[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 5 - 10:17:55 ]
Welcome to another in our series of QuestChats with Astronomer Dr. Sten Odenwald from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Sten will be in the chat room, ready to take your questions at 11 am Pacific (2 pm Eastern). We look forward to chatting with you then!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 6 - 10:20:16 ]
DID YOU KNOW... when Sten was a kid, he was in love with dinosaurs, human anatomy, ancient Egypt, chemistry sets, electronics, microscopes, collecting rocks, collecting and 'pickling' animals in glass jars, raising gopher snakes, hamsters, rabbits, salamanders, lizards...all of this before he was 11 years old!!!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 7 - 10:20:54 ]
SOME WORDS OF WISDOM FROM STEN'S BIO... As you visit the Web and cruise among the pictures from space, don't forget to take the time to go outside and learn the sky for yourselves. But please, don't just look at the sky like an empty canvas that has to be filled. It is already full of some of the most wonderous and exciting things you will ever come to know. Your journey of exploration begins by continuing to be inquisitive and asking your own questions about what you see. The math and science you will learn by day, will enrich your experience...astronomically!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 11 - 10:57:30 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Hi, everybody. I like to know if the program ask the astronomer is working? I just couldnt find the place where to put my question. Could you please, tell me the e-mail address, so I can send a question directly to Dr. Odenwald.
Hi Ramon: Sten will be here in the chat room in just a few moments and he will answer your question!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 13 - 11:00:20 ]
RE: [Jarek-JarektechnicalUniversity] If I know well the superstring theory unify all 4 forces of nature, but I wonder if this theory unify spacetime with these forces in in one multidimensional structure ?
What a great way to start a chat...with a question about superstrings no less!! If I understand your question, you are asking if superstring theory is supposed to create a 'simple' multidimensional picture of the four forces. Yes, that is the intent of the program, but also includes describing the fundimental particles in the same 'language'.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 15 - 11:02:54 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Hi, everybody. I like to know if the program ask the astronomer is working? I just couldnt find the place where to put my question. Could you please, tell me the e-mail address, so I can send a question directly to Dr. Odenwald.
Hi! Ask the Astronomer which I operated at the Astronomy Cafe was closed for business back in 1997 when I started up Ask the Space Scientist over at the NASA, IMAGE satellite program's education page. I am currently not taking more questions there either, after answering some 24,000 since 1995, but as soon as I can get a search engine on line I will probably resume this service for the year 2000 in january. I was getting 50 questions a day, and that became just too much for one person to handle.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 16 - 11:03:53 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] What are you trying to reserch
Right now my colleague and I are using data from the 2MASS infrared sky survey to hunt for the faint light from young galaxies.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 20 - 11:06:45 ]
RE: [Jarek-JarektechnicalUniversity] Andrei Linde proposed fractal structure of the Universe as a whole, than is it possible that this Fractal-Universe grows according to laws of deterministic chaos, creating beautiful multidimensional structure like Mandelbrot set for instance?
ANdre Linde's ideas are very intriguing, but my problem with these ideas is that they are untestable...completely, because they involve discussions of structures well outside our horizon. Its great speculation, but I am not sure it is really science.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 22 - 11:07:16 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] Do you know anything about mars
A few things...what do you have in mind?

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 23 - 11:08:08 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Ok. In this site: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/askmag.html There is a information asking to not send new questions to Dr. Odenwald because the service will be on hiatus from May to September!!? It seems that it still on hiatus. For that, I think, I couldnt find how to send a question to him.
You're right, an updated message needs to be put on this page. Thanks for pointing this out! Perhaps you could just ask Sten the question you wanted to post to his web site, right now!!! He's here and he's the same Sten Odenwald in "Ask a Scientist"!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 24 - 11:09:07 ]
RE: [Jarek-JarektechnicalUniversity] Could you tell what is the source of Cosmic Microvawe Background fluctuations ? Quantum fluctuations of spacetime in the early stages of the Universe?
It depends on what scale you are talking about. Sky regions more than a few degrees apart can only show structure if it came out of the Big Bang itself. Fluctuations smaller that that in the CMBR can arise from normal, gravitational clumping.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 29 - 11:11:23 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Ok. In this site: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/askmag.html There is a information asking to not send new questions to Dr. Odenwald because the service will be on hiatus from May to September!!? It seems that it still on hiatus. For that, I think, I couldnt find how to send a question to him.
Yeah...I know. I am enjoying my vacation too much. I really want to set up a system at that site that doesnt overwhelm me all the time. I hope to have a search engine installed in the next month so people can stop asking me questions I have already answered. After 400+ questions about black holes, I just dont have more to say at the non-technical level anymore! ;>

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 30 - 11:12:42 ]
RE: [Jarek-JarektechnicalUniversity] We probably live in an open Universe with omega = 0.2, bat is it possible that the density of the Universe changes with time and at early stages Universe was closed?
No...because the value of the critical density also gets higher as you go back in time so an open universe is always open.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 31 - 11:13:40 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] I'm interested in astrochemistry and I'd like to get the original papers that reports the discover of aminoacids and the fullerene C60 on space. Could you send that citations?
I wish I could, but it would take me a while to track it down and, unfortunately I just dont have the time to do that...sorry.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 32 - 11:16:01 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] How strong is the average wind speed on Mars?
The average speed varies all over the place with the season, latitude and time of day. 50 to 100 miles an hour is a good average, but can be higher during storms...even supersonic.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 37 - 11:19:21 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] What is the highest speed recorded for Mars?
Im not sure...probably about 200-400 mph from what I can dimly recall. I dont really work in that particular area of astronomy. You might visit the Mars Pathfinder web site at JPL. They have lots of Mars facts on their pages.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 38 - 11:19:47 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] the rover the thing that exploerd mars
Deedra; What EXACTLY is it that you want to know about the Rover? Please send explicit questions to Sten. Thanks ;-)

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 39 - 11:20:13 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] the rover the thing that exploerd mars
Yes? You need nto phrase this as a question somehow ;>

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 44 - 11:22:29 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Have you already answered that question about aminoacids and c60?
Yes...unfortunately I couldn't volunteer my time to track it down because I don't want to set the precident of my doing private research for people.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 46 - 11:23:48 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] Are there stand storms on Mars?
Yes there are, and we dont really know what starts them, or stops them for that matter. In the 1970s, the entire planet was enshrouded by a major dust storm.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 47 - 11:25:11 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] When was it made
Well...the Sojourner was built about 1-2 years before it landed on Mars in July 1997, if my NASA history serves me.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 49 - 11:27:25 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Could point me out a author name or laboratory name to drive my search?
I would search in keywords like 'PAH', and 'interstellar'. PAHs are small dust grains that were detected in the 1980s and which may be related to C60-type systems that fragmented, or are being chemically assembled. PAhs have even been found in meteorites, especially the chrondritic ones which are rich in carbon compounds.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 50 - 11:28:23 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] Do you know how much it cost
Not really, buit like most hardware, it probably cost a few tens of millions of dollars...I would guess about 40-70 million or so.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 54 - 11:33:09 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] WOW! how long you work for astronomy
Oh about 20 years; longer if you include graduate school, college and my own private amateur astronomy stuff.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 55 - 11:33:35 ]
RE: [ramon-rkrocha/Brazil] Thank you Dr. Odenwald. Bye everybody.
SO long, and thanks for stopping by!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 57 - 11:36:01 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] How do star clusters form?
We dont really know for sure, but when the universe was very young and clumpy, the laws of physics seemed to dictate that collections of matter with masses about those of globular clusters would have condensed like raindrops out of the gas from the big bang. Most of these were canibalized to form galaxies, but many have remained around as globular clustyers too. We dont really know how the individual stars themsalves formed out of such clouds.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 58 - 11:36:51 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] How many years was it on mars
Hmmm...it's still there and not going anywhere for the next few billion years, unless Mars colonists put it in a museum

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 60 - 11:38:00 ]
RE: [Sandy/NASAChatHost] Goodbye Ramon! Hope you can join us for another chat soon!
Chao!

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 63 - 11:39:24 ]
EVERYONE: There are about 15 minutes left in today's chat with Sten. Keep your questions coming!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 64 - 11:40:22 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] Does it rain on Mars?
Not anymore. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface or in the atmosphere, but CO2 can change from a gas to a crystaline 'snow' without going through a liquid phase in between and this happens on mars...it does snmow!

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 69 - 11:42:19 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] so far how many years
I have never studied Mars as an astronomer...In fact I only follow what is going on in our solar system by reading the popular journals like Sky and Telescope or Astronomy. Astronomy is such a big subject, there are many areas you never have the time to look into.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 70 - 11:42:53 ]
EVERYONE: When today's chat with Sten is over, please let us know how we're doing with our chat by filling out a short survey at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/qchats/qchat-surveys Thnaks :-)

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 71 - 11:43:12 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] What is CO2?
Oops...Carbon Dioxide. Its ice form is called 'dry ice' because it doesnt melt into a liquid as it evaporates.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 72 - 11:44:28 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] If you were going to colonize mars, what would be the main points that you would need?
How to keep my food supply going, and how to shield myself from the harsh elements ( nearly a vacuum!) and from the solar and cosmic radiation.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 75 - 11:48:17 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] How would you shield your self from the harsh elements?
Stay inside an airtight building that you would have to setup...probably your landing vehicle. It would be like a Space Station on the ground. It has to be completely sealed so your air does not escape, and you would probably bury it under the martian soil to get additional radiation shielding.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 76 - 11:48:43 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] Is it true our telescope only look up 1.8%
Hmmm..Im not sure what your question is.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 81 - 11:54:59 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] What do you think was before the Big Bang?
I dont think we will ever know for sure, but from what we can tell on THIS SIDE of the big bang, it may have been an utterly incomprehensible 'place' where there was no time in existence. Our best theories that work pretty well to describe our universe ,all seem to say that both 3 dimensional space, and time were somehoe transmuted into something very different than what we see them as now.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 82 - 11:55:31 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] are you coming back
Yep...I do this chat more or less regularly. The next one is later on in November.

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 84 - 11:56:03 ]
RE: [JK-stephens/hvms] Thanks for your time! We learned a lot from chatting!
You're welcome...Learning is what life is all about.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 86 - 11:56:34 ]
EVERYONE: It's time to let Sten get back to work now. Thank you very much for coming to our chat today! You asked some good questions! Pleae be sure to check out our schedule for upcoming chats. There's a Mars Millennium chat on Nov. 10 with Mary Urquhart and Sten will be chatting again on Nov. 18.

[ Sandy/NASAChatHost - 87 - 11:57:49 ]
RE: [Deedra-stephens/hvms] November what when
Deedra: Sten will chat again on Nov. 18 at 11 am Pacific (2 pm Eastern). Registration for that chat will open later this afternoon at: http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/sso/chats/sched2.html

[ StenOdenwald/Astronomer - 88 - 11:58:55 ]
So long everyone, I really did enjoy your questions! Tell your friends how excited you are about space too!!!