How Much Does the Sky Weigh?

As the director of the Kirkpatrick Planetarium for several decades, I received many questions from kids on school field trips. They often centered around aliens: do I believed they exist (I do), and do I believe they visit Earth (I don’t).

One of the more interesting questions I ever received was “How much does the sky weigh?” At first blush, it might seem that the answer is simple: nothing. That is not correct.

First, we need to define “the sky.” To answer this question, I count as “sky” our atmosphere and all the water vapor it contains. The Karman line, 60 miles above Earth’s surface, defines the official boundary between our atmosphere and the edge of space, so that is what we have to weigh.

Earth from space. Credit NASA

Sea level atmospheric pressure is 15 pounds per square inch, meaning every square inch of our planet’s surface has 15 pounds of air above it. One square inch is roughly one-third to one-half the size of an adult thumb. That corresponds 60,217,344,000 pounds of air for every square mile. Earth has a total surface area of 201,061,929 square miles. Do the math. Our atmosphere weighs 12,107,415,343,900,000,000 pounds.

According to meteorologists, water vapor averages 0.04% of the volume of Earth’s atmosphere. That means the sky holds 4,824,146,196 gallons of water. At eight pounds per gallon, that’s another 38,593,169,564 pounds of water in the air.

Add it all up, and the total weight of our sky is 12,107,415,382,493,169,564 pounds, more than 12 quintillion pounds! I didn’t say all of that at the time, because I can’t multiply that quickly in my head. I simply told the child that it’s more than all of us could hold.

Now, about those aliens …

On or about the first Tuesday of each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Classroom Creativity Activities

As a writer of books for children, I try to find ways to bring out their creativity. When I do school readings, I use word-play games to help stimulate the kids’ imagination. For example, my book If You Swallow that Seed (see all my books at http://www.4rvpublishingcatalog.com/wayne-harris-wyrick.php) is about a child whose mother says all those “momisms” we’ve all heard (and perhaps said to our kids) like “If you swallow that seed, a watermelon will grow out of your ear” or “ It’s as easy as falling off of a cliff.” In my book, all of those mom sayings come true, and the child needs to figure out how to break the spells.

After I read the book and as the students and I are discussing it, I ask them what is the oddest thing a parent ever said to them. I also ask what is something odd a parent might say to their child and under what circumstances the parent might say it. That also touches on the Language Arts aspect that teachers in those grade levels are always looking for.

Another creativity spark I use with my own children but have not yet fully refined it for a classroom setting is Create-a-Story. I first thought of this while driving in the car with my bored son Ethan. He knew I wrote children's books; one is even dedicated to him. This is how the activity works. One of us starts telling a story. We have no restrictions on the plot. After the first person makes up what is essentially a few paragraphs, he/she passes the narrative on to the other storyteller. That person must continue the story without contradicting anything that has happened in the story up to that point. This continues back and forth until the story reaches a conclusion, or we arrive at our destination. Because each storyteller can add only so much but wants to impact the story, the action tends to occur at a fast and furious pace.

We have come up with some quite interesting stories. Ethan, now a young adult, often centered his stories around racing cars, a favorite theme of his then and a favorite pastime of his now. My daughter Azuranna, now 12, usually centers hers around fairies and nature nymphs, and, typically, they end up with us (the stories always include one or both of us, or her and her best friend at the time, and often our dog Buki, as characters) falling into a secret hole in the earth or passing through some kind of dimensional portal in a tree or some such enchanted opening, only to end up in the magical fairy universe.

The stories my children and I create never contain raw violence or gore. I didn’t have to make that rule; my kids simply were not raised with such themes being something to glorify. Anytime I see the story going in a direction I think is inappropriate, I use my turn to steer it differently.

But the stories do become somewhat repetitive. A few days ago, Azuranna and I were telling a story and I specifically wanted her to have to create a different narrative. When she set it up for us to interact with fairies, I flipped it around to aliens coming to Earth, taking us into their space ship, different but not so different to make her lose interest. She admitted to being surprised as soon as I constructed that scenario but was thoroughly intrigued to see where this new idea would take us. In fact, we never got to the end of that story, and for the next several days, she beseeched me to finish the story.

While a child may always aim for a familiar plot, the creativity is sparked when the story takes a twist, just as in real story writing. Even when we are in her familiar, comfortable fairy world, I constantly throw in twists she did not anticipate. That keeps the entire story-creation enterprise fresh so that she always loves doing it.

This is how I plan to adapt this to a classroom setting. First, as I describe the activity to the kids, I will explicitly state that certain topics (violence, crime, gore, etc) are off limits. Not that kids stories can’t include any of that; the Goosebumps series comes to mind. But, not all kids are comfortable with such topics. Second, I will set a specified creation time for each child, probably some number of sentences. I am loathed to set a time limit, like 2 minutes per child, as I want to be able to encourage the reluctant kids who might otherwise sit and think through a time allotment without saying anything. With a sentence allotment, I can encourage that child without a ticking clock.

I plan on asking the teacher in advance which kids are outgoing and eager to talk and which are shy and rarely speak. Those shy students are the ones I most want to reach but must tread more carefully with. I would start by calling on a few of the talkative kids to get the ball rolling then sprinkle in the shier students. By planning the time carefully, I would attempt to get every child involved, although I recognize that some children are just so shy, they may never be willing to participate.

If the teacher has a large dry-erase board or large writing pad, I may have kids come up and write a few sentences. Some kids who may not be willing to speak might be willing to write a few sentences. And if the teacher agrees, before I leave I would write a few sentences on the board/pad to start a new story and let the kids work on the story as classroom time permits. Many teachers today have electronic write-on, or smart, boards that can capture whatever is written on them to a computer, so each kid could get a copy of their combined story.

Another rule of this activity is that I or the teacher can jump in at any time to add something to the story. This allows me to steer it away from repetition or a known popular kid’s story (Azuranna did that in the beginning before I explained that we wanted to create an original story). It also allows us to keep the story from going to topics that might be inappropriate in that classroom setting.

This is one of several ideas I am working on to interact with school kids using education standards of language arts. Others may become topics of future blogs.

I would love to hear your ideas on the subject. Please leave comments below or email me at wyrickwrites@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Kristin Perkins and Jay Thomas, elementary teacher friends of mine, for invaluable comments on this piece.

Killer Asteroid? Not This Time.

Sixty-six million years ago, a 6-mile-wide asteroid smashed into what is now the Gulf of Mexico. Red-hot debris blasted into the atmosphere and fell back to Earth, causing planet-wide fires. After that, dust and soot filled the air for years, blocking most of the sunlight from the surface of the planet. The net result is that some 75% of life on Earth, including all dinosaurs, went extinct.

On September 9^th this year, asteroid 2006 QV89 will come calling. While its size, a mere 130 feet across, makes it far less dangerous than the dinosaur killer, if it hit a major city, it would certainly destroy most or all of it and kill perhaps millions of people. But you probably don’t need to worry too much. NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) estimates there is only a 1 in 7,299 chance it will strike Earth. Their best estimate is that it will miss Earth by more than 4 million miles. That’s more than 16 times the Moon’s distance from us.

Artist rendering. Credit NASA

ESA keeps a tally of known asteroids that pose a collision risk with Earth. You can find it at http://neo.ssa.esa.int/risk-page. While this 1 in 7,300 risk isn’t very high, an asteroid designated 2010 RF12 poses a 1 in 16 chance of collision with Earth on September 5^th,, 2095. While that asteroid is less than 35 feet across, it will create a spectacular sight if it does enter our atmosphere, and can still cause considerable damage.

No other known asteroid poses a significant risk in the near future, so this upcoming near-miss will be our closest dance with asteroid destruction for a while.

Until the next asteroid with a high collision risk is discovered.

On or about the first Tuesday of each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page. This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Measurements Give New Insight into the Structure of the Lunar Crust

Everyone has seen the full Moon in the night sky. The familiar dark splotches called ‘maria,’ Latin for seas, create patterns on the lunar surface. Some people see a man’s face, the Man in the Moon. Others imagine a frog or a rabbit. Whatever you might picture when you look at the full Moon, the pattern of large, dark areas overlying lighter material is quite obvious. The maria are composed of lava that poured out from asteroid impacts and covered the lighter surface material.

The Lunar Nearside, credit NASA

From Earth, we only see the one side of the Moon, so you might assume this arrangement of maria over lighter material continues on the far side of the Moon. Astronomers assumed that, too, until the Russian Luna 3 spacecraft sent back the first, grainy pictures of the lunar far side in 1959. Although there were a few dark patches, they were quite a bit smaller than the familiar maria of the near side and didn’t cover much of the far side surface.

The Lunar Farside, credit NASA

Subsequent studies of the Moon revealed that the crust on the far side is as much as 10 miles (ca. 16 km) thicker than the near side crust. Because of this, asteroids can’t so easily puncture the far side crust, so fewer and smaller maria formed there. For decades, astronomers puzzled as to what might have caused this. Until recently, the best idea was that we originally had two moons. Very early on, the two collided at low speed on the far side. The material from the smaller impacting moon flowed over that side, creating the thicker crust.

Measurements made by the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission in 2012 provided more data, suggesting an impact from an outsider. "The detailed gravity data obtained by GRAIL has given new insight into the structure of the lunar crust underneath the surface," said Meng Hua Zhu, a co-author on the new paper on the subject and a scientist at Macau University of Science and Technology in China. Using computers, the researchers modeled 360 different collisions and compared all the results to what we know about the moon today. The best fit with our Moon suggests that a collision of an object 500-560 miles (ca. 805-901 km) across could have done the trick.

Artists concept of Lunar Farside collision, credit NASA

Luckily for us, there are no other such large objects wandering around near our orbit today.

On or about the first Tuesday of each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

This is reprinted by permission from the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.

Writing the Perfect Picture book

When people find out I write children’s books, particularly picture books, they often tell me that they have a great idea for a picture book but have questions about the process. Can I answer a few questions, they ask.

Before they can ask me, I ask them a couple of questions. Have you read any picture book lately?

Oh, sure, they say, I read my kids all the Dr. Seuss books when they were little. And I took my grandkids to see the movie 'Where the Wild Things Are.'

But, I ask, have you read any picture books published recently? They often have not.

Then I ask if they have actually written the book. Again, I often hear “No, it’s an idea I have.”

The Writing.

People think writing a picture book is easy. It’s only 500 – 1000 words. No problem. But the very brevity of picture books is what makes them so difficult to do well.

Let’s say you write an 80,000-word adult novel. If 5% of the writing is weak, which doesn’t seem so horrible (a 95% success, that’s a grade of A), that means you have 4,000 poorly-chosen words (or badly constructed sentences) an average of one or two per page of 200 words.

If 5% of your writing on an 800-word picture book is weak, you’ll have 40 bad words, more than one on a page with only 30 words or less on it. While it’s the same percentage, they will stand out more far more obviously.

I tell them to go to the library or a book store and read dozens of picture books. See what works; learn why they were good enough to get published.

Most publishers want their picture books to cover 24 pages. While they generally do not want you to indicate the page breaks, you have to think in terms of 24 pages (or 28 or 32, whatever the publisher’s guidelines state). Publishers will state on their web pages word count and preferred page length, so make darn sure you adhere to those guidelines.

Check Age-Appropriateness.

Let an elementary teacher read your picture book. Take her criticism seriously. Read it to a child of the appropriate age. Take his comments seriously, but remember that a young child won’t use the words an adult would. You need to learn to understand child-speak and note their facial expressions and body language as you read it. Having trouble doing that? Then why are you writing books for young children?

Write and rewrite it. My first picture book, only 800 words, took me five years to get what I felt were the exact right words for it.

Make sure it is appropriate for the age you intend it for. While it may sound perfectly clear and understandable to you, you are not a six-year-old child. One of my most used reference books, when I write for kids, is “Children’s Writer’s Word Book” by Alijandra Mogilner. It lists common words understandable by grade level. Think of this book as a thesaurus for child-compatible words. It gives alternative words to use for other grade levels. Suppose you use the word novel, as in new or unusual. ‘Novel’ is a 5^th-grade word used in that context, so if you put it in a book meant for 1^st graders, they won’t know what it means. The book suggests ‘new’ for kindergarteners, ‘latest’ for 1^st grade, ‘fresh’ or ‘modern’ for 2^nd graders, and so on. Each of those can be looked up to possibly give you more options.

Will Your Audience Understand It?

When you are done with your first draft, and indeed after every draft, run the story through a readability checker. Several can be found online, like http://datayze.com/readability-analyzer.php.  Or, here, you can find 10 different readability calculators: https://www.wyliecomm.com/2018/11/10-free-readability-calculators/. Try them all on the same piece of writing, see which ones help you the most.

Illustrating It.

Perhaps the most-asked question I get from would-be picture book authors is where do I fond my illustrators. I do not find illustrators. My books are published by a full-service indie press, and they have in-house illustrators. And, in general, you do not want to provide illustrations with your book. That just gives publishers two possible reasons to reject your book. If you or your friend who draws as a hobby have no experience illustrating picture books, you are not likely to provide illustrations the publisher wants.

As you write your books, you do have to think in pictures, even if your pictures are nothing like what the illustrator eventually comes up with. Make sure the story has action in it, action that can be illustrated. If you write a story where the same picture works for several pages, the publisher won’t want it and the illustrator won’t want to illustrate it. Picture books are really two books in one, the words and the pictures. And if you’re a 6-year-old kid, which will be more important to you? Make sure your picture book allows for interesting, varied, and exciting pictures.

learn

Bio.

I currently have 5 published books for children, with three more currently in the illustration stage with my publisher, 4RV Publishing. I spent 40 years as the director of a planetarium where I brought the wonders of the universe to audience members from 4 to 104. I have raised four children, my best audience and greatest critics.

Should We Announce Our Presence?

Let’s say you and a group of friends invent a transporter device, like on Star Trek, but with one major difference: You have no control over where it would send you. Suppose, on your first trip, you and your friends found yourselves in a back alley of a totally unknown neighborhood in a foreign country. Would you announce your presence? Back in your own country, the news regularly reports stories of strangers being treated very badly by locals. Sure, those are isolated events. Most people back home act quite friendly to others. But you don’t know much about the customs and mores of these people. What do you do?

Image your machine transported you to some alien planet, populated with local beings, where you would be the alien visitors. You know nothing about these beings. Are they so much more superior to you that they might look on you as you see a mosquito? Might they just eat you to sample a new delicacy?

That’s a quandary that faces humanity on a larger scale. We have discovered thousands of alien planets, many of which seem quite capable of supporting life, with more discoveries of potentially life-bearing planets coming every year. For some time, Project SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) has been actively searching for signals from aliens that populate other planets. That’s like you and your friends in the back ally of an unknown foreign country simply listening to a radio broadcast to see what you can learn about the local people.

But now, a newly formed group known as METI (Messaging Extra Terrestrial Intelligence), led by the former SETI scientist Douglas Vakoch, wants to take that a step farther and broadcast our existence to the universe. Some scientists argue vehemently against such an idea. Remember, they warn, what happened to the native populations of the Americas after the discovery of the New World by Europeans. In some areas, 90% or more of the natives were killed and their cultures virtually wiped out.

That, claim some voices of caution, is most likely our fate if other, alien races discovery our existence.

In 1974, the director of Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico, then the largest telescope in the world, wanted to showcase its newly renovated abilities. In a demonstration meant more for publicity than science, they designed and sent a 167-second radio message to a cluster of 300,000 stars, known as M-13. M-13 is 25,000 light years from earth, meaning we can’t get a return signal for 50,000 years.

Martin Ryle, then the Royal Astronomer of England fired off a strong condemnation of the stunt. He argued that ‘‘any creatures out there [might be] malevolent or hungry.’’ Ryle further demanded that the International Astronomical Union, the international governing body of things astronomical, forbid any further communication attempts to alien planets.

Today, the voices of dissent echoing Ryle’s caution include scientific luminaries like Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking. Like Ryle, they warn that aliens might treat us the way Cortez treated the Aztecs five centuries ago. The problem, they explain, is that humans have existed for a mere few hundred thousand years on a planet only 4.5 billion years old. The Milky Way has been making planets for more than 10 billion years. Any race of beings who detect our messages likely will be as advanced compared to us as we are to bacteria, and view Earth as a place with riches to be exploited. That doesn’t bode well, they say, for our continued existence.

Of course, not all humans are so brutal and calloused. Many actively work to help others less fortunate and less well-educated than they are. We’ve protected many species and environments on our planet. But as recent political events show, that may not be a permanent situation. And as the fate of those original natives of the Americas reminds us, such kindness towards others often takes a back seat when the opportunity to enrich ourselves arrives.

So, what do you think? Should we announce our existence and location to the universe at large? Or should we remain in our dark alley corner of the universe, eschewing contact with others? Please comment with your thoughts.

Water on Mars from Deep Groundwater Sources

In 2015, NASA announced the discovery of water flowing down the sides of craters on Mars. NASA calls them Reoccurring Slope Lineae, RSL for short. This seemed to answer the question of whether liquid water currently existed on Mars. And since liquid water is believed to be a prime requirement for life, the discovery also reinvigorated the discussion of life, even if only microscopic, on the red planet. You can see a NASA video montage of some RSLs at https://youtu.be/H44-XrGH5IQ.

Reoccurring Slope Lineae on Mars, credit NASA

In 2017, some researchers published papers suggesting RSLs were not from water but consisted of sand sliding down the slopes, driven by carbon dioxide that sublimated from dry ice just below the surface. Carbon dioxide, being a relatively heavy gas, flows downhill and carries sand grains with it. The researchers suggested that the sand just below the surface might be darker, having not been bleached by UV radiation from the sun.

The consensus of scientific opinion, however, rested with water flow, but many wondered if water just below the surface of the cold planet could never melt. Recently, Essam Heggy, a research scientist at the University of Southern California and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Abotalib Z. Abotalib, a postdoctoral research associate at USC, suggested that the flows are triggered not by near-surface water but rather from deep below the surface. "We propose an alternative hypothesis, that they originate from a deep, pressurized groundwater source, which comes to the surface, moving upward along ground cracks," said Hegggy.

They compared Martian geological features to similar ones on Earth and determined that heat flow in the Martian subsurface was similar to that in desert regions here on Earth. This research, the two concluded, indicates that RSL water is probably coming from deeply buried, briny aquifers.

This even explains the seasonal aspect of the flows. "The system shuts down during winter seasons, when the ascending near-surface water freezes within fault pathways, and resumes during summer seasons when brine temperatures rise above the freezing point," the researchers wrote.

The new study says nothing about the existence of life on Mars, but it will surely strengthen arguments for at least microbial Martians living below the surface.

       On the first Tuesday of each month, I write an astronomy-related column piece for the Oklahoman newspaper. On the following day, I post that same column to my blog page.

      This is reprinted by permission form the Oklahoman and www.newsok.com.