BSF2012 Friday 7th September
"Life down below:The search for a deep biosphere on Earth and beyond" started with the hunt for evidence of life in rocks thrown up by volcanic action. By this definition, thermophiles found near black smoker vents are surface dwellers. This search is after something much deeper.
We then heard about the expedition to Lake Ellsworth in antarctica - a fluid lake underneath a 3km thick glacier. The plan is to bore through the ice using the hot water technique (a kettle on the end of a 3km long polythene hose) before sampling the water in the lake and the sand at the lake bed. They are taking the same precautions to clean their equipment that space missions take to prevent microbial contamination of Mars.
http://www.ellsworth.org.uk/
Then we went back to the life in rocks idea. The next speaker sugegsted that the Earth was unusual in having surface life, and maybe many planets had life where we cannot detect it. He accepted that although it is quite likely there IS deep life, is is quite difficult for the conditions needed to CREATE life to exist in the deep, so it is probable life went down to hide from some environmental difficulty.
I attended the BA Open Forum to hear what good things the BA does during the year. There was remarkably little moaning this year. 2013 will be Newcastle, 2014 Birmingham, 2015 probably south-east England.
"Living in a Material World" was an enthusiastic lecture given by Jamie Gallagher, a "FameLabber". During the superconductor demonstration he told us that someone had stolen his lump of superconductor, so he proceeded to pour liquid nitrogen over an Everton mint until it started to show superconducting properties (repelling a magnet skillfully held aloft by Jamie himself). Good fun and quite silly, with health-and-safety nowhere to be seen. The best bit of the lecture was listening to him waffle to the festival helper before the lecture proper began, about his views on wind power and electricity generation.
http://www.famelab.org/
"Is access to water a Human Right?" I went into this lecture thinking that perhaps it wasn't, and anyone living where water is scarce should be responsible for building their own reservoir or moving somewhere more plentiful. I quickly learned that legally the human right to water and sanitation IS a human right, having been explicitly recognized by the United Nations General Assembly on 28th July 2010. They acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realisation of all human rights. How we acheive that is a bigger problem. We were shown the secondary problems that ill-researched bore holes can bring, including heavy metal poisoning in Bangladesh, and told that up to half of the wells installed over the last 30 years by humanitarian charities are now not working and in need of maintenance. The point was made that it is important for local communities to be involved in the installation process, so they have the knowledge and investment to maintain the equipment themselves. This was another talk where titanium dioxide showed up, this time as a wonder material for purifying water when activated by sunlight.
Again my brain had had enough by 17.30, and I took the evening off.
We then heard about the expedition to Lake Ellsworth in antarctica - a fluid lake underneath a 3km thick glacier. The plan is to bore through the ice using the hot water technique (a kettle on the end of a 3km long polythene hose) before sampling the water in the lake and the sand at the lake bed. They are taking the same precautions to clean their equipment that space missions take to prevent microbial contamination of Mars.
http://www.ellsworth.org.uk/
Then we went back to the life in rocks idea. The next speaker sugegsted that the Earth was unusual in having surface life, and maybe many planets had life where we cannot detect it. He accepted that although it is quite likely there IS deep life, is is quite difficult for the conditions needed to CREATE life to exist in the deep, so it is probable life went down to hide from some environmental difficulty.
I attended the BA Open Forum to hear what good things the BA does during the year. There was remarkably little moaning this year. 2013 will be Newcastle, 2014 Birmingham, 2015 probably south-east England.
"Living in a Material World" was an enthusiastic lecture given by Jamie Gallagher, a "FameLabber". During the superconductor demonstration he told us that someone had stolen his lump of superconductor, so he proceeded to pour liquid nitrogen over an Everton mint until it started to show superconducting properties (repelling a magnet skillfully held aloft by Jamie himself). Good fun and quite silly, with health-and-safety nowhere to be seen. The best bit of the lecture was listening to him waffle to the festival helper before the lecture proper began, about his views on wind power and electricity generation.
http://www.famelab.org/
"Is access to water a Human Right?" I went into this lecture thinking that perhaps it wasn't, and anyone living where water is scarce should be responsible for building their own reservoir or moving somewhere more plentiful. I quickly learned that legally the human right to water and sanitation IS a human right, having been explicitly recognized by the United Nations General Assembly on 28th July 2010. They acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realisation of all human rights. How we acheive that is a bigger problem. We were shown the secondary problems that ill-researched bore holes can bring, including heavy metal poisoning in Bangladesh, and told that up to half of the wells installed over the last 30 years by humanitarian charities are now not working and in need of maintenance. The point was made that it is important for local communities to be involved in the installation process, so they have the knowledge and investment to maintain the equipment themselves. This was another talk where titanium dioxide showed up, this time as a wonder material for purifying water when activated by sunlight.
Again my brain had had enough by 17.30, and I took the evening off.