June 8, 2001, Hour Two: Space Update / Health of the Brazilian Rainforests

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Hour Two: Space Update / Health of the Brazilian Rainforests

Back in the 1980's, there were dire predictions about how much of the Amazon we'd have left at the turn of the century. In this hour of Science Friday, we'll check in on the health of the rainforests in Brazil, and find out what's being done -- and what remains to be done.

We'll also get the highlights from the meeting of the American Astronomical Society. Results from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey include the most distant quasar yet found, looking back to within 800 million years of the birth of the universe, and, closer to home, better data on asteroids that may one day cross paths with the Earth. We'll get a rundown of the results.

The most distant known object is the faint red dot in the center of this picture. This Sloan Digital Sky Survey image was used to identify the object as a high-redshift quasar candidate; spectra taken with the Apache Point 3.5-m telescope demonstrated that it was a luminous quasar at a redshift of 6.2.

Image credit: Donald Schneider and Xiaohui Fan, SDSS Collaboration

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Guests:
Lynn Cominsky
Sonoma Center for Innovative Education in Science
Professor, Physics and Astronomy
Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, California

Peter Collins
Brazil Correspondent
The Economist
Sao Paulo, Brazil

William Laurance
Research Scientist
Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Manuas, Brazil

Luis Gylvan Meira-Filho
President
Brazilian Space Agency
Brasilia, Brazil

Books/Articles Discussed:

Brazil - Rainforest Portal Rainforest Action Network Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry American Astronomical Society Homepage Sloan Digital Sky Survey

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