Gerhard Ertl Wins Nobel Chemistry Prize
October 11, 2007
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honors Professor Ertl for his groundbreaking studies of chemical reactions on solid surfaces.
He is credited with creating a methodology for demonstrating how different experimental procedures can be used to provide a complete picture of a surface reaction, observing how individual layers of atoms behave on the extremely pure surface of a metal.
Professor Gunnar von Heijne of the Academy of Sciences explains the importance of Ertl’s work.
“From high school we tend to think of chemical processes as happening in water or perhaps in a gas, but in fact a whole lot of scientifically very interesting and practically important chemistry happens on solid surfaces,” he noted. “Think of iron rust, think of catalytic converters on the exhaust pipes of our cars, think of technologies such as fuel cells. Gedrhard Ertl’s scientific insights have laid a firm foundation for modern surface chemistry, and his careful methodological approach has become a model for both academic research and for industrial process development.”
Nobel science prizes are given for contributions to basic understanding of nature, but Professor Ertl’s work also has practical environmental applications. He has studied the process by which nitrogen can be extracted from air for inclusion in artificial fertilizers, a field of huge importance in agriculture. He has also explained oxidation of carbon monoxide on platinum, a reaction that takes place in catalytic converters to clean auto-exhaust emissions.
Professor Ertl was reached by telephone minutes after hearing he had been chosen, incidentally on his 71st birthday.
“I was really speechless,” he said. “I am very surprised. This is the greatest honor you can think of in the life of a scientist.”
On December 10, the 111th anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, Professor Ertl and the other winners of the 2007 Nobel Prizes in science and literature will come to Sweden to receive their awards in a gala ceremony at Stockholm City Hall.
Source: VOA
NASA: Mars Lander Set to Launch on Saturday
August 4, 2007
After a nine-month journey, the probe will search beneath the frozen Martian surface for hints of an environment compatible with life, such as water and organic chemicals.
Bruce Betts of the nonprofit Planetary Society says the organization has prepared a gift for future visitors to Mars, a silica-glass DVD attached to the deck of the lander.
“And that DVD has two things on it. One, it’s got a quarter-million names of people who signed up to send their names to Mars, participate that way in the mission. And then it’s got the first library for Mars, which we call Visions of Mars, that has all sorts of stories and art about the Red Planet,” he said.
There are works of fiction and works of science by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke and astronomer Carl Sagan. Sagan was one of the founders of the Planetary Society.
Betts says the distinctive red planet has always stirred the imagination. The 19th century observer Percival Lowell thought he saw canals there. It was an illusion, but the erroneous observation led to wild speculation about a Martian civilization. Lowell’s work is part of the digital library.
The disk also includes a work of fiction by H.G. Wells called “The War of the Worlds.” The DVD has the original text version of the story and its radio adaptation in a realistic 1938 broadcast.
The dramatization of an invasion by Martians was so convincing that it sparked a panic in some parts of the United States.
Betts says Phoenix is just one of a number of missions to Mars that are under way or planned by the U.S. space agency NASA and the space agencies of Europe and Russia. He notes there are launch opportunities every 26 months, when the Earth, Mars and Sun are properly aligned, and he sees a busy schedule ahead in coming launch windows.
“In the next opportunity in 2009, NASA will send a really big rover called Mars Science Laboratory, and it will actually have some of the first experiments since Viking in the 1970s that really look more directly for life as opposed to just studying questions of: could there have been life? Was there habitability?,” he said.
Russia is planning a 2009 sample return mission to the Martian moon Phobos. Two years later, a U.S. mission will study the upper atmosphere of Mars, and 2013 should see the launch of a NASA orbiter and a European rover.
Beyond that, the United States plans to return humans to our own moon by 2020, and then use the moon as a base for a human journey to Mars.
Source: VOA
Forecasters Predict Very Active Hurricane Season In US
May 31, 2007
Colorado State University hurricane forecasters today maintained an earlier forecast that called for a very active 2007 season with a 74 percent chance of a major hurricane making landfall on the U.S. coastline.
The hurricane forecast team is calling for 17 named storms forming in the Atlantic basin between June 1 and Nov. 30. Nine of the storms are expected to become hurricanes with five becoming intense hurricanes (Saffir/Simpson category 3-4-5) with sustained winds of 111 mph or greater.
The entire report is available on the Web here.
No hurricanes made landfall along the U.S. coastline in 2006. The 2006 season witnessed a total of 10 named storms, five hurricanes and two major hurricanes. Long-term averages are 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 intense hurricanes per year.
“We expect an above-average hurricane season with ENSO conditions on the cool side, which will help increase the likelihood of major storm activity in the Atlantic,” said Phil Klotzbach of the Colorado State hurricane forecast team and the lead author of the forecast. “El Nino conditions during the summer and fall - similar to those that developed in 2006 - tend to decrease Atlantic hurricane activity by increasing vertical wind shear across the area where Atlantic tropical cyclones develop.”
The hurricane forecast team predicts tropical cyclone activity in 2007 will be 185 percent of the average season. By comparison, 2005 witnessed tropical cyclone activity that was about 275 percent of the average season.
The hurricane forecast team reiterated its probabilities for a major hurricane making landfall on U.S. soil:
- A 74 percent chance that at least one major hurricane will make landfall on the U.S. coastline in 2007 (the long-term average probability is 52 percent).
- A 50 percent chance that a major hurricane will make landfall on the U.S. East Coast, including the Florida Peninsula (the long-term average is 31 percent)
- A 49 percent chance that a major hurricane will make landfall on the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle west to Brownsville (the long-term average is 30 percent).
The team also predicted above-average major hurricane landfall risk in the Caribbean.
The 2006 season was only the 12th year since 1945 that the United States experienced no hurricane landfalls. Since then, there have been only two consecutive-year periods where there were no hurricane landfalls: 1981-1982 and 2000-2001.
“There were a lot of challenges in 2006 that we didn’t expect such as a late-developing El Nino, which causes increased vertical wind shear and results in less tropical cyclone activity,” said William Gray, who began forecasting hurricane seasons at Colorado State 24 years ago.
For 2007, Klotzbach and Gray expect continued warm tropical and north Atlantic sea-surface temperatures, prevalent in most years since 1995, as well as neutral or weak La Nina conditions - a recipe for greatly enhanced Atlantic basin hurricane activity.
These factors are similar to conditions that occurred during the 1952, 1954, 1964, 1966, 1995 and 2003 seasons. The average of these six seasons had well above-average activity, and Klotzbach and Gray predict the 2007 season will have activity in line with the average of these six years.
“We are in a new era for storms that is part of a natural cycle,” Gray said. “We’ve had an upturn of major storms in the Atlantic since 1995. This active cycle is expected to continue for another decade or two at which time we should enter a quieter Atlantic major hurricane period like we experienced during the quarter century periods of 1970-1994 and 1901-1925. These changes in storm activity are not caused by human-induced global warming but by natural forces.”
The Colorado State hurricane forecast team has said the hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005 were anomalies: Florida and the Gulf Coast were ravaged by four landfalling hurricanes each year. Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne caused devastating damage in 2004 followed by Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005.
Probabilities of tropical storm-force, hurricane-force and intense hurricane-force winds occurring at specific locations along the U.S. East and Gulf Coasts within a variety of time periods are listed on the forecast team’s Landfall Probability Web site. The site provides U.S. landfall probabilities for 11 regions, 55 sub-regions and 205 individual counties along the U.S. coastline from Brownsville, Texas, to Eastport, Maine. The Web site, available to the public at http://www.e-transit.org/hurricane, is the first publicly accessible Internet tool that adjusts landfall probabilities for regions, sub-regions and counties based on the current climate and its projected effects on the upcoming hurricane season. Klotzbach and Gray update the site regularly with assistance from the GeoGraphics Laboratory at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts.
The hurricane team’s forecasts are based on the premise that global oceanic and atmospheric conditions - such as El Nino, sea surface temperatures and sea level pressures - that preceded active or inactive hurricane seasons in the past provide meaningful information about similar trends in future seasons.
The team will issue seasonal updates of its 2007 Atlantic basin hurricane activity forecast on Aug. 3, Sept. 4 and Oct. 2. The August, September and October forecasts will include separate forecasts for each of those months.
Source: Colorado State University