Shuttle Discovery's Final Flight Today

Shuttle Discovery’s Final Flight Today

Posted on by Scott Young
Posted on: Thursday February 24, 2011

The space shuttle Discovery is on the pad right now, awaiting its launch at 3:50 pm Central time. Discovery’s flight has been delayed several times, most recently due to cracks in the massive external fuel tank. The cracks were repaired and strengthened, and the tank has been fueled and is holding pressure, so it looks like it was the right decision. We’ll be updating this blog throughout the preparations for launch.

Scott Young

Scott Young

Planetarium Astronomer

Scott is the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, developing astronomy and science programs. He has been an informal science educator for thirty years, working in the planetarium and science centre field both at The Manitoba Museum and also at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Scott is an active amateur astronomer and a past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Manitoba Stories: In the Sky

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Voyage of Discovery

Posted on by Rebecca Watson
Posted on: Thursday February 24, 2011

By Dr. Graham Young, past Curator of Palaeontology & Geology

 

Last week, I discovered several very exciting fossils. Some of these are unusual, so unusual that they will certainly end up as the subject of future scientific publications. One of them is only the second known specimen, worldwide, of a particular group for the entire Ordovician Period!

But how, you must wonder, did I manage to make these discoveries? Was I out in the -20 degree weather, scraping the snow from the edge of a quarry in the Manitoba Interlake so that I could get at the rock beneath? Was I taking time away from the Museum, collecting fossils beside some calm tropical sea?

No, it was not as romantic as either of those possibilities. I was in one of the best places to find unusual fossils: looking through the microscope in my little research office. You may have heard of those situations when a large museum discovers an unknown dinosaur in its back rooms, stored away in field jackets from some long-past collecting expedition. But what you might not appreciate is that many of the most important fossil discoveries are made in museum collections, not in the field.

Stacks of trays carrying fossils placed around a crowded office.

I had thought about this for a long time, ever since hearing and reading about how Euan Clarkson discovered the conodont animal in a collection in Scotland. Conodonts have been known for over a century as small, fossilized tooth-like structures that are abundant in many rocks from the Paleozoic Era, but until the early 1980s it was not known what they really represented. Euan found the answer when he was looking through drawers full of specimens that had been collected long before from a site near Edinburgh known as the Granton Shrimp Bed. Based on this discovery, he and his colleagues were able to demonstrate that conodonts were eel-shaped fish-like creatures.

 

Image: In the paleontology lab, trays of fossils await examination under the microscope.

It is much the same here. We might sometimes already have an inkling that we have found something unusual, such as a very ancient horseshoe crab. But it is only when we really study things carefully under a microscope that we are able to make sense of them, to discover what they actually are. And there are times that the finds are, like Euan’s, simply serendipitous. When I first started to work at the Museum, I had to sort through some uncatalogued fossils. One of these looked somewhat like a jellyfish, with the note attached stating that it had been found in a schoolyard in River Heights, Winnipeg.

Close-up of a fossilized horseshoe crab.

Holotype specimen of the horseshoe crab Lunataspis aurora (specimen I-4000A).

Close-up on a fossilized jellyfish specimen.

The jellyfish found in a schoolyard in Winnipeg (specimen I-2555; ca=canals, go=gonads).

Years later, when I really started to study fossil jellyfish, I pulled out that specimen and realized that it wasn’t just a jellyfish. It was actually one of the best-preserved fossil jellies in existence, and I used a photo of it in a paper we wrote reviewing these sorts of fossils. Since it was found in a schoolyard, however, we don’t actually know its bedrock source. I have my hunches about where it came from originally, but we are still hunting for that jellyfish goldmine! So maybe I will make a discovery in the field, too, but if so it will be because we first found a fossil in the Museum’s collection.

Meanwhile, on these winter days, I will be hunched over my microscope whenever time permits. There are so many slabs of rock to be pored over, fossils waiting to be discovered, and time moves on faster and faster …

Museum Stories: Palaeontology & Geology

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Fun with Fungus!

Posted on by Diana Bizecki Robson
Posted on: Monday February 14, 2011

It’s that time of the year when I’ve finished writing reports and analyzing data and actually get to look at all the stuff I collected last summer. I’ve just finished identifying my vascular plants and now I get to look at the fungus! Using the photographs I took of the fresh mushrooms and the notes I wrote up in the field, I settle down at my desk with a hand lens, a ruler, and a big stack of mushroom books to try and figure out what I’ve got.

A selection of fungus specimens in various storage containers laid out on a desk.

Trays of fungus that I’ve been identifying.

A flat capped mushroom growing in the grass.

My unknown Russula while still fresh in the ground.

Mushroom identification is a bit different than plant identification because you need to use your sense of smell. After determining that one of my mushrooms is some kind of Russula, I move onto the species descriptions. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a candidate species is that it smells “fruity when young and dirty when older” while the other is only “slightly dirty”. Hmm, how does one ascertain the level of dirtiness? I’m stumped and decide to move on to the next character on the list: taste. One candidate species is described as tasting “very sharp and burning” which sounds more like a description of a bladder infection than a gustatory sensation to me. I decide to skip over the taste part too; I’ve read too many articles about exactly what happens to you if you eat the poisonous ones. You probably don’t want to know the details: it’s not pretty. After reading more of the descriptions I finally settle on Russula alutacea and my work on this species is done.

Two mushrooms picked and laying on the ground.

On to the next fungus, which is providing me with a fair bit of grief since it doesn’t seem to have any distinguishing characters at all! It is beige and light brown with white spores, no volva, no annulus, no partial veil, no bumps. Plus I can’t really find anything that looks quite like it in my field guides. I decide to try the internet and come across a wonderful mushroom identification web page by Micheal Kuo (http://www.mushroomexpert.com/index.html). Using his on line keys I decide that my unknown species could very well be Melanoleuca. Mr. Kuo writes that identifying species in this genus is nearly as tedious as singing Suzanne Vega’s “My Name is Luka” with the words changed to “Melanoleuca” (watch here). Oh no! Now I’m going to be singing that song all day. But the lyrics aren’t quite right. Ah, here we go “Melanoleuca, it lives on the forest floor, its’ not very colourful, yes I think I’ve seen it before. If you find mushrooms with white spores, flattened caps and amyloid warts, you just might have found this genus, you just might have found this genus, you just might have found this genus”.

 

Image: A suspected Melanoleuca sp.

As you can probably tell I get a little “office-bound” and antsy this time of year. It’s actually quite enjoyable to open up the containers that I placed the fungi in earlier in the year because the scent becomes concentrated. When the container is opened the wonderful earthy, spicy fragrance of the fungus is released and I am transported back to that mossy forest floor where I found it–a nice place to be (even if it is only in my head) on a cold, grey, February day. Unfortunately, smelling these fungi tends to make me hungry. Right now I’m craving linguini with mushroom cream sauce and bacon. Oh well, I guess I know what I’m having for dinner tonight!

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson

Curator of Botany

Dr. Bizecki Robson obtained a Master’s Degree in Plant Ecology at the University of Saskatchewan studying rare plants of the mixed grass prairies. After working as an environmental consultant and sessional lecturer…
Meet Dr. Bizecki Robson

Museum Stories: Botany

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50 Years Ago Today: Bold Steps in Space

Posted on by Scott Young
Posted on: Thursday February 3, 2011

50 years ago today, during the height of the Cold War, Americans and Russians were head-to-head in a competition to put the first human into space. At the same time, both nations were trying to send robotic probes to the Moon and the other planets. On February 3, 1961 (in North American time zones), the Soviet Union launches a four-stage version of their R-7 rocket. Earlier versions of the R-7 had launched Sputnik and the dog Laika, the first living being to orbit the Earth. With the added fourth stage, the target this time was the planet Venus. The Venera series of robotic probes would eventually land on Venus and provide the first images of its cloud-shrouded surface, but in 1961 the rockets were not up to the task yet.

The R-7 launched into a starry sky, and performed flawlessly throughout its first three stages. The new fourth stage, however, failed to ignite, and the probe remained in Earth orbit. To cover up the failure, the Soviets called the mission “Sputnik 7” and said it was only a test of a heavier spacecraft design, the Iron Curtain equivalent of “I meant to do that”.

Despite being a failed space mission, the launch did prove to the Americans that the Soviet Union could place an 8-tonne payload into orbit – and therefore, could also lob an 8-tonne H-bomb to hit any target in the world.

Scott Young

Scott Young

Planetarium Astronomer

Scott is the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, developing astronomy and science programs. He has been an informal science educator for thirty years, working in the planetarium and science centre field both at The Manitoba Museum and also at the Alice G. Wallace Planetarium in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Scott is an active amateur astronomer and a past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

Manitoba Stories: In the Sky

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