Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps.309E & 310E: The Heat Is On & Near Neighbor
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s two stories:
- 2016 was the warmest year Earth has seen in living memory. Humans are the cause of 90% of the temperature rise. We must study the climate more, not less.
- Carson Fuls discovered the 70m diameter asteroid 2017 AG13. It came 2 Lunar Distances from Earth this time. Next pass is 2091 and it is not expected to collide in the forseable future. Then he discovered 2017 BH30, which passed 3.5 Earth diameters away.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
309E – The Heat is On
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has published an extensive data based review, analysis, and summary of the Earth’s Climate. 2016 was hotter than 2015 which was hotter than 2014. 2016 is the warmest year the Earth has been in the more than 180 years of record keeping. Overall in 2016 the whole Earth was 1.8 F above the 1951-1980 average. The Arctic in 2016 was 7.2F higher than it was the pre-industrial age.
The average extent of Arctic sea ice in 2016 has shrunk by 400,000 square miles while the Antarctic sea ice in 2016 has been reduced by 970,000 square miles compared to the respective averages for the years 1981-2010. Natural factors such as volcanos, solar changes, variations in the Earth’s orbit, and El Nino accounted for about 10% of the 2016 warming. The rest, 90%, were due to human activity particularly the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
The future is much harder to predict than it is to make physical measurements of past and present temperatures. The Earth’s climate is chaotic in the sense that small changes in temperature can initiate events which produce large changes in the environment.
This no time to cutback on making measurements of our home planet from space and on the ground.
310E – Near Neighbor
My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was using the new hundred million pixel camera on our team’s Schmidt telescope located on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona, when he discovered 2017 AG13. It passes near the Earth’s orbit twice a year on its own 345 day path around the Sun. When Carson spotted it, 9 lunar distances from him it was heading in our direction at about nine and a half miles per second. Three days later it came to less than two times the distance the Moon’s distance from us. Carson’s new space rock, 2017 AG13’s orbit, can bring it to less than 2,000 miles from the surface of our planet. It will not come near the Earth again until 2091 and will not strike the Earth in the foreseeable future. 2017 AG13 is slightly larger than the small asteroid which exploded over Chelyabinsk Russia, creating a sonic boom that injured nearly 1,500 people in February of 2013. If it had been on an impact trajectory, Carson’s early discovery, would have given humans the time to calculate where it would hit and thus be able to put out a warning for people in the affected area to stay away from doors and windows. Less than three weeks later Carson was using the same equipment when he discovered another small space rock, 2017 BH30, which came to a bit more than an Earth’s circumference from our home planet.
Carson’s recent discoveries illustrate the fact that asteroid hunters now have the capability to detect small space rocks before they make a close approach to Earth.
365 Days of Astronomy
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As we wrap up today’s episode, we are looking forward to unravel more stories from the Universe. With every new discovery from ground-based and space-based observatories, and each milestone in space exploration, we come closer to understanding the cosmos and our place within it.
Until next time let the stars guide your curiosity