Sciency Words: Bunny Suit

December 9, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 7 Comments

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Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words. Each week, we take a closer look at an interesting science or science-related term to help us expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

BUNNY SUIT

Okay, I’ve snuck into a top-secret government research facility in Nevada. I’m not entirely sure what they do here, but as a science fiction writer I have to know stuff about science. Specifically, the kind of futuristic science they do in top-secret government research facilities.

As I crouch behind some crates labeled “Roswell materials,” I overhear two of the scientists talking. “I’ve got to go put on my bunny suit,” one of them says.

Bunny suit? I couldn’t have heard that right. At first, I picture something like the Playboy Bunny outfit, in part because the two scientists happen to be women. Then a less sexist part of my brain suggests that they might be talking about an Easter Bunny costume. But that doesn’t make sense either.

Fortunately, I have my smartphone with me, and I’ve already hacked into this research facility’s wifi (the password was “password”). So I google “bunny suit science” and find out that they’re actually talking about this:

The more proper, more technically accurate term would be cleanroom suit. Cleanroom suits are those loose-fitting, papery outfits that go over your regular clothes and cover your entire body. They sometimes include a mask and goggles to cover the face, but not always.

Think of the perfectly smooth mirrors being made for the James Webb Space Telescope, or the highly precise laser instruments used at LIGO to detect gravitational waves. If you’re working with that kind of extremely sensitive equipment, the kind of equipment that could get screwed up by the slightest speck of dust from off your skin or off your clothes, then you have to wear a cleanroom suit.

Except people who work in the science biz don’t call them cleanroom suits. They call them bunny suits. That’s the kind of insider lingo that I, as a science fiction writer, can totally use in a story at some point.

Now, let’s see what else I can learn for my stories—uh oh, gotta run. The dogs caught my scent.

Sciency Words: Kosmikophobia

December 2, 2016November 27, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

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KOSMIKOPHOBIA

I stumbled upon this word while researching last week’s posts on asteroids (click here or here). Kosmikophobia is the fear of cosmic phenomena.

To be fair, there are cosmic phenomena to be genuinely concerned about, such as potential asteroid impacts, gamma ray bursts, or the kinds of solar storms that could trigger another Carrington Event.

But this is a phobia, meaning its an irrational or over-exaggerated fear. It’s one thing to one thing to worry that an asteroid might one day wipe out human civilization; it’s another to live in existential dread that it might happen at any moment.

Kosmikophoba can also cover totally irrational fears of auroras or eclipses or the phases of the Moon. Or if you’re excessively terrified of comets and planetary alignments because you believe they are bad omens… that could also be considered kosmikophobia.

There are just two things I’m not clear on: first, has anyone actually been diagnosed with kosmikophobia and received treatment for it? And second, why is it spelled with k’s rather than c’s.

Regarding the spelling, I’m guessing the k’s are supposed to be a more authentic transliteration of the original Greek spelling of cosmos. I just can’t find any etymology to back me up on that.

As for the first point, I know not all phobia-words are meant to be taken seriously. For example, hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia (the fear of long words) seems to have been made up as a joke.

Since I can’t find any case studies about patients suffering from kosmikophobia, I can’t be sure how seriously to take this condition. The only thing I can say for certain is that this is a real word. I found it in a real dictionary. And as a space enthusiast, I’m really glad I don’t have it.

Sciency Words: Apollos and Atens

November 25, 2016November 24, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 1 Comment

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APOLLOS and ATENS

Asteroid are classified into different “groups” based on their orbital properties. The Apollo asteroids and Aten asteroids are two such groups, and these groups are of particular interest to anyone who doesn’t want a repeat of the K-T Event (which wiped out the dinosaurs) or the Tunguska Event (which flattened a forest and could have done the same to a whole city).

Technical Definitions

Apollo asteroids have a semimajor axis greater than 1.0 AU and a perihelion less than Earth’s aphelion of 1.017 AU. The first known Apollo was 1862 Apollo, for which the group is named.
Aten asteroids have a semimajor axis less than 1.0 AU and an aphelion greater than Earth’s perihelion of 0.983 AU. The first known Aten was 2062 Aten, for which the group is named.

Less Technical Definition

Apollo asteroids spend most of their time beyond Earth’s orbit, but cross inside at some point.
Aten asteroids spend most of their time inside Earth’s orbit, but cross outside at some point.

nv25-apollo-and-aten-orbit-diagrams

The important thing to know is that both Apollos and Atens cross Earth’s orbit at some point. Keep in mind that space is three-dimensional, so their paths don’t necessarily intersect with Earth’s. They might pass “above” or “below” Earth, so to speak.

But the orbits of enough Apollos and Atens do intersect with Earth’s orbital path that they might one day hit us. Atens are particularly worrisome. They spend so much time inside Earth’s orbit, in relatively close proximity to the Sun, that it’s hard for astronomers to find them.

So if a giant asteroid ever does sneak up on us and wipe out human civilization, my guess is it’ll be an asteroid from the Aten group. Those are the asteroids that frighten me the most.

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Sciency Words: Thalassogen

November 18, 2016November 9, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

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THALASSOGEN

I stumbled upon this term while researching my recent Molecular Monday post on ammonia. The word thalassogen comes from the Greek words for “sea” and “creation,” and it was coined by one of the great luminaries of both science and science fiction: Isaac Asimov.

Basically, a thalassogen is a chemical substance that could, under realistic circumstances, form an ocean on a planet or moon. Obviously water qualifies. Just look at Earth. But what other substances could we call thalassogenic?

First, we need something that can be liquid and is capable of remaining in a liquid state across a reasonable wide range of temperatures and pressures.

We also need a chemical that is reasonably plentiful in the universe. According to Asimov, that rules out something like mercury. Mercury does a great job being a liquid, but it’s so rare that we can’t realistically expect to find a world covered in mercury oceans.

Asimov also wrote that “ideally” a thalassogen should be able to transition from liquid to both solid and gaseous states without too much difficulty. That way, we could have something analogous to Earth’s hydrocycle, with clouds and rain and snow and glaciers. Please note: that’s ideal, but not necessarily a requirement.

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In my opinion, the most sensible way to use this term is to say that a substance is (or could be) a thalassogen in a specific environment. So methane is a thalassogen on Titan, but not Earth. You might also say water is a thalassogen on Earth but not on Venus. Or water is a thalassogen beneath the surface of Europa, but not on Europa’s surface.

So as we venture out into space, what sorts of chemicals might we find acting as thalassogens on alien worlds? Asimov suggested water, ammonia, and methane as the most likely candidates. Other possibilities include carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and sulfuric acid. We should also consider mixtures of these and other chemicals.

And who knows? Given some of the strange, improbable-seeming exoplanets we’ve discovered so far, maybe Asimov was a little too quick to rule out mercury.

Sciency Words: Zoosemiotics

November 4, 2016October 30, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

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ZOOSEMIOTICS

Sometimes with these Sciency Words posts, I feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. This is one of those times.

Semiotics is a field of study related to linguistics, but more focused on the creation of signs and symbols and how these signs and symbols can be used to communicate meaning. Zoosemiotics is the study of how animals do that.

Think of birdsong or whale-song, or the dance of bees, or ants laying down scent trails, or dogs marking their territory, or squid rapidly changing colors, or all the crazy displays animals put on to attract mates. Or think of the way pets very pointedly stare at you while you’re eating.

There are three basic types of communication that zoosemioticians study:

Intraspecies zoosemiotics: communication between animals of the same species.
Interspecies zoosemiotics: communication between animals of different species.
Anthropological zoosemiotics: communication between animals and humans.

In each case, we have an animal engaging in some sort of behavior that symbolically expresses meaning. On the other side of the equation, we have another animal (or animals) trying to interpret that behavior. If the behavior is interpreted correctly, we have communication!

And when animals communicate frequently, relationships can develop. A sort of culture might start to emerge. Animals may even form a kind of social order. Studying the culture and social orders of animal groups is also part of zoosemiotics’ domain, and this is where I think things get tricky.

It’s a little too easy to anthropomorphize animals, to assign human emotions and human motivations to their natural animal behavior. So just how human-like are animal communications? How human-like are animal “cultures” and “social orders,” according to zoosemiotics? Or should we rather ask how animal-like are humans?

This starts getting into a lot of heavy philosophical territory that I’m probably not qualified to talk about. I mean, I’m not a zoosemiotician. I only learned about this term a week ago, and I have a lot more research to do. For now, I’m just happy to have a new word to add to my scientific vocabulary.

P.S.: Xenosemiotics doesn’t seem to be a word yet, but it totally should be.

Sciency Words: H.A.V.O.C.

October 28, 2016October 23, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 5 Comments

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H.A.V.O.C.

Given a choice between colonizing Venus or Mars, I might actually choose Venus. Yes, surface conditions on Venus are hellish instant death. Like, literally hellish. It’s even got the sulfur. But a Venusian colony would not be built on the planet’s surface.

Atmospheric conditions at an altitude of about 50 km are actually quite pleasant. The temperature and pressure are about the same as on Earth. So is the gravity. And you wouldn’t need hydrogen or helium to keep your floating cities aloft; on Venus, oxygen is lighter than air.

Life in a Venusian floating city, drifting around right above the Venusian clouds, sounds almost—dare I say it?—heavenly. There’d be plenty of sunlight (solar panels would soak up plenty of energy), and Venus would provide some natural protection from solar and cosmic radiation (at least, more protection than you’d get on Mars).

And thanks to the weird chemical mix in Venus’s atmosphere, you’d be able to collect almost all the natural resources you’d need. Well, aside from water (Mars has got Venus beat there).

I know this sounds crazy, but the more you read about it, the more Venus colonization makes sense. Venus may not get the kind of attention (or funding) that Mars gets, but NASA and other space agencies do take this seriously. NASA has even given the idea a name: the High Altitude Venus Operational Concept, or H.A.V.O.C.

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So I’m ready to sign up for a mission to colonize Venus. Who’s with me?

Sciency Words: Fault Tree

October 21, 2016October 21, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 5 Comments

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Today’s post is part of a special series here on Planet Pailly called Sciency Words. Each week, we take a closer look at an interesting science or science-related term to help us all expand our scientific vocabularies together. Today’s term is:

FAULT TREE

The Future

The chief engineer marched herself up to the captain’s ready room, saluted, and stood at attention. The captain leaned back in his chair, reading the chief engineer’s report.

“So the starboard engine pod just exploded?” the captain said. “For unknown reasons?”

“Yes, sir,” the engineer replied. “I cannot explain it. My team has no idea what happened. The circumstances of the explosion are so unusual that we don’t even know where to start.”

“Well, couldn’t you start with a fault tree analysis?”

“Sir?”

The Present

I first encountered the term “fault tree” in an article about the recent Space X rocket explosion (click here, it’s an interesting read). I then read more about fault tree analyses in NASA’s Fault Tree Handbook for Aerospace Applications (click here, but I’ll warn you it’s pretty dull reading).

Basically, a fault tree analysis is a method of evaluating all the things that could go wrong to produce an undesirable result (like your engine pod mysteriously blowing up). Fault trees are sort of like flow charts, and they look something like this:

oc21-fault-tree

As I understand it, you start from the bottom of the chart are work your way up. Which subsystems failed? How did those subsystem failures affect the main systems, potentially leading to the “top event” on your chart?

One of the key advantages to using a system like this is that it can show how two or more seemingly unimportant problems can combine to cause bigger problems farther up the tree.

According to NASA’s Fault Tree Handbook, fault tree analyses have become fairly standard for space flights ever since the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. A good, well thought out fault tree can not only help figure out what caused an accident, but it can also help determine what might go wrong before an accident even occurs.

The Future

“Oh, right,” the chief engineer said, chuckling at her own foolishness. “A fault tree analysis! That’s been standard procedure since, what… the the 20th Century?”

The captain nodded.

“Sorry, Captain. Sometimes I forget I’m a real engineer and not a character in a science fiction story.”

“Happens to the best of us,” the captain said. “Carry on.”

P.S.: I have been having a really rough writing week this past week. I wonder if writer’s block can be diagrammed with a fault tree.

Sciency Words: Conan the Bacterium

October 7, 2016October 4, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 8 Comments

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CONAN THE BACTERIUM

Meet Deinococus radiodurans, a species of bacteria found in truly unexpected locations all over the globe. It’s said to be the toughest bacterium in the world. It’s so tough that it’s earned the nickname Conan the Bacterium.

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Don’t panic. Conan the Bacterium is nonpathogenic and does not represent a threat to humans.

Some microorganisms are referred to as extremophiles, because they’ve adapted to survive in some specific extreme environment. Conan is a polyextremophile, because it has adapted to survive in a wide variety of extreme environments. Among other things, Conan can endure:

Highly acidic environments
Airless environments
Waterless environments
Extremely cold environments
Extremely radioactive environments

Frankly, it sounds like this little bugger is perfectly adapted for life on Mars, but according to my reading, its genome suggests that it did in fact evolve here on Earth.

Conan’s resistance to radiation is of particular interest to science. It seems that whenever radiation damages Conan’s DNA, even if the DNA is shredded into tiny bits, Conan can stitch its DNA back together again in as little as twelve hours.

Lots of organisms, including humans, have some ability to repair their own damaged DNA. Conan is just a whole lot better at it than the rest of us, and no one’s sure why.

I first learned about Conan the Bacterium in a book called All These Worlds Are Yours: The Scientific Search for Alien Life. I’ll be doing a book review early next week.

Sciency Words: Patera

September 23, 2016September 22, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 4 Comments

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For the last few weeks, we’ve been touring the moons of Jupiter and learning about some of the scientific terms used to describe the weird geological features we’ve found there. Today, we conclude this Jovian moons series with the term:

PATERA

Meet Io, Jupiter’s fifth moon and the inner-most of the Galilean moons. Io, say hello to the nice blog readers.

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Oh jeez. I’m sorry you had to see that. Io is sort of caught in a gravitational tug of war between Jupiter and the other Galilean moons. You’d feel queasy too if you were constantly being yanked back and forth by all that gravity.

The result is that Io is the most volcanically active object in the Solar System. Just about any time you look at Io, its sulfur volcanoes are erupting.

A Caldera by Any Other Name…

Astronomers use the word patera (plural, paterae) when discussing Io’s volcanoes. The term comes from the Latin word for flat dish, and the name is appropriate.

Paterae don’t look much like the kind of volcanoes we typically imagine. They aren’t raised, mountain-like features but rather flattened, crater-like depressions. If you know what a caldera is, a patera is basically the same thing.

How Calderas… I Mean, Paterae… Form

Picture this: somewhere on Io, we find an underground chamber full of a nasty, sulfur-rich brew. The temperature in this chamber rises, and the pressure builds up. Suddenly, an eruption occurs, and Io spews that sulfur mixture all over its surface.

As that subterranean chamber empties, the ground above it starts to sink. The resulting pit-like surface feature is a patera. Or a caldera. They really are the exact same thing. (Here’s a short video demonstrating the caldera/patera formation process).

Paterae are not unique to Io. They’ve also been observed on Mars, Venus, and Titan, among other places. They’re also found on Earth, except you’re not supposed to call it a patera if it’s on Earth.

Patera vs. Caldera: What’s the Difference?

If you really want to, you can use the word caldera when referring to Io’s volcanoes, or similar volcanoes on other worlds. That usage seems to be acceptable. But it is unlikely that you will ever see the word patera used for such features here on Earth.

I think there’s a bit of geocentrism at work here. A lot of planetary features have one name on Earth and some other name everywhere else. You’ll sometimes find Earthly terminology used off-world, because Earth terms are more familiar to the average reader; the reverse is rarely if ever true.

Which is fine. I’m not judging. A little linguistic geocentrism makes sense to me, at least at present. In some distant Sci-Fi future where humanity has spread across the Solar System and beyond… at that point, things like the caldera/patera distinction might seem a bit silly.

Sciency Words: Facula

September 16, 2016September 11, 2016 ~ J.S. Pailly ~ 2 Comments

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When Voyager 1 trained its camera on the moons of Jupiter, scientists back on Earth had no idea what to expect. Turned out they were right. Voyager was snapping photos of geological features unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Which meant it was time to make up some new sciency words!

FACULA

Last week, we learned about the word macula (plural, maculae): a special term for dark spots on the surface of a moon or other planetary body. Now if you’re going to invent a special term for dark spots, you really ought to have a term for bright spots too. And that term is facula (plural, faculae).

To an ancient Roman, facula meant “little torch.” To a modern planetary scientist, it refers to a surface feature that looks brighter than the surrounding terrain. The term was first used this way to describe bright, circular features seen on Ganymede.

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If you think Ganymede’s faculae look a little like craters, you’d be on the right track. Like most moons in the outer Solar System, Ganymede is composed of a mixture of rock and ice, and it may have a layer of liquid water beneath its surface.

So the craters left by asteroid impacts on Ganymede sometimes get filled in with icy slush. The slush freezes, and the crater is virtually erased. Only the crater rim remains, and you can see a color difference between old and new surface ice.

The term facula can be used to describe almost any bright spot on a planet-like surface, not just resurfaced craters. For example, there are faculae on the dwarf planet Ceres. Ceres’s faculae are still being investigated by the Dawn spacecraft, but the current best guess is that they’re salt deposits—perhaps salt left behind after very briny water boiled into space.

For next week’s edition of Sciency Words, we’ll conclude our visit to the moons of Jupiter with a quick trip to Io.

Bonus Sciency Word: An impact crater that gets filled in and smoothed over, like the craters on Ganymede, is also called a palimpsest.