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The Witch Head Nebula (Image Credit: NASA/STScI Digitized Sky Survey/Noel Carboni)

The Witch Head Nebula—formally named IC 2118—sits in the constellation Orion about 1,000 light years from Earth. (In case you’re having a hard time seeing the witch, her face is in profile facing to the right.) That bright blue star in the center of the image is Rigel, Orion’s brightest star and the sixth-brightest in our sky. The star is responsible for the nebula’s blue glow, but it doesn’t appear that color because Rigel is a blue star. Rather, the dust grains simply reflect blue light more efficiently than red wavelengths. It’s much the same reason that our own sky is blue.

Happy Halloween!

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A 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Monday set off a tsunami that leveled whole villages on the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia. At least 343 people were killed, and more are still missing. Survivors say they had no warning that a giant wall of water was headed their way: two buoys off the islands that were key to the tsunami warning system had been vandalized.

The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed nearly a quarter of a million people, drove home the need to develop more and better warning systems. These systems can give people time to move to higher ground and get out of the way of the destructive water. But, as the most recent tsunami shows, we still have a long way to go.

A diagram of a DART buoy (credit: NOAA)

That seems to be the message in an assessment of the U.S. tsunami warning system, released earlier this month by the National Research Council. “Many coastal communities in the United States still face challenges in responding to a tsunami that arrives in less than an hour after the triggering event,” the scientists write.

Since 2004, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has improved their tsunami detection network. The main component of the system are the DART buoys, which are stationed in strategic locations in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and measure wave height. If a buoy measures an unusual wave, it transmits that information to shore.

The buoy stations are supposed to last about four years, but most don’t make it past one, according to the report. They have become detached and drifted away. Sensors have failed. As many as 30 percent have been inoperable at any one time. As a result, the network has experience outages and compromised the ability of warning centers to issue tsunami warnings and forecasts.

To make matters worse, the two warning centers—based in Alaska and Hawaii—are not working together. They use different technology, have different responsibilities and are managed by separate offices. They can—and have—issued conflicting warning messages. In 2005, the Alaska office issued a warning to Oregon and California; Hawaii said it was unnecessary.

In addition, more efforts are needed to prepare the public for what is an incredibly rare, but deeply dangerous, event.

“Minimizing future losses to the nation from tsunamis requires persistent progress across the broad spectrum of efforts,” the NRC report scientists write. “Sustained efforts…will be needed for communities to prepare for an event that may occur years to decades in the future, but only affords minutes or hours for people to respond.”

It doesn't matter if climate change drives polar bears extinct, right? (photo courtesy of flickr user Just Being Myself)

It’s easy to ignore climate change, to say it’s not a problem. Or, at least, it’s not my problem.

That’s not because climate change isn’t happening or because humans aren’t responsible for it—the excuses for non-action given by many people. In truth, Americans can ignore climate change because, for most of us, it’s not going to be a problem.

Sure, permafrost is melting in the Arctic, but hardly anyone lives in Alaska. Sea level is rising, but unless you live near the beach you’ll be fine. The weather has gone a bit wonky and plants now grow at different times, but that doesn’t matter unless you’re a farmer or a really avid gardener.

This kind of thinking, though, requires ignoring much of the rest of the world as well as our own descendants.

The changes that are happening today here in the United States are small, and we’re a rich enough country that we should be able to adapt for a while. Farmers can plant different crop varieties or change irrigation practices, for example. We can build barriers to hold back the sea.

But other nations do not have the luxury of waiting or the means for adaptation. The islands of the Maldives will cease to exist, leaving the population of 350,000 with nowhere to go. When the Andean glaciers that supply water to Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru melt and disappear forever, which is expected in the next 20 years or so, 77 million people will be left without a source of water. And while droughts will become more frequent, so will devastating floods like the recent one in Pakistan.

Sure, there will be some winners in all of this. Some places will become more hospitable to people and agriculture. Shipping companies will have a new, faster route available when the Arctic finally opens up. The harsh reality is, though, that people are going to die because of climate change. How many, where and when have yet to be determined, but it is going to happen. We can limit the pain by taking action now, by being a responsible nation and limiting our greenhouse gas emissions.

I don’t think it will happen, though. We’ll debate and debate and argue over nonsensical things like scientists supposedly conspiring to fake data or to somehow get rich by promoting climate change. Meanwhile, temperatures rise, the Arctic melts and islands disappear.

But this will all happen somewhere else, to some other guy, sometime in the future.

You see, it’s just that easy to ignore climate change.

The garden at 19 New King Street in Bath where William Herschel discovered Uranus (photo by Sarah Zielinski)

On March 31, 1781, William Herschel, a German musician and composer, looked through a homemade 7-foot-long telescope in his back garden in Bath, England and saw something odd. He thought it was a comet, but it didn’t act quite like other comets. And when scientists of the time calculated the object’s distance and motion, they declared that it was actually a planet, the first new planet to be discovered since ancient times.

Herschel wasn’t any amateur astronomer. He was a gifted telescope maker and observer of the skies, and he was well known to scientists of his time. Several of these scientists, including the president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, urged Herschel to name his planet in honor of the king, George III, figuring that the king would have to honor Herschel in return and that this might allow Herschel to leave music and pursue astronomy full time.

The strategem worked. Herschel named the planet Georgium Sidus (the Georgian Planet) and, after much negotiations and an audition, the king hired Herschel as his personal astronomer at Windsor. The pay wasn’t great—only £200, less than he earned as a musician and conductor in Bath—but his only duty was to entertain the royal family when requested, leaving plenty of time for observing the skies.

Herschel would continue making discoveries, including two moons of Saturn, two moons of his Georgian Planet and infrared radiation. He also coined the word “asteroid.” It should also be noted that he had a most excellent assistant, his sister Caroline, who was a gifted astronomer in her own right (but a subject for another day).

The name Georgium Sidus didn’t stick, though. Other, non-English astronomers of the time argued that the name just didn’t fit the pattern. The other five known planets—Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter—were all named after gods and goddesses of classical times. Eventually the planet was named Uranus, the father of Cronus (Saturn) and grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter), though the name didn’t come into use until after Herschel was dead.

The garden where Herschel discovered his planet and the home to which it is attached are now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy.

One of the things I love about visiting the U.K. is British television. Specifically what my friend calls “quiz shows.” That’s not quite the right name for them, though, because they usually consist of a panel (or two) of comedians discussing anything from current events to music to natural history (a favorite is “QI“). The questions only start the talking, and scoring is just for fun. But I was still pretty shocked to turn on the TV one day to find a panel judging scientific and academic theories. It was a show called “It’s Only a Theory,” and on it academics are invited to present theories like “texting is good for the English language.” The panel then decides whether to keep the theory or toss it out.

On the episode I watched, Chris Budd, a mathematician at the University of Bath, presented his theory, “there is nothing random about chaos.” I’m still floored that such a thing could exist on TV (and wish they would show it here in the U.S.). Here’s how the segment went: