Swine Flu

Take it from me; a guy who worked with dangerous viruses for many years, a good way to avoid the Swine Flu is to KEEP YOUR HANDS AWAY FROM YOUR FACE.

Pardon me for shouting, but it’s important. Washing your hands is important too, but does little good if you subsequently touch a contaminated surface and then rub an eye, nose or an ear. Even if your hands were covered with flu virus it would be tough to infect yourself if you didn’t transport the bugs to your face. Flu germs do not infect you through your skin.

So, try to remember while in public to keep your hands away from your face.

By the way, this helps in preventing colds as well.

Health Disclaimer

This above is provided in an informational and educational manner only, with information that is general in nature and that is not specific to you, the reader. The contents of this site are intended to assist you and other readers in your personal wellness efforts. Consult your physician regarding the applicability of any information provided to you.

Three Questions

I found an interesting survey conducted by the California Academy for Sciences.

The results of a survey commissioned by the California Academy of Sciences reveals that Americans don't know a whole lot about science.
- Only 53% of adults know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun.
- Only 59% of adults know that the earliest humans and dinosaurs did not live at the same time.
- Only 47% of adults can roughly approximate the percent of the Earth's surface that is covered with water.*
- Only 21% of adults answered all three questions correctly.

I don’t know what significance can be attached to the results reproduced above. People are busy trying to stay whole in a universe that sometimes seems bent on destroying them.If you asked me three science questions there’s a good chance I might not know all three. Maybe the point they were trying to make is that in a world coming to be dominated by science, we need to do a better job teaching science.

Here are the answers I found with a little research.

The Earth takes 365.25 days to revolve once around the Sun, the extra quarter of a day is dealt with every fours years by adding a day to February—leap year. I wonder if you had to know about the quarter of a day to get the answer right?

Humans came along around 65 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs. The extinction event is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid six miles across in the vicinity of the Mexican Yucatan peninsula.

The Earth’s oceans cover approximately 75 percent of the Earth’s surface. We are really a water planet.

A Miss is as good as a Mile?

Between the paths around the sun (orbits) of Mars and Jupiter lies the asteroid belt, a swarm of debris left over from the formation of the inner planets- Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars- some 4.6 billion years ago. Occasionally the planet Jupiter’s gravity nudges some of this debris toward Earth.

Asteroids nudged so that they pass within 121 million miles of the sun are called Near Earth Asteroids(NEA). The ones that get our attention are those that cross the path of the Earth.

In 1908 a NEA about 300 feet across exploded over Siberia leveling over 500,000 acres of forest. About 65 million years before that a really big one, maybe over six miles across, hit near the current location of the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico and is implicated in the extinction of the dinosaurs. So, these NEA’s not only cross Earth’s orbit around the sun, but sometimes get there at the same time we do.

The nearest most recent approaches of NEA’s was in 1998 when one about 1500 feet across came within 64,000 miles of Earth, and in 2002 when another came within 74,000 miles. The Moon is about 240,000 miles from us, so they passed relatively close. Luckily close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades, but the fact remains, these things do hit us.

In order to detect NEA’s that may be of significant danger, the U.S. Air Force, NASA and others are running surveys to detect and plot the orbits of NEA’s. So far a few thousand have been surveyed; luckily none of these is given much of a chance to hit us. But, as in most things, it is not what you know, but what you don’t know that can get you. A few thousand have been found, but we haven’t found all of them.

In addition to detecting possible impact NEA’s, scientists are researching ways to intercept and destroy or change the course of an asteroid that is heading for a rendezvous with Earth. Several robot spacecraft have been sent to determine just what these things are made of, such as the NEAR Shoemaker mission. The spacecraft flew by and photographed the NEA Eros in 1998 (see image) and landed a probe on its surface in 2001.

Should we worry about getting clobbered by a NEA? I don’t think so, but just to be safe I think it would be a good idea for Earth to keep looking over her shoulder.