So Thalweg and Srog the Dane and Bethany and I went skiing again. Skiing! woooo! Apparently Denmark is a pretty flat country, but there's cross country skiing there. Srog the Dane is going to be here til May so we have to show her a good American honky-tonk time. And no, her name isn't really Srog but that's what I call her not-to-her-face because I'm always forgetting her real name.

We decided to go up to the top of the ski resort because we figured out that there was a route we could take where we'd only intersect blues and one blue-black if we were feeling adventurous. Naturally, once we reached the top it was revealed to us that all of the blue runs were closed, and the only way down was to go down the black diamonds. Naturally, I was the only one of us who'd ever been down a black slope, and it was Teresa's 6th time skiing and Bethany's 2.5th and Srog the Dane had been skiing once for a week in Italy a long time ago. Befitting her mysterious Nordic heritage, Srog managed to navigate quite well down the slope. Thalweg and Bethany navigated the slope by sliding down on their backsides.

In the life of a skiier, he will navigate many slopes. The names of only some will remain in his mind forever.

The first black I nagivated by sliding on my backside was the Sizzler, a slope I chose because it looked very short on the map. But short says nothing about difficulty, and the Sizzler was covered in pine shrubs and moguls, and my dad had to wait quite a while for me to join him at the bottom as I slunk from mogul to mogul like the Grinch stealing Christmas. I celebrated this limited achievement later by soaking in a hottub.

My dad also waited for me quite a while as I navigated the treacherous blue slope, Larry Sale, in its steep, icy wide final stretch. But ne'er perhaps has my dad shown more patience with me than on the ultimate of memorable slopes, aptly named the Forget-Me-Not. The Forget-Me-Not is located in a high-altitude bowl at the upper reaches of a Coloradan ski resort, above the tree line, where no living thing in its right mind ventures in the dead of the Rocky Mountain winter. The Forget-Me-Not was steep and covered in ice. But it had an off-shoot! Oh joy! A little side trail called the Paintbrush! I had turned off onto the entrance to the Paintbrush and my dad was trying to coax me back onto the Forget-Me-Not. But that would require me to ski backwards out onto the icy Forget-Me-Not, and I would have nothing of this idea.

In the end, my dad followed me onto the Paintbrush, which probably required him shuffling up some measure of the icy Forget-Me-Not, and which left us shin-deep in powder on a skinny little tree-run, which hurts his knees. I Forget You Not!!!

In other news, I'm going to Iceland at the end of the summer for "work". Here is the program, which I copy-and-pasted from the website:

Hekla is Iceland�s most famous volcano and among the most active in the country. During the Dark Ages it was believed that the volcano was the entrance to hell, demonstrating that even then people were attempting to explain the existence of an active volcano and its nature of expelling ash and lava that burnt and destroyed the land.

Preliminary program:
Day 1 (23/8): Drive from Reykjav�k to the Southern Lowlands of Iceland, where we will stop to view the central volcanoes and other large scale features of the Eastern Volcanic Zone (if weather and visibility allows). From this vantage point we will also observe historic Hekla lava flows and the pathway of the 3.9 ka Selsund lahar flow. A section through the Selsund lahar deposits will be examined. At a nearby section as well as the well preserved en-echelon earthquake fissure systems produced by major events on the South Iceland Seismic Zone. Proximal sections of several prehistoric tephra layers will be visited at �f�rugil to examine the physical and chemical properties of Hekla tephra, followed by a discussion of the role of Hekla tephra layers in establishing methodologies of tephrochronology..

Day 2 (24/8): Pending good weather conditions, the plan is to hike to the summit of the Hekla volcano, which involves walking over rough-surfaced lava flows and snow pack. This will take up the whole day (i.e. 6-7 hrs). An alternative to the first option is a hiking tour to Holocene craters on the flanks of the volcano to examine the relationship between the Pleistocene hyaloclastites and the central volcano. Note, sturdy boots and warm clothing are requiered.

Day 3 (25/8): For the last day of this excursion, attention will be on the fissure systems in the vicinity of Hekla volcano as well as the impact Hekla eruptions have had on life in the Iceland through time. A large prehistoric explosive chasm will be explored along with several Holocene to very recent basaltic cone rows, we will also visit the Thjorsardalur valley, which was devastated by an eruption in Hekla 1104 AD.

It looks like my plan to go to grad school for the sole reason of having mad adventures is finally paying off!!

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I found a little movie showing the progress of Mercury MESSENGER towards Mercury. It will finally enter Mercury's orbit in 2011.

Mercury is a strange planet. It orbits the sun once every 88 earth days, but it rotates extremely slowly. The proximity to the sun makes days on Mercury into blisteringly hot affairs (up to 700 degrees F). There is also no atmosphere to buffer the heat loss and heat gain on the planet. However, this same effect means that Mercury also loses heat very quickly, making its night side among the coldest in the Solar System (-500 F).
However, while the Earth spins much faster than we could ever travel, you could ostensibly try and walk along Mercury's limb in order to stay in perpetual twilight or dawn, right around room temperature. See: The Chronicles of Riddick, Planet Crematoria. I was doing a calculation to see how fast you'd have to walk, but it's complicated, you see. If you go here then you can see how a day would look on the surface. Since Mercury rotates so slowly, the planet's position with respect to the sun is changing faster than it is rotating. In fact, at one point in its orbit, it would look like the sun is standing still, or even going backwards! That means that depending on the time of day and the time of year, you would need to move slower or faster to stay right at the right temperature.

It's the job of NASA-type people to think about these problems with regards to sending a lander to Mercury. Is it better to try and build a rover that can withstand the ridiculous temperature changes between night and day, or it is better to build a swift and nimble rover that can navigate across the surface at whatever speed NASA wants?
Naturally, you'd have to factor in Mercury's gigantic scarps, which can be up to a kilometer (~.62mi) high and thousands of kilometers long. It might take just a bit longer to navigate those on your way around the planet. Keep in mind that a typical one-way light time (the lag between when you send a command to your rover and when it recieves it) is about 10 minutes! No chance for last minute corrective maneuvers!

You can see how building and operating a Mercurian rover would be a Herculean effort. Just getting into orbit around this tiny planet instead of crashing into the sun will be a huge accomplishment. But we haven't even talked about Venus yet!

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Thalweg and I took the opportunity of a couple of inches of snow yesterday to have a wild sledding adventure late in the night. She knows of an excellent hill and the snow was icy and ready for sliding. Being from South Florida, Thalweg was unaware of the multitude of dangerous possibilities that are time-honored traditions of the sport of sledding, namely: sled-trains and chains. Just wait until we can get the whole department out there....

I mean, Southern California be damned-- sledding is so much fun I can't believe I've gone so many years without it.

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Discussion of Mercury will continue shortly, but for now, just one of the many reasons I love Thalweg, even though she schools me when we play Othello... that is, her emails:

Queen Laurentide, whose warm and caring heart may be the causeth of her thawing kingdom,

Indeed what Providence! I'm glad to hear of your fortuitous results!

My faculties too have been engaged in an orchestration of transcripts! Although crude, my printscreen/copy/paste manuevers have allowed the dean of admissions at a certain professional school in colorado to view my records! Although not encased securly in bubbles within cores, the dean was satisfied with the data and made some nice analysis of how to proceed forthwith.

yay to outcomes that augur a better future for the queens of 286,

Thalweg
" My powers detect that it is time to go home"

ps my manilla envelopes are at your disposal.... as for the boys, you will have to talk to ms kitty

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Zanzibar
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 3:43 PM
To: Thalweg
Subject: RE:


Thalweg, Queen of Remoteness, Empress of Sensing:

My rheumatism is acting up and my physician has recommended some strong, clean Macmillan air to clear up my senses. I will make way to your fine country at 4:15 depending on the delays of my entourage, but should there be a significant delay, those responsible will be dealt with swiftly and cruelly. All I ask in return is the use of a single Manila slave-boy; I mean, envelope... if that's ok with you? :D

My transcripts have arrived!

Until such time as we may have the Providence to meet once more,

Laurentide Ice Sheet
"I'm Melting!"

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From: Thalweg
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 3:14 PM
To: Zanzibar
Subject: RE:


Laurentide, Queen of Scotts of the Icy Kingdom du Nord,

sw33t.

Is there anyway that I can convince you to come over at around 4:15 to present my cover letter and resume to your court in my country? I think that it would be awkward to talk about these matters in the country from whence you come. awkward, like that sentence was awkward...

sailor mercury power,
Thalweg, queen of misplaced time and thought



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Zanzibar
Sent: Tue 1/22/2008 2:54 PM
To: Thalweg
Subject:


Hey Thal,

If you come by I'll probably be in my office. I've been keeping the door closed to keep it warm and so I can play my music loud, but I'll put it so that it can be opened without a key.


-Laurentide Ice Sheet

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The surface of Mercury is a many-splendored thing. Let me put us into context: Mercury, the first planet in our Solar System, named for the messenger of the gods because of its fleet-footed movements across the sky.

Mercury is extremely difficult to view by telescope because it is so close to the sun. That means that whenever Mercury rises in the night sky, the sun is close behind it, or in front of it, making it extremely difficult to see. The giant, looming sun also poses the greatest difficulty in sending a spacecraft to the planet, which is the other reason that so little of it has been seen or mapped even though its existence has been known since thousands of years B.C. According to the people on the MESSENGER mission, the sun on Mercury would appear about three times as large as it does here on the Earth and would be 11 times as bright.

To send a spacecraft into orbit around Mercury requires incredible precision and a lot of planning. Mariner 10, the first spacecraft to view Mercury, was a flyby mission, meaning that it went into orbit around the sun at an orbit comparable to Mercury's, and then took pictures of the planet every time their two orbits intersected. This was over 30 years ago, and it was the first time that anyone had used the gravity of another planet (in this case Venus) to help the spacecraft along its way and to save the fuel it would take for course corrections.

It wouldn't take very long to fly a spacecraft straight at Mercury. However, by the time it arrived, it would be traveling at a tremendous speed, and the amount of fuel it would take to fight the ever-growing gravitational pull of the sun (which scales as a square to the inverse radius) would be unfeasible. Instead, the spacecraft travels towards Mercury in circles around the sun with ever lessening radii. In the case of MESSENGER, at the moment that the spacecraft was launched, it is traveling the same speed as the Earth, which is a little bit less than 70,000 mph. After making some changes in its speed and direction, it flies for a year before encountering the speeding Earth again. This time it uses the gravity well of the Earth to help modify its speed and direction, and it makes a slightly smaller circle which lines it up to intersect with the planet Venus. MESSENGER had two Venus flybys, each about a year apart and each modifying the trajectory just a bit, until it finally moved into the orbit of Mercury. You can control the way that a planet affects your flight path by planning how fast you will be going with respect to the planet (You can change this by changing your angle of approach) and how far away you are when you fly by (which changes the magnitude of the change that the planet can make in your trajectory).

On January 14th, the spacecraft flew by Mercury in the first of three flybys that it will complete before orbital insertion. Each flyby will slow down the spacecraft and prepare it to burn its thrusters and be captured by the gravity of the small planet. It is a great difficulty to avoid being drawn in by the immense gravity of the sun and to catch the gravity of the tiny planet Mercury.

um... I'll have to continue this later...

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At the moment I am up to my eyes in pictures of Mercury. Maybe up to about 6 ft above my head. But upon my return to Earth, I will explain all of Mercury's mysteries! Except for those which are under embargo, of course, and those secrets of the solar system that I am saving so as to become rich and famous in the future. Those being relative terms.

In fact, I think I will embark upon ZANZIBAR'S TOUR OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM... starting at the first planet, Mercury, of course, and moving outwards. But every voyage needs a crew...

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This is the side of Mercury never before visible to the HUMAN EYE!!!

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We've seen the other side. Buuuuut, I can't tell you about it yet. HAHAHAHHAA. Watch for the press release at 8 tonight.

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