Mike Shara Discusses Next 50 Years of Space Flight

Thursday, September 30 12:05 pm

Museum Curator Mike Shara of the Department of Astrophysics will lead SciCafe: The Next 50 Years of Space Flight at the Museum on Wednesday, October 6.  He recently answered some questions about his upcoming discussion.

Where do you see our space program in 10, 20, and 50 years into the future?

Suborbital space tourism will almost certainly be a reality in 10 years, and orbiting hotels are quite possible in 20 years. The Chinese are likely to have a lunar base in 20 years. Humans will have landed on Mars, and perhaps set up a science base in 50 years. We will know with certainty, by then, if there is microbial life on Mars and Europa.

Where would you like to see NASA send a manned mission next: the Moon, Mars, or an asteroid?

All three. There is much valuable science to be done at each.

What do you see in the future for suborbital tourism?

Falling costs and rising numbers of tourists. Dozens the first year, hundreds the third year, then tens of thousands of people annually. I can hardly wait.

You’ve undertaken a survey to inventory all 10,000 presupernova stars in the Milky Way. Why?

This is a test of stellar evolution theory, something as basic to astrophysics as Darwinian evolution is to biology.  This theory predicts that “Wolf-Rayet” stars, which are so luminous that they are evaporating themselves, must give rise to supernova explosions. By finding every one of these stars in the Milky Way — and in nearby galaxies, too — and by getting a spectrum of every one of them (i.e., their “DNA”), we will know, when the next supernova explodes, if our evolution theory has predictive power or if it must be modified.

What have you learned from this?

That searching for a needle in a field full of haystacks is hard. There are 100,000,000,000 stars in the Milky Way. Only one in 10 million is a presupernova star. But we’ve got a list of 400 confirmed stars and thousands more candidates.

What is a stellar collision and what have you learned about them?

Stars actually crash into other stars in the centers of the densest star clusters. These collisions can be destructive or amalgamative and make some of the rarest stars in the universe.

Next Week: Celebrate 10 Years of Earth and Space on 10.10.10

Wednesday, September 29 4:26 pm

Over the past decade, the Frederick Phineas and Sandra Priest Rose Center for Earth and Space has brought the secrets of the universe down to Earth for over 30 million visitors. It has been and remains a place where people from around the world come to look upon the stars, discover their earliest origins, and be awed by the wonders of the universe. As beautiful as it is compelling, the Rose Center transformed Manhattan’s architectural landscape, and it continues to provide the public with exciting and groundbreaking astrophysical research and education.

Join us on Sunday, October 10, to celebrate a decade of discovery and exploration. To mark the Rose Center’s 10th anniversary, the Museum will host a number of terrific, family-friendly events, free with Museum admission, including special presentations by Museum scientists, live musical performances, hands-on activities, face-painting, storytelling, an appearance by NASA astronaut Michael Massimino, and much, much more.

The commemorative day concludes with a special Rose Center Anniversary Isaac Asimov Debate, hosted by astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson, dedicated to the probing question: is Earth unique? Tickets for the debate, which begins at 7:30 pm, are available here.

Learn more about the Rose Center for Earth and Space Anniversary Celebration here.

Rose Center for Earth and Space © AMNH/D. Finnin

Testing Water Filtration on Farms, Student Wins a Young Naturalist Award

Tuesday, September 28 3:42 pm

Growing up on a poultry farm in rural Arkansas, 15-year-old Hunter learned early on that clean water was a precious resource. He saw first-hand that poultry houses use large amounts of water that become contaminated with chicken litter, and he wondered if there was a way to filter this water for reuse.

Poultry farms tend to have three to five chicken houses, each with about 28,000 chickens. Using commercial filters to clean the water discharged from the poultry houses is an expensive proposition, so Hunter decided to investigate ways of filtering the water using a cheaper material—different types of local soil.

To start, he collected five kinds of soil: sand, red clay, ash, gravel, and loam, drying each sample and testing for pH, nitrate, and phosphate levels. Hunter then filtered tap water through the soils to remove nitrates and phosphates from the samples.

His second step was to collect water samples. Hunter made a mixture of clean water and chicken litter, letting it sit for two weeks before testing its pH, nitrate, and phosphate levels. He then filtered the contaminated water through the five different soils.

Although his hypothesis had been that sand would be the best filter, his experiments showed that loam removed contaminants better than any other type of soil. Hunter’s investigation led to a winning essay, Cleaning the Water, in the 2010 Young Naturalist Awards competition. Moreover, he hopes that his project can be used by farmers to construct poultry houses that filter waste water.

The Young Naturalist Awards is a nationwide, science-based research contest for students in grades 7 through 12 presented by the Museum. Since 2006, the program has been made possible through the exceptional generosity of Alcoa Foundation as part of its commitment to supporting student achievement in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines.

The deadline for the 2011 Young Naturalist Awards is March 1, 2011.

UNDP Award Ceremony at Museum Kicks Off MDG Summit

Monday, September 27 3:17 pm

On Monday, September 20, the American Museum of Natural History hosted a gala event in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United States Agency for International Development, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Conservation Society, Conservation International, the World Resources Institute, and other organizations, where 25 local and indigenous community groups from across the developing world were presented with the Equator Prize.

The award ceremony, together with a policy forum was convened to illuminate critical linkages between biodiversity conservation, healthy ecosystems, climate change and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Celebrities and opinion leaders joined top UN dignitaries to help deliver the message to leaders that biodiversity and healthy ecosystems, which are being lost and degraded at unsustainable rates, are essential for achievement of the MDGs, and that front-line solutions advanced by local and indigenous communities offer tremendous opportunities for conservation and sustainable development and must be scaled up.

“The American Museum of Natural History is proud to collaborate with the U.N. Development Programme and to be a partner in the International Year of Biodiversity, which had its North American launch at the Museum in February,” said Ellen V. Futter, President of the Museum. “Through collective efforts like this one, we hope to foster a renewed commitment to and sustained public awareness of the urgency and enormous consequences of biodiversity loss, climate change, and related issues. Serving as a bridge between science and society, institutions like the Museum have an important role to play in advancing scientific understanding about our increasingly threatened natural world, bringing the fruits of that research to policymakers, and leaders, and, importantly, demystifying for the public the most vexing and complex science-based issues of our time.”

The event was attended by nine Heads of State or Government and dozens of Ministers in New York for the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals. Ted Turner, Chairman of the United Nations Fund; Andrew Revkin, New York Times Dot Earth reporter; Edward Norton, actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador; Anggun, singer/songwriter and FAO Goodwill Ambassador and MDG Champion; Paul Tergat, marathoner and WFP Goodwill Ambassador; Catarina Furtado, television host/documentarian and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador; Prince Albert II of Monaco; and Gisele Bündchen, supermodel and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador, were among the participants in the evening’s activities. Helen Clark, UNDP Administrator, gave the keynote speech.

For more information, see the UNDP’s press release.

Catching Up With SciCafe: Neil deGrasse Tyson on Stars and the Universe

Wednesday, September 22 11:21 am

The American Museum of Natural History’s popular monthly SciCafe series featuring cocktails, conversation, and cutting-edge science presented by experts, is back at the Museum this fall, following its debut season earlier this year.

Some of the SciCafe events presented last season included a look at the Congo river with Museum curator Melanie Stiassny, who shared her team’s adventures and discoveries in Africa’s waters; a discussion with evolutionary psychologist David M. Buss on human mating strategies in celebration of Valentine’s Day; and Professor Kristin Baldwin’s talk on the future of stem cell research and engineering replacement organs.

Last season concluded with a SciCafe featuring astrophysicist and Hayden Planetarium Director Neil deGrasse Tyson. In this unique SciCafe, Neil answered questions from the audience for the duration of the program, which led to discussions on stars, planets, the universe, and beyond. Here now is the complete video of “SciCafe: Life, the Universe, and Everything,” recorded on June 2, 2010.

Make sure to check out the fall return of SciCafe on Wednesday, October 6, as Museum curator Mike Shara of the Department of Astrophysics helps celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Rose Center for Earth and Space with a conversation on the next 50 years of space flight.

For more information on upcoming SciCafes, visit amnh.org/scicafe.