Postcards from the Planet

Over time, new kinds of organisms develop as a result of mutations and changes to existing organisms. Bacteria evolve resistance to antibiotics; the bacteria that aren’t resistant to antibiotics die off–and the very few that have a gene that makes them less likely to die are the only ones that live to reproduce. This process, in which better adapted organisms survive to reproduce and less adapted organisms die before reproducing (or have fewer offspring), is called natural selection and is the key concept of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Darwin published the first edition of his book on the evolution of species one hundred and fifty years ago, in November of 1859.

Darwin was curious about many things, and was interested in how land snails–like the European snail that ends up being eaten in the French dish escargot–could get to islands, because they don’t survive in salt water. After discovering that a short bath in salt water didn’t kill them, he decided that perhaps they got there on floating logs.

But more modern scientists have discovered that land snails come in right-handed and left-handed versions. The right-handed versions are more common, but there are more left-handed snails in Asia than elsewhere. Why? Well, it turns out that some snakes have evolved jaws that work better on the right-handed snails than on the left-handed ones. So as the right-handed snails get eaten more often, the left-handed snails are more likely to survive and reproduce, so there are more left-handed snails where there are more snakes that eat right-handed snails. Evolution and natural selection in action!

Read all about it here: In Snails and Snakes, Features to Delight Darwin.

Part of the 11-foot-long cloth woven from spider silk. Photo from AMNH.org

One of my favorite places is the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. If you’ve seen the movie “Night at the Museum” you might think you know something about the museum – but reality can be even weirder than the movies. Right now at the museum, for example, you can see an eleven foot long golden piece of cloth, made completely from (TA DA!) spider silk. Even the gorgeous golden color of the thread was supplied by the female spiders, since they are  a species from Madagascar known as the golden orb spider. The collection of the spider silk  and the weaving of the cloth was done by teams of humans. To find out more about it, check this out: One Million Spiders.

One more thing to think about – how did spiders get named Arachnids? Look for the story of Arachne in Greek mythology to find out.

I can’t forget waking up in the middle of the night, July of 1969, to watch Neil Armstrong descend the ladder of the lunar ladder and put his enormous moon boots onto the surface of the moon. In the years since, it’s taken on a aura of inevitability–we all know the journey was successful, and we’ve all seen the rocks they bought back–but at the time:

• We didn’t know how deep the dust would be, and scientists were afraid that they would sink into the lunar surface.
• We didn’t know if something might go wrong and the astronauts would be stranded on the moon, and, with the whole world watching–especially with the Soviet Union, our arch-enemy, watching, die an agonizing death from starvation or worse, explosive decompression.
• We just didn’t know what would happen.

We all know now what DID happen: the six Apollo trips to the moon were successful–they were successful even in the days when a computer meant massive hardware that filled entire rooms (you know all those people in the room in the videos–that’s what they’re doing, operating the massive computers needed, computers that would now be replaced by a single PC that costs around $1000). They were successful. Politically, it was a huge coup. America amazed everyone. We did it–we did what was seen as impossible. We did something no one has done since, including us.

And for a few hours, the entire country watched, and instead of being angry, or divided, or worried, we were thrilled and proud.

In 1972, the Apollo 17 astronauts took this photo, called the Blue Marble:

Apollo 17: the Blue Marble

And this is what NASA said about it at the time:

View of the Earth as seen by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This translunar coast photograph extends from the Mediterranean Sea area to the Antarctica south polar ice cap. This is the first time the Apollo trajectory made it possible to photograph the south polar ice cap. Note the heavy cloud cover in the Southern Hemisphere. Almost the entire coastline of Africa is clearly visible. The Arabian Peninsula can be seen at the northeastern edge of Africa. The large island off the coast of Africa is the Malagasy Republic. The Asian mainland is on the horizon toward the northeast.

In 2008, NASA decided it was time to being its new imaging technology to bear to create a new Blue Marble photo of the earth. Using data from numerous photos, they created this image:

NASA in 2008: the Blue Marble

One of the first photos of the earth from space changed history. The Apollo 8 astronauts took this photo of the earth rising over the surface of the moon on December 24, 1968:

This photo (and others like it) started the environmental movement of the late 60s and early 70s–the first Earth Day. The photo instantly sparked changes in attitudes toward the environment. Suddenly, we all knew that we had only one earth, small and fragile, and in need of our care.

I’ve spent the last few days working with my daughter to get the vegetable garden in. She talked me into planting beets and butternut squash, and of course I planted tomatoes. Tomatoes you grow yourself taste way better than tomatoes that you buy.

I grow my own garden for purely selfish reasons–I really prefer the taste of home-grown food–but my daughter cares a lot about reducing her carbon footprint. She points out that organic garden recycles nutrients back into the soil and doesn’t require fuel to make or deliver fertilizer. The food I grow doesn’t have to be trucked anywhere. I don’t think it’s possible to use less fuel than it takes to walk into the back yard to pick tomatoes. And I’m certainly not going to use fuel to refrigerate it before I eat it–although my daughter plans to can the extra tomatoes this year, which would require some fuel.

Of course, if you really want to impact the carbon dioxide level, you need to grow trees, because trees store carbon for many years (the wood of a tree represents stored carbon). According to this article: Planting Trees to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint all you have to do is plant seven trees a year to neutralize your carbon footprint. I may be a few trees behind.

Low-level winds rushing over the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of northwestern Africa created cloud vortex streets which share this scene with the top of the Hubble Space Telescope locked down in the cargo bay of the Earth-orbiting Space Shuttle Atlantis. NASA photo, May 15, 2009.

The space shuttle Atlantis began its mission on May 11. Among other aims, the seven astronauts will be working on the Hubble Space Telescope. The STS-125 mission returns “the space shuttle to the Hubble Space Telescope for one last visit before the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. Over 11 days and five spacewalks, the shuttle Atlantis’ crew will make repairs and upgrades to the telescope, leaving it better than ever and ready for another five years – or more – of research.” To follow the mission daily, check this out: Space Shuttle Atlantis.

Astronaut Mike Massimino works with the Hubble Space Telescope in the cargo bay of the Earth-orbiting space shuttle Atlantis. Photo Credit: NASA. May 15, 2009.

It’s been a cool spring where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The cherry trees are late this year, and the tulips are so late that the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, scheduled for April 1st to April 30th, has been extended two weeks, well into May. The tulips weren’t really blooming this year until this week, I’m told by friends who went up last weekend.

The Northwest apricot trees are starting to bloom as well, and the growers are starting to move the bee hives into the field to pollinate the trees. Without bees, there would be very little fruit on the fruit trees here in the Northwest. We need bees to pollinate the apricots and peaches and (of course) the Washington apples for which we are famous. We need bees to pollinate the grapes that are made into Oregon’s wonderful pinot noir wines.

African Honeybees (Photo by Jay Torborg)

In fact, bees (and a few other insects) pollinate pretty much all of our fruits, vegetables, and nuts. (Grains are mostly pollinated by wind.) This link lists the plants that are pollinated by bees: Crop Plants Pollinated by Bees.

Pollination occurs when a bee picks up pollen (from the stamens of the flower) when visiting a flower for its nectar. Then, when the bee flies to the next flower, some of the pollen falls off onto the stigma (or stigmas) of the flower. The pollen is comparable to sperm–it is the male gametes of the flower–and the stigma is a tube that leads directly to the “egg” of the female flower. (Some flowers are both male and female; some are male; some are female. It depends on the kind of plant it is. Plant sex is complicated.)

When the pollen grain lands on the stigma, it sends down a tube to the egg, then sends the DNA down to the tube, and the egg is fertilized.

Once the egg is fertilized, the egg produces a seed and the fruit around the seed. Imagine an apple. The whole apple is there just to persuade an animal to eat the seeds inside the apple. There is all that sweet fruit surrounding the seeds. So the animal eats the apple, and swallows the seeds, and they travel through the digestive tract, and are eventually eliminated, along with a nice bit of fertilizer. (From a plant’s point of view, an animal is just a really good way to get your seeds spread around.)

But without bees, there’d be no fruit.

So when bees are threatened, it’s a really big deal. A few years back, beekeepers discovered that their bees were dying in large numbers. It was called Colony Collapse Disorder and of course scientists started studying it.

Unfortunately, we don’t really know a lot about Colony Collapse Disorder yet, but there are a lot of theories about what to do about making sure we have pollinators. The New York Times had a great column about it a while back: Treatment for Bee Plague.

And researchers at Washington State University say it might not be that bad: Bee experts say Colony Collapse Disorder might not be as bad as first thought. (I have to say that traces of seventy different pesticides sounds pretty awful to me, though.)

What can you do? Plant food for your local bees. Don’t use pesticides.

(Honeybees are actually not native to this country. They were brought here by the first colonists, because they were considered essential. There are native bees that pollinate our native fruits and vegetables, but they need to be encouraged. In the meantime, beekeeping–maintaining hives of honeybees–is a huge business here in the United States. Half a million hives are brought into California every spring just to pollinate the almond trees so that we can all have almonds.)

There are other great websites for more information on bees and how you can help them in your garden! This website will tell you good plants to plant at home for bees: Bee Gardens.

This is a good place to learn more about Colony Collapse Disorder: Plan Bee Central.

The Blue Marble is a true-color NASA image, stitched together from satellite photos.

Do you ever wonder how Earth Day got started, way back in 1970? You can read what Gaylord Nelson said about his idea here: Earth Day History.  

President Obama celebrated Earth Day 2009 by planting a tree – with First Lady Michelle Obama, former President Bill Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and his wife, Dr. Jill Biden.  They planted trees with the Student Conservation Association near Washington DC. Read about the President and other tree planters here: Americans Plant Trees for Earth Day.

What’s your plan for Earth Day?

In an historic move, the Environmental Protection Agency today issued an “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gases. Stating that greenhouse gases such as CO2 are a danger to us all and a “serious problem for future generations,” the report indicates that the EPA will start regulating greenhouse gas emissions. You can read about the announcement here: Greenhouse Gases.

An artist's image of the Plastiki

The Plastiki is based on an old idea — the raft — but it is being updated and made new because it is being constructed out of plastic bottles.  Explorer David de Rothschild plans to launch the plastic bottle raft in the summer of 2009, and the crew will sail the raft across the Pacific Ocean.

What do they want to prove? Unlike Thor Heyerdahl with his raft Kon-tiki, proving that people could have crossed the Pacific on rafts, de Rothschild plans to highlight the increasing litter in the ocean, and the importance of reusing plastic for other purposes — like plastic bottle rafts! Plastiki and its crew will visit the Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge area of litter which swirls around the Pacific Ocean. You can read more about the Garbage Patch here: Trash Vortex . To follow the voyage of Plastiki beginning in the summer of 2009, visit the boat’s  website regularly: Plastiki.

After several delays, the Space Shuttle Discovery took off on March 15 for a thirteen-day mission – mission STS-119. Today, the crew of seven is working with the crew of the International Space Station on repairs and the installation of solar arrays. To find out more about the mission, you can check the NASA information pages: Space Shuttle.

Image: Space shuttle Discovery hurtles into the evening sky on the STS-119 mission. Photo credit: NASA/Fletch Hildreth