Jurassic Park Quest- Extinction

These are the animals that I would bring back from each mass extinction if I could use the process of de-extinction. There are a couple different categories that I will go over for each animal. These are classification, (wether it is a mammal, bird, reptile or etc), diet, (what it eats), habitat, (the area it lived in), and the extinction it lived before.

The first animal I would bring back is the Dimetrodon.

Classification- The Dimetrodon is an animal that more closely resembles that of modern day mammals than lizards or birds.

Diet- The diet of the Dimetrodon consisted largely of fish that lived in shallow waters, including the xenacanthus.

Habitat- The fossils of this animal are most commonly found in the red beds of Texas/Oklahoma. This is near rivers and beaches were a long time ago.

Extinction- The Dimetrodon lived until around the end Permian.


The second animal I would bring back is the Trilobite.

Classification- The trilobite was a marine arthopod.

Diet- Though it is uncertain, most people have concluded that the trilobites were carnivores that consumed small invertebrates, such as worms. This is thought because of their structures and how their teeth are formed.

Habitat- The trilobites inhabited the oceans and the seas.

Extinction- The trilobites lived before the end Ordovician.


The third animal I would bring back to life would be the Dunkeosteus

Classification-The Dunkleosteus was a marine reptile.

Diet- It often fed on sharks slightly under its size but could take on something it's size.

Habitat- the Dunkleosteus lived in the depper parts of the ocean and in today's Pennsylvania.

Extinction- This marine reptile was alive until the Late Devonian extinction.

The fourth animal I would bring back to life would be the Camposaurus

Classification- This is a neotheropod dinosaur

Diet- It mostly eats small lizards and bugs that it can kill.

Habitat- It mostly lives in forests near rivers and streams.

Extinction- This creature lived up until the end Triassic.

The fifth animal that I would bring back is the Utahraptor

Classification- This is a theropod dinosaur

Diet-They often ate anything that was available to them and that did not kill them first.

Habitat- Highly wooded forests.

Extinction- This dinosaur went extinct in the K/T Extinction.

Citations:
http://galileon.deviantart.com/art/Utahraptor-2-524313025
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camposaurus
http://www.toptenz.net/top-10-terrifying-prehistoric-sea-monsters.php
http://www.mineraltown.com/Reports/33/33.php
http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/typesofdinosaurs/ss/10-Facts-About-Dimetrodon.htm

My notes: Here

Lunar Landing Quest

If the moon were to be removed from the orbit around Earth, theses are the major and some very small consequences. The first major consequence I could see the moon disappearing would have on the Earth is that the Earth's balance and orbit would be thrown out and it could possibly pull the Earth closer or farther from the sun and create major climate change. The second consequence is that the tides from the moon would disappear and that would mean that at noon time is when the tide would be high. The next consequence is that a lot of animals that sleep in the dark/ night time, including humans, sleep schedules would be messed up. This would cause for the animals to slowly have to either adapt or die off because of the exhaustion. That would then end a lot of food chains involving certain rodents, insects, and other animals. A lot of animals would die and that would cause a lot of foods to disappear from human diets. The next consequence I could see is that there would be no more phases of the moon to observe at night and astronomers would have it harder because the moon is very good for studying space and other extraterrestrial objects.

My notes: Here

Diversity Matters- Extinction

The first profile I am doing on the consequences of changing biodiversity is about how it can lead to extinction. This is also going to be my one profile on the consequences of changing genetic diversity affects a population. Most creatures that are alive today have evolved from past animals and used their genetics to adapt to their surroundings to strive in their current ecosystem. Some animals have had to change their DNA, which is more like the DNA changes itself because of the environment around them has put so much pressure onto their genetics that it causes the genes to have to change. This sometimes results in a species being killed off because either all of their genetics adapt to the ecosystem or the animal dies because it can not handle everything around them.

Credit: Fact Monster

http://www.factmonster.com/dk/science/encyclopedia/evolution.html

The second profile I am going to do is on how animals can damage their own ecosystem. This profile is on how change in species diversity affected an ecosystem. Species are constantly in competition for similar or the same resources. These resources can range from food to areas that they live in. So if two or more different species are fighting over a resource then they could possibly drive that resource  "out" of the ecosystem around them. An example I could give of this would be if two different species of birds were to be competing for a certain bush of berries in the forest. If the birds could (not saying that is real, it is just an example) only eat that berry in that ecosystem, then they may end up getting rid of all of that berry in the area because of them trying to take and eat all of them so that they have them. This would end up changing the ecosystem by taking away those berries and then the rest of the ecosystem wouldn't have it and since the berry bushes grow from the seeds from the berries, they could no longer grow. I assume the berries could possibly redevelop into the ecosystem by the fecal matter if the bird had not been able to dissolve the seeds.


Credit: Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_(biology)

My notes: Here

Star Trek- Hollywood Critic

In Star Trek, there are many different aliens that the Starship Enterprise people encounter and come by throughout the movies and series. This hollywood critic is on how all of these different speciees (Vulcans and etc.) all look similar or exactly like humans. So Vulcan's only difference in their appearance to humans is there eyebrows and their ears. If you think about it then the Vulcans, unless they were from another planet and just became native to Vulcan, would have had to evolve from something like a rodent or some other animal in that planet. Vulcan has no animal similar to that of a human or anything human-esque on it. This is very annoying and I don't see why they would have some of the main races look like humans. I could understand if it was really like a budget cut and they couldn't get suits for them but I also don't because like some other things have suits. Also, I could really say this about multiple human-esque aliens in other movies.

Explaining directional hearing in animals- Journalist Side Quest

One of the reasons that humans have the ear lobes are to help them know what direction sounds is coming from. Most animals in nature have a different way of doing this. Scientists have discovered that most animals that do not have really defined ears have a set of "internal ears" which localize sounds so that they can understand them. The animals need this because of the very small gap between their ears and the empty space from ear to ear, allowing for sounds to escape. These newly discovered ears have been found to allow creatures to also hear some more precise things and some internal sounds. Scientists have since thought of a way future robots could use this type of hearing for industrial applications. 

I feel that the discovery of this information is pretty useful because all of the implications it could have ranging from robots with very good hearing to hearing aids that are beyond better than the ones we have now and that could possibly give someone perfect hearing even if they were struggling to hear before. This discovery is very cool.

The article: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160218133146.htm

Credit to: Technical University of Munich

Pale Blue Dot

1. For the first step for creating a basic replica of Earth, you would need to find an area that is in a habitable zone and that has a star, such as a red giant, for energy on the planet.

2. After the area for this new planet is located, you will need a lot of dirt, stone, liquid metals, and rocks of sorts. Make sure the dirt has plenty of nitrogen in it so that it can help the atmosphere and be very good for crops.

3. Put the molten metal into a compressed ball in the area where you want the new planet. After that then just start throwing the rest of the stuff onto that ball of metal. It will all eventually sort itself by density and that will create the inside of your planet. The molten core so far will cool on the inside and the outer core will stay liquid because of the pressure on the inside. This liquid out core will help with the atmosphere on the planet.

4. For this step you will need to collect millions of comets and bomb that rock you have created so far with them. This will add a nice landscape to the planet and all of the ice on the comets will melt and create a lot of water.

5. The last step is for vegetation and organisms on the new planet. You could possibly make synthetic life forms, or artificial I guess would be a more accurate term.


My notes: Here

I am Legend- Hollywood Critic

In the movie, I am Legend, Will Smith plays a virologist who is also the protagonist of the film. In the film he creates a vaccine to protect himself from a virus that turns people into zombie/vampire/ghoul things. This may sound like something that is possible but it actually wouldn't work in real life. In the movie it is known that he is the only human that is currently "living" in the city, so knowing this and knowing that to make a vaccine, you would need a patient that had this disease already to get a small cell of the virus which you could then genetically modify so that it was weak and couldn't reproduce rapidly. So to create this vaccine that would protect him so much, he would either need to find another human that would contact or already had contacted the virus and take some of their blood, or he could get the virus and then take his own blood and then he would have something that scientists could go off of because it surely wouldn’t be perfect enough to keep everyone from contacting the virus.

What Goes Down When the Lights Go On

This quest journal entry is on the amount of power others and I use in our household. It cost 12.29 cents to fully charge my iPod. I assume this is a small amount taking in the fact that I don’t even charge it everyday and if I do charge it I only charge it once the whole day. The power bill for my house is about 230$ every month. It costs more power on the weekends because that is when we are all using electronics and on our technology. The month(s) the power bill is the highest is in June, July, and August. It is the highest in those months because that is when we are playing on games, watching tv, and just being lazy because we don’t have school (Me and my brothers). My house requires about 30 to 34 kwh per day. The most efficient ways I could reduce how much energy I use is by not leaving things on the charger overnights or forgetting their on there and leaving them on for like a week (Poor Windows Surface 2). I think that they could change a lot of the energy grid, though it would cost a lot, by upgrading to more hydroelectric and geothermal power plants.

What's Out There- Interstellar

My presentation: Here

My notes: Here

Crash Course Big History #1- #7- Documentarian

So I watched #1 through #7 of Crash Course Big History and have learned many things. One thing that I thought was very interesting was how I learned that Australia had broken off of Antarctica, but the thing I thought was interesting was how marsupials were the majority of the creatures that lived and evolved on Australia, resulting in kangaroos, lemurs, and many other creatures now on Australia. I also learned, or might I say clarified, on how we are more like cousins to Chimpanzees than a predecessor to them. They are like us  in how we both are from a close ancestor from a long time ago. We are no more genetically advanced than Chimpanzees. I also learned and thought it was interesting in how we share 98.4 percent of our DNA with the Chimpanzees. I enjoyed learning about the many different time periods including the Permian, Devonian, and Cretaceous.

Credit: Crash Course http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/crash-course-big-history.jpg

Godzilla (2014)- Hollywood Critic

In the movie "Godzilla", the main monster is always Godzilla because everything else is irrelevant. The science that I am judging in this Hollywood Critic is about how tall Godzilla is. With the height I found on the wiki page for Godzilla in the newest movie (108 meters or 355 feet) and assuming that Godzilla's bones are created the way most other living creatures bones are made, then I can say that Godzilla's body structure is impossible. Godzilla him self weighs 164,000 pounds and bone would have to make up most of that to be able to hold him up. Bone can hold a certain weight per meter and when increased to Godzilla's size bone increases in weight fast than it increases in how much it can hold. So Godzilla would have to have bones made of something that's weight would be equal to the bones but potentially quadruple the strength so that it could hold up the weight of the bones themselves and the rest of Godzilla's body.

Interstellar- Movie

 The Blight organism that is affecting the crops and the lack of resources. I think that the lack of resources problem could have been avoided when the people first started noticing the food was being damaged by the crops. They could have possibly started to test the crops or the Blight for what makes the blight eat the crops and just genetically modify the crops so that they can't be eaten by the Blight or the Blight don't want to eat them. Some of the characteristics a planet needs to sustain human life are water safe to drink by humans, soil capable of producing crops, sun light for energy, and oxygen in the air that is breathable. A self-sustaining space station would most likely be harder to up keep with because if the planet did have some resources then those would be much more viable than only living off of stuff the people brought with them.

Racing Extinction

My thoughts after watching the video primarily revolved around me thinking about what I eat and if I would stop eating those foods for the sake of saving many animals. The answer to that is yes, I would stop eating many types of meats and other things that cause animals to nearly be put to extinction because I really can go without them and I particularly don't care too much about many animal products. I am not saying I would go vegan because I love things like eggs, milk, and other things of that nature. I have wanted to go vegetarian, which will help a little I know, and hopefully I will be able to later in life.

A lot of people profit off of the ivory in many elephants native to Africa. These corporations will kill elephants for their tusks and skins that sale for a lot. It has put many different species of elephants in danger that would not be endangered otherwise, if not for this industry. Instead of killing these cute creatures, they could possibly make many animal safe attractions for people to come to and enjoy with their families which could be a very profitable business because these creatures are endangered.

Star Wars IV: A New Hope- Hollywood Critic

In all of the Star Wars movies there are often fight scenes in space where things are exploding. I am doing this Hollywood Critic side-quest because it is not possible for those explosions of planets, space ships, and battle stations. In space, things cannot explode. For one, fire can not be in lit in space making everyone incapable of lighting anything that requires fire to explode. In Star Wars, the lasers that are the cause of most of the explosions, follow the principles of magneto-hydrodynamics, which allows them to fly through space destroying things. Now talking about explosions. In space, if something were to be tempted to explode, it would not, because there is a lack of oxygen in space for fire to combust and go out everywhere, which if it could not explode it would implode, or collapse, on itself. So all of those ships, planets, and asteroids in Star Wars should have been falling inwards on themselves instead of exploding into many pieces. Also to include with explosions, you would not be able to hear in space because sound is absent in the vacuum of space.

Six Degrees Could Change The World: Climate Change

I consider climate change an important issue because climate change directly affects how we live our everyday lives and how we will have to adapt to live throughout life. As examples were shown in the movie, Australia could potentially become a continent covered in a giant desert with almost, if any, sources of clean drinking water. Another thing that was mentioned in the video that would happen would be hurricanes because of the massive climate changes. It talked about how the western half of the United states would be devastated with the droughts and dry climate but then along the east coast hurricanes would come down from up North. This would surely destroy most if not all cities and civilizations along the coast which would result in a drop of many places for people to live since the desert-ish area to the east would be inhabitable. So if both of those disasters were to come from the temperature going up a couple degrees then that would mean most major crop producing industries would be shut down due to the heat killing the plants and then without the vegetables and grains to feed the animals then that would mean most of the animals would die. An increase in the temperature would put a lot of the world's humans in danger even though it could possibly lead to a new/more sustainable life for people in extremely cold climates. Climate change would not be good.

Earthquakes- Natural Disasters

By looking at a map on this website I can say that I feel that the epicenter of a earthquake would, most likely, not be in our immediate area. It still could possibly be in an area around us and that would then affect us, but no the epicenter would not be in our area. Another bit of evidence that it would not be in our area would be the dates of all of the earthquakes in North Carolina. If you were to look at the dates of the most recent earthquake even remotely close to our area then it would be in 2006 in the mountainous region of the state. We aren't that far away from that area but hopefully there won't be any major earthquakes anytime soon. Looking at the map found on this site, you can see that the most hazardous earthquakes don't often happen in our area. We would be considered living in either the green or the blue on the map. This would mean that if any earthquakes were to happen in North Carolina then the probability that it would be catastrophic is very low.

Image Credit: DailyMail.com

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/15/article-1366603-0B307F2A00000578-515_634x386.jpg

Image Credit: NCDEQ

http://portal.ncdenr.org/image/image_gallery?uuid=8b609f83-4fdc-45f1-b64d-94ff897d536f&groupId=38334&t=1416259066624

To address the second detail that we needed to include in this post, I do think that an earthquake in a hotspot area around us could potentially damage us, taking in consideration the magnitude of the earthquake. The hotspot closest to our area is below us so that could possibly be where a earthquake would hit, if one were to hit sometime in the near future. If an earthquake did hit the hotspot then it would likely need to be an earthquake of a magnitude over 3 to do any significant damage. The damage would likely be unnoticeable in North Carolina if it was any magnitude under 4 though.

My sources are as follows:

http://portal.ncdenr.org/web/lr/southeast-us-earthquakes

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1366603/Earthquake-map-America-make-think-again.html

Drinking Dino Urine Activity- Storybook on water molecule!

Click this to go to it!- Storybook on a water molecule!

What Science is

To me, science is everything that exists around us in the natural world and outside of this world, such as in this galaxy or universe we live in. Science is usually something that can be physically proven but also a lot of times things are theorized and/or can be proven using mathematical formulas. Science is something that anyone can make a hypothesis about even if though it may be rejected or turned down immediately. Science is something that is always in debate and subjects in science may never be proven such as many theories involving multiple universes or ways to time travel. An example from my own everyday life is my everyday consuming of food and how we use food we consume to create energy for our bodies, in the form of calories.