Radio Liberty - Programs - Science and Technology

The science and technique of our days
Leading Evgeny Muslin

New theories of the origin of the moon, the true nature of dolphins, as well as the latest scientific and technical news - these are the topics of our program.

New theories of the origin of the moon

Ivanov

When the 30th anniversary of the Apollo-11 crew was recently celebrated in America, newspapers, magazines and television emphasized that this feat was partly the result of an extremely expensive and stressful political rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. In other words, the fruit of the Cold War. Some even claimed that the landing to the moon did not bring any scientific results. But this is certainly not so.

Just from the study of lunar soil, brought in 1969-1992 by American astronauts, as well as delivered by Soviet automatic stations of the Luna type and a revolution began in our idea of ​​the emergence and development of planetary systems. But first of all about the birth of the moon.

During the time of Newton, and much later, scientists imagined the Universe in the form of a giant hourly mechanism, in which the gears perfectly fitted towards each other, the leadingly rotated, wound up once and for all.

Of course, under the influence of new facts, this feeling of harmony and orderliness gradually faded, but despite the fact that the concepts of cataclysm and disaster have firmly established themselves in cosmology and planetology, the idea of ​​the inverse mechanism was still alive. “God does not play bones,” Einstein objected to the enthusiasts of quantum mechanics with its uncertainty. But it turned out that he was playing. “Almost every planet demonstrates our anomalies to us,” says David Morrison, one of the leading NASA planetologists. “Moon expeditions made us think about such catastrophic events that they could not even come to our minds before,” the science historian Stefan Brash writes in his book Front -free clashes. The name for the book is not chosen by chance.

Before the flight "Apollo 11" there were three rival theories of the origin of the moon. The name of one of them can be translated as “the theory of sisters”, the name of the other is as “the theory of mother and daughter” and the third as “the theory of picking up”. According to the first theory, Earth and Moon evolved each in itself, but both came from one clot of matter. So they themselves are like sisters, and their orbits are nursing. The second theory proceeded from the fact that the moon broke away from the ground, leaving a hollow instead that turned into a Pacific Ocean. And, finally, the third theory considered our companion as a small planet, which wandered through the cosmos without a steering wheel and without windy until the earth grabbed it and carried it into the sphere of its ordered impact.

But on the radio, the voice of Edwin Oldrin came from the moon: "There are a whole collection of them!" In front of the astronauts lay pieces of lunar breed of all kinds of forms - round, sharp -angle, crystal -like. The lunar landscape was a slightly hilly plain covered with dust, with large and small craters. The astronauts took with them both samples of moon dust and pieces of rocky breed. The precious cargo was delivered to the ground and handed to geochemists, geologists, planetologists.

There were many surprises. First of all, it turned out that there was very little iron on the moon, unlike the ground. There is little sodium, potassium, sulfur, and there may be no water at all. The lunar soil was not like the earth. The theory of the sisters cracked at the seams. Not sisters, but distant relatives - "the seventh water on jelly." On the other hand, a mixture of oxygen isotopes, its lungs and severe atoms, turned out to be exactly the same among these relatives, which completely disavowed the theory of pickup. All meteorites had a unique composition of isotopes, and then a complete coincidence with the ground. No, the moon is not a coming of space. The theory of mother and daughter died by itself, without the influence of lunar expeditions. Studies showed that the earth never spun at such a frantic speed that a piece the size of the moon could come off from it.

Where did the moon come from? Scientists were lost in conjecture. And then William Hartman, a young astronomer from the University of Arizona, who even before the Apollo-11 flight, was thinking about the photos of the moon, with his hypothesis. Like most scientists, he was sure that the lunar craters did not arise from the volcanic activity of the subsoil, but from the fall of meteorites. Observations made by astronauts on the moon confirmed this point of view. Even very large craters were formed not by frozen lava, but by the blows of celestial bodies that fused dust and stones in a solid rock. The impetus to the further development of the idea was given to Hartman, by his own recognition, the work of the Soviet scientist Viktor Safronov, who claimed that cosmic dust and stones that spun around the Sun, were constantly faced, were fused into larger formations, such as asteroids, from which, in the end, the planets of the solar system grew.

But Hartman went on. Then in the early 70s, he worked at the Institute of Planetology in Tyson, in Arizona. Together with their colleague, Donald Davis, they developed the theory of the origin of the moon as a result of a similar collision, only very powerful. Four and a half billion years ago, Hartman and Davis claimed, the cosmic wanderer rushing at all pairs into Mars crashed into the ground and split to smithereens, from which his fragments along with the broken pieces of the earth's crust scattered around, forming a belt that was rolled around the earth. Gradually, the fragments fused with each other and, in the end, turned into a moon. That is why there is no or almost no water on the moon, there are no volatile elements. All this during the collision boiled and evaporated.

In 1974, at a conference at Cornell University, Hartman first published his idea. He was waiting for objections and skeptical comments. But who took the word first to Elastir Cameron, the head of Harvard Astrophysicists, vigorously supported Hartman. Cameron told the present that he and his young colleague William Ward came, albeit in another way, to the same conclusions as Hartman and Davis. The only thing Cameron could reproach Hartman is in the insufficient mathematical justification of the theory: they have more accurately and more convincing with them.

Despite the powerful support from Cameron, most scientists first ignored the theory of Hartman-Davis (Camerona, out of respect for the previous merits for the authors of the theory, did not be ranked). It seemed too radical even to those who recognized the possibilities of catastrophes of a huge scale, but mainly within the framework of the biblical tradition, such as a worldwide flood or the death of Sodom and Gomorrah. Outside the Earth, these scientists who proudly called themselves disasters did not turn their gaze.

However, the attitude towards the Hartman theory was changing, which was the most facilitated by computer modeling. The clash of the giants was not such a crazy idea, or rather, a crazy, but in the positive sense that Niels Bor gave this word, that is, bold, but the only true one. On these models it turned out, for example, that the iron core of the alien merged with the iron core of the Earth, which is why the future moon of iron got only miserable crumbs.

In 1984, 12 years after the sixth and last expedition to the moon, the planetologists gathered in Hawaii to discuss the origin of the moon. The theory of Hartman-Davis-Camerona-Word was recognized as the only right one. “This time, not only other theories that were still warming up were ignored,” the lunar geologist Don Uylms later recalled in his book “To the Rocky Moon”, “but even the luxurious Hawaiian beaches. We all discussed the already indisputable fact that our companion of the Moon turned out to be a daughter of not one, but two parents. Father appeared. " But that was not all. George Uzerillal, the Washington Planetologist, told the assembled that if you believe computer models, then 4.5 billion years ago, about 20 celestial bodies the size of a small planet rushed through the young solar system, and the matter without clashes most likely could not do it, but from this should be made, we should look closely at the processes of planet formation.

The colleagues heeded the call of the Jeserilla and began to look closely. Soon, the turmoil around Mercury rose: he, contrary to traditional views, the bark was too thin. It also turned out that Venus does not revolve as the planet of her group, but in the opposite direction, and Uranus has some kind of strange orientation. In most planets, the axis of rotation is more or less perpendicular to the plane of the solar system, while the axis of uranium is inclined by 97 degrees.

Enthusiasts of the theory of the birth of the moon from the meeting of two planets are still clarifying the details. Robin Canap of the University of Colorado at Bowlder and Elastir Cameron already known to us, for example, recently announced that the “Luna’s father” was not with Mars, but with a good three Mars. Incidentally, according to Canap, or rather its latest computer, the gigantic clashes of celestial bodies in the early years of the solar system occurred all the same, which made a lot of moons form. But most of them have not survived to this day, because their orbits were unstable.

Doubts about the theory of collision remain mainly among geochemists. About this in one of the recent issues of the magazine "Science" - "Science", wrote Alex Holide, the Swiss geochemist and Michael Drake, a planetologist from the University of Arizona. On the other hand, facts confirming the theory appear. According to the data collected by the Lunar Prospector device, the tiny iron core of the moon exactly corresponds to the collision scenario (in the moon it is no more than two percent of the mass, while the ground has thirty percent in the ground.). Alan Binder from the Institute of Lunar Research in Tyson considers this to be a "decisive discovery."

The true nature of dolphins

Sirotin

Probably, almost all people like dolphins - funny, friendly towards a person, smart sea animals that have repeatedly saved the sailors. For many years, dolphins have been the heroes of films, television series, performances on the water.

Nowadays, thousands of tourists pay for various resorts and during sea cruises to swim with dolphins - manual or wild. In advertising brochures, inviting tourists in Florida, to the Azores and New Zealand, the amazing natural properties of dolphins are signed, communication with which he treats the emotional ailments of a person. However, scientists studying the physiology of dolphins came to a completely unexpected conclusion: the dolphins are far from as happy and not as peaceful creatures as we used to think.

The evidence is growing that one of the varieties of these huge marine animals up to four or more meters kills its mammals of brothers, using sharp teeth and heavy beaks as a murder tool.

Unlike most predators who kill to eat their victim, dolphins are not killing to quench hunger. There are evidence of even the murder of cubs. At the coast of Scotland, for example, scientists experienced a real shock when they saw how an adult dolphin pushed a beak many times over the course of an hour, threw up and beat a dolphin water until he stopped resisting and went to the bottom. Off the coast of Virginia, researchers discovered nine killed children dolphins. One carcass was covered with traces of teeth of adult animals.

"Humanity has an opinion about dolphins as the kindest and most sweet creatures, says Dr. Dann, a pathologist -veterinarian from the Washington Institute of Pathology under the US Department of Defense, therefore, new data on the behavior of dolphins, to be honest, are upset."

But most scientists and representatives of the authorities are worried about the facts of dolphin attacks on people. Cases of injuries and even murders of people are still rare, but can become more frequent as tourist programs develop, including close communication with dolphins, their feeding and swimming adults and children with them.

“Wildlife can be dangerous,” recalls the SECROURS, federal expert in dolphins, “but people look at marine mammals differently, especially the dolphins, as if they are all“ flippers ”, the best friends of a person who can only play with us, and not attack us.”

Employees of the National Marine Fisheries Service under the US Department of Trade, where the Trevor Sendolin, has launched an information and educational campaign with a newsletter of materials warning about the danger of communicating with dolphins.

One of these sent brochures says that dozens of testimonies of dolphin attacks on people are accumulated. Dolphins bit swimwear, pull them under water. The woman who fed two dolphins, and then jumped into the water to swim with them, was beaten by them. “I literally pulled out my leg out of their mouth,” said the woman, who after that spent a week in the hospital.

However, Dr. Amy Samuels, an employee of the Oceanographic Institute of Wood Hall in Massachusetts, studying the relations of dolphins to a person, said that the wounds inflicted on people dolphins were still not too serious, but that the dolphins smile, does not mean at all that they were deprived of aggressiveness.

In the USA there are no strict rules that limit business entertainment related to dolphins. In other countries, there are no such rules at all. In America, a ban on feeding wild dolphins, as a rule, is not respected by sea tourists and crews of travel vessels. Dolphins are packed in order to bring them as close as possible to people who, wearing masks and flippers, want to swim next to animals. Federal rules of conduct with dolphins were developed for the first time only last year. And they caused objections to tourist agencies and scout centers.

Many experts believe that dolphins will attract tourists until any tragic case is widely publicized.

"Dolphins are large wild animals, and we must not forget about it," says Andrew Reed, a biologist from the Naval Laboratory of the University of Doka, who studies cases of dolphin attacks on people.

Of course, the cruelty of dolphins can not compare with the cruelty of people who kill dolphins hundreds and thousands during the fishing of the tuna. Dolphins who breathe air die when they fall into fishing nets.

Dolphins belong to the whale detachment. The Dolphin family has thirty -two species, including the largest (up to ten meters in length) - killer whales, which are aggressive in hunting. Conventional dolphins on average have up to two to two and a half meters in length, and bottle -haired (Tursiops Trunkatus) reach three and a half - four meters. Most dolphins have an oblong face, spinal fins and rather sharp teeth. Dolphins eat fish and squid.

A man was always attracted by a mysterious Dolphin smile. The ancient Greeks described the altruism of the dolphins and claimed that they saved the lost navigators. The ancient Greek painters decorated mosaic, frescoes and sculptural ensembles with dolphins.

Dolphins are very sociable. They communicate with each other using a complex voice alarm, including a variety of clicks, whistles and squeaks at a high frequency (up to 170 kHz). Although scientists argue that dolphins do not have a complicated language of communication, dolphins are still smarter than dogs and are close in terms of intelligence to chimpanzees (in the cortex of the large hemispheres of the brain they have numerous gyrus with almost thirty billion nerve cells).

In the brochures of travel agencies, it is stated that dolphins possess some special spiritual influence on a person. This is written, for example, Mary-Helen Roussel on the Internet Web Side, where she invites you to make a six-day sailing on a sailboat around Bimini-one of the Bahamas for recreational meetings with dolphins in her group. Her partner Swami Anand Budha, a former rescuer from Louisian, says that he knew the infinity of love, peace and bliss, when he first looked directly into the eyes of a wild dolphin.

But now such statements are questioned. This is facilitated by scientific research data that began in 1990 after cases of mass death of dolphins and other marine animals were discovered. In Europe and in the USA, wide studies of biological, environmental and behavioral characteristics of wild dolphins behavior began.

The key to unraveling the intentional murder committed by dolphins off the northeast shores of Scotland was proposed by Professor Ben Wilson, dolphin experts from the University of Aberdin and Harry Ross, a professor of veterinary medicine from the Scottish agricultural college. It was they who examined the carcass of a half -meter dolphin with numerous damage to the skull, spine and internal organs. The search for the causes of death began. Ship screws? Fishing networks? But in 1994, researchers discovered traces of teeth of an adult bottlecock on the carcasses of dead dolphins.

Of the hundred five corpses of dolphins found in Scotland, forty -two were obvious victims of a bottle -haired dolphins. Ученые еще больше укрепились в своем мнении после того, как стали опрашивать свидетелей агрессивного поведения дельфинов. Два убийства, совершаемых группой дельфинов, были сняты на видеопленку.

В 1996-м году появилась первая публикация об этом в британском научном журнале "Труды Королевского общества" Факты убийств накапливаются, но причины остаются непонятными. Драка за пищу? Защита детенышей? Борьба из-за самки? Пока неизвестно.

Вообще, убийства детенышей в животном мире встречаются довольно часто, но в отряде китов, в семействе дельфиновых они обнаружены впервые.

Тем не менее, представители федеральных властей США считают, что в дельфинариях и специальных бассейнах, где люди плавают вместе с дельфинами, любителям такого плавания ничего не грозит: дельфины прошли здесь дрессировку и находятся под постоянным наблюдением экспертов. За последние пятнадцать лет количество бассейнов для плавания с дельфинами возросло в США с четырех до восемнадцати. Планируется открытие еще нескольких.

По словам Барбары Кон, ветеринара из инфекционной службы здоровья животных и растений при Министерстве сельского хозяйства США, статистика последних пяти лет показывает, что случаев нападения дельфинов на человека с травмами почти нет. Так что, общение с дельфинами в специальных водоемах и морских бассейнах остается безопасным. Опасность грозит лишь тем любителям плавания, которые купаются с дикими дельфинами и вне специально отведенных для этого мест. В Америке такой рискованный вид спорта и отдыха становится все популярнее. Именно это и заставило федеральные власти предупредить людей об опасности.

Научные новости

Muslin

В заключение нашей передачи сообщение о новых разработках НАСА.

6-тонный межпланетный зонд "Кассини", не так давно запущенный к Сатурну и его спутнику Титану, и обошедшийся в два миллиарда долларов - это последний столь дорогостоящий беспилотный летательный аппарат. На смену таким вымирающим исследовательским "динозаврам", не укладывающимся в теперешние бюджетные ограничения, идут миниатюрные и гораздо более эффективные роботы-автоматы.

Первым таким космическим лиллипутом, использующим последние успехи микроэлектроники, станет самоходная телеуправляемая танкетка "МЮЗЕС-Си-Эн", которая сейчас разрабатывается в Лаборатории реактивного движения НАСА в Пасадине в Калифорнии, и которая будет запущена к астероиду Нерей в 2002-м году. Длина танкетки пятнадцать сантиметров, а вес всего 1260 граммов. Тем не менее, работая на солнечной энергии, она сможет ползать и прыгать по поверхности этого полуторакилометрового астероида, собирая важные научные данные. И это только начало. Сотрудники НАСА разрабатывают сейчас космические танкетки весом всего 250-300 граммов, а также миниатюрные аппараты, которые смогут вгрызаться в поверхность космических тел и вести, так сказать, подпланетные исследования. Естественно, такая миниатюризация многократно снижает и необходимую грузоподъемность ракет.

Так называемая микроракетная группа НАСА разрабатывает крошечные летательные аппараты весом меньше килограмма, которые можно будет по несколько штук запускать на дешевых ракетах типа "Пегас". Такие аппараты, разлетаясь в разные стороны, смогут образовать целую сеть, своего рода космический "Интернет" и вести координированные исследования - рассматривать, например, астероиды сразу с нескольких сторон или выполнять роль составного гигантского телескопа с разрешающей способностью, многократно превышающей параметры орбитального телескопа Хаббла. Испытательные полеты описанных аппаратов начнутся уже через пару лет.

Легкие, как перышко, аппараты нужны, чтобы эффективно использовать солнечные паруса. Солнечные лучи смогут разгонять такие аппараты до колоссальной скорости. Первые эксперименты с солнечными парусами будут проведены уже в этом году.

Некоторые исследователи занимаются уже совершенно фантастическими проектами. Так, изобретатель Форрест Бишоп из Технического института атомных масштабов проектирует устройства, предназначенные для полетов к другим звездным системам. Подлетев к планете, удаленной на расстояние в несколько световых лет от Земли, такое устройство отыщет нужные химические элементы, синтезирует требуемые молекулы, воссоздаст из них заданную конструктивную систему с соответствующими датчиками, антеннами, передатчиком и исполнительными органами и начнет передавать изображения и научную информацию на далекую Землю.