Henry Hexapus

Count the legs... what's up with that?

How Chemists have Fun

Top 10 Amazing Chemistry Videos

I particularly liked the red gummy bear in potassium chlorate... ouch!

Eclipse

Lunar Eclipse Wednesday

Are you ready for tomorrow night's total lunar eclipse? If not, you'll have to wait until 2010 to see another episode. As you can see in NASA's picture above, the eclipse will begin around 8:45pm Wednesday evening and be total for nearly an hour beginning around 10pm. Often, depending on the conditions, the moon will turn reddish during the eclipse. See the chart below for future eclipses of the moon (click on it to make it bigger). Click on the chart above to go to the NASA eclipse page.

North America Goes Dark

Rotation of the Earth Plunges Entire North American Continent Into Darkness

NEW YORK—Millions of eyewitnesses watched in stunned horror Tuesday as light emptied from the sky, plunging the U.S. and neighboring countries into darkness. As the hours progressed, conditions only worsened.

At approximately 4:20 p.m. EST, the sun began to lower from its position in the sky in a westward trajectory, eventually disappearing below the horizon.

One reason you have to love "The Onion" is because it does such a great job of mimicking the real press. Here are some real headlines:

50/50 chance Colorado dams will go dry within 13 years

2007 was the warmest year on record for land masses

Melting Ice Sheets will increase Volcanic activity


Since 1992 the TOPEX satellite program has provided measurements of sea level change. Notice above the green is the sea level falling, the red is the sea level rising. Who can describe for me how quickly global warming is swamping us. TOPEX averages the changes over three year periods.

Cornoil on the Cob

Perhaps the development of corn is the greatest feat ever performed by Man. It is only recently that scientists were able to use DNA to figure out where corn came from (a certain type of grass)... it must have taken the Indians hundreds of generations to slowly turn grass into corn by picking and choosing the best crops to plant next to each other. Corn revolutionized how the world lived. Now, scientists are tweaking corn once again -- this time to make it yield more oil when it's turned into fuel.

Agricultural scientists in the United States have identified a key gene that determines oil yield in a corn, a finding that could have repercussions for the fast-expanding biofuels industry. The gene lies on Chromosome 6 of the maize genome, according to a paper published on Sunday by Nature Genetics. It encodes a catalysing enzyme called DGAT1-2, which carries out the final step in the plant's oil-making process. In addition, a tiny amino acid variant within this gene can boost the yield of oil and oleic acid -- the sought-after edible fat in corn -- by up to 41 percent and 107 percent respectively.

But how will it taste, and what it would do to my cholesterol level? And if cattle get lose in a corn-oil field, will burgers be even more greasy?

Space Station Tonight

Don't forget, the International Space Station, Docked with the Space Shuttle, is visible again tonight and it's hard to miss. If you're outside tonight from 6:35pm to 6:41pm and it's at all clear, you'll see it easily as it moves across the high North West sky. It will be at it's highest point at 6:38pm.

Freaky Friday

Do you remember the movie "Freaky Friday" where a mother and daughter changed places for a day? The mother finding herself back in school and the daughter finding herself in the grown up world... Sevens member Sue King sends along the picture above, which is very odd. Sitting at your computer, the angry man is on the left and the calm woman is on the right... but as you back away from your computer they change places on you. If you click on the picture it will get bigger and give you a better view.

As Sue's email says, it makes you wonder about seeing expressions in people that aren't really there at all.

Thanks, Sue!

Huntington Ethanol Plant a "Go"

NuFuels LLC is planning to build a $100 million ethanol plant on the East side of Huntington (pay site).

The long-awaited, much-debated ethanol plant planned for the east side of Huntington is back on track and could be under construction by spring or summer of this year, said Fort Wayne businessman Jerry Henry.

The $100-million project is "the biggest investment in the city of Huntington ever," he added. After it is completed, Henry hopes to build a biodiesel plant on the same 120-acre site, which he purchased a year ago for about $1 million.

But the project has drawn opposition from a group of residents concerned about the ethanol plant's impact on air quality, traffic and other factors. Henry said he expects the group, Huntington County Citizens for a Responsible Environment (CARE), to file a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the project, but that won't deter him from moving forward.

Oceans of Oil

Saturn moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, scientists report. But this massive reserve is at least 1.2 billion kilometres away from us, on a tiny inhospitable world where on a warm day it's minus 179°C.

As I mentioned before, there is another theory on where oil comes from on Earth (the abiotic theory). After all, the liquid hydrocarbons on Titan certainly didn't form from eons of dead plants and animals being crushed under the pressures of the planet. If oil is being renewed by the Earth, rather than created once, deep in the past, it is very good news.

Space Station Visible

Leaving the YMCA last night at about 7:15pm, out on Aboite Center Road, Katie and I saw the International Space Station very clearly, moving across the sky. It was brighter than Venus normally gets, and moving perhaps a little slower than a high flying plane. The chart above is from my account on Heavens-Above.com, which tracks where things are in the night sky and allows you to know when they are visible in your town. So, again, tonight, high in the North West Sky at about 7:32 pm -- look for the space station (now docked with the space shuttle) as if flies over Indiana.

Update: It was quite a wonderful sight the evening of the 14th. The space station/space shuttle was very bright, bright even with the moon out, and took 2 or 3 minutes, I guess (it was cold, so it might have been less) to cross the night sky.

Alka-Seltzer in Space

What would we do without the International Space Station?

NASA TV

Sevens member Mike Roberts (out of Spring Harbor, Florida) sends along an interesting link to NASA TV... right now showing live images of the Earth from the Space Shuttle.

Note: Mike and Pat live in Palm Harbor, Florida, not Spring Harbor. :)

Hurricane Dean

All the models but one show Dean making landfall in the Yucatan, sparing Texas. Jamaica, however, doesn't look to be so lucky.

Update: Category 4.

REPEATING THE 1100 PM AST POSITION...14.9 N...65.9 W. MOVEMENT TOWARD...WEST NEAR 18 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...145 MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...937 MB.

Muliple Chemical Sensitivity

If you know anyone with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), you know how cleaning fluids, or perfumes or a wide variety of normal things found in homes or the workplace can trigger terrible headaches, weakness or dizziness. Thankfully, scientists, including Sevens member Dr. Barbara Sorg, are working to understand this disorder and its opposite (chemical addiction).