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Ants... In... Space
Ant writes "The Fowler students picked an experiment with ants, rather than plants, because they wanted to see some activity in space. They have been following the ants' progress on the web. The students and their teachers also have learned that sometimes the best thought-out hypothesis does not pan out in reality. 'We predicted that the ants would tunnel a lot slower in microgravity, but we're finding out they're moving a lot faster,' said Golash. The students have a control group of ants at their school, living in a similar environment except with gravity. After the shuttle returns from its scheduled 16-day flight in early February, the young scientists will have 30 days to put together a preliminary report. Their "Ants in Space" experiment was sponsored by SPACEHAB, an aerospace company that has worked with NASA for many years to design and build hardware for space experiments."
Launch Preparations: $130 million
Anti-Grav Ant Colony: $2000
The fact that 30 years after we put man on the moon, this is the best NASA can come up with: Unfathomible.
You know, how about we try seeing how ants tunnel in Lunar Regolith, or Martian soil. That would be intersting.
This is great for the kids, but I think it just shows how far NASA has NOT come.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
I could only attribute this to concepts based on hinderences to human's movements in space. They probably assumed that since Humans have a harder time coordinating while in space suits on different worlds that Ants would have a harder time coordinating in small tunnels in a controled environment.
This of course has so far been proved false, because the Ants have several legs and movement through said tunnels would probably be easier with lower gravity in the same way humans could probably move faster in tunnels on the moon than we could here on earth. Think of it this way, we could jump down a cooridor on the moon far faster than we could walk run or crawl through it on earth.
It wasn't until Buzz Aldrin's EVA during the last Gemini mission that they had worked out a set of maneuvers and restraints to make sure that when an astronaut turned a knob, he didn't turn instead.
Now, an ant is never free floating. She always has something to hold onto, the tunnel. But if we have learned anything in space, you really can't assume anything. You have to observe it and see how it actually behaves.
Take fire for instance. You take it for granted here on earth that you can see the flames. Well, flames are caused by convection, which does't happen in micro-gravity. Hot air has the same "weight" as cold air. Instead the plasma forms a sphere that is tricky to see. Smoke does not rise from the fire for the very same reason.
With that sort of information, NASA found they had to design completely new fire detection systems for the ISS.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
2. We probably wasted thousands of tax dollars on this experiment.
You're nothing; like me.
Another thing you need to remember that hasn't been pointed out yet is that while the forces do indeed propogate upwards, they disperse. They don't maintain their strength in the way I'm almost certain you're imagining, they get weaker and weaker, until quite rapidly they are simply swamped by simple friction and other electromagnetic effects and get absorbed into the system as incredibly tiny amounts of heat.
This is why when you jump on the ground, nobody on the opposite side of the planet suddenly feels a bump. The forces disperse to effective nonexistance (since they can't be conceivably detected anymore). Even really really large bumbs like Richter 7.5 earthquakes require very sensitive devices to detect them after a few hundred miles.
I'm trying and I really can't think of any solid benefits from trying this.
This statement could have two interpretations. One, that there are no direct benefits to what could be derived from this experiment. Two, that there are no benefits at all, scientific or otherwise.
I agree with number one. I disagree with number two. And furthermore, I think the assumption behind number one is faulty.
I believe there are practical, non-scientific benefits from doing this. You mention that you are in favor of getting kids involved in science. What better way then having them directly involved in real science? With real scientific equipment? This appears to me to be a valid scientific effort, albeit of little practical value. But is will no doubt have an immense effect on the self esteem of the kids involved. And don't tell me that you went through high school as a geek and couldn't have used a boost to your self esteem. (Another post in this thread complained of wasted tax dollars for field trips from NY to CO. I see no differnce between this and elite sports teams travelling for interstate games.)
The faulty asssumption is that scientific research needs to have immediate practical application. Because this assumption is so widely held, and in many cases not recognized as such, we have the situation where funding for basic fundemental research continues to shrink.
Consider the fate of the Superconducting Supercollider. The SSC designed to answer questions in physics that would have little or no immediate practical applications. But because of the assumption that all science has to be for something now, it failed to secure funding.
What that Newton, Maxwell, or Faraday had been forced to work under such constraints? Can you imagine Newton in a publish or perish environment? I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall for Newton's response to, "Yes, yes Issac, we all know prisms make pretty colors. But as to giving you money to play with such toys, well ...". And I believe it was Faraday who when asked what use his work was replied, "Of what use is a newborn baby?" (I have seen this quote attributed to both Faraday and Ben Franklin.)
But without the basic work done by Faraday, Maxwell, et al, we would not have had the understanding of electromagnetism that many years later allows us to use computers to post comments on /.. Without the work done early in the last century on quantum mechanics we wouldn't have transistors or integrated circuits.
Consider the Michelson-Morley experiment. No immediate practical benefit at all. And furthermore, one that obtained a negative result. They expected to measure the effect of the ether and did not. Imagine how it would be reported today? Experiment to measure ether a failure, no effect found. It was Edison who said, "I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that don't work." No well thought out and performed scientific experiment is ever a 'failure'. Unless your assumption is that all experiments should have the predictable result for practical benefits, stated in advance as justification in the funding grant request.
The faulty assumption of immediate practical benefit precludes doing fumdemental research of possible long term benefit. So what knowledge that we haven't gained because the SSC was canceled would have been useful in 2050?
There is a difference between basic research and applied research. The faulty assumption is that all research is/should be applied. This has the practical (i.e. in practise) result that in general, only those projects that have immediate payoffs get funded. This is a bad thing.
Steve M
While reading the various slashdot posts, I was struck by the thought that apparently, MOST of these kids have never just spent an afternoon watching ants. What sort of deprived childhood was that??!
Cripes, I'm 47, and I still enjoy watching ants. These kids don't know what they're missing.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?