Another earth

Another planet was found

Solar storm satellites launched from Florida

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Five satellites were launched into space from Florida on Saturday aboard an unmanned Delta rocket to investigate electromagnetic storms, the dark side of the phenomenon that causes Earth's dazzling aurorae.

The $200 million mission is expected to help scientists develop better forecasting techniques for potentially dangerous solar storms, which can knock out power grids, navigation and other satellites and even force airlines to abandon polar routes due to loss of radio contact.

The satellites were carried into orbit aboard a Boeing-built Delta 2 rocket that lifted off at 6:01 p.m. (2301 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The solar storms are better known for triggering the beautiful sheets of shimmering green lights near Earth's north and south poles. The lights, known as aurorae, are caused by charged particles that have been blasted off the sun's surface toward Earth, where they can interact with the planet's magnetic field.

During storms, the magnetosphere is overloaded with energy, causing magnetic field lines to stretch until they snap back like giant rubber bands, flinging electrically charged particles at the planet. They travel into the upper atmosphere over the polar regions, where they smash into atoms and molecules, causing them to glow.

Scientists want to know where magnetic disturbances arise in hopes of being able to better predict when they will strike.

"For over 30 years, the source location of these explosive energy releases has been sought after with great fervor. It is a question almost as old as space physics itself," said Vassilis Angelopoulos, the lead scientist for the mission, which is called Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms, or THEMIS.

The charged particles also can damage electronic components on spacecraft, short-circuit power lines and rip through the bodies of astronauts in space, potentially causing cancer.

A network of five satellites is needed to track the storms, which start from a single point in space and progress past the moon's orbit within minutes.

The purpose of THEMIS is to identify the trigger locations and unravel the physics of the storms' progressions. Over the network's two-year lifetime, scientists hope to observe about 30 storms.

The launch was the first for NASA since Boeing and Lockheed Martin combined their commercial launch services of both the Delta and the Lockheed-built Atlas boosters into the jointly owned United Launch Alliance.

Science skills displayed at olympics

With a quick yank of a rope, the green bottle wrapped in duct tape whooshed into the air over Lakebottom Park.

As intended, the bright orange tip of Wesley Heights Elementary School's bottle rocket came off, making way for a parachute that eased the vessel back to the ground.

"It really worked out well," said Jennifer Hurtt, who led Wesley Heights' team in the countywide Elementary Science Olympics Saturday at Columbus High School.

Nearly 300 elementary school students from 18 schools built bridges with Popsicle sticks, fashioned paper airplanes and shot off bottle rockets, competing in 14 science-related activities.

Each event carried with it different lessons. Building the bottle rockets -- from deciding its shape to selecting its materials -- is an exercise in aerodynamics, said Tommie Ford, a science teacher at Arnold Magnet Academywho was running the bottle rocket event.

But the education doesn't stop there. Whether the students know it or not, they are watching scientist Isaac Newton's Third Law when their rockets are shot into the sky. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction at work, Ford said.

Activities in the science olympics challenge students to draw on principles of math, biology, logic and other academic disciplines, said Gail Sinkule, a Columbus High teacher who has coordinated the olympics for 12 years. Next month, Sinkule will become president of the Georgia State Science Teachers Association.

"It's putting together different skills," Sinkule said.

Standing in a courtyard, Hannan Elementary teacher Elia Moran watched as her team competed in an egg drop. To soften their eggs' fall, students were allowed only two wire coat hangers, paper clips, rubber bands and masking tape.

"They don't see it as learning," Moran said. "They don't realize they are."

Isabella Ruby national science fair winner

Isabella Ruby, a Grade 7 student at Kwaleen Traditional School, is looking forward to making her first trip to the Canadian national science fair in Truro, Nova Scotia May 12-20.

“It’s going to be quite an experience and learning possibility for me. It’s going to be really unbelievable,” Isabella says.

Isabella qualified for the national competition by winning top awards with her project Wind Energy at her school science fair, the School District 27 Science Fair at Columneetza March 1, and at the regional science fair held at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops April 2-4.

Isabella is among three of the students from School District 27 and only five students overall chosen by the judges in Kamloops to attend the national competition.

In addition to a gold medal for her project Wind Energy, Isabella won several perpetual trophies and keeper awards to go with them:

• The BC Ministry of the Environment Award (keeper and perpetual) for a project that supports environmental protection.

• The Best Environmental Science Award (keeper and perpetual) for the best experimental science project.

• The Association of Professional Engineers and Geotechnologists of BC for the outstanding engineering projects. ($50, plus keeper and perpetual)

• BC Hydro Award ($100.00 and keeper) to a Grade 4 – 12 student who creates a project which creatively demonstrates electrical conservation and its environmental social and economical impacts.

• Science Council of BC ($100, keeper and perpetual) award for the project that turns ideas into solutions.

Unfortunately the results list for the School District 27 Science Fair had Isabella’s last name wrong (Rudy instead of Ruby) and one of her awards listed incorrectly as third place instead of first place. She won first in both the Junior Engineering and Overall Engineering categories at the district science fair held at Columneetza.

For her project Wind Energy, Isabella designed and tested three turbine prototypes using common materials such as empty toilet paper rolls, Popsicle sticks, Ping-Pong balls, tooth picks and masking tape. She called them the Trislice, the Cooper Wind Scooper; the Quarte Wing Flyer.

She stabilized the creations on a table and used a fan set on high and low settings to test the prototypes. She used an anemometer to test how many miles per hour the fan pushed air then tested each prototype at distances of 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 centimeters away from the fan. She discovered that her Cooper Wind Scooper which had four fan blades made from Ping-Pong balls cut in half intensified the wind the most. She says it rotated the fastest because the material used was the lightest. She also found the Cooper Wind Scooper was twice as efficient as the most common commercial prototype with three propellers when she compared her results to professional results.

She found her Quarte Wing Flyer which employed two toilet paper rolls cut in half to be her next most efficient creation and the triangle shaped Trislice made of Popsicle sticks wrapped with masking tape to be the least efficient turbine prototype. Isabella gave an in-depth presentation to the School District 27 board April 5 which amazed and delighted the audience.

Isabella entered her first school science fair in Grade 6 with her partner Brittany Denny called Cookie Crumble. In this project they took out different baking ingredients such as sugar to see when the cookie would crumble. They won a bronze medal at the regional science fair in Kamloops last year so this year Isabella decided to try a project on her own.

Isabella decided to research wind energy after going on holiday to Alberta with her family and seeing the large wind turbines in operation there.

“I thought it was very interesting to see how to create energy without giving off any greenhouse gases, radioactive waste or toxic emissions and they actually only take up one per cent of the habitat,” Isabella says. She says wind energy is also a good alternative to hydroelectric dams which cause problems with water sources.

Isabella says she got a lot of help and support with her project from her teacher Miss Kim Zalay, her principal Jim and her parents, the district science fair organizer Stephen Dickens and the judges at the district and regional science fairs.

Isabella lives with her parents Patti and Brent and her brother Nathan who is in Grade 10.

She is on the honour roll and effort rolls. “I like most subjects in school,” Isabella says. But she doesn’t spend all of her time studying. She plays rep and house soccer, volleyball, basketball and floor hockey at school. She also enjoys cross country running and will be running with her team in the Dave Jacobs Classic.

She plays soccer with the team Pride in the community league and is currently taking a refereeing course and will start as an assistant referee with the younger teams.

She also took the leadership course at Kwaleen Traditional School in the first semester and has taken the baby-sitting course.