Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Alaskan Aurora Adventure!

Episode Date: March 18, 2014

Join Mat Kaplan and other Aurora “virgins” as they seek the Northern Lights in Fairbanks, Alaska, and meet retired rocketeer and Director of the Poker Flat Research Range, Neal BrownLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To Alaska for the Aurora Borealis, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Outside at 1 a.m., 20 below zero Fahrenheit, with 40 new friends waiting and hoping to see wonder in the sky. My Alaskan Aurora adventure is coming up, as is our regular What's Up visit with Bruce Betts.

Emily Lakawala is spending this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. She'll have an extended and no doubt exciting report for us next week. The CEO of the Planetary Society is here and Bill Nye is thinking about another very cold place, the outer reaches of our solar system, where the sun is not much more than just another star. Bill, some somewhat troubling news out of NASA via the Department of Energy. This kind of thing makes me crazy, Matt, or if you will, crazier. The Department of Energy is apparently not going to be able to produce enough plutonium-238, which is not the plutonium you use to make weapons. It's the plutonium that just gets hot and stays hot for decades. They're not going to be able to make enough to do any mission beyond this so-called Mars 2020 rover, which is like the Curiosity rover and is going to planet Mars. Now, what this means

is the discovery class missions, I don't want to get all technical on the listeners, but the smaller missions that cost less money will not happen, will not be allowed to be considered if they require any plutonium. Now, Matt, if you're like me and you're going to the outer planets, you've got to keep warm. It's cold out there. So if there's going to be no plutonium for those missions, those missions aren't going to happen. It's heartbreaking. Part of this is complicated by the fact that NASA stopped development of that advanced sterling engine.

I happen to know you have a fondness for sterling engines, which would have required less plutonium. That's right. Yeah. So a sterling engine is just a more efficient way to use the heat that comes off the plutonium. So you could use less plutonium for the same thing. But it's a complicated gizmo, millions and millions of dollars. The whole thing is if we were funding planetary science just a little bit more than we are right now, just a little bit, we could afford to do these extraordinary missions to these

extraordinary destinations and make discoveries that would change the world. So this is where I, as your CEO of the Planetary Society, get all arms akimbo that we can make these discoveries for not that much money by changing where NASA spends the money or giving a little more money to NASA. And you could say, well, everybody wants money, wham, wham, wham, wham, wham. You can say that. But planetary science is like nothing else. It brings out the best in us. People solve problems that have never been solved before. That leads to innovation, which leads to a successful United States economy, which makes all the space agencies around the world that much more successful. Oh, Matt, it makes me a little crazy. Hear him, hear him. He is Bill Nye, the science guy. And let's hope that the Department of Energy

also can work out these kinks in producing this stuff, and we'll have more of those plutonium missions, whether they're Stirling engine-powered or not. Bill, thank you very much. Straight on now to another very cold place, not as cold as the outer reaches of the solar system, but it was Alaska, where I was just a week ago. it was Alaska, where I was just a week ago. The item on the top of my bucket list now has a checkmark next to it. I have seen a ribbon of light undulating in the sky, separating here, growing brilliant there, and leaving all who saw it in awe.

Last week, I was the Planetary Society representative with other Aurora Virgins, as someone called us. Our tour started in Anchorage, made a fascinating side trip to the port town of Seward, and then boarded the Alaska Railroad for Fairbanks. We would see moose, sled dogs, mighty Denali, breathtaking chasms, a rocket range, an ice festival, and with luck, the northern lights. Photographer and adopted son of Alaska, Justin Gibson, was one of our excellent guides. We're in Fairbanks, Alaska in the middle of winter and it's below zero, but not too bad. It's minus five with wind chill, probably minus 10, minus 15. You've been in worse.

I've been in a lot worse, yeah, minus 40 last year at this time. This is the coldest I've ever been in. It would be great if we got rewarded by getting to see the aurora, and your, the website, your solar weather website made it look kind of iffy for tonight. It did, it made it look a little iffy, but that can change at any moment. That website can have spikes in the solar weather, and we could be rewarded tonight. You just never know. Have you seen that, I mean, in reality as well, where you've been out one night like this, and you don't see anything, and all of a sudden, there's the aurora? Yeah, and it seems to, you know, for whatever reason, it seems to be on the days where we have the most anticipation.

Maybe a group hasn't quite seen the aurora yet. Maybe anticipation is high and people's frustrations are starting to get to them. And all of a sudden, there they are. And they last for a while. And actually last year at this time in this field, in this particular field, that exact thing happened. And it's one of the best displays I've ever had. So minus 40, but we hung in there. You've given me hope. You have obviously seen this far more, and most of us here, among the 40 or so of us, have never seen it. And so obviously we're here with great anticipation. Do you remember the first time you saw it? I do,

I do. I'm from Colorado and I went to school in Anchorage. And the first time you saw it? I do. I do. I'm from Colorado, and I went to school in Anchorage. And the first time I saw it was just across the street from the university dorms. It was kind of like a scene out of Northern Exposure. I walked across the street just, you know, luckily there were no cars because my eyes were definitely to the sky. And there were a bunch of Native Alaskans kind of whistling and yelling because that's part of their tradition is the louder you whistle and the louder you clap, the more vibrant the Northern Lights become. And they certainly did.

They got more vibrant. Did you join in? Did you help? Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. You know, it was my first time and I was very excited. And you know what? To tell you the truth, every time I see them, I'm just as excited as the rest of the group.

And hopefully you'll get to experience that. I should let you get out there. I know you're both helping people with their cameras on their tripods, but also probably making sure none of us get hypothermia out here. Right, right. And trying to stay of anticipation just a little bit. Thanks, Justin. All right.

Thanks a lot. Poor Steve Mueller. just a little bit. Thanks, Justin. All right. Thanks a lot. Poor Steve Mueller. He had not long ago spent a week in Lapland watching for the Aurora.

Nothing. Landing at JFK, I turned on my phone and ding, ding, ding, ding. I had two text messages from the Aurora app. Go outside quickly. Northern lights in the night. You know, bust seeing it. It's run out right now.

And I had just landed at JFK. Not so Neil Brown. This is Neil's 50th year with the University of Alaska. We met him at the Fairbanks campus where he delivered a delightful talk about the Aurora. He told us how his long love affair with the lights began. We had satellites in orbit. Every time we tried to get them back, they'd burn up. But to try to build something that would actually work, you needed to have a test chamber that you could create the high temperatures and high-speed winds. And that's what I did for the first year. And I realized that we just needed to know basic information about the atmosphere. And here all of a sudden I discovered that you can analyze the light of the

aurora borealis to determine the wind speeds, the temperatures, the compositions of the Earth's atmosphere, all sorts of cool stuff. And I really enjoyed spectroscopy, what little introduction I had at Washington State as an undergraduate. But then when I came up here, I got a chance to work in the near infrared, which is just beyond the visible. So it is just kind of the last red that the human eye can see on out to about 900 nanometers, those new things that they talk about, nanometers. I'm still back in Angstrom, so. Everything starts out on the sun. Real storms of physical particles, electrons, and

protons that take roughly two days to make the physical trans journey from the sun to the earth. You might think the earth magnetic field looks like the bottom lower left, symmetrical on either side of the Earth, but it isn't because the pressure of the solar wind is such that it compresses the Earth's magnetic field on the side of the Earth next to the sun and elongates it on the side of the Earth away from the sun. In addition, electrons and protons being charged particles cannot go across magnetic field lines.

Good thing, because all they do is add a little bit of energy to the day side of the Earth and we'd never see the aurora. But what they do is they shut all that material around the Earth and it goes sweeping by the Earth, kind of gets trapped behind the Earth and then snaps forward in an ongoing process that creates energetic particles coming down in the Earth's atmosphere, creating an aurora in both the northern hemisphere and the southern hemisphere. And those are basically around 750 miles away basically around 750 miles away from the North Magnetic Pole or the South Magnetic Pole. However, when you have a huge storm on the sun, then it's literally like a crown of light that gets bigger in diameter can move to lower latitudes.

So God forbid that we have one of those things happen while you're here and all your friends far away from here say, oh, we saw the aurora down here. And you say, oh, all we saw was a glow on the southern horizon. But honestly, that has happened to us. March 13, 1989 was a tremendous storm seen by a lot of people throughout the United States of America. Neil Brown, Alaska science enthusiast. Stay with us for a conversation with Neil. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society,

speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life, to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do. And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds.

Your name carried to an asteroid! How cool is that? You, your family, your friends, your cat, we're inviting everyone to travel along on NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. All the details are at planetary.org slash b-e-n-n-u. You can submit your name and then print your beautiful certificate. That's planetary.org slash Bennu. Planetary Society members, your name is already on the list. The Planetary Society, we're your place in space. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. This week's show gives me the chance to share my Alaskan Aurora adventure.

A highlight of that experience was a conversation with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Neil Brown. Actually, I enjoyed two conversations with Neil, with the second focused on the job he had for nearly two decades at the Poker Flat Research Range. We'll feature that topic in a couple of weeks. When did you first catch aurora fever? Well, I was actually during the work that I did at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field in California,

where I realized that you could study the aurora and learn about the dynamics of the composition and the temperatures and the winds and everything in the Earth's atmosphere just by studying that alone, which was a crucial piece of information to build a spacecraft to safely get people back to the ground. Now, I grew up seeing the aurora on the northern horizon as a kid, and it didn't turn me on. But when I found a reason for it, then I really got fascinated with it. So I spent a year in Tule Greenland on a research station,

and during that time I selected to come here to the University of Alaska, where it's a real strong point to study the Aurora, because it's in our backyard every night. You've got a room full of people here who are just nuts. I'm one of them, to see this thing. Many of us for the first time. You must see this all the time when you talk to groups like this. I do. It's a wonderful experience for me.

I love to share my enthusiasm for seeing the aurora or for science in general. You know, a lot of people haven't had a lot of background in science. This group today may be a little better than most, but often I have to choose words to try to reach a general audience because they're not familiar with the details. But I love doing that. I don't try to dumb it down. I just try to use words to help explain it.

How has our knowledge of this phenomenon changed over, I don't know, maybe the last 30 or 40 years? When I came here, there was a huge number of ground research stations using cameras, radars, looking up at the aurora in the sky. using cameras, radars, looking up at the aurora in the sky, and we were making some major strides in pulling together the morphology of where the aurora is, and we were still analyzing the data from the International Geophysical Year. Getting our foot in the door by building a rocket range with the idea that we could put a rocket into the aurora itself. It's a no-man's land. You can't

stay there. You can pass through it but it's the altitude where there's enough air that a satellite will de-orbit within two or three days and we just can't get to it any other way. So it was really cool to get Poker Flat off the ground back in 1968. First

launch in March of 69 and for the first time get data from a satellite that's flying over with a rocket that's right underneath that satellite and this wide range of ground-based observatories, the data that we could bring to it. So that was really exciting, and it still is. We're still the leaders in the world. We have the largest rocket range, the University of Alaska, in the

world. The ones in Andoya, Norway, they fire out over the ocean. You can't go out and sit underneath it. But up in Alaska, we just launched a rocket out of here that involved calling the launch at the midpoint of the flight trajectory in Veneti, Alaska. What do you mean calling the launch? Deciding that the conditions were perfect for the launch. I mean, the conditions for a rocket launch involve many details about a particular event they were looking for. They were looking for curls, which are rays in the aurora that are kind of winding up on one another, as seen from the bottom. And they wanted to see those, and they wanted to fly their rocket over the top of it. Well, you couldn't see those rays from Poker Flat, 30 miles north of Fairbanks,

but from Venati, which is a small community about 200 miles north of Fairbanks, you could be underneath, identify the curls, and say, now, launch now. And they lasted, you know, for tens of minutes. So everything worked for them. And you were in charge of that facility, right? I was. Oh, I'm sorry. Not now, but when it started? I came into it in the fall of 1971, and I stayed with it through 1989. I thought, well, it'll ruin my scientific career to spend any more than a couple years at it.

But I had so much fun. It was just great. And I'm looking forward to a couple years at it, but I had so much fun. It was just great. And I'm looking forward to taking a look at it tomorrow. So all these decades, well, you know, centuries, if not eons of curiosity by humans. And it's, of course, present in pretty much all the myths of all the cultures of the northern, just below the polar regions, below the Arctic. which was the northern, just below the polar regions, below the Arctic. But even in the scientific study, which has been going on now for, I guess, a couple of hundred years, what mysteries are still left?

What are we still trying to figure out? You know, you mentioned something earlier. I should take a crack at that. And that is when I came here, we moved from the morphology of the world to actually making measurements in it. we moved from the morphology of the aurora to actually making measurements in it. Then a great diversion took place with the satellites orbiting the Earth, and the big concern was about how does the sun create the energy on the Earth and what's happening on the sun. So a lot of effort for about the last 20 or 30 years has been involved in studying the aurora to see if it can deduce what is making this happen on the sun.

And as a result, not much has been done on the aurora itself in the intervening time. Just a few experiments here and there. We're sort of moving back to that, which I'm really excited about. So this last launch on March 3rd of 2014 was really detailed on auroral curls and other things like how they affect the transit of a GPS signal from a payload that was transmitting a GPS signal aboard the same rocket back to receiver ground stations. I'm glad we're getting back to where we're actually studying. The Aurora itself is exciting. There are some events in it like layering of the visible structures in the Aurora horizontally that we've never explained.

We got diverted to go look at some of the big picture items, and now we're going back to look at some of the fine detail. Really exciting stuff. Basically, it's basic research. We're not looking for practical applications. Now, at the same time, that's all we ever tried to do. At the same time, we came up with things. Wow, you know, if you have a big solar storm, it can kill a satellite orbiting the Earth. It can induce huge currents and power lines on the Earth. So we do have some practical applications. But by and large, the scientists who are studying it

are doing it just to try to learn about the basics of how this sort of works. And basic research is very exciting. Was it exciting also to see this happening other places like Jupiter and Saturn, other places with big magnetic fields? Absolutely, yeah. The storms on Jupiter are 100,000 times more powerful than they are on the Earth. And it's fascinating because there's some different details that happen there. You know, there's a little streak of aurora around the oval that's created by Io, the little satellite. And it's actually traveling at great speed through the magnetic field of Jupiter,

and it's actually generating a little tiny patch of aurora that leaves a trail behind it as it goes around Jupiter. It leaves this little streak of aurora. On top and in the center of that is an aurora much like the aurora on planet Earth. That's fascinating. Crazy stuff. I had no idea. It's crazy stuff.

Really fun. Yeah. You still enjoy going out late at night and bundling up and watching? Yes, I do. I've gone out many times. You know, the older you get, the more times you have to go outside at night. The older you get, the more times you have to go outside at night. And you really increase your chances of seeing the aurora by using an outhouse.

I'll keep that in mind. That's the punchline right there. And that's a good place to stop, at least for now. But we'll maybe talk again tomorrow at Poker Flat. Sure. Thank you, Neil. Thank you. Retired Alaskan rocketeer, aurora lover, and science enthusiast Neil Brown. We would not see the aurora on our first night in Fairbanks. Ah,

but the second night. It's approaching 20 below zero at Creamers Field. The sky is clear. What starts as a milky band or arc to the north quite suddenly coalesces. Here's tour leader Justin Gibson. There it is. Look, it's getting stronger. There it is. Look at that. Look at that nice arc right there. That nice folded curtain right there. There we go. There's a nice rod. It's starting to get a little thicker. Now you guys should be getting some great pictures right now.

Okay, are you ready? I told you so. Did everyone forget that they were cold? The photographers among us were busy capturing long exposures. I'll give one of them, Laura Prescott, the last word. So we're looking at your camera LCD and it's much stronger there, of course. Yes, and you can see the two bands very clearly. And it's just beautiful. I'm so excited. Want to see some pics? I've got them in my blog at planetary.org and the Planetary Society Flickr page.

My thanks go to Betchart Expeditions and its staff for this wonderful opportunity. Bruce Betts is next. I have come back from the cold. Why? So that I could talk with Bruce Betts because it's time for What's Up. You didn't like having frozen toes. Man, those were really painful. It sounded like you had a great trip, did you? I really did.

Most of the people along for the ride, the 38 paying customers, were Planetary Society members, and a number of the others said that they're going to join. Even if we hadn't had our 10 minutes of wonder with the Aurora, it would have been a terrific trip because they had so many cool things for us to do. Have you seen it? No, I have not. I'm afraid of it. I'm so sorry. Okay. Well, never mind then.

It's magic or something. It is. It really is. I've heard it's quite spectacular. I regret not having seen it yet. Eventually it will, you know, when we have a monstrous solar storm, I'm waiting for it to get down to 34 degrees latitude. Okay.

Seems unlikely. But if you are in the northern latitudes and deep southern latitudes, look for the auroras. If you're not, or even if you are, check out all the planets in the sky. We got Jupiter up high in the south in the early evening looking like a super bright star. Just out last night looking at Mars near Spica. It's fun. Mars is brightening up. It'll be about another month before it reaches its absolute brightest for this opposition period, but it's already as bright as, brighter than almost every star in the sky. Looking reddish and a nice contrast with bluish speaker look for that

in the early mid evening over in the east and then up all all night coming up a couple hours later we got saturn looking looking yellowish pre-dawn venus totally dominating in the east looking super super bright if you're picking this up soon after it comes out, and if you live in the New York City area, you may be able to, on March 19th, Wednesday, March 19th, see the bright star Regulus disappear briefly as an asteroid occults it. I heard about that. That's a very cool thing. Astronomical stuff. We move on to this week in space history. 1965, the first spacewalk by Alexei Leonov.

And then just three years ago, three wonderful years, we've had Messanger orbiting Mercury, the only Mercury orbiter ever still returning good data telling us about that innermost planet. Yeah, we'll get those folks back on the radio show again soon because there are some new discoveries being made out there. We'll get those folks back on the radio show again soon because there's some new discoveries being made out there. We move on to what is an Aurora Borealis sounding sound? Oh, wait, you discussed that. We don't know. We're not sure there is one.

But here's a try. We'll try ethereal because, you know, I have just the voice for that. Random space fact. Don't try for any voiceovers where they ask for ethereal, okay? All right. Sorry. So speaking of ethereal, or maybe not, at least atmospheric, Jupiter's upper atmosphere is composed of about 90% hydrogen, about 10% helium by number of molecules. about 10% helium by number of molecules. But since helium's heavier, it's actually about 25% helium by mass and 75% hydrogen.

On to the trivia contest. I asked you what Curiosity rover instrument has an acronym name that, when pronounced backwards, gives you one of the things that the instrument measures. I amaze even myself sometimes. You threw a lot of people for this. I think it reduced the numbers. So it was a good week

to enter because you had a better shot on random.org. And it was Dan Price whose number came up. Dan Price, who lives in, get this, Baghdad. All right. Baghdad, Kentucky. You got me. It's serious. It's an unincorporated area. I looked it up, and sure enough.

So there in Baghdad, he submitted the SAM instrument, sample analysis at Mars. So it's a very mild cheat you did here, because backwards, that would be? I did not cheat. I said pronounced backwards. Ah, okay. Yes, backwards, it would be M I did not cheat. I said pronounced backwards. Ah, okay. Yes, backwards would be M-A-S, of course. One of the many things it measures is mass using the mass spectrometer. Excellent.

So, Dan, one, the beautiful and fun Beyond Earth letterpress poster from Chop Shop. You can see it at chopshopstore.com. We have, I believe, one more of those to give away next week. Before we go back to the new and improved Planetary Radio t-shirt, I've got to tell you. Now with body armor built in. Yes, well, now with Saturn built in, because it was missing before. It was hiding behind the radio antenna. Listen, this is also from Dan, who just by coincidence says, I'm glad it wasn't the Dan instrument, dynamic albedo of neutrons. Yeah, that's not actually a complete

word. No. Well, it's close. It's close. We'll let people think about that. We got another one. This one I think you'll like a lot. Mark Smith, our friend down in San Diego, he said, since Bruce didn't specify English for his answer, I considered using the APXS. The SXPA is the Martian unit of alpha particle flux and was a key feedback loop element in Marvin's

disintegrator. Wow. I wouldn't have had to give it to him if he'd been pulled up by ran.org. Yeah, I think we could have done that. Lastly, this one, not an instrument, but it came from Mark Wilson, who said that he's been thinking about writing a sci-fi novel for years. When he finally does, he's going to name one of the aliens Malpac Tam.

Do you get it? It's my name backwards. Finally, people are recognizing that you are an alien. How many of Jupiter's moons are bigger than the Earth's moon? And then for bonus points, list them. But just how many of Jupiter's moons are bigger than the Earth's moon? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Get us your entry by... By the 25th of March.

That'd be Tuesday at 8 a.m. Pacific time. I think we're done. We believe in you, Tim. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about Nerf darts. Thank you, and good night. You can call me Nalpak. He's Bruce Betts, the director of Projects for the Planetary Society, and

he does join us every week here for What's Up. E-curve step. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by the warm members of the Planetary Society. Clear skies. Thank you.