Zoom: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees: How Everything Moves by Bob Berman
Authors: Bob Berman
Tags: General, science, Essay/s, Physics, Geophysics, Optics & Light, Science / Essays, Science / General, Science / Physics / General, Science / Physics / Geophysics, Science / Physics / Optics & Light
Ads: Link
vagaries of light speed, including the way it slows down under certain conditions. Most of all, he gained global renown for his dramatic pendulum, proof of our whirling planet, for which he received the prestigious Copley Medal of the Royal Society in 1855—that era’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize.
Sadly, Léon Foucault fared no better than Coriolis in the longevity department. Mirroring a dramatic swing of one of his pendulums, at the peak of his fame and to the horror of his family and friends, he suffered a sudden and startling physical deterioration that was probably the result of a rapidly progressing form of multiple sclerosis. He died in 1868, at the age of forty-eight.
If you manage to overlook his name near the pendulums oscillating nonstop at science museums throughout our spinning world, you might notice it among the seventy-two names of science luminaries—including Coriolis—inscribed by Gustave Eiffel on the first balcony of his tower.
CHAPTER 6: Frozen
The Unhurried Riddles of Snow and Ice
Trust not one night’s ice.
—GEORGE HERBERT, JACULA PRUDENTUM (1651)
If you look at a map of Alaska and stick a pin right in the center, you’ll be close to Fairbanks. In China or India, Fairbanks would be called a town, maybe even a large village. But in this ultra-low-density state, with an average of approximately one person per square mile, Fairbanks officially earns the “city” moniker even though it has a stoic population of merely thirty thousand.
It was late winter, and a short drive on tires that went thump thump thump for a while—their flat spots were caused by the rubber freezing during overnight parking—took me away from all traces of Fairbanks. It’s easy to leave civilization behind in Alaska. In 2013, taking along a tour group of forty-four adventurers, I’d been heading east for nearly two hours, toward the Yukon. But the sparsely traveled road never makes it there. Or anywhere close. It ends at Chena Hot Springs.
The aurora borealis dances above many places, but nowhere does it appear more often than in Chena, where it is particularly striking against the dark, inky skies. The reason is simple. All auroras are merely small sections of an enormous glowing doughnut that surrounds Earth’s magnetic poles. As we’ve seen, the northern pole lies adjacent to a barren Canadian island in the territory known as Nunavut. Whenever solar emissions get particularly intense, the auroral oval widens and expands southward. Then people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and, in extreme cases, even Florida get to see it from their backyards.
That happens every few years. More usually the aurora borealis forms a steady ring that hovers over the middle of Alaska. Right in the Chena Hot Springs–Fairbanks area. For Fairbanksans, the aurora is more familiar than deer ticks are to northeastern suburbanites.
This was my sixth wintertime trip to this region. I had been the aurora lecturer for an Astronomy magazine tour group back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and now, with solar activity once more on the rise, I was doing it again for a private science company. But this year I had embarked on an additional quest for a specific polar experience: hidden natural motion in the white wilderness.
An aurora shimmers over central Alaska in March 2014. Though its motion seems leisurely, this light show is the result of broken atom fragments from the sun striking us at 400 miles per second. (Anjali Bermain)
Alaska’s vast frozen landscape includes quirky dynamic aspects that lie beyond most people’s ken. But this wasteland’s animation really starts with the simplicity of ice.
Flowing rivers brake to a screeching halt in October. In Alaska, this creates flat white highways that last through April, allowing isolated villages to be reached overland. When that happens the landscape metamorphoses into a motionless still life. Thus, for most of the year, the polar realm resembles the desert.
Water’s change
Sadly, Léon Foucault fared no better than Coriolis in the longevity department. Mirroring a dramatic swing of one of his pendulums, at the peak of his fame and to the horror of his family and friends, he suffered a sudden and startling physical deterioration that was probably the result of a rapidly progressing form of multiple sclerosis. He died in 1868, at the age of forty-eight.
If you manage to overlook his name near the pendulums oscillating nonstop at science museums throughout our spinning world, you might notice it among the seventy-two names of science luminaries—including Coriolis—inscribed by Gustave Eiffel on the first balcony of his tower.
CHAPTER 6: Frozen
The Unhurried Riddles of Snow and Ice
Trust not one night’s ice.
—GEORGE HERBERT, JACULA PRUDENTUM (1651)
If you look at a map of Alaska and stick a pin right in the center, you’ll be close to Fairbanks. In China or India, Fairbanks would be called a town, maybe even a large village. But in this ultra-low-density state, with an average of approximately one person per square mile, Fairbanks officially earns the “city” moniker even though it has a stoic population of merely thirty thousand.
It was late winter, and a short drive on tires that went thump thump thump for a while—their flat spots were caused by the rubber freezing during overnight parking—took me away from all traces of Fairbanks. It’s easy to leave civilization behind in Alaska. In 2013, taking along a tour group of forty-four adventurers, I’d been heading east for nearly two hours, toward the Yukon. But the sparsely traveled road never makes it there. Or anywhere close. It ends at Chena Hot Springs.
The aurora borealis dances above many places, but nowhere does it appear more often than in Chena, where it is particularly striking against the dark, inky skies. The reason is simple. All auroras are merely small sections of an enormous glowing doughnut that surrounds Earth’s magnetic poles. As we’ve seen, the northern pole lies adjacent to a barren Canadian island in the territory known as Nunavut. Whenever solar emissions get particularly intense, the auroral oval widens and expands southward. Then people in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and, in extreme cases, even Florida get to see it from their backyards.
That happens every few years. More usually the aurora borealis forms a steady ring that hovers over the middle of Alaska. Right in the Chena Hot Springs–Fairbanks area. For Fairbanksans, the aurora is more familiar than deer ticks are to northeastern suburbanites.
This was my sixth wintertime trip to this region. I had been the aurora lecturer for an Astronomy magazine tour group back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and now, with solar activity once more on the rise, I was doing it again for a private science company. But this year I had embarked on an additional quest for a specific polar experience: hidden natural motion in the white wilderness.
An aurora shimmers over central Alaska in March 2014. Though its motion seems leisurely, this light show is the result of broken atom fragments from the sun striking us at 400 miles per second. (Anjali Bermain)
Alaska’s vast frozen landscape includes quirky dynamic aspects that lie beyond most people’s ken. But this wasteland’s animation really starts with the simplicity of ice.
Flowing rivers brake to a screeching halt in October. In Alaska, this creates flat white highways that last through April, allowing isolated villages to be reached overland. When that happens the landscape metamorphoses into a motionless still life. Thus, for most of the year, the polar realm resembles the desert.
Water’s change
Similar Books
