Covers 2003 Number 4.Indd

C ALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY engineeringE& andS science Volume LXVI, Number 4, IN THIS ISSUE Spitzer’s Skies Napoleon’s Constellations Naegler’s Amoebas The Mudeo returned to Caltech after a six-year absence. Organized by Jeff Cox, a senior in mechanical engineering, it happened on January 19. Mudeos are traditionally held at construction sites, in this case the future home of a 700-space underground parking structure going in beneath the athletic field north of the gymnasiums. The decades-old tradition is designed to maximize the muck per square inch of skin, with events including a tug o’ war, wheelbarrow races, a “tire spree,” keep-away, and wrasslin’ matches. What does one wear to a Mudeo? “Whatever you don’t mind throwing away,” says Cox. engineering& and science C a l i f o r n i a Institute of Technology Volume LXVI, Number 4, 2003 E S �2 Random Walk 8 The Far, the Cold, and the Dusty — by Douglas L. Smith Caltech and JPL collaborate on a new infrared telescope in space that will change � the way we see the universe. Here’s a first peek. 20 Egyptian Stars under Paris Skies — by Jed Z. Buchwald An ancient (but how ancient?) zodiac rouses Napoleonic-era physicists to attempt calculations of the earth’s age. 32 Brain Worms and Brain Amoebas: They Do Exist — by Andrea Manzo A Core 1 (science writing) paper gives us more things to worry about. On the cover: Like the five Departments blind men’s descriptions of the elephant, how the 37 Books cosmos appears depends on who’s looking. The 41 Obituaries: Edward Hutchings Jr.; Peter W. Fay Elephant’s Trunk Nebula, which lies in IC 1396, 43 Faculty File 2,450 light-years off in the constellation Cepheus, is an ebony blotch to our eyes (inset). But to the Engineering & Science (ISSN 0013-7812) is published Thomas A. Tisch Spitzer Space Telescope’s quarterly at the California Institute of Technology, 1200 President of the Alumni Association East California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125. Annual Robert L. O’Rourke infrared vision, it becomes subscription $10.00 domestic, $20.00 foreign air mail; Vice President for Public Relations a luminous womb. One of single copies $3.00. Send subscriptions to Caltech 1-71, Pasadena, CA 91125. Third class postage paid at Pasade- the two bright young stars na, CA. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material con- STAFF: Editor — Jane Dietrich in the central void was tained herein forbidden without authorization. © 2003, Managing Editor — Douglas Smith seen only dimly before, California Institute of Technology. Published by Caltech Writer/Editor — Barbara Ellis and the Alumni Association. Telephone: 626-395-3630. Contributing Writers — Robert Tindol, Mark Wheeler indicating it may still be PICTURE CREDITS: Inside front cover, 3, 36, 43, 44 – Bob Paz; Copy Editors — Emily Adelsohn, Michael Farquhar, surrounded by its 2 – NASA/JPL/ASU; 2-3 – NASA/JPL/MSSS; 2, 3 – Doug Smith; Elena Rudnev 3 – NASA/JPL/Cornell, NASA/JPL/ASU/Cornell; 4 – Tom Ahrens; Business Manager — Debbie Bradbury placental planet-forming 5 – Caanan Meagher, Roy Poper; 6 – NASA/JPL; 7 – GALEX; 10 Circulation Manager — Susan Lee disk. For more on the – IPAC, Howard McCallon/IPAC; 14 – Lockheed Martin, Mark Photographer — Robert Paz Garcia/JPL; 15 – Ball Aerospace; 16 – STScI; 19 – Denise Apple- Graphic Artist — Douglas Cummings Spitzer, see page 8. white/Princeton; 20 – Réunion des Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, Cover image credits: Spitzer image—NASA/JPL-Caltech/W. Reach (SSC/Caltech); inset image—Canada- Cover image credits: Spitzer image—NASA/JPL-Caltech/W. Cuillandre/Coelum, and the Digitized Sky Survey France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. NY; 21 – Giraudon/Art Resource, NY; 32 – Doug Cummings Visit Caltech on the Web at http://www.caltech.edu Random Walk Above: This 360-degree panorama was taken before Spirit turned 115° clockwise to roll off the northwest ramp. The camera mast is also a periscope for the mini Thermal Emission Spectrometer (mini-TES), W E ’ RE B AAACK . which sees infrared light; that is to say, heat. Warm, red regions like the shallow depression in the distance tend to be dusty, and perhaps treacherous. The infrared spectral data also help the geologists decide which rocks are worth visiting. In the inset, mini-TES data are superim- posed on a corresponding panoramic camera image. Unless you’ve been living under a rock yourself, you know that a JPL Mars rover named Spirit has rolled off its lander and is preparing to sample rocks. (Spirit’s twin, Opportunity, was still en route as E&S went to press.) These robot geologists are the next best thing to being there. Each stands about five feet tall, so its panoramic camera gives us a human’s-eye view of the landscape; its Swiss-Army-knife tool arm is about as long as a human’s; and the arm’s microscopic imager is the strength of a geologist’s loupe, discriminating things as small as a grain of salt—all in hopes of positively identifying rocks that on Earth only form in the presence of water. It can turn in its own Above: NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe pours champagne for, from left, length, clear basketball-sized rocks, and traverse a 45° slope Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager Pete Theisinger (BS ’67), Deputy without tipping over. And it has to think for itself—since it Project Manager Richard Cook, and Rover Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) takes about 10 minutes for a radio signal to reach Mars, you can’t drive it with a joystick. You just give it marching orders. Development Manager Rob Manning (BS ’82) at the post-landing press This amazing machine is only beginning to get to work, but conference on January 3. here’s the story so far. ■—DS Left: Spirit (red dot) landed in Gusev Crater, which may once have held a lake slightly smaller than New Jersey. Ma’adim Vallis enters Gusev from the south (at top in this image) after running some 900 kilometers—about the distance from Baton Rouge to St. Louis—and appears to have been carved by flowing water about two billion years ago. (This Mars Odyssey daytime infrared image was draped over Mars Global Surveyor [MGS] topography.) Right: Spirit’s planned itinerary includes a jaunt of some 250 meters to a 192-meter-diameter crater dubbed Sleepy Hollow by the jet-lagged mission team. With luck, clambering down into the crater’s interior will give access to older subsurface rocks that may reveal a sedimentary history. Then we’ll head for the (East) hills, two to three kilometers away. The long arrow points to Hill B—the black blob at the top (south) of this image, which is a composite of MGS photos and images from the lander’s descent camera. The dark streaks are dust-devil trails. 2 ENGINEERING & SCIENCE NO . 4 Left: Spirit’s first target is Adirondack, a football-sized rock chosen for its flat, dust-free surface. (Adirondack can be seen in the panorama directly above the inset.) After exposing the rock’s interior with an abrasion tool and determining its composition by both Mössbauer and alpha-particle X- ray spectrometry, Spirit will make its way by easy stages to Sleepy Hollow, the crater in the middle distance directly above. The patches of disturbed soil on Sleepy Hollow’s floor may be bounce marks. Left: Those patches may resolve a mystery—the top layer of soil scraped up by one deflating airbag crumpled up and peeled away almost as though it was wet sand overlaying dry, which it clearly is not. Spirit can’t examine this area, called the Magic Carpet, for fear of getting fouled in the airbag, so Above, left: Spirit Mission Chief Mark Adler (PhD ’90) practices patience perhaps the same soil-peeling as Mission Control waits to hear if Spirit survived its landing. The rover process will be found to be at should have bounced to a stop in five minutes or so, but there was no work where the airbags bounced. signal for nearly 10. Right: That’s more like it! Adler and EDL Chief Engineer Wayne Lee celebrate as the first pictures begin to come down. Below, right: The rovers are solar powered, so team members must live and work on Mars time. Garo Anserlian, of Executive Jewelers in nearby Montrose, has modified several batches of 21-jewel timepieces by inserting precisely calibrated lead weights into their works to slow them to match the Martian day, which is about 39 minutes longer than an Earth day. ENGINEERING & SCIENCE NO . 4 3 Right: It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s grad student Sean Humbert taking wing from a medieval siege engine known as a trebuchet (that’s French for “Really Big Catapult”) into the bracing waters of San Francisco Bay. B ETWEEN A R OCK AND A H OT P LACE Earth’s core-mantle bound- to the conditions that exist crystals of Sri Lankan Donald Helmberger, the ary is a place none of us will at the planet’s core-mantle enstatite—a form of magne- Smits Family Professor of ever go, but Caltech research- boundary. The team did their sium silicate—as well as Geophysics and Planetary ers using a special high- work in Caltech’s shock-wave synthetic glass of the same Science, and Edward Garnero velocity cannon have shown laboratory, where an 80-foot composition. Upon compres- (PhD ’94), now a professor at that there may be molten light-gas gun is specially sion, these materials trans- Arizona State University. rock there, at a depth of prepared to fire one-ounce form to the 30-percent-denser Most prominent beneath the about 1,800 miles.

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