Science Sunday: Dinosaurs are (and were) Real

I’ve had a pretty fun summer.

Early in the summer, I met a man who believed that most everything in science is a conspiracy against his religion.

I’m not familiar with the beef between him and tens of thousands of scientists all of the world who don’t know him or his religion, but he was certain that the fossils I claimed to have seen in museums must be fakes. He was especially certain of this when the fossils were of early hominids.

I invited him to come to one museum so that he could see them for himself.

He wasn’t interested.

Here are a few pictures of fossils at The Field Museum. I didn’t take many. I really wish I could have captured a shot of the Giant Sloth skeleton. It is standing up with its front paws on a tree; it’s about 2 & 1/2 stories tall.

I always get an astounding feeling when I walk into a few of the exhibits at The Field Museum.  You step into a room and it is full of the fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs you have never even heard of before.

I highly recommend it.

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Field Museum

Hey, friends.

About a week ago, or so, I rode my bike to Chicago’s Field Museum for one of their free admission days.

It was a nice, longish bike ride.  Surprisingly, the museum doesn’t restrict much photography at all.  However, it was pretty dark throughout each exhibit which makes it tough for taking pictures.

My favorite items are the fossils. No doubt. But the rest is super incredible.

Coming in second and third are the stuffed animals throughout whatever section has all of the animals and then the Native American artifacts & architecture, etc.

Over the next few days I’ll upload a bunch of my favorite shots from this dark trip through the Field Museum.

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After a Month

Well that was a long month.

Flickr upgraded awesomely in the last month and allows much larger photos.  I’ve been looking around for a personal site that allows bigger images than I have here, but I’m still hoping someone can point me to a great and relatively cheap choice.

Anyway, I have so many shots jumbling up my computer that I can get back on the horse and upload more often.

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Kato is a lazy dog. He naps about 16 hours per day. He also seems to be getting a bit fat.

About a week ago, I stepped out of the shower and Kato was nowhere to be found.  Well, until I did find him, that is.

He started to growl as soon as I walked into the room. I found him in his a closet with his head shoved into his bag of kibble.

He went to town. And now, he is on a diet.

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Science Sunday ~ Rainbow Between Storms

(I actually get to supply the photos for this Science Sunday, with the help of our Sun and some water vapor)

Nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei in to helium 93 million miles away fires lots of photons out into the Universe.  Some of those photons eventually bounce off of water molecules overhead.  Like a bullets that ricochet, light that bounces from one point in space proceeds at a different angle than if it bounced off of a different point in space.

In the heat and humidity of a Chicago summer, between strong downpours, this massive rainbow glowed above my neighborhood.

Pretty great.

Once again, demystification through science enhances – rather than diminishes – beauty.

And since I know you nerds like learning about stuff, here is a link to learn a bit more of the details of why and how rainbows appear.  I’ve linked a little ways into the article because most people seem to know that rainbows are natural manifestations of the refraction of light through a prism, like we saw in many elementary and high school science classrooms.

It’s certainly true that it is the bouncing/angling of white light that makes rainbows visible, but there is a bit more interestingness to it.

If you happened to read a few past posts (here and here), you know that your experience of color is simply light flying at different wavelengths.  Your beautiful brain interprets the data from the photocells in your eyes. Slower speeds of light show up in your vision as different colors than faster light – or, more accurately, different wavelengths of light.

Interestingly, each drop of water fluttering in the air sends out the full spectrum, but only one color reaches your eye. Each drop spreads the white light from the Sun the same way – fanning out at different angles and wavelengths (this page of the article has a great shopping cart analogy).

Therefore, the drops high in the sky refract all the light, but only the wavelength (think speed) of red is at the proper angle to hit your eye.  When the light bounces off of water molecules hanging lower in the sky, the angle to your eye is different. Therefore, the colors missing your eye from the high drops hit you directly when bounced off of the lower drops; you see a different color.

So, you see a huge band – high in the sky – of each color of the visible spectrum of light. There are lots of other wavelengths shooting around, as well, our eyes and brains just don’t bother interpreting them.

Ninety-three million miles – off some water vapor – and into your eyes – nothing but net.

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