The Most Important Science News You've Heard in the Last Five Minutes

I could spend this post talking about how half of all Earth's wildlife has died since 1960, everybody else certainly is.  It's a big number, but honestly?  Not that surprising.  I guess it's good to have a number on just how much of nature we've killed off, but it didn't take a genius to know it was a lot.  No, today, I'm going to talk about something much more important in the world of science: gigantic solar flares.

When I say gigantic, I mean it.  These flares, coming from DG Canum Venaticorum, a red dwarf binary system 60 light years away, are the biggest ever recorded.  It was about 10,000 times more powerful than our sun's meager flares, reaching a temperature of 360 million degrees.  The stars are young, only about 30 million years old, but the key to the flare was the rotational period of the flare star.  It orbits in about a day, while the Sun takes about a month.  Fast rotation means more magnetic  activity, which leads to more powerful solar flares.  That's how a piddling little red dwarf produced the most powe
rful solar flare ever.

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Ryder Cup 2014: Ehhhhh

So, we lost.  Didn't bother watching after the first day.  It was over the moment we couldn't even get a full point from two Europeans who could barely hit a fairway, even after we were two up with two to play.  I've got better things to do than watch our players lose while being forced to listen to the commentators be neutral in their commentary.  I don't want to hear it. 

I don't even have anything to say about this, it was just so uninspiring and so predictable.  Maybe next time will be a little more interesting, especially seeing as Whistling Straits is almost certainly a better course then Gleneagles.  Maybe it'll at least be worth watching.

2014 Ryder Cup Prediction

Gleneagles Hotel...Listen, this was the only sort of related picture in the public domain I could find.

The Ryder Cup starts tomorrow up at Gleneagles in Scotland. Why they decided to have it there instead of one of the several links courses proven under championship conditions is beyond me, but there's not much use in complaining about it now. I guess it's the same reason they had the Ryder Cup at boring, inland courses in Ireland and in Wales...money.

Anyway, there's certainly been plenty of press about the Ryder Cup, maybe even more so than there's been in the past. Maybe it's just because I'm paying a little bit closer attention, but there seems to be stories about every little bit of news coming from the Ryder Cup.  Honestly, I think it might be for two reasons: first, and I hate saying it because Europe is stupid, but they're going to win, and second, it feels like there are very few people on either side playing well. Europe's got McIlroy and maybe Garcia playing decent, but that's about it in the past few months. And the American's who've been playing the best right now aren't in Scotland. Thanks a lot Chris Kirk and Billy Horschel for waiting until after the captain's picks to start playing well. Europe's dragging out a bunch of guys who haven't played well in months or even years just because they've done well in Ryder Cups in the past, and half of America's team got in because so many people have pulled out for whatever reason. Tiger and Jason Dufner have injuries, and Dustin Johnson was definitely not suspended for drug use. He is most definitely taking a voluntary break from golf. That is what is happening. So, neither side feels like it's putting its best foot forward.

I'm sure I'll do plenty of watching, and I'm sure I'll get extremely angry at our sides complete inability to do anything and Europe's uncanny ability to make every single putt they look at. Hmm, I've already said I think Europe's going to win, haven't I? Ignore that, it'll be 15-13 America, because I do not want to be happy on Sunday night after Europe wins 15.5-12.5. Go America, don't fumble it like last time. I believe Jim Furyk can remember how to play golf on a Sunday, that Phil won't 3 putt a five footer on the back nine like he loves to do, that Patrick Reed can manage to break 80 over the weekend, that those captain's picks will play better than they did over the Fed-Ex Cup. Seriously, what did any of them even do over the last three weeks, other than withdraw? Hmm, so much optimism here.

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Advanced Astrophysics is Kind of Difficult

A few months back, scientists announced they had found gravitational waves from the very beginning of the universe, lending credible evidence to the theory that the universe expanded at an enormous rate in the first few... what's the small prefix I can think of...picoseconds.  Anyway, in those first few instants, the universe expanded at much faster than the speed of light, or so the theory goes.

As I've mentioned before, science is hard, and this kind of science is really hard.  An extraordinary claim was made here, and you know what they say about those.  Of course, equally important is making sure you didn't make any silly mistakes, like not compensating for dust floating around the Milky Way.  Now, no one is saying the observation is wrong, or that the whole theory is wrong.  Unlike propulsion from nothing, this actually has a chance of working out.  I hope it does.

In an unrelated bit of news, I'm putting the link to my Twitter back on the bottom of each post.  I'm going to try and actually be an active Twitter user...er, even if I don't care for it.  Just don't expect too much.

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Conocodell Golf Club Review

Golf in a simple but entertaining form.

If there's one thing I have to say about golf in Franklin County, it's that there is an abundance of relatively cheap and accessible golf for everybody.  Conocodell, in Fayetteville, Pennsylvania, is one of several inexpensive 9 hole courses in the area, and after playing there this weekend, I'd say it was the best.

One of the best points of the course is that it is very flat.  No hills, no nothing, so it's a very easy walk.  I think they try to encourage walking, since the price for 2 people to walk 9 holes on a Saturday is $24, but to ride, it's $48.  So, there weren't very many carts around, which was nice.  I would highly recommend anyone who plays the course do the same.

Water running along the first hole.

The condition of the course was iffy for most people, but for me, they were perfectly acceptable. There was a definite delineation between fairway and rough, the grass was somewhere between brown and green, and the course was playing fast, which is definitely how I like it.  The greens were in very good condition, playing reasonably quick, but not too fast.  I don't mind fairways and rough being a bit questionable, but getting a decent roll from the greens is nice.

Now, let's get to the important part of the review, the golf course.  It's not a long course, with a couple of very short par 4's, but the one par 5 is pretty long, and there are some longer par 4's as well.  I don't know, it's not a particularly scenic place, but it just seemed to fit into the surroundings very well, so I found myself taking quite a few pictures.  Maybe it was the fact the fairway blended into the rough almost seamlessly, and then the rough blended into the native areas just as seamlessly.

A crossbunker on the fifth fairway.

The first hole is a shortish par 4 that doglegs right around a water hazard.  The more water you cut off from the tee, the shorter second you have.  I think the green might be just about reachable with a bold enough drive.  I haven't been driving it well, so I didn't go for it.  After a straightaway mid-length par 4 and a shortish par 3, there's a couple of reasonably difficult par 4's.  The fourth is pretty tight, but the fifth is a bit more interesting.  There's a couple of big bunkers cutting into the line of play, and the green is guarded by even more.  A stream on the right makes the hole even more interesting.  I wish that I could say I played the hole well, but I didn't.  Hooked my drive straight into a tree, had to make a 12 foot putt for bogey. 

A challenging pitch on the last hole.

The sixth is a very short par 4 which my younger brother drove with a three wood.  Got the drive to about ten feet, missed the eagle putt right on the edge.  Typical, he said.  After another mid-length par 3, the eighth is a mid-length par 5, playing straight to a wide open fairway.  Really get a chance to open up with the driver, which I attempted unsuccessfully and my brother (who is comfortably better than me) managed.  It's a fun drive, but there isn't much else to that hole.  The ninth is a little more interesting.  It's only about 300 yards, but it plays along the road to a small green guarded very closely by a pair of surprising intimidating bunkers.  I closed off a relatively lackluster round by curling in a 15 foot birdie putt, salvaging a 40 on the par 35.  Not brilliant, but not awful.

I can't legitimately give the place a particularly good grade, or recommend it to anybody who doesn't already live here.  There are better places to play golf in Franklin County.  That said, it's a fun little course that's very easy to walk and fits in well with the environment.  Nice way to spend a couple hours with the family.

It just...looks good.

Sometimes, Professional Golfers Just Lose It

There have been many occasions throughout golf's history where someone who was at the top of their game loses that magic. It happened to Ian Baker-Finch after he won the 1991 British Open, it happened to David Duval after he won the 2001 British Open, and it looks like it happened to Anthony Kim.  Sure, he wasn't a major winner, but he had won multiple times, and he was a big part of the American victory in the 2008 Ryder Cup.  His story might be even more complicated then we might have thought. It's an interesting read, and even if he hasn't lost his game, I can understand why he wouldn't want to come back.

Commercial Space Flight is Coming

As of 2011, the United States has no manned space vehicle. The only way we can send astronauts to the International Space Station is by hitching a ride on a Soyuz, and seeing that tensions with Russia are kind of high, this is not a brilliant situation.  NASA is focused right now on Orion and the Space Launch System, a big giant rocket meant to send astronauts past low Earth orbit. However, low Earth orbit operations are obviously not going to stop, and so, NASA has turned to commercial space flight and ships built by private companies.

There won't be just one, SpaceX and Boeing will each build, launch, and maintain their own spacecraft, operating out of Cape Kennedy Space Center. They will be reusable, and meant for travel to and from the ISS. While this won't be happening tomorrow, space flights should commence in 2017. This is fantastic news for manned space flight, getting more and more ships out there will bring the cost of space flight down, and it allows NASA to devote more money and resources into manned flight to the Moon, to asteroids, and to Mars.

More Dinosaurs: New Spinosaurus Skeleton

Credit: University of Chicago, Fossil Lab

Yes, back to dinosaurs. Hey, when there's big news, it's gotta be reported on. This is no obscure dinosaur either, it may not be T-Rex, but you've heard of Spinosaurus.  It's been featured in one of the Jurassic Park movies, though as it turns out, it was portrayed inaccurately.  Our knowledge of Spinosaurus comes from an incomplete skeleton found a century ago which was lost during the Second World War. Again with the lost dinosaur bones, but at least having bombs dropped on them is a valid excuse. We knew it was big, the biggest carnivorous dinosaur ever, and we envisioned it like every other big carnivorous dinosaur.

This assumption has turned out to be incorrect. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was more crocodile than Tyrannosaurus, spending much of its time in the water, courtesy of a whole host of unique adaptations that have never been seen on dinosaurs. It's actually the first aquatic dinosaur ever, and it also happens to be one of the biggest. While it was capable of moving around on land, it likely lumbered about on all fours, and was much more comfortable in the water. Scientists still aren't sure what purpose the big giant sail served, but clearly, it wasn't meant for stealth. Big giant thing like that probably wasn't capable of stealth.

Plate Tectonics on Europa

We've seen traces of what could have been plate tectonics on all of the other inner planets, but Earth is the only one to still have an active and moving surface.  Plate tectonics are a big deal, scientists believe the recycling of materials is important for life.  Now, strong evidence suggests Europa also experiences plate tectonics.

Europa is certainly getting interesting, with the recent suspected discovery of plumes of water jetting out from the surface, similar to Enceladus.  While the plates, really large chunks of ice, probably don't go down all the way to the subsurface ocean, material probably gets down there somehow.  It doesn't guarantee life exists on Europa, but it makes sending a spacecraft there to find some answers even more important.  Seriously, when is that happening?

Really Big Dinosaur Discovered

Discovered in Argentina, Dreadnoughtus schrani weighs in at a very large 65 tons. This isn't the biggest dinosaur ever discovered, that honor goes to Amphicoelias fragillimus, which was nearly twice as big, and there are a few others who outweigh Dreadnoughtus, but this discovery is different, because the number of bones discovered is much higher than with other big dinosaur finds. The size estimate for Amphicoelias fragillimus is based off of only one incompelete vertabra, which has since been lost. How they managed to lose such a big fossil, who knows, but it happened.

This skeleton is much more complete, with 45% of the total skeleton found, and 70% of all the types of bones found. Before this, the most complete large sauropod find found 15% of the total skeleton, and 27% of the bones. The high level of completeness of the skeleton allows for a reasonably accurate estimation of its size and weight.  The scientists were even able to determine that the specimen they found wasn't fully grown yet, so Dreadnoughtus got even bigger. And at about 75 feet long, it was already pretty big. I imagine that this skeleton will definitely end up on display in some museum, after all, it would be quite a centerpiece to any dinosaur collection, and since the skeleton was so complete, not a lot of guesswork would need to be done in order to approximate what it looked like.

Opportunity's Still Going

It's been more than ten years since Opportunity landed on Mars, and the rover's still going at it, still sending back useful data, still trundling along at the incredibly rapid pace of a couple inches a second...at maximum speed.  Hey, over ten years, that adds up to, well, not that much.  A bit over 25 miles, which does surpass the record for most distance traveled on an off-world surface.

After so long on Mars, it's only natural that Opportunity has developed a few problems.  Frankly, it's amazing that none of those problems have stopped it, but they haven't.  In the past couple of months, the rover's been having computer trouble.  It's needed rebooting a dozen times, and the time has come for a drastic solution.  A complete memory wipe.  That will get rid of the glitches slowing Opportunity down, and allow it to get back to the mission.  According to NASA, this is a low-risk procedure, and Opportunity should be just fine.  It'll probably run better than it has in years.  So, hopefully nothing to worry about for the tough little rover.

NASA's New Rocket Coming Soon

Well, in three and a half years or so.  The Space Launch System is the first really heavy duty rocket we've had since the Saturns, and the SLS will have even more deep space capability.  At over 400 feet tall, the SLS will be able to send astronauts outside Earth's influence altogether, on to nearby asteroids or to Mars.  It's about time we regained the capability to send people beyond the International Space Station.  Sure, the shuttle was interesting, and the ISS is quite an achievement, but they're not very far away.  We've sent probes far afield, Rosetta is now in orbit around a comet, and New Horizons just passed Neptune's orbit, but they don't have quite the same impact that sending astronauts to those places would have.  So yes, this is good news.  A new, ambitious manned space program is a good thing.