Pluto

New Horizons came closest to Pluto today, releasing some amazing images!  So sad Pluto was demoted from planet status before we got there, but this is still really exciting, and more pictures will be out tomorrow.
Click here to read more on NASA's website.

I couldn't resist making this meme, since so far it looks like no one else has (which surprised me). What else do you do when you have a planet with what looks like a giant heart on it? hah

I love you to Pluto and back

Stay curious!
~Bio Geo Nerd

Capitol Reef Field Trip

I just spent a totally awesome weekend at UVU's Capitol Reef Field Station with my Botany class (Flora of Utah).  We had a group of 20 students, and our two teachers - the Botany Lab Manager Ally Searle and Dr. Renee Van Buren, who is also the station manager.  She is the one who spearheaded the creation of this awesome field station, after 10 years of working and fighting for it.  Check out the website.

Dr. Renee Van Buren, Capitol Reef Field Station Manager (my Botany professor), enjoying our jam session

Ally Searle, Botany Lab Manager, in a box canyon on our orientation hike

Jane Dell, Field Station Site Manager, teaching us about Packrat Midddens

Botany
It was a long weekend of botanizing on our way to Capitol Reef National Park, and in the park, and driving from there down to Bryce Canyon (we didn't go in there though, just drove through Escalante and did a couple things in Red Canyon nearby).  So much fun.  Got a bit of a tan, had lots of time to sit in the dirt with a 3" thick Plant key, took a few quizzes, and had a ton of fun laughing and joking with my classmates.  We had a really fun group.  I still need to get my plant families down- I've been working on that with practice and flash cards all weekend.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you find a post about the plant families in the near future so I can practice them more.  We saw some neat cacti and other things that I didn't take pictures of because I collected them, outside of Capitol Reef itself, of course.  (In case you're unaware, in national parks you aren't allowed to collect anything.)  I rode in the van with Dr. Van Buren so I learned a lot.  I was happy to find that she loves Geology too so I got to learn some geology on this trip from both her and Jane.  Speaking of which...

Geology of Capitol Reef National Park
Capitol Reef was named that because it has some white domes of Navajo Sandstone which reminded people of the U.S. capitol.  And it was termed a reef because, like a coral reef to sailors, this huge body of rock was a barrier very hard to get around for early travelers on horseback and in wagons.

Capitol Reef is a giant anticline.  The crust was folded up like a dome or speed bump and then partly eroded away.  As you travel down in elevation along the reef you actually go into newer layers because of how the crust is curved from this deformation.

There are 5 main formations in Capitol Reef.  From top (newest) to bottom (oldest):
Navajo Formation (sandstone)
Kayenta Formation (mudstone I think)
Wyngate Formation (sandstone)
Chinle Formation (mudstone)
Moenkope Formation

The Chinle is pretty soft and more prone to erosion than the harder Wyngate sandstone above it, so the Chinle, which has beautiful colors of gray, purple, and green, erodes quickly, causing large chunks of Wyngate to fall off the cliffs.  That's why the base of the cliffs are completely littered with boulders.  It's pretty fun.

Wyngate Formation of Capitol Reef National Park with boulder field at the base

The first morning I went out and explored that area.  It's a wash because there are a lot of flash floods that run through the area during the summer rains (monsoon).  I had a blast exploring down there and finding neat trees, rocks and plants.  My favorite was this boulder that looks just like an anapsid skull (turtles have this kind of skull).

Click for source and more info about skull types

Prehistory
I have finally collected my first fossils!  We went to an area that was covered in bivalve fossils that have been left in a big pile after the surrounding rock has eroded away.  You could just sift through and gather what you wanted, just like beach combing. 

Bivalve fossils near CRNP

Bivalve fossil - Jurassic time period

I was so excited that this area was outside of the national park itself because that meant I could actually take some of these home- yippee!

Biology
I got bones!!!  My awesome friend (and fellow Bio Ed student) Garrett pointed out some bones on the ground and there was almost an entire deer skeleton (I think it's a deer, at least).  I'll see if I can figure out what animal it belongs to for sure.  This was a great trip for adding some cool stuff to my collection of geek out artifacts... lots of bones, tons of plants, and some fossils.  I wish I could always have a botanist, biologist, and geologist to go with me on all my vacations so I could learn the entire time and have them point out the best places to collect things and such.

As far as live animal life, we saw a lot of birds, lizards, some bats on our stargazing night, a couple of marmots and one pronghorn.  So that wasn't a huge highlight of the trip, but there was plenty of other cool stuff to keep me happy.

Astronomy
As I mentioned we did some stargazing on the first night.  They pulled out the ginormous telescope (holy cow, "ginormous" is in the dictionary now!  It didn't give me a spell check error).  We got to take a look at the craters of the moon and see Saturn!  Wahoo!  So that's my second time in a month getting to see that planet, rings and all.  (We saw it at a ranger program while on our trip in Bryce Canyon, which I still need to blog about...I'm behind.)  Totally cool.

Jane and the interns pulled out their pointers and showed us some stars, planets, and constellations.

They pointed out the curved section of the mane of the lion Leo.

As well as the Gemini twins -  Castor and Pollux.

Source

The best part for me was talking about this best-known constellation: the big dipper.  Ursa Major is the real name of it and this constellation is of a bear.  I never realized before that the big dipper that is so easily recognized is only the tail and part of the body of the bear.  So it was cool to see it in context of the rest of it.  I always used to think of constellations as being very small and clustered.  But they really can take up quite a bit of space in the sky.

I definitely want to take an Astronomy class!  Next summer will hopefully be my chance to take a few fun things that aren't required before I have to leave UVU.  On the wish list: Ornithology, Trees & Shrubs, and Astronomy.  Thanks Renee, Ally, Jane, and UVU for a wonderful field trip!

Group picture taken on our Cohab Canyon Trail hike in Capitol Reef National Park
(L toR) Top back: Renee, (the one name I don't remember, sorry), Chris
Top front: Quinn, Zack, Garrett, Leslie
Bottom back: Mike, Katie, Madi, John, Julie (me), Lewis, Heather, Megan, Emily, Jerom
Bottom front: Richard, Debbie, Emma

Big Bang

Again the lines of science and religion are crossing in this post.  But since this is my blog I can do whatever I want. :)  It's who I am, in reality I'm a gospel nerd as much as I am a science nerd. And they go together quite beautifully in my opinion.  So that is my disclaimer, choose to read or not, and I do invite you to comment.

"Anyone who has studied the inner workings of the human body has seen God moving in His majesty and power.  ..Some think such marvelous things happened by chance or resulted from a big bang somewhere.  Ask yourself - could an explosion in a printing shop produce a dictionary?"

-Russell M. Nelson, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

I define myself as an open-minded skeptic.  (Those two adjectives are not antagonists, I promise.)  I don't personally believe in the Big Bang Theory.  I must admit I need to learn more about it.  But I am a big believer that truth is logical.  The things I believe - both in science and in religion - make sense.  To allow us to learn, grow, and do many good things by our free will, God gave us many tools - most notably our brain.  The Big Bang theory doesn't make sense to me.  Mostly, the evidences that they have found and attributed to this theory don't seem very conclusive at all to me- there are many many ways these things could be interpreted, but sometimes scientists take the observances and try to assimilate it into a theory that they already have.  Naturally that's the most logical thing for them to do.  I just keep in mind that science doesn't have all the answers.  We keep learning more and more, and if at any time someone states that we know it all about any particular thing, I would think them a fool.  Even with something like our own bodies - we know a ton about them and how they work.  But we still don't know or understand it all.

Internationally renown Astrophysicist George F. R. Ellis explains: "People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations….For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations….You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

http://big-bang-theory.com/

 

From another leader - the Prophet on the earth today (literally today, April 1, 2012, President Thomas S. Monson:

"Where did we come from?  Why are we here?  Where do we go?  Answers to these are not discovered in academia's textbooks or on the internet.  They embrace eternity.  Where do we come from?  This query is inevitably thought if not spoken by every human being."

He told a story of a man who became convinced that death was the end.  But then all that crumbled and he came back to his faith.  What made the difference?  President Monson explains:

"His wife died.  With a broken heart, he went to the room where lay all that was mortal of her.  He looked again at the face he loved so well.  Coming out he said to a friend - 'it is she, and yet it is not she.  Everything is changed.  Something that was there before is taken away.  She is not the same.  What could be gone, if it be not the soul?'  Later he wrote - 'Death is not what some people imagine. It is only like going into another room.  In that other room we shall find the dear women and men and children we have loved and lost.' "

So I guess it comes down to this.  The science attempts to explain how things happen.  The gospel tells us why.  I think that is the point that the Church leaders have been trying to get across.  Don't try to turn to science to answer the why questions.