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You are browsing the archive for Online outreach Archives - Page 4 of 28 - The Plainspoken Scientist.

26 August 2022

#AntarcticLog: Finishing up with Alvin

Hello from the tail end of the Alvin Science Verification Expedition, in which we worked to verify the submersible Alvin’s ability to carry scientists, their equipment, and samples to depths of 6500 meters.  The upshot: human-operated vehicle HOV Alvin is ready, willing, and able indeed. 

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19 August 2022

#AntarcticLog: Alvin dive 5101

Greetings once again from sea, this time the Caribbean Sea, off the Cayman Islands to be precise, way down deep at the Mid-Cayman Rise.  Today is Alvin dive 5101, on the Beebe Vent Field (named for the deep-sea pioneer William Beebe who, with Otis Barton, descended 417m in the bathysphere in 1930, the year Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded), the deepest known hydrothermal vents in the world. Wonder what we’ll find… 

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12 August 2022

#AntarcticLog: Diving on the Mid-Cayman Rise

Leg 2 of the Alvin Science Verification Expedition finds us once again exploring new territory. After all, that’s the point of certifying Alvin to dive 6500 meters — to give us access to much more of the sea floor.  Today we’re diving on the Mid-Cayman Rise, a spreading center in the Earth’s crust at the deepest point in the Caribbean.  

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5 August 2022

#AntarcticLog: Greetings from the Puerto Rico Trench

Greetings from the deepest place in the Atlantic Ocean!  So far I’m reporting from the surface, but every day human-operated vehicle (HOV) Alvin carries scientists deeper. I mean, if you knew you had access to 99% of the seafloor — where before you had access to 2/3 — wouldn’t you head for the deepest spots?

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29 July 2022

#AntarcticLog: Down with Alvin

Down with Alvin!  That’s where the scientists aboard R/V Atlantis are headed.  As Alvin Science Verification Expedition chief scientist Adam Soule says, “our human brain is good at seeing what’s different in an environment — anything from organic shapes to unusual colors.” 

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22 July 2022

#AntarticLog: To sea we go!

And now for something completely different. #AntarcticLog heads to the deep sea, where carbon sinks, where the sea is black, and where the tiny submersible Alvin — able to carry three people — will soon be shining its light on unseen territory. 

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15 July 2022

#AntarcticLog: Summertime

By Karen Romano Young The question of summer Arctic ice extent is up in the air — not to say it’s unknown.  NASA goes to extra effort to assure the detailed accuracy of its measurements, including a new effort beginning this summer.  Given the 40-plus-year coverage from space provided by the ICESat satellites, including ICESat-2, placed in orbit in 2018,  our understanding of the volume of sea ice is exquisite any time …

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8 July 2022

#AntarcticLog: Invisible Volcanoes

Artist Karen Roman Young shows us what we can learn about the below-ice geology of Marie Byrd Land in Antarctica.

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1 July 2022

#AntarcticLog: Six years of science comics

Karen Romano Young shares highlights of her (now six!) years of drawing the Antarctic Log.

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24 June 2022

#AntarcticLog: Picturing time

How do you picture time? Does that seem like a strange notion? Not to a visual storyteller like me. Is time a wheel? a sphere? a line? a line with wrinkles? (Don’t forget, I’m a children’s book author, too.)  

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