to have been about 13 feet in diameter and weighed about 56 tons before it entered our atmosphere.

The explosion created 1.7 kilotons of energy -- about a tenth as powerful as the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. Though 97% of it vaporized during entry, the meteoroid produced countless fragments, about 500 of which have been recovered.

The resulting Tagish Lake meteorites (those remnants of the meteoroid that survived the fiery entry into the Earth's atmosphere), are carbonaceous chondrites, a rare group of meteorites that represent less than 5% of all known meteorite falls and include the most primitive ones ever found.

The Tagish Lake meteoroid was most likely a piece of 773 Irmintraud, a D-type asteroid or "minor planet" that orbits the Sun between the orbital paths of Jupiter and Mars.

It contains primitive and unchanged stellar dust that most likely was a part of the stellar cloud that created our Sun and solar system.

A 2006 NASA study of globules from the meteorite found that they "resemble cometary carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen (CHON) particles, suggesting that such grains were important constituents of the solar system starting materials."

Tagish Lake is famous for being a part of the Alaska-Yukon corridor that gave passage to some 40,000 frenzied fortune hunters on their way to the gold fields near Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897.

While the Tagish Lake meteorite wouldn't fetch a dime for a gold trader, it might fare well on the diamond market: It has more nanodiamonds than any other meteorite ever found.

But its real value is its ability to give us a look into the birth of our particular corner of the universe.

GET INVOLVED

• View the 2010 meteor shower calendar
• Download this month's free night sky map and calendar from Skymaps.com

RELATED POSTS

• The Leonids (November 16, 2009)
• The Tears of St. Lawrence (August 12, 2009)
• Reclaiming the Night Sky (October 2, 2009)
• The Lost Siblings of the Sun (November 6, 2009)
• Empire of the Sun (August 7, 2009)
• Where Stars Are Born (July 16, 2009)
• Orbiting Saturn, Five Years Later (July 10, 2009)
  
• Goodbye Ulysses (June 30, 2009)

image: a piece of the Tagish Lake meteorite, recovered from the ice in British Columbia (credit: Mike Zolensky, NASA JSC)

Earthquake in Haiti: The Animals

As humanitarian aid arrives in Haiti, animal welfare groups are ready to do their part

Few words can fully express the grief, the shock, the sadness caused by the earthquake in Haiti.

And when humans experience the terrible effects of natural catastrophes such as this, so do animals.

As various national governments and humanitarian groups mobilize aid to help the people of Haiti, several animal welfare organizations are working to help the animals affected by the disaster.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association (HSVMA), Humane Society International (HSI), the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and the World Society for the Protection of Animals are among the groups responding.

"Fortunately, one of our veterinary teams had been conducting a program at a veterinary school in the neighboring Dominican Republic when the quake struck," writes HSUS president Wayne Pacelle on his blog. "We are looking to determine if they can get into Haiti to conduct an on-the-ground assessment.

The WSPA Web site states, "Our Disaster Liaison Officer from Panama, Jorge Alcidez Gonzalez who also works as the Head of the K9 unit of Civil Defence, is now travelling out of Panama with a team of specially trained staff and will assess the destruction and welfare needs of the animals. Jorge and his brave team will be treating as many animals as they are able to help."

"Our teams will be working out of a mobile clinic which has been donated to us by the Antigua and Barbuda Humane Society," writes WSPA USA executive director Cecily West in an email.

"WSPA and IFAW have pledged funds to fully outfit this mobile clinic, and it will be shipped from Antigua to our member society, Sociedad Dominicana Para la Protección de Animales (SODOPRECA), in the Dominican Republic for them to drive across the border into Haiti."

"As always with disasters like this, the humanitarian rescue efforts will be the focus in the first week or so," according to IFAW's Web site.

"The immediate priorities will be getting food, clean water, shelter and medical attention to the survivors. After those immediate human needs are met, IFAW's Emergency Response team will be ready to assist the animal victims in any way that we can."

It will take trained search dogs to locate some of the people trapped in the rubble.

And it will take people to help save dogs and other animals in Haiti.

GET INVOLVED

• Support the WSPA Disaster Animal Fund
• Support the HSUS International Disaster Fund

image: a rescue dog searches for survivors in Haiti (CNN)

Freeing Our Family Members

American lawmakers have an opportunity to prohibit testing on great apes. That would be a highly evolved decision

Chimpanzees are our closest relatives. Humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor in Africa over 3 million years ago.

But we have not been such great relatives.

There are an estimated 1,000 chimpanzees trapped in laboratories around the United States.

But four lawmakers have been trying to do something about it.

On March 5, 2009, representatives Edolphus Towns (D-NY), David Reichert (R-WA), James Langevin (D-RI) and Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) reintroduced the Great Ape Protection Act of 2009, H.R. 1326 (GAPA) to end invasive biomedical research and testing on chimpanzees as well as bonobos, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons.

Technically, "great apes" are members of the family Hominidae. Humans are in this family.

The GAPA bill has been referred to committee and has already received the support of 141 members of Congress as co-sponsors, a development that is being hailed by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society (NEAVS) as an indication that there is significant momentum behind this legislation.

According to the bill, "Great apes are highly intelligent and social animals and research laboratory environments involving invasive research cannot meet their complex social and psychological needs."

If passed, the bill would also retire about 600 federally owned chimpanzees currently in American laboratories -- many of whom have been trapped in labs for more than 40 years.

"Chimpanzees have been poor research models for human illness, so most of these animals aren't even being used in active research, but instead are warehoused at great taxpayer expense," according to the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS).

"While they languish, it costs about $20-25 million a year to keep them in eight federally-funded labs. H.R. 1326 is expected to save taxpayers nearly $200 million over the lifespan of the chimpanzees."

"Like human children, young chimpanzees learn life skills via observation and imitation," according to NEAVS. "They in turn pass these lessons on to their children, resulting in a complex socio-cultural system."

What lessons are we teaching the chimpanzees that are confined and being tested on?

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a (HSUS) letter urging your representative to support the Great Ape Protection Act
• Volunteer with the Great Apes Project, which defends the rights of the great primates to live in liberty in their natural habitats
• Sign a PETA petition urging President Obama to ban military trauma exercises on animals
• Support the Fauna Foundation chimp sanctuary
• Sign a petition to stop the bushmeat trade and hunting of primates

RELATED POSTS

• Chimp Trauma (September 16, 2009)
• Protecting Great Apes (August 13, 2009)
• Chimp Apocalypse Now (June 15, 2009)
• A Peculiar Evil Grows in Austria (May 26, 2009)
• Military Torture: Not Just for Humans (May 17, 2009)
  
• Killing Congo's Chimps (March 29, 2009)
  
• Tracking Our Second-Closest Relatives (March 24, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)

image: McDreamy, a former laboratory chimp in the Netherlands who has been rescued (research using apes is no longer allowed in the Netherlands), now living in a safari park (credit: patries71)

Under Attack: Clean Air

America's Senate considers an amendment that would make it easier for polluters to pollute

Born in 1955 as the Air Pollution Control Act, the United States Clean Air Act has been the government's main tool in controlling air pollution on a national level.

The act aims to deal with the problems of acid rain, ozone depletion and greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6).

Now, this cornerstone of America's environmental protection law is under attack.

Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, has introduced an amendment that would reduce the Clean Air Act's ability to regulate harmful pollutants, giving the country's biggest polluters more freedom to pollute.

The Washington Post reported recently that industry lobbyists have helped to craft the scheme.

"These lobbyists were high-level officials at EPA under former President Bush who were responsible for some of the worst environmental rollbacks of his administration," according to the American environmental law firm Earthjustice.

"The Supreme Court has already ruled that the EPA has the power to determine whether global warming pollutants are a danger to public health and welfare," said Kathy Kilmer of the Wilderness Society. "And now the agency is preparing to write rules that require the reduction of these harmful pollutants over time."

"The Murkowski amendment would limit the EPA from regulating global warming pollutants -- despite the risks these pollutants pose to public health."

The amendment will be considered for a vote when Congress returns on January 20.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Wilderness Society letter urging your senator to vote "no" on the Murkowski amendment
• Sign an Earthjustice letter urging your senator to oppose the amendment
  

RELATED POSTS

• Holy Grail in the Clouds (May 19, 2009)
• The Air That We Breathe (April 15, 2009)
• 13.7 BILLION YEARS EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Philip Renaud, Executive Director, Living Oceans Foundation (Part 4 of 5) (March 19, 2009)
• Don't Cry for Trees Argentina (September 28, 2009)
• Happy Markets, Happy Forests (April 27, 2008)
• The Trees of the Maya (July 29, 2009)
• Environmental Showdown in the Amazon: Big Oil vs. Native People (July 21, 2009)
• Trade Carbon, Save Orangutans (June 8, 2009)
  
• Hey You, Get Off of My Cloud (May 30, 2009)
• Blowing Noses Into Dead, Ancient Trees (February 29, 2009)
  
• Dismembering the Earth's Heart and Lungs (January 25, 2009)

image: Dori

The Castrato Oinks

Torturing pigs on their way to the dinner table

Pigs are castrated so that they can carry more fat.

Castration also prevents boar taint, an offensive odor or taste present when cooking or eating pork caused by two substances -- androstenone and skatole -- that begin to accumulate in male pigs at puberty.

It is a painful process that involves making two incisions in the scrotum with a sharp blade, pulling out the nerve-rich testicles, cutting off the spermatic duct and blood vessels and then leaving the wound open to heal on its own.

In an effort to reduce the suffering of pigs, Norway and Switzerland have banned castration without anesthetic.

But they are in the minority: According to a new study by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), 77 percent of 125 million male pigs killed each year in Europe are castrated without the use of anesthetic.

Pigs are curious, playful and possess a higher intelligence level than dogs. Pig intelligence has been compared to that of a three year-old human child.

President Harry Truman once said, "No man should be allowed to be President who does not understand hogs."

It seems that most of the heads of Europe, at least, have a lot to learn.

GET INVOLVED

• Sign a Care2 petition to stop the castration of pigs without anesthesia
  
• Choose a pork substitute for your recipe
  
• Read PETA's "The Hidden Life of Pigs"
  
• Sign a PETA letter urging Unilever to stop pig abuse
• Join the Farm Sanctuary Advocacy Campaign Team
• Read the Yale College Vegetarian Society's "Top 10 Reasons to Become Vegetarian"
  

RELATED POSTS

• These Little Piggies Didn't Go to Market (May 2, 2009)
• Animal Farm (April 10, 2009)
• The Gloomy Dean (January 30, 2009)
• Eat Healthy and Save the World, Simultaneously (January 23, 2009)
• California Passes Landmark Anti-Cruelty Act (November 7, 2008)
• If We Really Are What We Eat, Most of Us Are A Bit Disturbing (October 17, 2008)

image: Titanium22

Not Your Average Hole in the Ground

Today in 1908, the Grand Canyon became a national monument. That was a pretty good idea

The Grand Canyon is one of the most complete geologic columns on Earth, a colossal rift carved by the Colorado River that reveals rock layers that are a record of the much of the early geological history of the North American continent.

The Vishnu Schist is the oldest visible part, dating back 2 billion years.

Recent estimates date the beginning of the canyon to around 17 million years ago (though there is some controversy over its age, with previous estimates placing it around 4 to 5 million years old. The Colorado River basin, of which the Grand Canyon is a part, began its development around 40 million years ago.

On January 11, 1908, the Grand Canyon was officially named a national monument by the United States.

But for the next 11 years, landowners and mining claim holders tried to block efforts to upgrade the classification of the Grand Canyon from national monument to U.S. national park, a designation which would have provided more funding and wildlife protection for the site.

Though it took over a decade, those business concerns failed and on February 16, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act of Congress into law that officially made the Grand Canyon the 17th U.S. national park, protecting the home of over 2,000 species of plants and 34 species of mammals.

Around 5 million visitors make the pilgrimage to see this magnificent view of Earth's deep history every year.

In 1903, when President Theodore Roosevelt first laid eyes on Grand Canyon, he said:

"The Grand Canyon fills me with awe. It is beyond comparison -- beyond description; absolutely unparalleled throughout the wide world...Let this great wonder of nature remain as it now is. Do nothing to mar its grandeur, sublimity and loveliness. You cannot improve on it. But what you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see."

GET INVOLVED

• Send a Sierra Club thank-you message to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who announced that the agency will temporarily place 1 million acres of public lands surrounding the Grand Canyon off limits to new uranium mining claims, as well as exploration and development of existing, unpatented claims
• Sign a Defenders of Wildlife letter urging your U.S. representative to cosponsor the America’s Wildlife Heritage Act, federal legislation that provides for a balanced, common-sense approach to wildlife management on our U.S. national forests and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands (U.S. citizens)
• Take an eco-tour of the Grand Canyon
  
• Analyze and reduce your impact on the environment with the National Grid Floe

RELATED POSTS

• Happy Birthday TR, and Thanks (October 27, 2009)
• From the Redwood Forest, to the Gulf Stream Waters (March 26, 2009)
• Taming the Mighty Colorado River (October 26, 2009)
• Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone Is A Time Bomb (July 5, 2009)
• Gone in 75 Years: Polar Bears (June 29, 2009)
• Polar Transcendentalism (May 11, 2009)
• Appalachian Mountains Get A Breather (April 12, 2009)
  
• Ashley Judd to Congress: Commit Some Cap and Trade Revenue to Help Wildlife (April 25, 2009)
• Selling the Arctic's Future to the Oil Industry (March 6, 2009)
• President Bush: The Biggest Ocean Protector Ever (January 7, 2009)

image: view from Grandview Point (credit: Doug Dolde)

Hunt for Earth 2

Over 400 planets outside our solar system have been found. Finding one suitable for life is another story

CoRoT-7b was discovered in early 2009 by the French-led COROT mission.

It is the first Earth-like exoplanet astronomers have identified.

But CoRoT-7b is a forbidding place, with surface temperatures up to 4,000 degrees F (2,200 C) on the side lit by its star and down to minus 350 F (minus 210 C) on its dark side.

According to astronomer Rory Barnes at the University of Washington in Seattle, the planet sounds like it could be Vulcan's workshop.

"If conditions are what we speculate, then CoRoT-7b could have multiple volcanoes going off continuously and magma flowing all over the surface," said Barnes.

"Any planet where the surface is being remade at such a rate is a place nearly impossible for life to get a foothold."

Barnes says that the next step to finding a planet that could harbor life is detecting rocky planets that are no too close to their stars.

NASA's Kepler space telescope, which was specifically designed to find Earth-size planets in the habitable zone of stars like our Sun, has just discovered its first five new exoplanets. All of them have surface temperatures hotter than molten lava.

But the international search for "Earth 2" has really just begun, and though the chances of finding Earth seem small, it is entirely possible.

According to Ohio State University astronomer Scott Gaudi, solar systems like ours amount to about 15 percent of all the solar systems in the entire universe.

"Now we know our place in the universe," said Gaudi at an American Astronomical Society meeting this week in Washington, D.C.

"Solar systems like our own are not rare, but we're not in the majority, either."

The hunt goes on.

GET INVOLVED

• Join the Great World Wide Star Count
• Visit NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day Web site
• See what's in the sky tonight
• Sign a petition to add the option for US taxpayers to contribute to NASA on the IRS 1040 tax form
• Download Google Earth 5.0, which has an interactive map of the entire surface of Mars

RELATED POSTS

• Planet Hunters (October 6, 2009)
• Kepler and the Gate to the Black Forest (February 15, 2009)
• Basic Chemistry of Life Found on Exoplanet (December 14, 2008)
• Reclaiming the Night Sky (October 2, 2009)
  
• Empire of the Sun (August 7, 2009)
• Sailing Through Space on Sunshine (November 13, 2009)
• The Lost Siblings of the Sun (November 6, 2009)
• Where Stars Are Born (July 16, 2009)
• Star Light, Star Bright (September 25, 2009)
• A Message from the Universe's More Youthful Days (October 30, 2009)

image: artist's impression of COROT-7b (credit: ESO/L. Calcada)

The Final Act for India's Dancing Bears

Animal welfare activists applaud: No more dancing bears in India

Indigenous to the Indian subcontinent, the endangered sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) has been a source of public entertainment in India for many years.

Traditionally meant for royal performances, bear dancing was outlawed in 1972. But since, there have still been many bears employed in this cruel practice, in which bear cubs are captured, and at six months, a hot needle is driven through their muzzles so that they can be tethered to ropes.

They are trained to "dance" on their hind legs to music through the use of fear and torture.

Their canine teeth are removed. They are subjected to beatings and starvation. Some go blind from the lack of food.

The UK-based International Animal Rescue (IAR), along with other animal welfare groups, have rescued more than 600 bears in a campaign that began seven years ago.

And now, according to BBC News, India's bear dancing industry is finally over, as IAR rescued the last bear on December 27.

The rescued bears will get lifetime care in sanctuaries across India, while their ex-handlers will receive their own training to learn new job skills.

"In all my years in animal welfare I have never been part of such a resounding success story," said IAR chief executive Alan Knight.

"To transform the lives of hundreds of captive bears is amazing in itself -- but to put an end to this cruelty once and for all is nothing short of momentous."

GET INVOLVED

• Support International Animal Rescue
  
• Support the efforts of the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) to protect wild bears from the life-long cruelty of bear farming

RELATED POSTS

• Ursus Melancholius (April 19, 2009)
• The Russian Bear Hunt (November 28, 2008)
• Warmer Yellowstone Allows Bears to Flourish (March 18, 2008)

image: AP