Black holes don’t suck!

One of the advantages I feel we have to offer at the PVL is the diversity of experience of our individual members. I purposely recruit Astronomers, Engineers, Geologists, Physicists, Atmospheric Scientists or really anyone who has the interest and is holding a piece of the puzzle we call planetary science. Last weekend, Christina Smith spent some time going back to her roots as part of a panel hosted by a good friend of the lab, Jesse Rogerson of the Ingenium in Ottawa.

By Dr. Christina Smith

I may or may not have mentioned this in a previous blog post, but prior to joining the Planetary Volatiles Laboratory at YorkU, my research was in stellar astrophysics (my PhD and a short post-doc), primarily studying what small dying stars were made of and surrounded by (they have a tendency to shed bits of themselves all over the place). In fact prior to that, I dabbled in theoretical particle physics for a while (my undergraduate Masters’ project – simulating interactions of top quarks at the Large Hadron Collider to try and infer something about the physics of extra dimensions) but that’s a story for another day...

Anyway, a few weeks ago I was approached to be part of a Royal Canadian Institute of Science panel discussing back holes, which though not related to what I do now, is something I am familiar with in the grand scheme of stellar evolution from my PhD and short post-doc. Specifically, they wanted someone nerdy enough to talk about black holes as they are portrayed in popular culture. I am definitely nerdy enough and this was a really cool and interesting topic to talk about (and gave an excellent excuse for a lot of evenings spent in front of my TV binge watching sci-fi movies and TV shows).

I also figured this was a good topic to chat about – a tad outside the norm but I figured that was ok. So, before I delve into the world of black holes in popular culture, I’m going to digress a little into Black Holes 101.

The Rover Exploration Challenge Outreach Program – Want to participate?

Over the past two summers, the PVL has run a youth outreach event at the Ontario Science Centre as part of our work with the Government of Ontario's Ministry of Research, Innovation and Science (now part of the Ministry of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade). Leading the charge has been PhD Candidate, Charissa Campbell. Today we make those materials broadly available, as we had previously done with the associated board game.

By Charissa Campbell

Every summer our research group demonstrates the Rover Exploration Challenge at the Ontario Science Centre. Over the course of a day, participants plan observations for a simulated rover to achieve certain goals for their respective science group. With the plentiful experience in mission operations within our lab we were able to successfully create this outreach program to educate anyone on the true conditions needed to maintain and do science with a rover on another planet.

A new opportunity rose this year for the Challenge when we were invited to showcase it at the Space Educators Institute (SEI) at Western University. SEI educates Ontario science teachers on astronomy related topics. This was the perfect opportunity for us to take our Challenge further and apply it in classrooms. We were able to modify the program so teachers could take the Challenge back to the class and educate their students on rover mission operations. Since this package has been set-up to be shared easily, we wanted to try to extend the offer to anyone that is interested. This blog post will explain how you could run the Rover Exploration Challenge for friends, families or in a classroom.

On the supersonic meteorology of exoplanets

 

As Giang Nguyen gets deeper into his PhD, the atmospheric conditions he is analyzing just keep getting more and more extreme! Above, the subject of his latest project: looking at winds on a ultra-short period planet which orbits incredibly close to its parent star.

By Giang Nguyen

As I progress with my PhD research hoping to graduate in a couple of years, I delve deeper and deeper into the field of exoplanets. No longer working on Mars, I now model the atmospheres of distant planets as well as hypothetical planets yet to be discovered. Continuing my work from my internship in the UK where I started with modelling the thin SO2 atmosphere of Io, I now expand my model to analyze icy-Earths and lava planets.

For the icy-Earth cases, I inferred what kind of atmosphere would arise from a water dominated world with sub-freezing surface temperatures (50 K - 270 K). With an atmosphere generated from the sublimation of ice/frost at the surface on the dayside, this creates a pressure gradient which causes the wind to blow from the dayside to the nightside. To give an example, one water-vapour dominant atmosphere has a maximum pressure of 0.45 kPa (0.4% of the Earth’s atmosphere) where winds reach up to 950 m/s. With winds going much faster than Mach 1 and there’s precipitation too! It’s rather exciting to think that somewhere in the universe there’s a blizzard blowing at twice the speed of sound.

Space from Across the Pond

 Our newest recruit, MSc Candidate Hemani Kalucha, introduces herself in this post reflecting back on what she did this past summer before joining the PVL.

By Hemani Kalucha

Last summer, I had the opportunity to work at the European Space Agency centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. There are a few charming eccentricities about this place that really define the Dutch experience. To start off, the Dutch bike everywhere. By this I mean, the town of Leiden is only a few km square, practically the size of a university campus if you will, and walking around is a game of constantly dodging the wave of ever-present bikers whizzing past you. The undeniably flat and uniform landscape here is a gift, and they use it well. 

They are also the most skilled bikers I have ever seen. The first few times my friend and I tried to bike to work, we were shamefully slow compared to the locals. At my most embarrassing, a guy with no hands on his bike handles, not looking at the road, texting on his phone, pedaled faster than me with ease. It has been surprising to learn the impressive range of a bike. Briefly, I have seen someone roll along their suitcase while biking, walk their horse while biking, carry two other people on their bike, connect two bikes to carry a wooden panel, you get the idea. 

As a result of all this biking, Holland has some of the most expensive and interesting bike paths in the world. From the few that I’ve tried out, one was a bike trail through sand dunes and a network of old war bunkers called the Atlantic Wall, one involved biking over a dam with the bright blue sea on both sides, and another used to be a NATO air base runway! The Dutch love their boats as much as they love their bikes. The maze of canals that line the streets of Leiden are forever filled with boat picnics, completely ignorant of my North American perception of a work schedule. I say this a little out of jealousy, but mostly out of respect for their approach to work life balance. 

How far can a golfer hit a drive on Mars… and the Moon?

Click Here to view an animated version of the figure above!

This week, undergrad Noah Stanton takes on a burning question in comparative planetology: how would a change of venue to another planet or Moon affect one's golf game? Read on for his deep-dive! Reminds me a little of some of the tangents I followed in my earlier years!

by Noah Stanton

Have you ever been watching golfers playing on Pebble Beach and thought, ‘What would happen if he or she took that shot on Mars or the Moon?’. I’d assume no, but I am here to tell you this important information. In order to figure out a way to model a golfer’s shot let’s start somewhere we know a little bit better, Earth. 

Modelling a golf shot involves bio-mechanics, aerodynamics, elasticity of the golf ball, etc., which is maybe outside the abilities of a mere blogpost. I will need to make some assumptions, focus on some parts of the swing, and ignore the rest. The two modeled parts of the swing will be:

1)    The initial contact and acceleration due to the club-head hitting the ball
2)    The flight of the ball after the initial contact

Ab astris ad terram, ad astra iterum

This week, a familiar face returns to the lab with Alex Innanen's first post as a MSc student. You may recall a few years ago she worked with us looking at images from Mars' north polar cap. That work has since been published with more outputs on the way. In the interim she chose to pursue more terrestrial projects before returning with us to the stars.

By Alex Innanen

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a graduating student must be in want of an answer to the question: “what’s next?” If I had a dime for every time I heard some variation on that question leading up to my graduation, I would have been able to finance my undergrad. I am here to tell you – it is okay to not know. It’s normal! You will figure it out and it will be fine. Feeling reassured? Or just skeptical? That’s also normal, but trust me, reader, I have plenty of experience with Not Knowing. 

When I was in my final year of my undergraduate, I was volunteering sporadically with PVL and also worrying excessively about what I was going to do once this whole school thing was over. Could I do more school? Maybe, but I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted to do more school in, and also I was very tired from being in school more or less constantly since the age of five. Some people don’t burn out from school – I did. This is also (say it with me) perfectly fine and normal. At any rate, I was rapidly approaching the end of the school year with very little direction. All I had was a summer job, working in the civil engineering department in a geotechnical lab until the end of August. Or so I thought…