Two weeks down, and still no signs of alien life. However, we’re still holding strong. We’ve recently shifted our focus in class to geology, taking a look at the conditions on Earth that have made life possible, and could potentially do so in other solar systems. For this post, we were asked to research significant geological features near our home towns. Little does everyone know, my home town is located in the middle of such a significant feature. Or should I say, on the bottom of one.

Sometime around 13,000 years ago, near the end of the last ice age, Missoula, Montana would actually have rested on the floor a 2,000 feet deep glacial lake. In the picture above (which includes my neighborhood, just near the end of the left-most bridge), the water would have risen to about three quarters of the way between that small white “M” on the mountainside and the summit. The top of the mountain would have been just a tiny island in the middle of a lake that was bigger than Erie and Ontario combined.

Glacial Lake Missoula was formed when the Corellian Ice Sheet encroached southward between modern-day Montana and Idaho, damming the Clark Fork river (as seen above). The resulting build-up of water flooded the valleys of Western Montana for 200 miles eastward.

However, the story doesn’t end there. Sometime after its formation, the water level rose so high that it began to strain the ice dam. Eventually, the 2,500 foot tall wall of ice gave way, and a rush of water with a force 60 times greater than that of the Amazon burst out into eastern Idaho. Travelling at speeds close to 50 or 60 miles per hour flooded out across Idaho and beyond, tearing apart mountains and carving canyons through Western Washington (forming the “Scablands” seen there today), and carrying car-sized boulders some 500 miles.

Evidence of this monumental body of water can still be seen today. Apart from the scablands and the Columbia River Gorge, researchers have discovered 13,000 year old ripple marks carved into the valley floors of Montana, products of underwater sediment.

Also, similar marks can be seen on Mount Jumbo, which can be seen from the back door of my house…

… and other sedimentary formations in the surrounding hills point towards an ancient, massive body of water.

https://www.google.com/search?q=glacial+lake+missoula&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=SsczUrXqMsWBrQG_k4H4DA&biw=1745&bih=860&sei=c9YzUurWE8r9qAHjloHYDg#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=K9GYK1rZYrSKlM%3A%3Br7iciYbW6itezM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fhugefloods.com%252FGlacial-Lake-Missoula-Map.gif%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fhugefloods.com%252FLakeMissoula.html%3B823%3B462

http://www.glaciallakemissoula.org/

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/geology/publications/inf/72-2/images/fig12.jpg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GLMsed.jpg

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fhugefloods.com%2FCamasPrairie.html&h=0&w=0&sz=1&tbnid=HCJIhurImkglJM&tbnh=165&tbnw=306&zoom=1&docid=GKc6kYfmxKlgeM&hl=en&ei=19YzUurcF8SZqQGPuYDIAQ&ved=0CAEQsCU

Ever wondered how how researches have produced images like the banner-shot on this blog? Contrary to popular belief, they don’t just look through a telescope and gawk at these stunning vistas of color. The raw images that come back from the Hubble, for instance, actually tend to look something like this…

Granted, still pretty impressive considering the distance at which they are captured, but not quite enough to give us a real feeling for what the universe really looks like out there. That picture (of a star forming nebula) would actually appear something like this to the naked eye…

I compiled that picture this afternoon using three different images that were actually taken by the Hubble telescope. You can actually find stock images at this website:  http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/datasets/ if you’re interested in trying it yourself.  The way researchers develop pictures like this is by taking several shots of the same point with several different lenses, all calibrated to pick up slightly different wavelengths. Mine is fairly simple, made up of three images taken with a 502 nm, 656 nm, and 673 nm lens respectively. By themselves, they produce three mono-chromatic slides (red, green and blue), but when layered on top of each other and tweaked a bit, the produce a pretty amazing image of a nebula in the process of star formation.

If you want to try this yourself, there are detailed instructions here:

http://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/stepbystep/

Where to begin…

A few classmates and I sat down at 1:00 today for a screening of Stanley Kubrick’s iconic sci-fi peace, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that we stood up three hours later thoroughly confused, not to mention a little exhausted. The film, which is classified as an “epic drama” (in part because of the prominent themes of travel and exploration, in part because of the fact that the narrative spans nearly four million years), is renowned for both its convoluted symbolism and deliberate ambiguity. Frankly, I blinked a few times when the credits rolled, trying to wrap my head around what it was I had just witnessed.

How do you begin to describe 2001? The film opens with the “Dawn of Man”, featuring the gorilla-like inhabitants of Earth in 4,000,000 B.C, who come upon a mysterious, black, singing monolith in the middle of the African Serengeti, and concludes with an ill-fated mission to the moons of Jupiter in the year 2001 C.E. The final sequence of the film is one of the most famous, and least explicable in the history of cinematography, depicting what could be a journey through a worm-hole, an alien abduction, or the wild hallucinations of an oxygen-deprived astronaut. Or pretty much anything else. In the process of posting this, I read an interview with Kubrick concerning the various interpretations of the film, and was befuddled to find that he refused to give viewers any explanation as to what “really” happened in the film, stating instead-

“You’re free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film—and such speculation is one indication that it has succeeded in gripping the audience at a deep level—but I don’t want to spell out a verbal road map for 2001 that every viewer will feel obligated to pursue or else fear he’s missed the point.”¹

But, to avoid any potential spoilers I’m going to drop any analysis of the plot resolution, and turn instead to an examination of the “science” behind 2001. The film is actually fairly acclaimed for its realistic portrayal of space travel, especially given that it was released in 1968. With special effects unrivaled at the time, Kubrick depicted spaceships and moon-bases that utilized rotational architecture and centripetal force to simulate gravity, and space-suits with magnetic boots that allowed characters to walk even in areas without these features. He also included the use of artificial hibernation, or cryo-sleep, in space travel, as well as the burgeoning science- and questionable ethics- of Artificial Technology, a theme that is still featured heavily in modern science fiction.

Apart from adding to the realism of the setting, Kubrick’s attention to gravity and weightlessness plays on the slow, ethereal narration that characterizes much of the film. The pace of 2001 is remarkably gradual, almost plodding at times, reinforced by the drifting motions of the characters in space, as well as the recurring classical music that likens satellites and space-ships to the floating participants of a waltz. In addition to lulling the audience into an almost jelly-like, metaphysical state of mind (which is all but requirement for the tackling of the final sequence), the pace mimics another prominent theme of the film: human evolution.

From the jump-cut that ties the tossed bone and the spaceship together in the audience’s mind to the survival-instinct-spurred betrayal of HAL, Kubrick draws a clear parallel between mankind’s past and present identities. Throughout the film he makes an interesting comment about evolution as he likens the human’s (or human-like computers) of 2001 to the primitive, ignorant inhabitants of 4,000,000 B.C. The familiar image technique is visible throughout- the astronauts clustered around the Moon obelisk mirror the apes in the Serengeti, the aforementioned spaceship mirrors the bone shard of the victorious Australopithecus, and the conflict between HAL and the crew of the Jupiter-bound vessel mirrors the battle for the African water-hole. Kubrick seems to be indicating that we are essentially the same beasts that roamed the primitive earth, just with fancier tools. The fact that the alien monoliths seem to be guiding human evolution, prompting the critical steps in our development, creates an interesting statement on human nature. Could Kubrick saying that we are incapable of self-guidance? That it requires an external force to push us into the future, in to discovery?

It seems like it to me. The greater implications of that statement however… Anyway, I’m pushing my post limit, so I’m going to leave it here. However, watch for more to come. I’ll be scratching my head over this one for a while.

1)       Norden, Eric. Interview: Stanley Kubrick. Playboy (September 1968). Reprinted in: Phillips, Gene D. (Editor).Stanley Kubrick: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2001. ISBN 1-57806-297-7 pp. 47–48.

In reference to the New York Times…

A little dated maybe, but this article still raises several good questions about the situation that science finds itself in today. For a society that owes so much to the calculations and calm logic of science, I find it boggling how many people, even in our country alone, still manage to cling to an almost medieval mistrust of scientific advancement.

Even though, as the authors state, science has raised the national life-expectancy 30 years in the past century, developed cures and vaccines for countless diseases, put men on the Moon, machines on Mars, and even made our day-to-day lives more comfortable with everything from the light bulb to digital electronics, significant portions of the population still find it in themselves to doubt or disregard entirely the teachings of the system that has made possible every break-through in our knowledge of the world since the days of the Greeks. Even now opponents of mainstream science are haggling the intellectual community with issues seemingly dragged out of antiquity, such as the practice of astrology, the existence of ghosts or, more recently, the teaching of Darwinism versus Intelligent Design, an argument that we thought buried with the Monkey Trials. Taken as a whole, the evidence provided by authors serves to paint a fairly bleak picture of the current state of rationality in our society.

Granted, the stats cited in the article should be taken with a grain of salt. While, “most Americans believe in miracles,” and, “half believe in ghosts,” this doesn’t directly indicate that a majority of our population believes in magic or has renounced science altogether. Instead, I think it speaks more to the increasingly prominent conflict in our society between science and religion. Not to say that there is an ever-widening gap between the two- on the contrary, the coexistence of science and religion has come a long ways since the days of Galileo and Giordano Bruno. Instead, it seems that as science has advanced and given us increasingly reliable evidence detailing the nature of our universe, it has become more and more tricky for people to reconcile their spiritual beliefs with their scientific ones. While I believe it entirely possible to do, I think that the difficulty of engaging in such an internal philosophical debate turns many away, as it is much easier to give oneself over to the basic, learned tenants of one system than to try to question them in light of new evidence. “Isn’t it incredible that you have so much fundamentalism, retreating back to so much ignorance?” For better or worse, it seems as though religion has always posed a significant speed bump in the road to acceptance and pursuit of scientific progress.

That being said, I do agree that religion or other less-than-scientific belief systems can and do play significant roles in many people’s lives, and I don’t mean to vilify religion or loft science up as the one true goal of society. I do, however, believe that irrational adherence to outdated customs can often impede societal progress. I think that science has been an integral part of our development as a species, and it is because of this that I agree with Dr. John H. Gibbons when he says, “The urgency is to re-establish the fundamental position that science plays in helping devise uses of knowledge to resolve social ills. I hope rationality will triumph. But you can’t count on it. As President Chirac said, we’ve lost the primacy of reason.”

Hello everyone! Nolan Fromm here, marking my first ever entry in the blogging universe. I know, I know. Try not to look as excited as I do. I want to start off by saying thanks to those of you wayfaring bloglodites who are here to share this moment with me. As I’m sure you know, this is going to be one of those serious milestones in life that will be looked back on for years, to be chronicled right alongside such events as my graduation day, or the birth of my first child. I just want you to know I appreciate you being here to witness it.

So, on to business I suppose. I’m a first-year student at Colorado College, and am keeping this blog as part of my first class, “Life in the Universe”. I know, nothing like starting off the year with a modest topic. While it is a physics course, it’s apparently deeply rooted in astronomy and biology, and we will be discussing the existence of known life in the universe, as well as the possibility of extraterrestrial life. We have been instructed to post a few times a week about topics we find intriguing in our research. Just a heads up about subsequent post material.

As far as background on myself… I’m from Missoula, Montana and am the older of two brothers. I was a captain on my high school swim team, am an experienced violinist and an avid George R.R. Martin fan. I have no astronomy experience whatsoever (apart from being able to pick out Orion and the occasional Scorpius), and only a single high school physics class under my belt.

However, despite my lack of preparation, I am very excited about Life in the Universe (probably due in no small part to the mandatory sci-fi movie screenings), and look forward to learning more about the origins and development of everything that makes our world possible. I couldn’t think of a better way to begin my college career than starting with a topic so fundamental.