LIFE project

Just a reminder that this Friday is the day we test Transpermia on the life project!

http://planetary.org/life/launch.html

Check it out!

Radiation Scale explained!

7 – Major accident

Chernobyl Disaster
- We all know (at least I hope) of the Chernobyl catastrophe, 6000 dead within 4 years from the radiation, 31 dead from the initial blast, world wide radiation spread.
The worst contaminated areas getting a reading of above 200,000 roentgens per hour.
Now what is a roentgen you may ask? well even if I explain it, it wont mean as much as saying that at 500 roentgens over a 5 hour period (100 roentgens per hour) , you will die of radiation sickness within that time , the "normal dose" for a human to receive over a year from things like cell phones, cosmic rays and background radiation is about 0.023 roentgens per hour.

200,000 roentgens per hour is still being recorded in parts of Chernobyl, with a half life of 10 years and in some cases 25 years (strontium 90), often taking between 10 and 20 half lives to break down to "safe" levels, chernobyl may be inhabitable for 500-5000 years, Yeah that's not a type FIVE THOUSAND years for strontium 90..

That is the breadth of a level 7 catastrophe.
Fukushima Nuclear Meltdown.

The incident that's all over the news lately, but what does it mean?
Well it has been declared a level 7 incident.
This is an incident that has caused wide spread long term damage, that needs an extreme long term plan of action.

Fukushima now has a 20 km exclusion zone and a 30km volunteer evacuation zone outside that.

The widespread effects you may not have heard of yet however, Iodine-131 has been found in cows all across the United States of America, the cows are suspected to have eaten tainted grass, and although this amount is neither a health concern nor deadly, it is still present.
The more pressing concern was the discovery Cesium 134 and 137 as far away from japan as "Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Shanghai, Inner Mongolia, Jiangshu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei and Ningxia in China, and in California, USA" -wikipedia
The reason this is concerning is that the half life of cesium is 30 years, with a ten year safe breakdown.
So it will infect target cells, and be a part of the food chain in these areas for another 300 years.
This can be a good and bad thing as it will cause mutations, some of those mutations may be a good evolutionary step, however most will just make it poisonous for human consumption.

6 – Serious accident

Kyshtym Disaster
The Kyshtym Disaster happened in 1957, and I am not all that familiar with it, so any information i can present too you would be purely off of the wikipedia page.
From what I can gather however is that a cooling tower exploded, and dumped 80 tonnes of radioactive material into the atmosphere..
(that's bad)

5 – Accident with wider consequences
The factors required for a level 5 are.

Impact on people and environment
This includes:

Limited release of radioactive ­material likely to require i­mplementation of some planned­ countermeasures.
Several deaths from ­radiation.

and


Impact on radiological barriers and control

Which includes:


Severe damage to reactor core.
Release of large quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high probability of significant public exposure. This could arise from a major accident or fire.

The most common level 5 accident referenced is
3 Mile Island was a nuclear power plant in America that due to some design flaws and operator errors started to lose cooling fluid, leading to a melt down in one of its reactors.
Luckily due to good training and past experience death was kept to a minimum and nobody was seen as highly infected.. However the cultural affect (General media and such) was extremely widespread.

4 – Accident with local consequences
The factors required for a level 4 are split into two categories

Impact on people and environment
Minor release of radioactive material unlikely to result in implementation of planned countermeasures other than local food controls.
At least one death from radiation.

Impact on radiological barriers and control
Fuel melt or damage to fuel ­resulting in more than 0.1% release of core inventory.
Release of significant quantities of radioactive material within an installation with a high ­probability of significant public exposure.

An example includes a minor incident in Argentina, where a rod failed to insert correctly killing the operator and injuring two others.

3 – Serious incident

Serious incidents include things like stolen nuclear material and things like radiation burns to at least one person

2 – Incident

an incident is something like, a worker receives slightly more than the annual acceptable radiation limit.

1 – Anomaly

There is no real safety significance with an anomaly.

0 – Deviation (no safety significance)

Theory of Life in the Universe.

Adrian Kent of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, in Ontario, has come up with a new theory as too why we have yet to find extra-terrestrial life.
Kent's idea is that in terms of survival of the fittest (which is the commonly accepted theory of evolution), on a universal scale, the quietest species are the ones that thrive in the universe.

For example, we where unable to detect (and therefore destroy) microbial life for a very long time, them remaining quiet and undetectable left us (on the outside the more intelligent species) unable to do anything about them.

So on a galactic scale if a species can go relatively unnoticed by more dominant species then they are less likely to be taken over.. And so therefore according to survival of the fittest will continue to thrive.

My longstanding theory is that we are the first, there has always had to be a "First" and I believe that we are them, I only subscribe to this theory because it makes me feel special, like I am a pioneer.. but when I bring myself back to being a sane and happy human, I like to go grander and say that somewhere out there.. in the great expanse of space and time, there is a species like us, but thousands of years advanced, waiting to welcome us into our sci-fi fantasy.

Id just like to add to this post something that my friend mentioned after reading my draft of this..

He said that most scientists and even regular humans view first contact as being the most important date in the timeline of mankind, he also pointed out that the Gregorian calendar starts at 0 based on an the most important date to the Gregorian's (Gregorian's being Christians) and that the 0 is the year of Christs (birth or execution not sure here) but at any rate, he believes that the calendars should should logically start from 0 again, with 0 being first contact. so BC will be before contact and AC will be after contact.

What are your thoughts leave us a comment below, what do you think about alien life??

Follow up to the LIFE project

Bill nye has just sat down to tell everyone about the LIFE project and get some more promotion out there. I posted about it before so no need too do it again but here is the video! For the love of life, DONATE!

Shuttle Life program by Bill Nye

Shuttle Life

See the link above.. Click it..

Why click it you may ask??

Because it is a link to planetary.org which you should visit every day regardless..
But that link is special because it goes to the page for the shuttle life program.

What is the shuttle life program?

Well basically they want too put a whole bunch of funky microbes onto a space shuttle and launch it into space..
See how the organisms survive, too see if life really could have come from outer space on a rock from a distant planet..

But doing things like this is expensive, so they want moneys.. Well deserved moneys..
The planetary society was founded by the legendary CARL SAGAN, and is now founded by the amazing Bill Nye the science guy!

Donations can be anything but as incentive they have incentives for certain amounts, including a signed image of bill nye!!