The Shark in the Milky Way: a Hawaiian Legend

The Milky Way as seen through the Hawaiian trees, by active Kīlauea (photographed by Sean King)

There are a great many myths that our ancestors created to explain the white and dark patches of the Milky Way in their night's sky. Looking up to see this band of light in the sky, some of them would liken it to a great river or a walkway, while some others thought it was the remnant flames of a horse-rider or chariot dragging starlight or sunlight across the sky. Many of our ancestors, including the Norse and the Algonquin peoples, thought of the Milky Way as a path, perhaps leading to Valhalla or a great village, which their friends and family could follow once they had died. 

The Polynesian peoples commonly thought of the Milky Way as a great river or sea in the heavens, though many of their legends include mention of a great shark. The people of Tuamotus, for instance, considered the Milky Way the sacred ocean of the god Kiho-tumu, and great dark patch in the Milky Way was formed from his ship, which was known as The-Long-Shark. Indeed, many of the Polynesian peoples of various regions had legends that included a shark or great fish swimming in the Milky Way.

Rena Ekmanis' Canoe at Night

Last night I was reading Vivian L. Thompson's "Hawaiian Myths of Earth, Sea, and Sky" (as some of you know, I'm working on another planetarium talk - this one will deal with mythologies of the heavens and connecting ancient people to our modern pursuits in space exploration). One of the stories Thompson shares is called "The Shark in the Milky Way". It tells of one of the adventures of the trickster god Ka-ulu. Here is a very-brief paraphrasing of that story:

This version holds that Ka-ulu's brother, Ka-ehu, had been abducted by a great king, a chief of Far Island. Ka-ulu becomes Ka-ulu-the-Strong and decides to find his brother. 

The king fears Ka-ulu, so he sends Great-Rolling-Surf to kill the strong man. Ka-ulu uses his strength to break the Great-Rolling-Surf into little waves.

The king then sends Great-Stone-Man-with-Eight-Foreheads, a giant made of stone. When this giant attacks, Ka-ulu grabs him and holds him down until the ground and grass and trees grow over him. The Great-Stone-Man thus becomes a stone mountain with eight rolling hills.

The king send his Great-Barking-Dog to attack Ka-ulu, but the latter uses his strong hands to break the Great-Barking-Dog into pieces, each of which became a little barking dog that ran off in fear.

Ka-ulu approaches the king's mountain home. The king throws Great-Rock at Ka-ulu as he climbs the mountain. Ka-ulu crushes the Great-Rock into many little pebbles.

Ka-ulu then approaches the king and places his strong hands on the king's throat. Threatening the king's life, Ka-ulu asks for the whereabouts of his brother. The king, a weakling and fearful for his life, tells Ka-ulu to go ask the Chief of Sharks about the location of Ka-ehu.

Ka-ulu goes to Chief of Sharks and asks where Ka-ehu can be found. Chief of Sharks tells Ka-ulu that Ka-ehu is inside of his great stomach, but there is room for two if Ka-ulu would like to join him. 

Knowing better than to be eaten by a great shark, Ka-ulu grabs the Chief of Sharks by his jaws and pulls them so wide that Ka-ehu can walk out of the shark's stomach. Before Ka-ulu and Ka-ehu leave, Ka-ulu grabs the Chief of Sharks and throws him into the sky. The great shark's body breaks upon and the heavens and shatters into millions of pieces, forming the great white streak across the sky that we now know as the Milky Way.

What would you think of the heavens above if you were alone on a canoe in the great sea? Would you create your own myths and legends from the patterns in the stars, the wanderings of the planets, or the patches of the Milky Way? (image from Thompson's book)

If you'd like to read a bit more about the legends of Ka-ulu, definitely check out the Asia-Pacific Digital Library's versions of the stories. I'll soon be putting together a post that will outline the talk I'll be giving on the constellations and mythology, so stay tuned for that.

Wicked Awesome Space Art by Kerstin Jacobs

A sweet painting that envisions the New Horizons flyby of Pluto earlier this year

Here's some awesomeness to brighten your day. All the images on this post are from an artist named Kerstin Jacobs. You can find these and more at Jacobs' website and Instagram and Twitter accounts. For instance, check out this rad piece of work:

I think my favorite piece from what Jacobs has online is this image of Jupiter and the Galilean Moons. You may recall that my graduate research has some relevance to our astrobiological investigations of the icy worlds of our solar system, so worlds like Europa and Ganymede have a special place in my thoughts:

I highly recommend checking out the rest of Kerstin Jacobs' work. Definitely some kickin' space art!

A Dream Within a Dream - Edgar Allan Poe

Sometimes our reflections of our own lives can lead us to find surprising things. Some of those things we cherish, some of those things make us feel guilty, some of those things seem like they should've been in someone else's life, not our own. I'm having just such a moment of reflection, so I thought I'd share one of my favorite poems. Enjoy.

A Dream Within a Dream

            By Edgar Allan Poe

Take this kiss upon the brow!

And, in parting from you now,

Thus much let me avow —

You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream;

Yet if hope has flown away

In a night, or in a day,

In a vision, or in none,

Is it therefore the less gone? 

All that we see or seem

Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar

Of a surf-tormented shore,

And I hold within my hand

Grains of the golden sand —

How few! yet how they creep

Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep — while I weep!

O God! Can I not grasp

Them with a tighter clasp?

O God! can I not save

One from the pitiless wave?

Is all that we see or seem

But a dream within a dream?

Why aren't the rest of us living in space yet?

Space art from NASA made in the 1970s (find more here)

We've read and seen stories and films for decades now that suggest a future where humans will live in space. From colonizing other planets to traveling through interstellar space, many people have dreamed of a human future beyond Earth. So why hasn't it happened yet? 

After sending twelve men to the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s and supporting ventures of government organizations to send astronauts into low Earth orbit (LEO) since that time, we still don't live in a world where the rest of us can easily get into space. Of course, a large part of the argument for why this hasn't happened comes down to economics and initiative, but there are also many who would argue that we're not yet ready for it. Some may say that we need to figure out how to be better citizens of the Earth before we try to be citizens of space. 

That may seem like a flawed argument to space exploration advocates, but it's an argument that I've heard many times. I'm going to start working on another article considering what it will take to advance our human future in space, but I'd like some community input before I do that. Comment on this post or hit me up on Twitter or Facebook with your ideas about whether or not we should venture into space and why. Also, I'd like to know the reasons people suspect for why the past dreams of our future in space have not yet come to fruition. Please, tell me:

Why aren't the rest of us living in space yet?

Today is a Day for Watching Cats Bounce

Ugh. Sometimes you have one of those days where you know you'd be better if you took a nap, but then you can't seem to clock yourself out to catch some zizzlers. If you have such a day (as I seem to be having today), then maybe you too would enjoy watching cats bounce.

Fluoroantimonic Acid: The Strongest Acid Known to Humankind

Update Note, 30 January 2024: I used to have an image from the film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark at the top of this article. It showed the face melting scene at the end of the film. However, Google constantly sent me violation reports because of this rather famous image, so I removed it. That said, enjoy what follows for the strongest known acid.

The strongest known acids on the planet are something called superacids. These are acids that are more acidic than a pure solution of sulfuric acid! That's most definitely "face melting acidity". Even the word "superacid" sounds like something you don't want to dance with on a Saturday night.

There are many superacids that chemists have formed, but by far the worst of the worst (the most hated and cursed? well, no, it's just the strongest) is the superacid known as fluoroantimonic acid. Fluoroantimonic acid can be estimated to be over 10 quadrillion times stronger than sulfuric acid! (see the discussion below on the Hammett acidity function to see how I got that number)

Fluoroantimonic acid has the chemical formula H₂FSbF₆ which shows you that it's composed of bonded atoms of fluorine (F) and antimony (Sb) with some hydrogen (H) as well. Let's chat a tad about the chemistry of fluoroantimonic acid and why you most definitely don't want it on your skin (or anywhere near you, for that matter, unless you're a chemist who's working with the stuff).

Dropping Acid

From left-to-right: strong acid, dilute acid, base (image from SeattlePI)

Acid (which comes from the Latin word(s) acidus/acēre, which means "sour") is something that people have known about for a long time. Acids are literally what you are tasting when you taste something sour (hence the name). Lemons and other citrous fruits have a sour taste due to citric acid. We use microbial lactic acid fermentation (producing lactic acid from glucose) to make sauerkraut, sour beers, and kimchi (and, incidentally, lactic acid fermentation ruined a pot of stew I had sitting out last week). You may have noticed that your vomit has a sour taste. That's because of the acid in your stomach that normally helps you to digest your food, though the burning sensation you feel in your throat from vomit has more to do with your stomach enzymes which cleave amino acid bonds to break down proteins (update: I had hydrochloric acid listed as the main stomach acid that causes the acrid taste of vomit, but a reader clarified that the real nasty smell and flavor comes from butyric acid). 

There's a lot more to acids than taste. Put simply, an acid is a substance which can donate a proton. In chemistry, we tend to think of these proton donations as shuffling of hydrogen nuclei (a hydrogen atom, which has one proton and one electron, is only a single proton when it's ionized). There are lots of molecules that can donate a proton to water (to form the hydronium ion) or to another molecule (something that accepts a proton is called a base). Some molecules are much better at doing this than others. The molecules that are the best at donating protons are called strong acids. Strong acids include things like hydrochloric acid (HCl), nitric acid (HNO₃), and sulfuric acid (H₂SO₄). In these cases, the chloride (Cl^-), nitrate (NO₃^-), and sulfate (SO₄^2-) ions are very stable as ions in solution, which is why they're so good at giving away those protons. For instance, in the picture below, the behavior of hydrochloric acid in water is compared to that of acetic acid (HC₂H₃O₂):

As the picture illustrates, hydrochloric acid donates all of its hydrogen (protons) to water, while acetic acid tends to mostly remain as acetic acid and only a small amount dissociates to form hydronium ions and acetate ions. Because of this, we consider hydrochloric acid to be a strong acid and acetic acid to be a weak acid.

Superacids 

When considering the acidity of a substance, many acids are compared in their acidity to that of sulfuric acid. The sulfate ion is very stable in its ionic form in solution and so it's not a happy camper when bound to a proton or two (which is a state called "protonated"). Like I mentioned earlier, a superacid is one that is considered to be more acidic than 100% sulfuric acid. When you have that strong of an acid, a measure of something like pH (the negative log of the concentration of protons in solution) is no longer adequate. Instead, chemists can turn to something called the Hammett acidity function.

I won't explain the Hammett acidity function here, but it can loosely be thought of as what the pH of a solution would be if it were possible to pack trillions of trillions of hydronium ions into a solution. A pure solution of sulfuric acid would have a Hammett acidity function value of -12 (so, kind of like having a pH of -12, if that were possible). 

This is Magic Acid, the second most acidic superacid. It's Hammett acidity function is -19.2!

What About Fluoroantimonic Acid?

Fluoroantimonic acid, the strongest known acid, has a Hammett acidity function value of -28! (though there are also sources out there stating an unconfirmed value of -31.3)

This is what the pH of a solution would be if it were possible to pack 10²⁸ moles of hydronium into each liter of solution. To give you an idea of how crazy that is, a solution with a pH of 1 (which is easily acidic enough to burn your skin) has 0.1 moles of hydronium per liter. 

Since the molar mass (the mass per mole) of hydronium is 19.02 g/mol, a quick calculation will show that fluoroantimonic acid is as acidic as a solution would be if it contained over 10²⁶ kg/L of hydronium. That's more than the known density of neutron stars! (Luckily, that's not really how these superacids work.)

As I mentioned above, it can be estimated that fluorantimonic acid is about 10 quadrillion times stronger than sulfuric acid. Since sulfuric acid has a Hammett function of -12 and fluorantimonic acid has a Hammett function of -28, the difference is 16, or about 10¹⁶ more moles of hydronium. That's 10 quadrillion times more! However, as I mentioned above, this isn't really how superacids work and the Hammett function can only loosely be idealized as the negative log of the acid concentration.

This is the structure of fluoroantimonic acid. White balls are hydrogen, green - fluorine, and purple - antimony.

Fluoroantimonic acid is a ridiculously strong acid. It will eat through glass and plastic. It will react explosively with water (so it is only mixed in solution of hydrofluoric acid). It can protonate almost any organic molecule (force a proton onto the molecule), and it will most definitely cause some massive trauma to any living organism (by massive trauma, I mean it will certainly destroy any and all flesh it comes into contact with). There's really only one way to store it. 

A bond between fluorine and carbon is the strongest chemical bond in organic chemistry. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), brand name known as Teflon, is composed of repeating units of carbon bonded to fluorine atoms. For a container to hold fluoroantimonic acid, it has to be made out of PTFE. Yup, you read that right: the strongest acid known to humanity can be stored in the same stuff that keeps your eggs from sticking to the pan when you make breakfast.

PTFE - Keeps your breakfast from sticking to the pan and kicks the snot out of the world's strongest acid

I bet you'll never look at your non-stick frying pans the same way again!

There are some uses of superacids like fluoroantimonic acid. These acids are great at creating substances known as carbocations (molecules with ionized carbon atoms) and providing environments for studying such substances. Carbocations are intermediates in some economically important reactions, so studying their behavior when isolated is pretty important. 

Outside of the need to protonate things that normally aren't protonated or to create these carbocations, it's pretty safe to say that there's absolutely no need to have superacids like fluoroantimonic acid around. Well, maybe not. Here's a TEDxGhent talk from a couple years ago by Lennart Joos where he suggests using a superacid known as phosphotungstic acid to combat smog:

So maybe there are some great uses for superacids. Still, I don't think I have any need to play with something like fluoroantimonic acid during this lifetime. My hats off to those chemists who deal with this stuff safely and securely (and my hopes that it remains that way in their future work). The science behind fluorantimonic acid is awesome, but when I think of the stuff all I can imagine is all of my skin melting off in the most painful of ways. Scary.

Brief Hiatus

Me standing by some cool rocks on my favorite secret beach in California

Hi all!

I must apologize for not having any recent posts. I've been working on squaring away some things in my research and public engagement endeavors. I should be back to posting between one and three times each week in the very near future.

Until then, here are some quotes from other people that may make you ponder your own place in life and the universe:

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. 
~André Gide

Only that in you which is me can hear what I'm saying. 
~Baba Ram Dass

Before enlightenment — chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment — chop wood, carry water. 
~Zen Buddhist Proverb

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. 
~Dr Seuss

You can find some more thought-provoking quotes here.

Ta.

Beyond Our Solar System's Plutonian Shore: Whither Pluto After New Horizons?

An artist's conception of New Horizons passing Pluto and its satellites (NASA)

It has definitely been a big year for one little world in our solar system. 

The flyby of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft on July 14th of this year has spawned renewed interests in the king of the Kuiper Belt, lord of the dwarf planets. 

From reigniting the discussions over Pluto's designation as a dwarf planet to revealing that the surface of Pluto holds geological mysteries for us to explore, New Horizons has been an amazing success. As the spacecraft continues on its mission and leaves Pluto behind, many of us wonder what might come next for the 17th largest object in our solar system.

This image has probably been the widest shared image from the New Horizons mission thus far (NASA)

Pluto has long fascinated many of us. Since the accidental discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930 (he was definitely looking for a planet, but it's very lucky he actually found Pluto) and its being named for the god of the underworld in Roman mythology by an eleven year-old girl, Pluto has made many of us wonder about what lies beyond the planets in our solar system and has inspired storytellers of all sorts to question what remote regions of star systems might be like. 

H.P. Lovecraft included Pluto in his fictional mythologies of the "ancient evil ones", it's believed by many that Disney named their famous cartoon dog after Pluto, Doctor Who visited Pluto in a fictional future, and in the Mass Effect video-game universe Charon, Pluto's largest moon, is the locale where an alien device for faster-than-light travel is discovered. In fact, there have been a large number of science fiction stories that have included mention of Pluto. Part of the allure of Pluto for storytelling has been the uncertainty about what kind of world it is.

We've often talked about Pluto as being a frozen world touched only by the dimmest light from the Sun; a little, icy ball enshrouded in mystery. But, thanks to the New Horizons mission, we now know so much more about Pluto: we know that there are icy mountains on Pluto that rise as high as 3.5 km above the surface, there are variations in the composition of surface ices (most notably causing the "heart" on Pluto; see above image), and that the moons of Pluto have their own surprises in store.

Also, it's great to know that scientists from the New Horizons team have been naming the features on Pluto after various science fiction and fantasy stories as well as from the history of exploration. There are the Cthulhu Regio, Vader Crater, Sputnik Planum, Viking Terra, and Uhuru and Spock Craters, just to name a few. 

Some of the surface features of Pluto

New Horizons' mission is continuing on now that the spacecraft has screamed past Pluto. The current plan for New Horizons is to try to fly by some other Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) before continuing on and away. Much like the Pioneer 10 and 11 and Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft, New Horizons will continue sailing away from us, leaving our solar system behind in the decades and centuries to come. It will have long-since lost the capability of communicating with us or even operating, but maybe thousands or millions of years from now it will bump into some alien spacecraft and present a mystery to whoever finds it.

I used to think that New Horizons was going fast enough to overtake Voyager 1 at some point in the near future, but it turns out that New Horizons will never catch up with Voyager 1. This means that Voyager 1 will continue to be the furthest stretch of humanity in the universe for quite some time to come.

"Goodbye Pluto!" A look back from New Horizons (NASA)

Now that New Horizons has left the Plutonian system, a lot of people have wondered what else lies in store for Pluto?

Of course, there's the still the debate as to whether or not Pluto should be called a planet. You may know that Pluto is currently classified as a dwarf planet due to a vote amongst the International Astronomical Union (IAU) back in 2006. This decision caused a lot of public backlash, mostly for sentimental reasons. A lot of people felt like Pluto had always been a planet in their lifetimes so it should stay that way (of course, that's not how science works). There are certainly some good scientific reasons to call Pluto a planet, but, as many people point out, if we call Pluto a planet, then there are a lot of other worlds in the solar system that we'll have to call planets as well. These other worlds are also currently known as dwarf planets, and include the likes of Makemake and Eris (it was really the discovery of Eris that became the impetus for reclassifying Pluto). 

I personally tend to be on the fence about calling Pluto a planet. It most certainly shouldn't be classified along with the terrestrial worlds, like Venus and Earth, and definitely doesn't fit with the gas giants, like Jupiter and Uranus. Yet, the word planet hails from the Greek for "wandering star" (aster planetes) and that original concept could be fit to just about any body in the solar system. Also, to change the classification of Pluto required finding a definition of "planet" that fit the other eight large worlds, but would cut out Pluto and other dwarf planets and moons. That's what led the IAU to come up with their three requirements for a "planethood":

1. A planet is in orbit around the Sun

2. A planet has sufficient mass to assume hydrostatic equilibrium (a nearly round shape)

3. A planet has cleared its orbital neighborhood

The first part takes care of moons that orbit around other bodies, but also fails to include exoplanets (which do not orbit our Sun!). The second part makes a planet anything that is massive enough to draw itself roughly into a spherical shape, which fits with the planets and the dwarf planets, but leaves out many of the smaller asteroids and some moons. Finally, the third part is where they got Pluto. Pluto is a member of the Kuiper Belt and has not "cleared its neighborhood" of other bodies. Pluto is also weird in a lot of other ways (for instance, it's orbital plane is nothing close to that of the eight planets in the solar system), but there are many of us who still love Pluto, regardless of what it's called. 

It seems to many of us that what we choose to call Pluto should be based on science. There are several other dwarf planets and smaller bodies that were once considered planets (including Vesta, Juno, Ceres, and Pallas), so the idea that Pluto should be a planet because it was once a planet makes little to no sense. If we make Pluto a planet, then that means we have many other planets as well (which is not necessarily a problem, but does bother some people). Of course, there is also the potential that we could abandon "planet" as a scientific word and find something else, leaving the word "planet" to be something of a public matter. I suppose the debate over Pluto's status will continue on. How long that debate will last and what its outcomes will be, who knows...

As for what comes next for Pluto: there are no current missions in the works that will visit Pluto. We've learned a lot from New Horizons and will continue learning more as the data stream in over the next 15 months. However, although we'll have gained a lot more knowledge about Pluto, there will surely be many more mysteries to ponder. I would love to see a future where we could afford to send missions to the outer solar system more often, but, for now, we have to hope that there might be another mission to Pluto within our lifetimes.

If you'd like to know more about Pluto and the New Horizons mission, the video below has a lot of great information. It was released before the New Horizons flyby, but still serves as a fantastic resource for interested people:

Also, if you'd like to know more about the New Horizons flyby of Pluto, Space.com posted a Complete Coverage article for following the news as it was coming up online.

An image from New Horizons shows a mountain range of ice on Pluto (NASA)

As I close out this post, I leave these questions for you: 

-What comes next for Pluto? 

-Would you like to see another mission to Pluto? A lander this time, maybe? 

-Where do you stand on Pluto's status as a dwarf planet? 

-Finally, if you could name some of the new features on Pluto after science fiction and fantasy or famous exploration stories, which names would you choose and why?

This image shows what appear to be swirling ices of different compositions on Pluto (NASA)

Dune, 50 Years On

Illustration by Robert Ball

It's now been 50 years since Frank Herbert's science fiction masterpiece was first published (Dune was published on August 1st of 1965). Dune has always been one of my favorite science fiction reads. Herbert's take on planetary ecology, religious mysticism, and the potential for human mind expansion unleashed my young mind to the possibilities for the future of our species. 

I loved the idea of the spice drug, Melange, which could expand human consciousness, allowing some humans to change altogether in physical and mental form and use their mental powers to transport spacecraft faster than light through warped space. The spice also allowed the protagonist, Paul Atreides (Muad'Dib), to access a new plane of mental power and take on the role of religious leader of the known universe. As Herbert later said of Paul Atreides and the Dune story, "I am showing you the superhero syndrome and your own participation in it". I've wondered ever since reading Dune if we would one day see a world where an elite few can use some form of technology or chemistry to propel themselves to a superhuman status (would such people try to rule the rest of us as gods?).

Admittedly, I've never read the sequels to the Dune stories that were written by Frank Herbert's son, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson. I've heard good and bad about their additions to the Dune universe. I'm sure at some point I'll get around to them, but for now I like to bask in the glory of the Dune universe that I envisioned after reading Frank Herbert's original work.

Fans of Dune and the sequels are usually also fans of the 1984 film, which was written and directed by David Lynch. It was a decent take on the original story, though the novel had so much political and religious complexity to it that I think the film came up a bit short in delivering the real depth of the Dune story to the audience. In fact, the film Dune was probably one of my favorite movies when I was a kid. 

Michael Warren, a fan of the 1984 film adaptation of Dune, has put together an extended version of the film which is most definitely worth the watch. He recently made an HD remastered version of this film "Dune: The Complete Saga" (the film is available for download by clicking on the link). This new version was mentioned to me by Michael Warren himself (see the comments below). Of his edits in putting this film together he says, "It is far better in terms of video and audio and I managed to find a place for a couple of more narrations from Princess Irulan to help clarify and expand on the story and details. I also utilized more of my editing skills to improve certain transitions and integrations to run far more smoothly and effectively." Get it while it's hot, people!

In the early 2000s the SyFy network (then called the Sci-Fi Channel) released a miniseries version of Dune, Frank Herbert's Dune, as well as a sequel, Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, based on the two novels that follow Dune. I've heard a lot of complaints from Dune fans about these miniseries, but I found them to be far more accurate portrayals of the original novels than the 1984 film. Indeed, with the greater amount of time to work on character and story development, I think the miniseries came closest to what Frank Herbert had envisioned in his stories. 

Of course, there are many of us who lament that Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt to make a film version of Dune in the 1970s never panned out. Some people have thought of this film as possibly being the greatest science fiction film that was never made. In 2013, a documentary was made that looks back at what Jodorowsky's Dune might have been.

It's now been 50 years since Frank Herbert first gave the Dune story to the world. The original novel has sold millions of copies and the sequels and film adaptations have inspired generations of sci-fi fans to wonder about what could happen if a person was given powers that made them appear as something supernatural. I think I'll read Dune again, in honor of five decades of this fantastic story.

The "Not Planets" World

The image below was created by Kristoffer Åberg (Örebro Astronomi) and shows a map of the Earth with country borders which is overlain with the land areas of the largest worlds in our solar system that are not planets. Check it out: