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You
are here: The NEPTUNE Project
by Nancy Penrose
Beneath the waters of the northeast Pacific lies the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, one of a dozen or so plates that make up the surface of the earth. Here, in this one place, all the major earth and ocean processes are represented. Deep-sea volcanoes nurture heat-loving microbes. Life forms that were once beyond even our imaginations thrive at hydrothermal vents. Earthquakes are born from the shifting of myriad faults. Bottom currents complete their grand tour having hugged the sea floor all the way from Antarctica. River-carried sediments rush to sea during storms, carving offshore canyons as they go. Blue whales are thought to reach the northernmost end of their migration. Salmon follow ancient pathways.
This ideal location, just off the west coasts of the U.S. and Canada, has been chosen for study by the NEPTUNE scientific research project (http://www.neptune.washington.edu). The project's goal is to lay a network of fiber-optic/power cables that will encircle and cross the sea floor of the Juan de Fuca plate. A series of mini-observatories, connected by cables, will be equipped with a variety of instruments to collect data from the tops of the waves to below the sea floor If all goes as scheduled, scientists, educators, and learners of all ages will be using NEPTUNE by 2005. The system will have an expected lifetime of three decades.
Unprecedented Studies Possible
NEPTUNE's combination of cables, remotely operated robotic systems, satellite communications, and thousands of sensing instruments will enable unprecedented long-term studies of earth and ocean processes. Via the Internet, real-time data will flow to land-based laboratories and classrooms around the world; commands to instruments and robots will flow from shore to ocean.
Historically, oceanographers have gone to sea in ships to collect data for short periods of time. But this expeditionary phase of oceanography is now expanding to include an emphasis on how earth and ocean systems change through time.
The challenges are immense. They require learning to measure change over long periods of time in large complicated natural systems such as the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. But by using systems such as NEPTUNE, scientists will become more skilled at observing and measuring such variations. Patterns of discovery will shift from identifying what is out there to trying to understand how it works. Insights achieved with NEPTUNE will shed new light on our understanding of earthquakes, tsunamis, fish stock assessment, marine mammal populations, metal and hydrocarbon deposits, and human influences on ocean and climate systems. Lessons learned may even guide the search for life on other solar bodies such as the Jovian moon of Europa.
NEPTUNE began about two years ago and is a multidisciplinary, international effort. Partner institutions are the University of Washington, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, and the Institute for Pacific Ocean Science and Technology in Canada. Professor John Delaney of the University of Washington's School of Oceanography is the project's chair.
NEPTUNE and Science Education
According to Delaney, although NEPTUNE's primary focus is scientific research, the project is strongly committed to entraining students, teachers, and the general public in the NEPTUNE process.
"I have always considered it a great privilege to be an oceanographic researcher," he says. "The opportunities and the challenges are vast. The potential for making a difference is profound. Yet much of our work is foreign to the daily lives of the public, the people who pay for our work, the people who benefit from it, those who study it in books.
"We often wonder how to share the excitement and significance of our work with taxpayers, voters, and students. How can we convey the essence of our enthusiasm? How can we inspire their interest?" he asks.
He believes that NEPTUNE offers some of the answers to these questions for it will create opportunities for students and the public to travel along on the scientific journey, to participate in the voyage of discovery that defines the scientific investigative process.
Delaney's own voyages have led him to studies of the undersea volcanoes along the western edge of the Juan de Fuca plate. He describes the deep sea as one of the solar system's most remote and hostile environments, where 6,000 lb. of pressure may press on each square inch of sea floor and superheated water jets out of undersea volcanic vents at temperatures of up to 700˚ F. Animals and microbes living near the vents thrive in environments that would be deadly to more familiar earthly life forms.
He sketches his vision for what could be done with NEPTUNE in a classroom or a science center equipped to handle the project's real-time flow of data from the sea floor He imagines students immersed in a 3-D virtual-reality world of the ocean. They use remotely operated video camera "eyes" to observe the environment, thermometers to "feel" the temperature of the water, and robot samplers to collect and analyze extremophiles, the heat- and chemical-loving microbes that live at undersea vents. Via the Internet, a "scientist in residence" guides the students and their teachers through their observations and experiments from his or her laboratory at the NEPTUNE Institute in Seattle.
The NEPTUNE Institute
The concept of the NEPTUNE Institute emerged at a recent workshop devoted to brainstorming sessions on the best ways to use the project's capabilities in formal and informal science education settings. Some 65 teachers, educators from aquariums and science centers, school administrators, and university scientists attended this workshop, which was held at the Sleeping Lady Conference Center in Leavenworth, Washington and was sponsored by the University of Washington's Smart Tools Academy of the Office of Educational Partnerships.
The NEPTUNE Institute, as imagined at this point in time, would provide an integrated, holistic approach to lifelong learning. It would gather teachers, researchers, technologists, engineers, data managers, librarians, informal science educators, the public, and students of all levels within a single physical facility that would include a K–12 school.
Electronic communication technology would be used to encapsulate and extend the Institute's capabilities. This "Cybership NEPTUNE" component would help the Institute reach a broad international and national audience.
The creative and innovative ideas that emerged from the workshop, when placed within the context of the NEPTUNE Institute, fall into the four general categories described below.
Real-time data: Fundamental to the NEPTUNE Institute are the unique opportunities and excitement generated by the real-time data coming in from the NEPTUNE network. NEPTUNE creates opportunities to develop a holistic understanding of an environment the size of a tectonic plate. It also allows students to fully participate in the scientific investigative process, to learn that it is okay to fail, as scientists often do in their search for answers to their questions, and to learn from those failures and develop alternative solutions. Students in classrooms would work with teachers and scientists to develop and execute their own experiments using NEPTUNE.
A current NASA project provides a good example of the potential for students and teachers to work with real-time data streams. Using computers in their classrooms, students at middle schools and high schools are using a Deep Space Network radio telescope to scan Jupiter. Their goal is to monitor and record natural radiowave emissions from the planet. These data will be used to help interpret measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft as it flies by Jupiter in early 2001. One student was quoted as saying that he likes the unpredictability of the real research, compared with textbook learning. "It inspires you to go on and do more in science," he stated in a NASA press release.
Mentoring: This element of the NEPTUNE Institute would occur vertically and laterally at all levels: between engineers and students, scientists and teachers, teachers and technologists, students and scientists. Envisioned are opportunities for teachers to mentor scientists about how to teach kids, for data librarians to mentor teachers in the use of data archives, for an informational corps of knowledgeable teachers, i.e., master teachers, to mentor less experienced teachers, for engineers to incorporate students and teachers into their instrument design work.
Immersion learning environments: Naturally evolving 3-D virtual environments of the sea floor and overlying ocean space would be created, fed by high bandwidth real-time data streams from NEPTUNE. These environments would foster the highest quality of interactive learning opportunities. Indeed, an entire classroom could become a virtual environment, which, with NEPTUNE-like capabilities, would become a 4-D (3-D plus time) experience.
Integrated approach to science, art, and the humanities education: One solution to the dilemma of how best to communicate science to the public is to merge the borders of art and science, to incorporate "translators" into the NEPTUNE Institute. Integrating writers, visual artists, musicians, philosophers, and science historians into the Institute will tap a rich source for education and communication at all levels. Artists and writers in residence and art exhibits/installations are just two of many possibilities. International partnerships with schools and classrooms around the world would open doors to opportunities for not only scientific but also cultural exchanges and collaborations.
NEPTUNE is well on its way to becoming a reality. Many people – scientists, engineers, administrators, educators at all levels – have contributed significant effort thus far and continue to demonstrate the kind of strong commitment that it will take to bring NEPTUNE into full existence. Partner institutions and federal agencies have provided the financial support needed to get the project to where it is today. This support will continue and will grow in parallel with NEPTUNE's pursuit of fundraising opportunities in the private sector.
Located on the Juan de Fuca plate, NEPTUNE will be in the Pacific Northwest's backyard, but it is a project that belongs to the world. Sharing the excitement of scientific discovery with a global audience and increasing our understanding of planetary processes as they change through time are among NEPTUNE's most important missions. As Delaney explains, "During the lifetime of many of today's students, the art of scientific discovery will depend more than ever on our ability to rise to the challenge of documenting and understanding change." NEPTUNE will be at the leading edge of this challenge.
Nancy Penrose is a writer/editor for the Neptune Project. You can reach her by email at penrose@ocean.washington.edu.
Copyright © January 2001 New Horizons for Learning, all rights reserved.
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