Our Graphics
Contact Us

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

New Course
The Undiscovery
Suffocation
Map
Why Chiron
Chiron Facts
The Graph
Survival Facts
Oort Diagram`
Brainstorm Ideas
Primary Document
Sources

Our team chose to analyze journal entries from the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In 1803, explorers Captain Merriwether Lewis and William Clark started their journey across the newly purchased territories of the United States. One of the things they hoped to find was a water route to the Pacific Ocean - the Northwest Passage.

Along the way, each member of the party kept a daily journal. The journal entries included weather conditions, the state of the environment, what the crew was doing, health of the party, descriptions and drawings of the land, animals, plants and native peoples.

We found a timeline of the Lewis and Clark expedition on the PBS website. (http://www.pbs.org/lewisandclark/archive/1805.html) On August 12, 1805 Captain Lewis expected to arrive at the Northwest Passage, but instead discovered that it did not exist.

The PBS website states:

August 12, 1805
... Lewis ascends the final ridge toward the Continental Divide and “the most distant fountain of the waters of the Mighty Missouri, in search of which we have spent so many toilsome days and restless nights” and joyously drinks from an ice-cold spring. Climbing the rest of the ridge – Lemhi Pass, on the present-day border between Montana and Idaho – he expects to see from the summit a vast plain to the west, with a large river flowing to the Pacific: the Northwest Passage that had been the goal of explorers since the time of Columbus. Instead, all he sees are more mountains.

We thought this was interesting because for centuries, explorers thought the Northwest Passage existed, but in the end discovered that it wasn't there. This could happen in space with the Oort Cloud. Scientists believe that the Oort Cloud contains icy bodies that become comets. If this is true, it helps explain how a comet only lives for 10,000 years - yet the universe is believed to be billions of years old.

If the Oort Cloud does not exist, then how can the universe be so old and we still have comets? Or maybe there's another place comets come from? Or maybe comets are older than 10,000 years?

Part of our journey takes a look at these issues.