Hey, remember the new red spot that’s appeared on Jupiter? Recent observations have shown that it’s slowly approaching its big brother, the Great Red Spot. Christopher Go, an astronomer, has created the website redspotjr.com to monitor it. He has a small ’scope, but he takes phenomenal images. The one above was taken by him, and shows how close the two storms are getting. Red Jr. is just above and to the right of the Big One. Go expects the two spots will pass each other around July.

You may be wondering how a storm can pass another storm like that. When you look at Jupiter, you aren’t seeing the surface. Jupiter may not have a real surface at all! We are seeing the tops of the clouds, and the atmosphere of Jupiter goes down for thousands of kilometers, until the fantastic pressure turns it into a liquid. This transition region is not sharp like it is on Earth (think about the sharp boundary between the air and the surface of the ocean), it’s fuzzy. For hundreds of kilometers vertically it might be hard to tell air from liquid– it’s like a slushy glop. Jupiter’s a very weird place.

What’s weirder is that the atmosphere is banded, striped. Those are different wind patterns, something like the different winds on Earth, like the trade winds and the doldrums. The winds move at different speeds. Overall, Jupiter spins about once every 10 hours, but the storms drift a little compared to that. What this means is that over time, the Red Spot might overtake (or lag behind) another storm. In the picture of Jupiter above, see how the clouds to the left of the Great Red Spot look clean, but to the right they are all roiled up? The clouds on the right were whipped around the Spot, which is moving right-to-left very slowly as seen in this image. Think of running your finger through water: in front of your finger the water is calm, but behind it the water is disturbed. That’s pretty much what’s happening on Jupiter.

So right now, Red Jr. is moving toward Big Brother. Usually, there’s not much mixing between the stripes, but I wonder what will happen when Jr. gets just above the bigger storm? Will it survive? Probably. But it might get mixed up. We’ll see. And with fantastic images like Go’s, we really will see!

I am incredibly pleased and proud to announce that after just a few hours, BABloggers have donated more than $1000 to help the two fifth-graders and their teacher fly to Virginia to see their rocket launch!

Wow. I was hoping this would generate some money, but I did not expect to reach that much money so quickly. In fact, it went up so fast that I have removed the donation button from the website and previous blog entry; we’re done! The goal has been reached, and the kids have enough money to make their trip and see the rocket launch.

I just talked to Pamela Ghaffarian, the teacher, on the phone, and she was thrilled with how wonderful people have been to send her this money. She told me the two students, Cameron Wade and Billy Shannon, are really excited about the trip. I know they’re happy now, but wait until they actually see the launch! Even though it’s a small rocket, it’ll be really dramatic, and they’ll have the time of their lives.

I’m hoping that this won’t be the last time they participate in something like this. And because of all of you who helped, I’m betting it won’t be.

Thanks, everyone. You done good.

Kids are such a joy when it comes to science. They have a natural curiosity, and love the idea of other worlds and traveling through space. When you find kids that have an even larger dollop of that drive, it should be kindled, encouraged.

Here’s your chance to help do just that. Two fifth grade students from Indiana, Cameron Wade and Billy Shannon, both 11 years old, have an experiment that will launch onboard a suborbital NASA rocket. It’s part of a partnership between their school and NASA. The problem is, the grant they have doesn’t cover their own travel to Virginia to see the rocket launch!

They still want to go, of course. The trip will cost $3000, and they’re still $1000 from their goal.

Wanna help? I do, so I’m asking you to donate some money to this cause. Their teacher, Pam Ghaffarian, does not have a PayPal account, but I do, so I’ll keep track of the money collected and send it to her via check. Their flight leaves on June 4, but I will take donations up to June 6 (and I’ll post a reminder at the top of each new blog entry). She has already bought their tickets, and now it’s our chance to make sure that a teacher who has motivated these kids so much gets the support she deserves.

Note added May 31, 1:00 p.m. Pacific time: I removed the donation button; the goal of $1000 was reached within a few hours of this blog entry being posted!

If you want to help out, just click the button above. It’ll take you to the PayPal site, and you can pay via credit card if you don’t have a PayPal account.

These kids need the money, and by giving them some you’ll be helping the next generation of explorers. Thanks.

Hat tip to NASAWatch for this story.

In America, we have this dichotomy in that we lead the world in ground-breaking scientific research, yet we have creationists and other anti-scientists who hold sway over the government.

It’s cold comfort, I suppose, that we’re not alone. A few months ago, in Assam, a state in India, 5 people were publicly beheaded by a mob for practicing witchcraft. Amir Munda was a traditional healer at a tea plantation. He and his family were "guilty of causing a mysterious disease that claimed two plantation workers and affected many more during the past two weeks." 200 workers assembled, held a trial, and used machetes to decapitate Munda, two of his sons and two of his daughters. If you are not sufficiently outraged yet, I’ll note that his wife – his pregnant wife—managed to escape with three of their sons.

It’s incredible that something like this can still happen, more than a century after germs were discovered to cause disease. It might be easy for some listeners to want to laugh at news like this, I mean, really, beheading people for witchcraft?

But remember, India, like America, has an excellent scientific community, but also, like America, it’s brimming with people who have no clue about how science works. In this country, we have homeopathy, "natural" cures, creationism, and people who think AIDS is a government conspiracy. So don’t mock those plantation workers so quickly. How far are we from such atrocious acts?

Then I remember race riots, Matthew Shepherd, and so, so many other atrocities based on superstition, credulity, and uncritical notions — take your pick which ones — and I realize:

We’re already there.

Oops! With the convention over the weekend, I totally forgot to let everyone know about the 35^th Skeptics Circle, hosted by Skeptico. There are some really good essays, as usual, including a guest blogger with a funny back story. I have a couple of entries there as well.

Chapter 4, wherein I come up with a brilliant scientific deduction and then go home. What else would I use as a title?

So today dawned a bit late for me; I usually don’t sleep until 9 but I was pretty wiped. A quick jaunt to Starbucks and I was ready for the day! First stop: a panel on Wikipedia, of all things. It was pretty interesting. Some deranged fan put up a Wiki page about me, which is both flattering and scary. But there you go. I was interested in the panel discussion, as my page has sometimes been defaced slightly, no doubt by a juvenile or juveniles whom I have ticked off by being so unfortunately mired in reality. The panel had lots of good info for me, and I’ll look into Wikipedia a little more.

I then went to a panel discussion on time travel, which was fun! Niven was there, and a cool thing happened. The discussion was about how you could tell if a time-traveler had been mucking in the timeline. I am of the assumption that you can’t tell, since by definition any changes (s)he makes will alter the whole timeline, past and future, and everything will change leaving no trace.

There was lots of fun discussion, but it all danced around the point. People made statistical arguments (like, an event happens that is so unlikely it must have been due to intervention– a notion that I find distasteful, and not just because twinkie Intelligent Design proponents use it), and historical ones, but I think there may be a physical solution. And because I am so, so evil, I won’t reveal it here. It deserves some thought, and about 1000 words at least to flesh it out. Who knows? I might even publish it!

I then had my Koffee Klatsch, which was basically me and four people sitting around a table and just chatting. That was pretty nice, especially since an old friend I hadn’t seen since my undergrad days showed up (Hi Laurie!). Very cool. It was nice to talk with her, even if only for a few minutes.

Then I finally got Niven to autograph my copy of the Ringworld role-playing game. Hurray! Right next door, Seth Shostak was giving a talk on SETI, and it was nice to see the audience was pretty big compared to what I had been seeing for other talks, including ones by the guests of honor. Anyway, by then it was getting late, so I said goodbye, hopped in my car, and came home.

All in all, I had a fun time, and I would be tempted to go again next year. But I think I’d rather go to the really big cons, like the upcoming Worldcon in LA. That should be a blast! And I just found out, I’m officially on the guest list!

So that’s it. I survived another experience, had some fun, talked with friends, and walked away with a couple of interesting ideas, too. I call that a success.

Chapter 3, in which I almost sleep through my panel.

After lunch with Seth, I perused the dealer room, which was fun (I found an incredible carved wooden dragon that I may get for the Little Astronomer). But I was exhausted after getting so little sleep, so I checked into my room and took a nap. I was almost asleep when I realized I should set my alarm, so I crawled out of the bed to do that. Good thing: if it hadn’t gone off I would’ve slept through my panel!

This one was about podcasting, and continued a theme I have found to be true for the half-dozen panels I have witnessed: things aren’t organized terribly well. The moderator wasn’t completely sure she was a moderator, and left right before the panel to take care of some personal business, and didn’t come back until five minutes into the panel! That wasn’t really a big deal, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. I’m not. Something this size, with nearly a thousand people, all of whom are openly rebellious to authority, must be a nightmare to organize. Honestly, it really incredible that anything gets done at all!

Anyway, the panel on podcasting went in about ten different directions, all at the same time. Two of the panelists were writers who were making a series of podcasts where they read their novels, and people can download the book pretty much chapter by chapter that way. I listen to mostly science and skeptical podcasts, so this was interesting to me. One of the novels was straight fantasy, and not my cup of tea, but the other is more horror, so I will check it out.

During the panel discussion, I talked a bit about blogs (since they are related to podcasts) and mentioned the comet not hitting the Earth last week, and how I debunked that on my website. One of the panelists suddenly looks at me, and says "You’re the Bad Astronomer?"

That made my day.

After, I went to an interview with Larry Niven, who did a brief synopsis of various stages of his writing career. That was fun, even if I knew most of the stories. I will get an autograph from him tomorrow on my Ringworld game, I suppose. I also have some work-related ideas I have where I could use a gang of hard science fiction writers. I asked him about it, and he was tentative at first but may be interested in it– after I told him more, I think he realized I was legit and not some demented fan. Or perhaps both. I won’t go into details here, but I promise that if this looks like it will happen I’ll be blogging all about it.

Next: dinner (sigh, probably McDonalds), and then I’ll surf some of the notorious parties that swing on the second floor, and then maybe the hot tub. My feet hurt.