Science Friday!!!

Welcome to Science Friday

Science that is weird and unusual

If you are a foodie, you'll love this fish!  It eats everything!!

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Double Whammie! Earthquake in Salt Lake City and Covid-19 Virus

Have you felt like there is a "dark cloud" over your head lately?  First it's the tiny virus COVID-19, we have to stay home, practice social distancing, wash our hands for twenty seconds after touching everything. Then, we have an earthquake and the Angel Moroni drops his trumpet!  What. In. The. World. Is. Happening?

The earthquake was a big one...a 5.7. Since we are "sheltering at home", you might have some time to learn about earthquakes along the Wasatch front.  Click on this link if you want to track the aftershocks that are still happening today in Magna, Utah. Or even in California...they get earthquakes everyday...somewhere...because they can, I guess. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/uu60366502/executive

The quake was centered in Magna, Utah which is right on the coastline of the Great Salt Lake.  The shaker was rather shallow, the center being 6 miles beneath the surface.  Last year we had small little shakers in Bluffdale and they measured in the 3.0 range.  So yesterday's quake was a 5.7.  Let's look at this in terms of TNT.

A 3.0 quake can be compared to 1000 pounds of TNT. That's half a ton of explosives.  Now our 5.7 could be compared to 6000 tons of TNT!  That's like the weight of 30 blue whales, or 75% of the Eiffel Tower. (I love quantitative math!)  

So what happens next?  Well, geologists don't know.  Earthquakes are harder to predict than weather.  We could have another of the same measure, or we could have smaller ones, or the BIG ONE!  It could happen any second. Like right NOW! Or NOW! OR NOW!  Or not.  

The Wasatch fault isn't one big fault.  It's broken up into segments about 25 miles long.  

These faults don't move all at the same time.  The Provo, Nephi, Weber faults have had large earthquakes in the last 300-700 years. So we could say we are "overdue" for another big one.  

We will have aftershocks for maybe a few days, weeks or months.  The earth that was displaced has to settle down.  The main thing is not to panic.  You don't need anymore toilet paper!!  It's good to have a plan, like knowing where your emergency kits are. If you are really nervous, put your emergency kits in the back of your car and park the car outside, not in the garage.  This way, if things start to get "real" again, you have a plan of escape afterwards.  

So, we shouldn't act like this is not a big deal.  Look at the coronavirus pushing across the world!  A pandemic for Pete's sake!  We need to remain calm and be prepared.  Not stupid.  Stupid people ruin everything!

COVID-19: The Virus That Brought the World to its Knees

How big is the COVID-19 virus? 

Yep. That tiny virus, just a little bigger than a particle of dust is creating a huge commotion around the world.  Scientists believe that viruses are very smart, but they are not living organisms.  So how does that work?

Viruses depend on living things to survive. Some biologists think of viruses like a parasite.  The creepy part is, the virus will enter a body through the nose or mouth and inside is a tiny "key" that they can insert into the body and it unlocks your bodies cells.  Your cells infected by the virus begin doing crazy things, like making more viruses! 

https://news.usc.edu/9791/researcher-teases-out-secrets-from-surprisingly-intelligent-viruses/

The tiny virus contains RNA, once the key has opened your cells, the RNA is shared with the cell DNA, and replication begins.  Can we see this happening?

This type of virus uses bacteria to replicate.  Remember, the virus is not living, the RNA inside the virus is waiting to be injected into the bacteria.  (I think we should research the "not living" idea about viruses.) 

This is how the virus works:

The virus creates many more of itself and destroys the bacteria.  Doesn't this sound like some kind of zombie apocalypse movie?

The corona virus doesn't look like a bacteria-killing-virus.  It has a different function, and a different structure.  That's why scientists believe viruses are so smart...

The corona virus enters your body through your nose or mouth.  It attaches itself to your throat, your body immediately knows something is not right.  You start coughing.  This virus knows when you cough, it can travel out your mouth, or into your lungs.  This is one reason why the virus is as powerful as it is.  It doesn't die right away when your body attacks it with white blood cells.  Once in the lungs, those little suckers on the tips of those spikes attach to your lung tissues and get to work making as many little viruses as possible before you cough again and the little viruses can make their big exit and search for another surface that they can inject their RNA into. 

You know how even Superman has a weak spot?

The corona-virus has a weak spot too!  It's soap!  The walls of the virus melt when exposed to soap and the whole virus kind of "pops" and dies, or deactivates, because viruses aren't alive... That's why everyone has been saying "Wash your hands! Wash your hands!"  If you can stop the virus before it gets into your nose and mouth, soap is, the. best. defense!  

Don't be afraid, remember to be vigilant in washing your hands after doing an activity outside, or in a store, restaurant or library.  Feeling anxious?  Wash your hands.  This will soon pass.

Air Masses: Occluded Fronts

Who wants to look at a mess?  Not your room, like a really big mess in the sky?  Yes!  Occluded fronts are what I would call a big mess!

If you like soap operas...you're gonna like occluded fronts!  Okay!  We have a large, cold, mass of air that moves in and tries to take over.  There is a mass of air that isn't as cold as the big, bad, mass of coldest air ever...it gets pushed out of the way by the big, coldest mass!  To top it off, warm air gets trapped in the middle and it tries to make things right between the coldest air and the cool air, but it can't, so it barely escapes out the top of the masses and then begins to cry! 

Isn't that the saddest story!  Such a mess!

I know!  And I thought my life was a soap opera...

Oh! The drama!

The weather map explains it simply.  The coldest front will follow the warm air mass, the warm air can't quite escape the other less cool air mass and they kind of spin around in a cat and mouse type of game.  We know who wins.  The coldest air of course, because it is very cold, very dense and all those molecules close together can bulldoze a warm front right out of existence!

What if you can't stand an occluded front? Is there anywhere you could live where they can't be found?  Why yes, as a matter of fact!  The occluded front is not very common in the southeastern part of the United States.  For some reason occluded fronts get started in the low pressure regions of the south, but they don't completely form until they have traveled up north.  So I guess, if you hate drama, you shouldn't live in the south. But! If you like starting drama?  The south is for you! 

Forecasting Weather

Does anyone believe the weather forecast?  How accurate are these guys anyway?  So many times we hear the report: "Get ready for the big snowstorm. It's coming in cold!" And we don't even get one flake of snow!!  

Whatever!  Should we give up believing what the weather man, or woman, tells us?  Where in the world do they get their information?

Actually, the weather scientists have lots of technology on their side:

1. Doppler Radar

This type of radar can detect rain, and snow.  It also can read wind strength and notes when the clouds start spinning.  This radar can detect tornadoes and hurricanes.  

2. GOES Satellite

The GOES satellite will focus in on one place and take data every 30 seconds in that area.  Other satellites are positioned to look at the poles, and other satellites look closely at the surface of the Earth and other satellites look only at the surface of the Sun.  

3. Weather balloons and Radiosondes

There are 92 places in the United States that release weather balloons at least twice a day.  Attached to the balloon is a radiosonde which records air pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, and temperature.  This looks like a fun job!  The balloons go all the way up into the upper stratosphere!

That's way up there!

4. Automated surface-observing systems

When you are hiking or skiing around here, you might run into one of these stations.  They take surface readings twelve times an hour.  There are more than 900 of these stations working to share information about precipitation, cloud cover and temperatures. Snowfall and rainfall data are taken by volunteers who visit the stations weekly.  

5. Super computers

(Kind of looks like a soda pop machine to me...) These super computers are 6 million times more powerful than this laptop I'm using and provide quadrillions of calculations per second using the information that comes from satellites, weather balloons, Doppler radar and surface stations. They run all day and night helping scientists analyze all of that information that comes in from all over the world.

So...you're still wondering why weathermen/women can't seem to get the weather right...

With all our technology...weather is still unpredictable. Yep, weather does what it wants to, when it wants to.  The big storm might not come in when predicted, but it might hit when you least expect it....

Like snow in May....

Like it or not, no matter how smart we think we are...weather still wins.  No matter how badly we want our predictions to be right, the weather always wins!!

Weather: Cloud Types

If you are frequently bored, look up!  I mean, the sky is changing every hour of the day, every minute, maybe every second...There is so much to see when we look up.  It's not "just the sky". The sky is literally different every day. 

How many different kinds of clouds are there anyway...?

Because everything that is related to science has a weird name...like science names....clouds are no different.  Once you know what the word means, it makes all the difference in the world!

Cirrus:  Horse hair

Cirrus clouds are thin, wispy and look like horse hairs in the sky.  (At least some early scientists thought that anyway...)

Stratus:  Sheet

Stratus clouds cover a large area of sky.  They look exactly like a sheet of clouds covering a large portion sky that covers all you can see.  

Cumulus:  Cotton balls

Cumulus clouds look like big, fluffy, cottony, balls of fluff.

Pretty basic.  So, what if we add other syllables to the words, for example:

Cumulonimbus:  Cumulus means like cotton balls. Nimbus means black.

Altostratus:  Stratus=sheet, alto=medium or midlevel

How about cumulocirrus:  cumulo=fluffy, cotton balls.  cirrus=horse hair like.

One more.  Altocumulus:  Alto=mid level, medium. Cumulus=fluffy, cotton balls.

There is also the weirder than ever clouds category:

Shelf cloud:  

Mammatus cloud: 

Lenticular clouds: 

Told you.  Start looking up!