Read Online Zoom: From Atoms and Galaxies to Blizzards and Bees: How Everything Moves by Bob Berman - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Bob Berman
Tags: General, science, Essay/s, Physics, Geophysics, Optics & Light, Science / Essays, Science / General, Science / Physics / General, Science / Physics / Geophysics, Science / Physics / Optics & Light
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seaside fishing village. My gas tank was nearly full, I had a bottle of water, and, well, what else do you need?
Yet after a mere hour of solitary driving among nothing but dunes and small rocks, not encountering a single car passing me going the other way, the initial elation of adventure was replaced by a vague and uncomfortable feeling.
No one was there. The sun was fierce. There was certainly no cell-phone service. What if the car broke down? No one knew my plans. When would another car travel on this dry dirt trail? Would the next vehicle appear any time this month? This year? I glanced at the single plastic liter of water on the seat next to me. It suddenly occurred to me that I was an idiot.
Turn around or keep going? I figured I was roughly at the halfway point. It made no difference now. Anyway, never turn back. At this point, I had no idea that my odyssey would become bound up with that of a legendary British brigadier named Ralph Bagnold.
Suddenly, without preamble, a yellow dust devil appeared perhaps forty yards in front of me, and I slammed on the brakes, creating a competing dust cloud. It was a dead ringer for a tornado, a miniature version. I got out and had to crane my neck to see how very high it towered into the blue cloudless sky. And now it was joined by a twin to my right. Swirling crazily, they both moved ahead at maybe walking speed and showed no sign of dissipating. Each was perhaps six feet thick. In the unchanging sameness of the desert, where everything else was utterly motionless and even the wind was perfectly calm, this sudden lively animation was startling. The fierce whirlwinds were not just surreal. To tell the truth, they were downright spooky.
Unlike tornadoes, dust devils develop from the ground up. They favor dry places, such as deserts, and do not form from clouds. Indeed, like the pair I was now observing, they usually materialize beneath calm, cloudless skies.1
I knew that they could reach above the tallest skyscrapers, but these towered perhaps three hundred feet. Thirty stories.
In the dry, very thin air of Mars, the sudden materialization of dust devils marching across the chocolate-orange soil seems like the work of spirits. In fact, these dust devils are referred to in Arabic as jinni, which means “demon” and which was the origin of our word genie. They abruptly give that lifeless red planet the brash hint that, yes, the hand of nature still stirs even there, where Earth is a mere dot in the sky.
Those bizarre “spirits” may even be benevolent. On March 12, 2005, technicians monitoring the Mars rover Spirit found that a fortunate encounter with a dust devil had blown off the thick dust on its solar panels, which had choked off much of the power supply. Now, suddenly, electricity generation dramatically increased. Expanded science projects were joyously scheduled. Previously, another rover, Opportunity, had also had its solar panels mysteriously cleaned of accumulated dust, and a dust devil was likewise assumed to have been the cause.
I got the sudden urge to step into one. Would it be dangerous? How fast were those winds, exactly?2
I’d heard that dust devils sometimes throw jackrabbits into the air. But the only truly scary story I’d ever encountered was that of three children who sat in an inflatable playhouse just outside El Paso, Texas, in 2010. The trio were taken into the sky, playhouse and all, carried over a fence and three houses, and then deposited on the ground without serious injury.
The impulse was irresistible. It was my investigative duty as a science journalist, I rationalized. I trotted clumsily across the sands toward the nearest dust devil, my feet sinking with each step, but the whirlwind moved away like a mischievous jinni. It kept eluding me, and then the farther one dissipated abruptly, as if in a dream.
When I finally turned back toward where I thought the car and dirt road were, there was no trace of either. They must be hidden in a
Yet after a mere hour of solitary driving among nothing but dunes and small rocks, not encountering a single car passing me going the other way, the initial elation of adventure was replaced by a vague and uncomfortable feeling.
No one was there. The sun was fierce. There was certainly no cell-phone service. What if the car broke down? No one knew my plans. When would another car travel on this dry dirt trail? Would the next vehicle appear any time this month? This year? I glanced at the single plastic liter of water on the seat next to me. It suddenly occurred to me that I was an idiot.
Turn around or keep going? I figured I was roughly at the halfway point. It made no difference now. Anyway, never turn back. At this point, I had no idea that my odyssey would become bound up with that of a legendary British brigadier named Ralph Bagnold.
Suddenly, without preamble, a yellow dust devil appeared perhaps forty yards in front of me, and I slammed on the brakes, creating a competing dust cloud. It was a dead ringer for a tornado, a miniature version. I got out and had to crane my neck to see how very high it towered into the blue cloudless sky. And now it was joined by a twin to my right. Swirling crazily, they both moved ahead at maybe walking speed and showed no sign of dissipating. Each was perhaps six feet thick. In the unchanging sameness of the desert, where everything else was utterly motionless and even the wind was perfectly calm, this sudden lively animation was startling. The fierce whirlwinds were not just surreal. To tell the truth, they were downright spooky.
Unlike tornadoes, dust devils develop from the ground up. They favor dry places, such as deserts, and do not form from clouds. Indeed, like the pair I was now observing, they usually materialize beneath calm, cloudless skies.1
I knew that they could reach above the tallest skyscrapers, but these towered perhaps three hundred feet. Thirty stories.
In the dry, very thin air of Mars, the sudden materialization of dust devils marching across the chocolate-orange soil seems like the work of spirits. In fact, these dust devils are referred to in Arabic as jinni, which means “demon” and which was the origin of our word genie. They abruptly give that lifeless red planet the brash hint that, yes, the hand of nature still stirs even there, where Earth is a mere dot in the sky.
Those bizarre “spirits” may even be benevolent. On March 12, 2005, technicians monitoring the Mars rover Spirit found that a fortunate encounter with a dust devil had blown off the thick dust on its solar panels, which had choked off much of the power supply. Now, suddenly, electricity generation dramatically increased. Expanded science projects were joyously scheduled. Previously, another rover, Opportunity, had also had its solar panels mysteriously cleaned of accumulated dust, and a dust devil was likewise assumed to have been the cause.
I got the sudden urge to step into one. Would it be dangerous? How fast were those winds, exactly?2
I’d heard that dust devils sometimes throw jackrabbits into the air. But the only truly scary story I’d ever encountered was that of three children who sat in an inflatable playhouse just outside El Paso, Texas, in 2010. The trio were taken into the sky, playhouse and all, carried over a fence and three houses, and then deposited on the ground without serious injury.
The impulse was irresistible. It was my investigative duty as a science journalist, I rationalized. I trotted clumsily across the sands toward the nearest dust devil, my feet sinking with each step, but the whirlwind moved away like a mischievous jinni. It kept eluding me, and then the farther one dissipated abruptly, as if in a dream.
When I finally turned back toward where I thought the car and dirt road were, there was no trace of either. They must be hidden in a
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