December 28, 2015
So. Their Cover Story is...Salt.
Two of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes bring us news from two different planetoids.
Art by Six
First up, we have what is actually a tad more than week old news from the Main Belt. It seems that scientists going over the data from the Dawn Probe have reached a consensus for their cover story regarding the glowy bits on Ceres. They claim is that it not an alien city nor a steadily charging space laser preparing to wreak havoc upon the Earth, but rather a really big salt lick.
Image via
The effect is enhanced by thin clouds of water vapor outgassing in the salty areas that give a refractory effect that one would not normally get on a nigh airless body. It could be that Ceres has cometary properties and is orbiting right on the cusp of its critical distance from the sun.
Farther afield (quite a bit farther actually) another of our proficient and pulchritudinous planetologists brings us these spectacular videos from the New Horizons flyby of Pluto. These were only recently processed due to the combination of a necessarily slow data transmission rate and the vast amounts of information that New Horizons gathered on its brief pass.
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November 23, 2015
Well Then. This Would Be a Bad Thing.
One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes reacts to what Volcano Cafe' has chosen as their final and potentially deadliest entry in their "Volcanoes That We Really Should Be Paying More Attention To because We Don't Know Nearly enough About Them But What We Do Know Is Pretty Scary" series.
"Holy fricking crap!"
The whole list is interesting as well as disturbing, but the last on the list is quite the doozy.
Already synonymous with misery for unrelated reasons, the worlds bloodiest porkchop may one day bring suffering and death to many far from its bleak shores.
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November 10, 2015
Meanwhile....On Youggoth
It appears that NASA's New Horizons probe may have photographed volcanoes on Pluto.
Well, they certainly DID photograph two mountains that each have big fumaroleesque holes in their tops. Additionally, they seem to be associated with fairly young terrain so it is quite possible that these are, in fact, multi-mile high volcanoes.
Interestingly, these two mountains don't fit into the general pattern of geek addled naming conventions for the planetoid and it's satellite, being named for aviation pioneers ( it's those Piccards, not the other one).
Of course, while volcanoes are the most likely explanation yet, they could be something else, perhaps access tunnels for the saucers of the Sinister Snake-Women of Pluto.
Err...There's more here.
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November 08, 2015
Nukes on a Flatbed Truck
Russia has announced that they intend to begin producing a series of road mobile nuclear power plants. (via)
The project is called Pamir and the mobile plants are supposed to hiot the road sometime in 2020.
Such a short development time might be cause for considerable skepticism save for one important detail not mentioned in the article.
The picture is of a previous project, also called "Pamir" which was a Mobile Nuclear Power Plant being developed in the 1980s. The project was suspended after only two had been produced in the aftermath of the Chernobyl unpleasantness.
The concept seems to have been twofold. The plants would power dispersed mobile radar arrays that would be moved around constantly to add uncertainty to any wild weasel operations and they could be dispersed and hidden by the dozens to provide power for rebuilding after a nuclear war.
"Oh please...He doesn't have any idea what the hell that means."
Ahem...
There is also a PDF concerning the Pamir from the perspective of its dismantling under a nonproliferation program here.
Given that the original design seems to have worked, it may not be a stretch to expect that they could simply spool up production again, though the loss of the original engineering cadre would certainly be a significant hurdle.
To what end they are making this non-trivial expenditure is unclear. A couple of megawats available on 2 flatbeds would certainly be useful in building infrastructure and kick-starting settlements in Siberia, though given current events, the original operational concept may well be closer to the mark.
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November 04, 2015
Space Geysers
The massive south polar geysers of Enceladus from the night side. Picture taken by Cassini on approach during its historic pass through the plumes last week.
"Because Astro Oceanographic Vulcanology is AWESOME!"
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October 31, 2015
A Want Ad: If Fortran is Your Thing, Your Time is Now
One of Dr. Pournelle's correspondent's passed this along.
Voyager needs a programmer
Dear Dr. Pournelle,Perhaps someone in your reading audience would like to take up the challenge. It seems the current engineer for Voyager 1/2 is retiring.http://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a17991/voyager-1-voyager-2-retiring-engineer/So they need someone who is greatly skilled with Fortran and Assembly languages to step in and keep the probe running. This is old-school programming at its finest; there are only 64kb of memory to work with, and this will be real-time programming , I suspect, with hard constraints.I’m a little disappointed. Voyager is the reason I got into computers in the first place, but now after years of writing database and object-oriented programs I don’t have anywhere near the experience required to do this kind of work. I’d be willing to learn .. but I suspect "willing’ isn’t enough. "Willing†doesn’t instantly make you an expert in real time software.Respectfully,Brian
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October 28, 2015
PLUME DIVE!
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes reacts to the news that Cassini has survived its plume dive.
Allow us to explain...
Saturn's moon Enceladus is known to have a global, ice-covered ocean. It also has massive geysers in its southern hemisphere that spew the contents of its ocean far above its surface.
Well, in order to find out exactly what is in its ocean NASA has turned to its only probe in the Saturnian system (Cassini). Since Cassin'is only deployable sub-probe was sent down to Titan, and since scientists have learned about all they can by spectroscopy and other remote methods, they've decided to go for broke and fly the probe on a low pass right through the plume.
Pictures and other data should be coming in within 48 hours!
In the meantime here is the closest picture ever taken of Enceladus's northern hemisphere which was taken last week...
Stay Tuned!
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October 24, 2015
There's Going To Need To Be A Re-Release
One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes points out the obvious application for the blackest substance ever synthesized by humans.
Art by S. Zenith Lee
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October 21, 2015
Today in History
Well...today.
We have twitter, but no self lacing shoes, Mr. Fusion or Hoverbo....
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October 16, 2015
A Rescue Mission MUST Be Undertaken!
For some reason, this story does not have top billing on Drudge, despite its awesome implications.
We should note that one of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Stunning Experts pointed us to the story.
Art by Ayaki
UPDATE:The linked story is problematically parsimonious with the pictures. There is a better spread at the Daily Mail of all places and, of course, a bunch of super high-res pictures can be found at the New Horizon's page at NASA.
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October 06, 2015
Simple Processes Involving Layyyzeerrzz
The most strongest of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Fairies brings us news fro the practical application of coherent light.
Via Brian Wang, we learn that General Atomics (could there BE a more awesome name for a company?) is expected to be offering its line of Avenger drones with 150 kilowatt lasers on them. The Avenger is a stealthy development of the much used Predator (and was formerly called Predator-C)
For comparison purposes, the article helpfully provides video of what the prototype 30 kilowatt laser on the USS Ponce can achieve.
WARNING: Military grade laser...demo may cause ear damage and extreme irritation.
Yes gentle readers, in a little over a year we will have flying robots armed with lasers!
Sarah Connor, raise your son well.
Farther afield, in San Luis Obispo, Scientists are working on a solar laser that can de-spin asteroids for exploration and exploitation as well as alter their orbits so as to deflect space rocks that threaten to impact the Earth.
Note too that if they can get a solar laser working, it is just a matter of scaling it up (a whole hell of a lot) to allow interstellar probes, perhaps even manned ones.
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September 28, 2015
Meanwhile, on the Second Closest Planet
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes was supposed to be reporting on NASA's news conference today, but instead seems to be focused on organizing an excursion to the beach...
"We're going to need sunblock, some really big mirrors, high yield, low fission fraction H-bombs, a few tons of CFCs, some ham biscuits, lichen, iced tea, blue green algae and a towel."
I'm not sure wh...
"Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,†said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars.â€
Zounds!
Percival Lowell, he died 99 years too soon.
("Science Babe" is actually Sakura War's Diana Caprice as drawn by Ao Ume)
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September 24, 2015
This is Worrisome
It's not just that these incredibly simple, basic questions were answered correctly by only 6% of the nation...but that one question is not even about science (indeed its opposite).
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September 20, 2015
Oh My Stars And Garters YES!
Also this...which is just as awesome but lacks the derp.
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September 14, 2015
Best Picture Yet
...of the exhaust port, alien city, ice deposit or whatever is going on in Occator Crater on Ceres.
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September 10, 2015
More Pluto!
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes brings us news from the edge of the solar system.
Actually, she's not at the edge of the solar system.
Come to think of it, Pluto isn't either, because there is still the Oort Cloud and Kupier Belt which extend for hundreds of AU before one gets to the Heliopause.
Anyway, our science corespondent reports that the experts are cataloging and naming the features on Pluto and Charon....
"Golly. I guess it makes sense that they'd've completely exhausted Edith Hamilton as a source for names."
Well...
In any event, NASA has downloaded several high rez pictures from this summer's flyby of the object formerly known as the 9th planet and here are a couple...
Click here for larger.
Click here for supah-size.
Click here to embigulate.
Click here to see at exactly the same size.
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August 10, 2015
The Alien Battle Station We Call Ceres Continues Slowly Charging Its Main Gun
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes discusses the continuing mystery of the bright spots on Ceres.
"When I find out who put that damned, irresponsible, Hoaglandesque post title over MY head. I am going to break my foot of in their a.."
Oh dear.
In lieu of expert commentary, we will go with the short, quick version:
No one has a good explanation for the glowy bits.
Note that "pyramid" is a bit dramatic. It appears to be a steep sided mountain...that glows.
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August 06, 2015
OK This is REALLY Neat!
Here is an animation of the moon crossing the Earth from a million miles away. Note the lack of rabbits on the far side of the moon.
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July 29, 2015
Meanwhile, In Outer Space
One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes brings us news from the International Space Station, where...
...Huh.
OK. She seems busy at the moment.
Note that they mean the outside of the windows...on the Space Station.
It seems that the organisms are terrestrial marine plankton. though how they got up there is unclear. My initial guess would be cross contamination from 0-G plankton experiments, but the C-Net article suggests air currents or the possibility that the plankton originated from Florida where much of the station was launched from (though that would mean the plankton had survived a rather long time).
Of course all of this is dancing around the fact that there is living greenery on the outside of the space station and we all KNOW what that means.
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July 26, 2015
"Have You Ever Seen The Blue Sky?"
This is a disturbing hour and a half that went viral and gained two hundred million views in less than a week before being banned by the Chinese Government.
It even attracted praise from the newly-installed environment minister, Chen Jining, for its contribution to the national debate on public health – but that was before it was abruptly scrubbed from the internet on Friday, ordered offline by the Communist Party's central propaganda department.
The segment that begins around 1:00 is disturbing in an entirely different way..as it highlights just how precarious the Chinese industrial economy actually is.
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