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enrichment activity: global climate change
link: NASA
what I learned: I learned about proof/evidence that global warming is real, and the causes and effects of global warming. The proof that I learned about was that the atmospheric carbon dioxide level have never been as high as they are now. In 1950, they were at about 300, and now they are at about 410. The causes of global climate change are certain gases that keep heat in the atmosphere, like nitrous oxide,  methane, carbon dioxide, and

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Enrichment activity title : 40 Years Ago: Space Shuttle Columbia Rolls Out to Launch Pad 39A

Link : https://www.nasa.gov/feature/40-years-ago-space-shuttle-columbia-rolls-out-to-launch-pad-39a

A new learning I accomplished was that 40 years ago NASA made a shuttle named Columbia. On Dec. 29 (40 years ago) Columbia got to Launch Pad 39A by middle of the afternoon, completing the 3.5-mile journey down the crawlway that was made for it, without any accidents.  I think a engineer would benefit from learning about this information. They would want to observe how this creation didn't fail even thought I was humongous. One question this activity left me wondering about was that what inspired NASA to create this?

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Surveying the Northern Lights https://www.sciencefriday.com/videos/aurora-northern-lights/

I learned that however good northern lights can look they can do a lot of damage to the electricity on earth and even the satellites in space. The color of aurora's depend on the molecules that they hit in the atmosphere. The plasma that the aurora creates can actually influence the path of satellites. That means that when the sun is in solar maximum, meaning the solar winds are at the peak of the solar winds, it can do lots and lots of damage to those satellites and that when people rely more and more on satellites and radio communication that can be catastrophic. Scientists need to be able to predict when these will happen and how much damage it could do. I think the scientists who could benefit from this would be people who are needing to launch satellites because if they do it at the wrong time, it could send the satellite off course to go and hit another one or go out of orbit. One question I still have is how many different colors of northern lights can there be?

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Noise and Light Pollution From Humans Alter Bird Reproduction

I learned that human noise and light pollution is altering the bird reproduction and the bird population is going down.

I think people who want to try and stop climate change and help the enviroment around us would benefit from this.

I wonder what other animal are being affected by our man-made pollution.

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I learned about how humans are changing ecological climates and traits just like events in the far past that have killed off tons of ancient creatures and how we can learn from our past to solve those problems and work towards a better future. The question I came up with was if we have also positively impacted the environment as well as harming it.

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As a public health precaution due to COVID-19, all Smithsonian museums are temporarily closed. We are not announcing a reopening date at this time and will provide updates on our websites and social media.

Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

From the Beginning of Life

The new, 31,000-square-foot fossil hall invites you to explore the epic story of how Earth's distant past is connected to the present and informs our future.

Travel through ancient ecosystems, witness the evolution of life, and get up close to some 700 fossil specimens. Discover how human actions are driving Earth's rapidly changing climate today much like long-ago geological events did in the past. Learn how to interpret the scientific evidence of the past and present, and see how the choices we make today will live far beyond us, in deep time.

Earth's distant past is connected to the present and informs our future

Deep Time starts at the very beginning-4.6-billion-years ago. But it ends in the future. Along the way, visitors will travel through ancient ecosystems, experience the evolution of plant and animal life, and get up close with some 700 specimens, including an Alaskan palm tree, early insects, reptiles and mammals, and dramatically posed giants like Tyrannosaurus rex, Diplodocus and the woolly mammoth.

The massive, 31,000-square-foot exhibition will inspire a new generation of dinosaur lovers and scientists. It will also prompt individuals to think about their own impact on the planet.

Unlike past extinction and warming events, human activities are driving Earth's rapidly changing climate today. The exhibition will give visitors tools to interpret the past, present, and future and see how the choices they make today will live far beyond them, in deep time.

Did you know?

Many of the original murals from the old fossil hall by Jay Matternes are featured in Deep Time

Evolve or Perish Board Game

Travel through 630 million years of evolution from life in the sea to life on land! Download this two to four player game in a variety of languages and learn more about the history of life on our planet.

Fossil Highlights

Deep Time Sponsorship

Be part of 4.6 billion years of history in the making. Sponsorship opportunities include financial and in-kind support.

DEEP TIME AUDIO DESCRIPTION APP

Using the accessibility features and settings on your own device, you can read or listen to visual descriptions of the new fossil hall integrated with exhibit content.

Discover how all life is connected-past, present, and future-to all other life and to the Earth itself. Learn more about evolution, ecosystems, and extinction from the beginning of life 3.7 billion years ago to the Age of Humans today.

Available on
Apple App Store Google Play Store

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David H. Koch Hall of Fossils - Deep Time

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As a public health precaution due to COVID-19, all Smithsonian museums are temporarily closed. We are not announcing a reopening date at this time and will provide updates on our websites and social media. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History The new, 31,000-square-foot fossil hall invites you to explore the epic story of how Earth's distant past is connected to the present and informs our future.

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I learned about the pollutant Nitrogen Dioxide. Nasa has recently discovered that during the Covid-19 pandemic this pollutant has disappeared in some parts of the world. This is important because we always hate when the environment gets polluted but when the number goes down it really is a good thing. Many people could benefit from this research but especially scientists that work with air capacity and that stuff. The question I have is how quickly will the number keep going down?

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Explore the actual datasets scientists use to investigate early research discoveries on the NASA COVID-19 Dashboard.

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https://climate.nasa.gov/ Global Warming is becoming more harmful than ever before. Right now, there are shrinking ice sheets, warming oceans, and global temperature rise. The ocean absorbs most (90%) of the Earth's heat and is killing coral reefs/marine species. The planet's average temperature has risen about 2.05 degrees Fahrenheit, which doesn't seem like a lot, but is quite important since the Earth can be affected by any little detail.

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Enrichment activity title and link,

Elk- project noha: https://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/1794747402

New learning you accomplished,

The elk or the cervus canadensis is  part of the deer family

Who do you think would benefit from learning about this information,

People who are interested in mammals and animals

One or more questions this activity left you wondering about.

How big are they when born

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Now I know how life came to exist. It probably started as a simple life form that was too simple for even DNA, which only knew how to reproduce and follow Darwin-style evolution. It was made of simple elements that reacted to one another to fit into the category of life. But who would benefit from this? To be honest, I don't really know who could benefit from this. I get that it's in the name of research and things like that, but how could it help us? Maybe it could help some people learn about evolution and understand it better. Yet I'm still asking myself, what is a clear classification of life and what's not? Does it need to have DNA to contain life, because the first life forms theorized here did not have any DNA. It was just a compound that reacted to form something like life. Does something need to be sentient to count as life? Then plants would not count as life. It's a little confusing where the line is of what is life and what's not.

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https://www.calacademy.org/explore-science/tough-tardigrades

Tough tardigrades, by Moly Michelson (california academy of sciences.)

Tardigrades are tiny microscopic animals that live everywhere. The tundra, boiling waters, the deep sea. They even live in your backyard, and maybe even in your room. But the main reason why tardigrades are so special is because of their resilience, caused by their percentage of foreign dna. This event occurs in their "tun'' state, or a state of deep hibernation. During this ten year state of hibernation, the tardigrade dehydrates itself, causing its dna to become "rather leaky." And when that occurs, foriegn dna is easily accepted into the tardigrade, making up a whopping 1/6 of the tartigrade's dna. These different genes form "a mosaic of different genes'' making the tardigrade immune and very resilient. This would be helpfull, because if we can copy the tardigrade's process, we can maybe replicate their resilience.

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I took some virtual tours of the Smithsonian. From one about the whale that hangs in the ocean hall, I learned that the whale's name is Phoniex because the whale it is a modlel of survived being entangled in fishing equitment. The longest bale a white whale has are 8 ft long. The white patches on it's body are unique to each whale. Whale-watchers could benfit from learning this if they don't already know it. It would make it easier for them to idenify whales.
I wonder if the longest balen on the model are 8 ft long. It didn't look like it in the video.

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The National Museum of Natural History remains temporarily closed. To view the status of the Smithsonian's other museums and the National Zoo, please visit si.edu/museums .

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Sea Level Projections Drive San Francisco's Adaptation Planning

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Sea Level Projections Drive San Francisco's Adaptation Planning

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https://climate.nasa.gov/news/3053/sea-level-projections-drive-san-franciscos-adaptation-planning/

I learned about San Francisco's plans to adapt to the rising sea level. They are doing things such as moving people away from places in serious danger like the cost and are doing the best they can to reduce global warming in hopes to stop/reverse the damage. I  think everyone can learn from this and the damage that global warming is doing to our world.

I wonder how they are going to get other cities/states to be aware and believe the affects of global warming and if this is enough to prove its existence.

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Activity: NASA, Moon-Mars. I did overview 

Link: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moon-to-mars/overview




What I learned: I learned that NASA has a plan to send Astronauts to the moon and then when they have what they need, use the moon as a base of operations to take the next big leap. Humans on Mars. They are planning to get the first woman and another man onto the rocky surface of the moon by 2024.  NASA and other space companies are planning as using the moon as an observer of the solar system. They also want to go there because there are rare earth elements and water on the moon. NASA is going to use use Orion, SLS and the Gateway for the rockets functions, the Humans survivals and many more.

Who will this benefit: Kids who want to know more about the moon and space, people that are studying science for things like work or assignments and astronauts in training who wants to know what may happen if they become a astronaut.

Questions: Who is going on the trip, in what way will Earth use the Moon as a way to get to Mars.

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https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/webb/main/index.html

Quasars are the brightest object in the universe outshining billions of stars, Black holes sit in the center of these objects, they power the Quasars to make them have a voraciously powerful appetite. Quasars abrupt Nasa's learning of other galaxies that are in the universe because of the powerful light they produce that does not reveal the galaxies. If the quasars did not exist, this would allow scientists to increase their knowledge about the outside universe, because some of these galaxies are out of the universe’s wavelength. This learning would benefit me by improving the way I think of galaxies and increasing my knowledge about things I did not know about.

Question: How big can a black hole get, and when if it is in maximum size, how much more powerful would quasars be? And what would happen if the black holes did not power the quasars, would they be stranded without power, would this allow scientists to discover more galaxies?

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https://www.calacademy.org/learn-explore/new-species-2020

4 Standout Species Described in 2020

A skull named Yaksha peretti, can lead us to other extinct amphibians from 100 million years ago. With that discovery historians can benefit from that to search for other types of species and fossils.

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Rising water https://www.nasa.gov/specials/sea-level-rise-2020/

Earth’s global sea levels are rising in a accelerating rate. water is expending fast. Sea Level from 1993 to 2020 has been rising about 3.3 millimeters per year.

I think  that people would want to hear this because this is so important and that would keep them safe that they know

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https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/human-origins (Links to an external site.) Human Origins

Homo erectus was like homo sapiens and they were the first to migrate out of Africa. Homo sapiens interbred with other hominids as they spread across the areas they lived.

I think racist people would benefit from this information because it shows that we are all the same species and the only difference in race is climate and that we are all homo sapiens, not other hominids.

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https://climate.nasa.gov/

I learned about when climate change started happening. Scientists generally regard the later part of the 19th century as the point at which human activity started influencing the climate. But the new study brings that date forward to the 1830s. I'm still wondering who figured out about climate change.

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Dark Storm on Neptune Reverses Direction, Possibly Shedding a Fragment

Astronomers watched a mysterious dark vortex on Neptune go away from a likely near death situation. This storm was wider than the Atlantic ocean and was found by Hubble in September, 2018, in the Northern Hemisphere. This dark vortex scientists found is important because "this smaller dark fragment is potentially part of the dark spot’s disruption process." Basically scientists have seen dark spots like these vanish but they have never seen them disrupt.

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The Northern lights, or auroras, start off from particles that the sun produces called solar wind. When the particles bump into our magnetic field, they follow down the field lines and bump into the molecules in our atmosphere. When this happens the molecules depart their energy to the particles and the particles get excited. This excitement creates light which becomes the aurora.

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Don Hampton keeps his gaze fixed on Alaska's night sky, closely watching colorful streaks of light dance above. As an aurora researcher at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Hampton has monitored this mesmerizing phenomenon for nearly two decades.

"I worry that I know enough about aurora that I sort of lose the magic of it, but when you know the scope of what you're looking at it's quite interesting," he says. "It never gets boring watching the aurora. It's just a pure joy to watch."

Hampton captures thousands of images a night using a myriad of imaging tools that help him quantify the energy pouring down into earth's ionosphere from particles in the solar wind. By examining the aurora's varying colors as well as radar imaging of aurora's effects, Hampton ultimately wants to help identify potential threats of high energy solar particles on satellites and our electrical infrastructure.

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Credits

Produced by Luke Groskin

Filmed by Christian Baker

Aurora Timelapses by Jason Ahrns

Music by Audio Network

Additional Stock Footage Provided by Don Hampton, Pond5, Lee Petersen (C.C. 2.0), Bernt Olsen (C.C. 2.0), NASA NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center's Conceptual Image Lab, NASA Johnson Space Center and the ISS Space Crew Observation Facility NASA Earth Science Remote Sensing Facility, NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory, Steve Sellwood (C.C 2.0), Matthew Stewart (C.C 2.0)

Meet the Producers and Host

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Don Hampton keeps his gaze fixed on Alaska's night sky, closely watching colorful streaks of light dance above. As an aurora researcher at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Hampton has monitored this mesmerizing phenomenon for nearly two decades.

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Project Noah (Links to an external site.)

Project Noah is a global citizen science platform to discover, share and identify wildlife. In project Noah people are able to join and share their discovering through pictures of plant/animals or nature in general. Usually when someone finds a insect they give the location of where is was found, measurements of the creature and a detailed description of it. This information would be useful to people who enjoy learning about nature.

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Penguin Watch

Penguin Watch is about watching penguins 24/7 to see how they're in danger, their patterns, what they do when humans are not there and how people can save penguins because right now, their population is going down, a lot. They use cameras called "Foraging Cameras" The cameras shoot at 1 minute intervals in order to capture very short behavioral events. They are doing this to save the penguins, some of the ecosystem and even humans. They have been doing this project for over 10 years and have gotten a lot of data. There have been these cameras set up in Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Antarctica and more places.

I think everyone would benefit from this, especially people who care about animals, the earth, extension, ecosystems etc. It's important to learn what penguins (and other animals) do when humans are not around so we could potentially save them from danger and even extension. It's also very interesting to see what they do when you're not watching.

One question I have is do they use these cameras to observe other animals or other things?