Friday, January 16, 2009

1. OBAMA'S SCIENCE TEAM: AIR FORCE GENERAL TO HEAD NASA.

After eight years of continental drift in science policy the science community urged president-elect Barack Obama to act swiftly to fill science positions. But who expected a much admired professor of physics to be nominated as science advisor before Christmas? Or a Nobel laureate to be Secretary of Energy? No scientist could refuse the President's call to serve their country and the world. Do we only now have a leader who understands this? The members of the Obama team are linked by their commitment to the environment. Only the position of NASA Administrator remains to be filled. It was no secret that Michael Griffin wanted to keep the job, but as NASA head he consistently ignored environmental concerns to push a hopelessly outdated space-cadet program of manned rockets and islands in space. The great environmental observatory DSCOVR was left locked in solitary confinement. Obama will name USAF Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, Ret. to head NASA, possibly today. We know virtually nothing about Gration's position on the issues, but Obama presumably knows; he spent a lot of time with Gration on a trip to Africa, where Gration was born to missionary parents. This is the sort of person you put in charge when you want to sever the shackles of outdated tradition and totally reexamine its reason for existing.

2. FARTS ON MARS: TIME TO PUT THE RED PLANET OFF LIMITS.

Plumes of methane have been observed in the atmosphere of Mars. Since methane is destroyed by sunlight, there must be a renewable source. Could it be living organisms? Methane seems to be a pheromone to Mars Trekkies, who immediately called for a human mission to check it out. Very bad idea; astronauts are huge bacteria cultures that must dump their contents daily for the 18 months the mission must remain on Mars. Humans on Mars are certain to discover bacteria but they may look familiar. Astronauts resist being autoclaved, but methane plumes certainly justify a sample return mission. Remember the 1976 Viking lander that scooped up Martian soil, plopped it into a nutrient broth, and monitored the evolved gas for evidence of life? And behold! There it was. However, NASA later backed down saying it was most likely an inorganic reaction.

3. THE FERMI PARADOX: ACTUALLY, IT WAS A DUMB QUESTION.

Enrico Fermi, the great Italian physicist, fled Italy with his Jewish wife to escape Hitler and became a leader of the atomic bomb program. When he was asked if he thought there are space aliens, he is said to have answered with a question: “Where are they?” They're where they've always been. The bad news is that we can't go there. The good news is that they can't come here. We're alone in our solar system and interstellar distances are far too great to visit another star. But maybe we can see.

4. SEEING: THE INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMY.

This year in March, 400 years after Galileo invented the telescope, the United States will launch a new orbiting telescope, Kepler, specifically to see Earth-like planets hidden by the light of their sun. In May the final space shuttle trip will make a maintenance visit to the Hubble Space Telescope. Designed to be serviced by the shuttle, and delayed three years by the Challenger disaster, Hubble was out of date and had a construction flaw before it was launched but it has given us a glimpse of the possible.

Bob Park can be reached via email at whatsnew@bobpark.org
THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
Opinions are the author's and are not necessarily shared by the University, but they should be.