A curiosity post...what do you think about this one?

 Here's a link to check out, and see what you think. This link is for parents of younger children.

What is the Earth's inner core made of?

 New studies of simulations of what the Earth's most inner core is made of suggest a strange form of matter - superionic matter - could exist. Superionic matter is a type of matter that has behaviors of both solid and liquid states. The inner core is at such ridiculous pressures and temperatures, no one has been able to confidently deduce what's there. 

Studies of earthquake waves passing through the core have some strange characteristics that have not been explained, and simulations with superionic material seem to be a better match to the recorded data. It seems that iron in the material would stay fixed in a lattice, like a solid, but then other types of atoms such as oxygen and hydrogen would flow through the lattice, more like a liquid. I would imagine this all could have some relevance to better understanding the earth's magnetic field production, depending on the nature of the flow and how ionic it may be, so we'll see in coming years what research shows. 

Fermilab Online Open House, February 9-13

 If you want to check out the schedule for some online, virtual sessions for the Fermilab Open House, check out this site and you can register for them! 

UIUC Engineering Open House, in April

 The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has one of the elite engineering colleges in the world, with 39 Top-10 ranked degree programs for undergraduate and graduate levels. I don't think any other school can say this. Anyhow, they put on a pretty good show each year with their Engineering Open House. This year it is on April 8-9, 2022, and will go back to in-person. 

If you want to check out the engineering programs, that would be the weekend to see so much and talk to people from literally every department within the engineering college. It's about a 2.5 hour drive to UIUC, so check it out if you have a chance!! The photo below is of the Bardeen Quad on Engineering Campus (a small portion of the engineering campus). John Bardeen is the professor I've mentioned who is the only person to win 2 Nobels in Physics, for the transistor and theory of superconductivity. 

Malawi Fundraiser for 2022 Under Way! Help out if you can

 We have begun out fundraising effort for our friends in Malawi! The money we have raised over the past five years have helped schools in Malawi, Africa, one of the top ten poorest countries in the world, purchase land, seed, fertilizer, pesticides, tools, and an irrigation system for dry season and future droughts. This has allowed the schools to feed over 1500 students for an entire school year with each harvest! This model is in response to the last famine the region experienced back in 2014-2015, and we refer to it as our EMPATHY Project.

We are thrilled that more schools will begin this process, so we literally need seed money for them to begin! Help out if you are able to through our GoFundMe site.  

This video provides some more detail about this work. THANK YOU for your consideration!!!

James Webb Telescope nearing operational phase

 The Webb space telescope, a marvel of modern science, technology, and engineering, has reached its home for years to come, orbiting the sun at a point known as L2, one of the Lagrange points of the Sun-Earth system. This is around 1 million miles from earth (4x's the distance to the moon). See this article for more information about Lagrange points in a 2-body gravitational systems, which are points of balance between the two gravitational forces on a small object at the Lagrange point and the 'centrifugal' force on the object at the Lagrange point (since objects moving in orbits want to be flung outward if they had their way due to their inertia). 

This is the next-generation telescope for astronomers around the world, and soon the Webb team will begin to focus this unique telescope and begin to calibrate its various detection systems to do highly anticipated science! 

Our World in Data - Amazing site!

  Looking for data and trends in countless areas of life? The Our World in Data site, run through the University of Oxford, is amazing! It has thousands of interactive graphs on everything from world hunger to electricity accessibility to education to war to agriculture...

It is also a site used in teaching for the world's best universities and sponsored by the top scientific and media-based organizations on the planet. Use it when writing papers for school or doing your own research. 

It is difficult to solve the world's big problems if one does not know the extent of the problems, and this site helps address that issue! 

Get beyond the politics of big problems, and go after the actual data to help figure it out!

TED Talk: Reshma Saujani and Teaching Girls Bravery, Not Perfection

 The founder of Girls Who Code, Reshma Saujani discusses the difference between how many boys and girls are raised differently in terms of who is encouraged to take risks (boys) and who is encouraged to be perfect in all they do (girls). This is an interesting presentation that needs to be heard and addressed if we ever want to see greater numbers of women as leaders in science, business, and other fields where the are historically underrepresented, there is a strong argument to be made that this is the way to approach rising girls when young - risk taking is necessary for become a leader in anything, and could be something adults can have some influence on when girls are young.

Can the laws of Physics change over time?

 There is a published study that finds evidence something called the fine-structure constant has changed ever so slightly over the evolution of our universe. This, if true, will make us re-think a lot about our understanding and assumptions about 'universal constants' such as the speed of light, Planck's constant, the gravitational constant, and several others that are believed to be unchanging since the beginning of time. 

We can't know with any certainty if this new study is the final, accepted word on this topic, as many other groups will be going out to verify the results independently (which is how science is supposed to work). But over the years, we have wondered in class whether G, Newton's universal gravitational constant, could change over time? The reason we wonder is because Einstein says gravity is the consequence of curvatures in space and time. Well, since the universe is expanding and space and time can change and vary a lot locally, around big objects such as stars and galaxies, why would we expect G to be a universal constant since the stuff that allows for what we 'feel' as gravity is dynamic and changing?! 

We'll need to find out how this one goes when there are more studies into it! 

Meteorite has building blocks of life

 In a recent study published in the journal Science shows how a meteorite found in Costa Rica has organic molecules, as complex as amino acids, the building blocks of life (proteins). Many scientists have wondered if life was given a 'nudge' by molecules coming to earth from outer space, and this finding would suggest that was a real possibility. It also suggests there could be primitive life on other worlds since these organic molecules are found widespread in space, as well as water molecules. With trillions and trillions of other planets and galaxies out there, most scientists would find it difficult to Believe there isn't at least primitive single-celled or bacterial life out there! The chemistry is just too common and basic not to produce the pieces needed for simple life. Now intelligent life, who knows about that!