A Partial Goodbye

As of a few days ago, my blogging activities have moved to the Nature Network, an assemblage of science-related blogs hosted by Nature, the pre-eminent British scientific journal. Needless to say, the Nature blog will be more science-oriented, hopefully with a slightly personal touch. Come and check it out here!

Pretty Iceland Pictures

Ok, no real theme here, but time to indulge in a brief slideshow of photographic highlights.


The Blue Lagoon - pools of hydrothermally heated water that create a glorious swimming hole no matter what the weather!


An unintentionally blurry yet beautiful shot of the Blue Lagoon.


A ginormous waterfall fed by glacial meltwater.


Surface runoff at Geysir, Iceland's most famous geyser. And yes, those two words are related...


Skogafoss from above...


...and from below.


Wind-carved rocks. Very Mars-like in many ways: basalt re-worked by wind.




An ice cave at the foot of a (rapidly receding) glacier.


Sunset in Reykjavik.

A Tale of Two Continents

Alas, the whirlwind month of April is drawing to a close, meaning that I will soon be working 5 days a week again. That will be a bit of an adjustment. The final bit of April travel was to Iceland, the glorious geological wonderland literally split between North America and Europe.

There are two types of the Earth's crust - continental crust and oceanic crust. You can probably guess where one might find each type. Oceanic crust is generally heavier, so when it reaches the edge of a continent, it sinks beneath the continental crust and ultimately dives down toward the center of the Earth to be melted and recycled. New oceanic crust is made at oceanic ridges, where hot magma is pushed up and onto the ocean floor, where it cools to become crust. So the whole cycle is a conveyor belt of sorts, moving at the blistering speed of roughly 2 cm per year. This whole process is nicely shown here:


Iceland is part of the oceanic ridge - the only place on Earth where oceanic crust is made above sea level. The western part of the island is part of the North American plate; the east is part of the Eurasian plate. Below is a photo of Thingvellir, one of the more dramatic locations where you can really see the distinction between the plates. The big cliff is the North American plate; a couple of kilometers to the east across a flat valley is the Eurasian plate.



It's pretty rare for geology to be so explicit. It's even more rare to overlay geological history and political history: Thingvellir is also the site of the world's oldest Parliament, where, as far back as 930, clan leaders would gather to announce the laws, their voices amplified by the cliffs.

The Birth of a Nation?

Got back from a brief trip to Scotland the other day, during which we had the privilege of visiting the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh. It's easy to view countries as permanent entities, set in stone by the lines of a map. Clearly, though, this isn't the case. The lines are both arbitrary and ephemeral; nations are always being born and gobbled up, as shown by the recent creation of East Timor and Kosovo. Scotland has always been a tricky political entity, but these days they're pushing for full autonomy from England. Roughly 300 years ago, Scotland joined with England in order to centralize government, etc. in London, but now many Scots are looking to reverse that. Just last year, the Scotish National Party rose to power for the first time, and they are currently trying to forge a fully independent Scotland. But political will is just the tip of the iceberg; demonstrating that Scotland can be economically self-sufficient is a different issue.

It was fascinating to observe discussions about how Scotland should go about this. In today's world of continued specialization, the consensus seemed to be to focus on selected areas of expertise rather than to build new infrastructure behind brand new industries. For example, Scotland specializes in shipbuilding and renewable energy derives from tides and wind. They seem well positioned to make a contribution (and a lot of money) by marketing effective tidal energy technologies. Another vital industry is tourism, and our hosts were very interested to know what Americans thought of Scotland. All destinations have a few items associated with them. France, for example: berets, bread, and wine come to mind. Holland has wooden clogs, tulips, and windmills. Scotland is fortunate to be relatively well branded. Scotland evokes thoughts of kilts, Scotch, bagpipes, and Braveheart for most Americans, and this type of name recognition is rare. Whether or not such stereotypes should be propagated is another issue, but it certainly doesn't hurt tourism.

I came away from the visit feeling slightly indoctrinated (being hosted, by the Scottish National Party, we only got one side of the argument), but nonetheless impressed. Scotland has just 5 million people, and they have historically punched above their weight, so to speak, making many important contributions to the world. There's no reason to think this can't continue.

London Marathon!

One prolonged break later, I'm back, and fresh off a painful but quite satisfying London Marathon. Unfortunately, I was a couple of minutes off my personal best time, but taking into account the bathroom break and the traffic jam at mile 1, it would have been very close. Oh well, guess that's a reason to do another one...

My last few marathons were rather haphazard affairs. I think I did them mostly just to do them, not necessarily to test or improve myself. So even if I was a couple minutes shy of my goal, I was proud of how I ran London, in a competitive state of mind. Some notes and observations:

- Beautiful day at the start; patches of clouds, mid 50s. For some reason there were about a dozen hot air balloons as well.
- Marathons tend to double as charity clothes drives. Right before the start, thousands of people shed a longsleeve shirt, a jacket, etc., and just toss it to the side. As if the 10 minutes between when you drop off your bag (to be picked up at the finish line) and the start must be spent at the perfect temperature. The good news is that at many races, the clothes picked up off the street are donated.
- I passed a group of 6 or 7 Masai warriors around mile 6. These guys were decked out in their tradition garb, carrying spears and massive shields. Rumor has it they drank cow's blood and used pieces of tire rubber as shoes. Impressive.

- Rainstorm from miles 12-16. Nice change of pace I suppose.
- Brought it along, but didn't end up using the ipod. In events sanctioned by the US track and field association, listening to such devices is illegal. In one race last year, officials pored over photos of runners crossing the finish line and disqualified anyone with headphones!
- Accompanying the commercialization and soccer-mom-ization of the marathon (hey, nothing wrong with that), name-bearing shirts have become all the rage. This way, thousands of spectators can follow the directions and yell "GO (insert name on shirt here), GO!!" Apparently I spent much of the race nearby a "Jess" based on several dozen shouts.
- Ok, time to rant about the course. First of all, with 35,000 runners, you would think they would route you down large roads, no? Not so much; in many cases, we were on side roads...and often one lane of said road. There were also some major traffic jams (particularly at the beginning) due to some poorly positioned toilets. Secondly, one of the best parts about marathons is that they provide a chance for a city to show itself off. In DC, the course goes by the Pentagon, Georgetown, the Mall, the White House, the Capitol, etc. At Disney World, you get a tour of all four theme parks. In London, you get a tour of sketchy East London back roads. Other than a traverse of the Tower bridge at 12.5, we didn't see any awe-inspiring parts of the city until the last 2 miles.
- The crowds were amazing - so much energy when I had none.
- A race number earns you a free day's worth of Tube rides! Given prices of one-way tickets (more than $14) that's not a bad deal.
- Got a jolt of inspiration seeing the elite men on the other side of the road during the switchback. Saw Felix Limo (last year's winner) and Ryan Hall (US champ)...clearly household names. Seriously though, 5-minute miles for 26.2 miles is insane, and seeing it in person makes it even more impressive. I know it's apples and oranges, but world-class marathoners have my vote for best athletes on the planet.
- My sources tell me I was a couple minutes behind Gordon Ramsay, the celebrity chef.
- One of the best things about a marathon is that it's such a mental game. I'm convinced anyone can do it, it's just a matter of willpower. But one of the worst things you can do is convince yourself at mile 16 or 17 that you're almost there. At this point, you're still feeling pretty good, past halfway, no problem, right? Not at all. Get to mile 22 and then we'll talk.

So it was a great race despite my few complaints. Great crowd support, great enthusiasm on the course; a reminder of why I enjoy running such races so much. And with that, enjoy a clip of yesterday's champs here.

A lost Opportunity?

Potentially bad news coming out of NASA headquarters today: the Mars Exploration Rovers, those hardy robots that have just celebrated their 4th anniversary on Mars, might fall victim to budget cuts. In the worst case scenario, one or both of the rovers would be shut down, though they could be revived if the funds to operate them become available. So far, this appears to be only a possibility, with NASA now vehemently denying that they would willfully pull the plug, but the fact that this is even on the drawing board is pretty alarming.

Sunset on Mars: symbolism, or just a pretty picture?

Our record of successfully landing robotic missions on Mars is not particularly good - a little over 50%. Each mission costs hundreds of millions of dollars (the MERs were $800 million), so each successful mission is really twice that. So if you're fortunate enough to have two very capable rovers operating successfully on the surface, it seems pretty clear from an economic point of view that you would want to maximize that return, squeeze every last spectrum out of those rovers. That's not even considering the science potential of continued operations. Both rovers have now essentially proven the past existence of water, and continued exploration could very well tell us what the water was like, how long it was around, and if life could have gained a foothold.

It's hard to point the finger in this kind of situation, because everyone is trying to do what's best. NASA only has so much money to work with, and no amount of scientific potential will change that. Any time money is limited, something is going to have to go; the remarkable thing in this case is that such a high-profile, successful mission may be on the chopping block.

The next generation of extremophiles?

We humans are pretty picky. We complain when our conditions get too hot, too cold, too acidic, too salty...the list of environments we don't like goes on and on. But microbes are different, able to eke out a living just about anywhere: acid mine drainage, deep sea hydrothermal vents, salt lakes, boiling deserts, etc. Scientists have now identified yet another "extreme" environment - an ice-covered alkaline lake in Antarctica ("extreme" is a subjective word meant to signify something extreme by human standards...the microbes are perfectly happy there and would very well find a Florida beach house "extreme").

Most extremophiles have learned to adapt to one particularly challenging condition. Some deal well with heat, others with salt, others with radiation. But microbes in this lake, Lake Untersee, would have to deal both with extremely cold temperatures and very high pH levels. Acidophilic ("acid-loving") microbes have been relatively well characterized around mine drainage sites or naturally acidic places like the Rio Tinto in Spain, but alkaline-adapted organisms are rare. Untersee is more alkaline than Clorox bleach! To combine that with cold temperature adaptations would be pretty extreme indeed.

Thus far in our exploration of the Earth's biosphere, we've found life just about everywhere we've found water. I would be amazed, but not particularly surprised, if Lake Untersee was stocked with a rich microbial community.


Above: the distribution of known sub-glacial lakes in Antarctica.