Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:41 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 266 words, total size 4 kb.

This story actually transpired a couple of weeks ago but I have been waiting for the inevitable debunking. Now one of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes is here to inform us how that went...

"The debunking is not going quite as smoothly as expected". 

Oh dear.

Allow me to explain...

A few weeks ago, radio astronomers detected an odd radio signal that seemed to come from from the nearby Alpha Centauri system, the 3 closest stars to Earth. 

That's bloody coincidental, so while the press was being their usual calm selves, the scientists did what they always do when they hear an 'extraterrestrial signal', they set about trying to figure out what Earth radio signal they had mistakenly picked up. 

Well, weeks later there have been some developments...sort of. 

Basically all known terrestrial radio signals have been eliminated as being this.

As I understand it, the signal hasn't changed much in bearing (relative to the sun), which one would expect if it to do if it were being broadcast from inside the solar system. Moreover, this turns out not to be a particularly weak signal by the standards of radio astronomy, quite the opposite in fact, and after adjusting their readings and analyzing their parallax, they've narrowed it down to coming from the direction of Proxima Centauri, a red dwarf that is the closest of the three stars in Alpha Centauri and the closest star to Earth. 

The chances of the first SETI success involving the closest star in the sky is....well, the odds of THAT seem dubious. 

However, this signal is strange, and is stubbornly defying debunkery. An inability to, as of yet, debunk something that is vanishingly unlikely is NOT the same as confirmation. However, this has slipped out of the realm of press hype and into the realm of 'interesting'.

There's a good overview of this conundrum here: 

 

Interestingly, the signal doesn't appear to be data...it's a monotone signal, like a dial tone...or a beacon.  

Proxima is now known to have at least 2 planets and an asteroid/dust belt. 

One of the planets, (Proxima Centauri B) is in the theoretical habitable zone from the star. However that habitable zone is very close to the star. Proxima's a small star, a tad bigger than Jupiter (though much more massive) and it's not a calm star like ours. It flares quite spectacularly. In fact it has flares that are bigger than those spewed out by our sun. 

Any planet in the "habitable zone" of this dinky little star is going to get bombarded by star farts, and would require a massive atmosphere similar to Venus, and/or a terribly strong magnetic field to keep its atmosphere from being stripped away. 

Note too that "habitable zone" is a bit of a provincial and vague term. Venus, Earth and Mars are in our sun's habitable zone, but only one of them is habitable by humans. 

The planet in that system which has gotten the most attention is the aforementioned  Proxima Centauri B, in part because it is in the habitable zone and in part because it was discovered first. It has a mass somewhere between 1.7 and 1.6 times that of Earth and an estimated surface gravity, according to Wikipedia of between .95 and 1.1 g. It's a bit bigger and somewhat more massive than Earth. Assuming it has an atmosphere, it's probably colder than Earth...but that's a big assumption, because it's so close to its star that its getting blasted by solar wind and radiation, that, in the absence of a strong magnetic field would have stripped away the atmosphere long ago and sterilized the husk.

We have some experience with the magnetic fields of roughly Earth-size rocky planets, having no less than four of them in the general vicinity. Only one of them, has a useful magnetic field. Mars has one that only extends above the planetary surface in the tropics. Venus has a weak magnetosphere caused by the impact of solar wind on its upper atmosphere, Mercury, which is about the size of the moon (but as massive as Mars) has a very weak field, and Earth has about the second strongest magnetic field in the solar system after Jupiter. Earth's anomalously strong field is actually on  par with the other gas giants like Saturn. It is hypothesized that this is due to tidal forces coming from the moon and the fact that Earth still spins on its axis fairly quickly. 

As we noted a while back, any planet orbiting as close to its star as Proxima b is likely to be tidally locked, that is, it's likely to orbit once per rotation (like the moon is to Earth). However, In the embedded video there is speculation that  it might be in resonance, perhaps with the other, recently discovered, planet (Proxima Centauri C)  much as Mercury is in resonance with Jupiter. It is unclear if this is based on models or wishful thinking, but this would at least mean that it would have a day/night cycle. However, even generously granting that possibility, it likely still does not rotate fast enough to generate a sufficient magnetic field to protect it. There is also a data artifact noted in passing on page 8 of this paper that opens the remote possibility that the planet might have a moon (how that could possibly work so close to the star is unclear). There is a video discussion of this planet and the solar system in general here.  

The study confirming Proxima b also indicated there might be another, smaller planet with an orbital period of 5.15 days (Noted on page 7 of the previous paper) but Proxima d is, as yet, unconfirmed.

The only other planet confirmed to be in the system  in the system, Proxima Centauri C is either a small ice giant (would that be an ice orc?) ,  or a big rocky world. It is quite frigid and  fairly far from the star, being outboard of what appears to be a dust or asteroid belt. This is all based on inferences from the wobble and red-shift of the star, but, recently astronomers were actually able to take  a direct picture of Proxima C. While this dark frigid world elicits little interest from those looking for life signs, the ability to directly take a picture of a planet in another solar system is cool indeed. So what does this boring thing look like?

 It appears to be far larger and brighter than its apparent mass would suggest.

Yes the bigger planet in the system we are "getting signals from" is 'glowy', way bigger than it should be, and appears to be vastly less dense than a  planet.

Wow.

One possibility is that this planet has a massive ring system, that, like those of Saturn and Chariklo, is coated in highly reflective ice. 

Uncredited NASA artist's conception of Proxima-C via

For reasons of propriety, we will, of course, dismiss out of hand the notion that Proxima C is an alien megastructure. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:37 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
Post contains 1185 words, total size 11 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 7 words, total size 1 kb.

...where there is a Hydraulic Press Channel.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:28 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 17 words, total size 1 kb.

 Computer model of Apophis from Wikipedia

Now, in 2020, astronomers looked at the space rock's most recent pass and amended their amendment to their calculations with the result that they think this dollop of deep-space detritus has a 0.00067% chance of impacting the earth with the force of 1.2 gigatons of TNT in 2068. 

This is not a high probability event, but if it comes to pass it is a very consequential, as a blast yield of 1200 megatons is a, shall we say, impactful, event no matter where on Earth it happens.  Furthermore, this asteroid tends to have close calls frequently, meaning that in the long term, an eventual impact is almost certain. 

The good news is that we've got plenty of time to mitigate this and try, fail, and try again to deflect the object and still have time to reflect upon and learn from mistakes made and lessons learned. 

The Brickmuppet's Crack team of Science Babes begin training to take care of business. 

For instance: The next time one discovers an Earth crossing asteroid, name it Fluttershy or Snorlax rather than after some ancient Egyptian god of chaos and death. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:53 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 283 words, total size 3 kb.

We asked our Crackerjack team of Science Babes to report on the latest breakthroughs regarding the Flying V. 

However, due to poor communication there was some confusion, so I'll just link to this story at Ars Technica. 

Flying V is a type of aircraft that has been talked about for some years. In theory a Flying V aircraft with the same passenger capacity as a standard airliner would have about 20 percent less fuel consumption. The design has not been pursued until recently because that's only a theory and there were other theories that the design would just not get off the ground, or flip over and crash. Airbus rejected it, but the engineer who developed the concept hopped the border to the Netherlands and the idea was taken up by Dutch Airline KLM, who have built a scale model and successfully flown it. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:13 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 295 words, total size 3 kb.

Is obviously to rename it U.C. 1. 

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 206 words, total size 3 kb.

I've gotta re-enlist in the Coast Guard now.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 33 words, total size 1 kb.

Friday the 13th does not necessarily bode ill.

For example, on March 13th 1781, William Herschel discovered Uranus!

^{"March 13, 1781 was a Tuesday, not a Friday, thus invalidating this whole post."}

Details...
Besides, the seventh planet from the sun is actually quite interesting despite the tedious jokes revolving around its name. 

 The planet and its moons have surprising potential. In fact, here is a long post by Matter Beam on how to colonize Uranus!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 149 words, total size 2 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:19 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 136 words, total size 2 kb.

Ben Kavanaugh, An English-teacher from Ireland goes to buy groceries in Wuhan.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 04:19 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 482 words, total size 4 kb.

One of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes brings us news from the cutting edges of Materials Science.

_{"And Biology. And Architecture. And Structural Engineering. And Invasive Species Management."}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 01:18 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 112 words, total size 2 kb.

One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes time from whatever Ren-Faire she's attending to bring us some news from the intersection of astronomy and explodimology.

It seems that he colossal red-giant star Betelgeuse, the right shoulder of the constellation Orion and heretofore one of the brightest stars in the night sky, has, over the past 3 months started dimming and over the last few weeks dramatically so.

^{"Unless,being 2019 and all, the light from the shoulder of Orion is dimming due to smoke from the attack ships on fire."}

^{That orange thing in the upper left (our left, not Orion's left )...it's going away...someday.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 11:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 376 words, total size 4 kb.

^{"New evidence regarding organics and seasonal methane emissions seems to support her conclusions and if these pan out, it'll be important to remember that it was Dr. Straat and her team who first discovered life on Mars, probably before the first people who will first see it under a microscope were born. "}

Time will tell but her argument seems compelling. Indeed, its looking more and more like she's right and that the decision to not put any life detecting experiments on the subsequent probes was ill-conceived at best. She has a book on the topic that is, for some reason, not available in the usual places but you can buy it here.

_{Full Disclosure: "Science Babe" is actually Makise Kurisu from Stein's Gate, but you know that, because you've seen it, unless you haven't in which case you're wrong.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:19 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 263 words, total size 3 kb.

A MUCH earlier post; see, back in November of 2007 we noted that archeologists had discovered a semi-mythical submarine that was claimed to have been all kinds of advanced but was believed to have been lost in 1869, 150 years ago this year.

The SUB MARINE EXPLORER did indeed exist and  was found 12 years ago. She was intended for underwater salvage, exploration and pearl diving and sallied forth to Panama to do the latter, where her entire crew died "of fever" after a long dive.

Examination of the wreck and what was known of the sub's design indicate that they died of the bends after staying down to long and not decompressing properly. Now, a dozen years later, the reports of the survey are available online as well as photos and schematics of the submarine itself derived from the wreck that confirm other reports about how advanced the vessel actually was. The SUB MARINE EXPLORER was remarkably advanced for its day and worked, achieving most of its design goals. It had the ability to equalize pressure like a diving bell allowing its crew to exit the vessel underwater.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:53 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 255 words, total size 2 kb.

...The internet was born. around 9:00PM technicians at UCLA loaded up a program to allow two workstations to talk to one another across the country via phone line.

At 10:30 PM the log entry read...

"Talked to SRI, Host to Host.”

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 09:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 238 words, total size 5 kb.

I was curious about that ringed asteroid/dwarf planet they found between Uranus and Saturn a while back. Chariklo is one of several asteroids in that region between Uranus and Saturn which have collectively been named the Centaurs. The objects in this small group are named after centaurs from Greek mythology and as there aren't many of those, any non-Centaur spouses/children from when the myths implied that the achievement "hybrid vigor" was unlocked...still they are likely to run out of names from Greek Mythology and will soon have to go to other sources.

^{Ms. Shianus by エルセン(Elsen?)}

Etymology aside,  these objects don't represent a large field like the Main Belt, the Jovian Trojans, or Hildas, but are thought to be a few objects from the Kupier Belt tossed sunward like Triton and Pluto/Charon. The largest of these, Chariklo, (named after Chiron's wife) had caused some confusion due to uncertainty about its size and readings that indicated it was either big and icy or small and surprisingly not so. It turned out that the Chariklo is a largely spherical object with an icy ring system that may imply two or more shepherd moons as well.

Not enough is known about this object to know if it will ultimately qualify as a Dwarf Planet (it would have to be in hydro-static equilibrium) but there's a chance that it might.  It's certainly at the low end of the scale of such things as can be seen here.....



Because Ceres is not a common frame of reference, the below picture may be helpful.



Besides the general coolness factor of the rings, one thing appears curious from the perspective of a layman with a mere Bachelor of Arts degree. The rings were discovered in part because when viewed front on the object appeared to be an icy object, when viewed ring edge on the moon appeared to be ice free. Now, "ice free" might mean largely anhydrous like Psyche, or just covered in regolith like Ceres. If the former, Chariklo might be something even more interesting. If all it's water is baked out then this thing might be a differentiated object like Vesta and Psyche, with all the potential for mineral wealth that that would imply.

As of now I have not learned anything more along those lines.

However, while looking,  I did encounter the exact opposite of learning. Well almost. In my search I blundered onto this website and very nearly used it as a reference hyperlink...after all it linked to space.com and had a nice overview of the object...the etymology of its name, and it then went on to discuss where the object can be seen in the sky at various times of the year which might be useful if one somehow has a ridiculously powerful telescope as this is a very dark object, (though the rings might be visible to some very well equipped amateur astronomers if one knows where to look).

Alas, this positional information was in reference to which HOUSES the object is in when viewed from Earth because the discovery of this object fills in some of the gaps in the predictive powers of...astrology.

Chariklo aspects seem to be prominent in individuals who take a step into the future. It may be through science (Pierre Curie, who studied the various types of energies, had a close Chariklo conjunct Sun...the greatest source of energy for this planet; Alexander Graham Bell, who studied ways to communicate with the deaf and who invented the telephone, had a close Chariklo conjunct Mercury....planet of communication).

Oh Lord.

Yes, the cray-cray is strong with this link. The author manages to tie in many of the cast and crew of Star Trek, Dr. Who, The Outer Limits and various other Sci-Fi authors to being born under the sign of this object, because this space-rock being linked...somehow...to forward thinking people is obviously linked to those involved in science fiction. Obviously.

Obviously.

Actually, there is a tremendous amount of research that went into this page. There is the equivalent of four typed pages that catalog when people of note were born when this asteroid happened to be in a certain arbitrary location when viewed from the Earth*.

There's an awful lot of numbers and charts.
 
So, (checks) I appear to be a Capricorn. If I were to apply this websites knowledge practically, what conclusions could be drawn about me?

^{Ms. Shianus by Okayado. Profound wisdom inspired by the Onion.}

Indeed.

But wait.

This stupid actually gets worse.

Three out of the first five pages that came up on Chariklo in a web search were in fact astrology pages. None of them were the Space.com page that the Astrology page linked to.

The algorithms that are deciding who gets to speak and what is a credible source can't tell the difference between astrology and astronomy.

This is why we can't have nice things. 

We're doomed! DOOMED!

Of course, in a few million years Chariklo might be too, since it's likely to eventually join the Saturnian or Uranian system....perhaps catastrophically.

^{Green=Uranus  Yellow=Saturn  Unlikely Pink=Chariklo}

^{*The third large object orbiting an unremarkable green dwarf in a big  empty bubble in the Orion arm of The Milky Way Galaxy, one of what is provincially known as The Local Group, a cluster of Galaxies which is somewhat removed from the apparent center of Lainekia.}

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 902 words, total size 9 kb.

One of the things that comes up from time to time when discussing futurism and space travel is that there is a theoretical (if tenuous) basis for violating the generally accepted impossibility of superluninal travel.

Developed by an acclaimed Mexican scientist named Dr. Miguel Alcubierre, the  Alcubierre Warp Drive sounds superficially similar to the propulsion in Star Trek, but is based in real physics..albeit very theoretical physics.

You see, since the speed of light is very firmly established as an insurmountable obstacle Dr. Alcubierre was only able to develop a mathematically sound way of violating this by using negative values for certain variables....in this case, um, mass.

"Unless..."

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 10:37 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 450 words, total size 4 kb.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 05:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 6 words, total size 1 kb.

In the recent post on the extra-solar comet Borisov, we used the rocketry and ballistics expertise bestowed by our liberal arts education to to recklessly speculate that it might be possible to launch a quick and dirty probe to get a close up look at this visitor from beyond.

Now one of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes has found a proposal to do just that, presumably after slogging through academic sites for many hours.

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 06:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 222 words, total size 2 kb.