One of our Crack Team of Science Babe's has some commentary on the matter.
"Uuuuu Laaaaa!"
UPDATE:
Oh.
Oops.
Apologies to everyone who viewed the post in the first two hours that it was up.
I was surprised when I saw the "live feed", but figured that it was a test flight ,and, being quite busy today just linked the previous embed as part of a particularly perfunctory post and ran out to run errands. A few minutes ago I came back and checked for any more info and realized that there was none and then a comment by "David" which confirmed my unease.
Thanks David.
I replaced the "live feed" with a recent video on Ingenuity.
The different embed retroactively makes the post technically correct...(the best kind of correct).
It's rather interesting that You-Tube, the company that claims to care greatly about fact checking and yeeted with prejudice anyone who mentioned the Hunter Biden story have let this chlickwhore stay up for (checks Youtube) WOW this has been up for THREE DAYS and it is still up.
The previous embed is impressive and does look for all the world like an actual live stream with black and white video supplemented by color corrected video with an additional time delay. The vistas looked very much like Mars indeed, but it's completely fake. If you are very curious about the video that was previously embedded it is here. I'd rather not give the people-shaped-colostomy-bag who posted it any clicks though.
Again, I'm sorry. I'll strive to do better in the future.
1
First flight of the helicopter isn't planned until about two months from now, someone is scamming for views.
Posted by: David at Sun Feb 21 15:09:15 2021 (aT8ji)
2
It's actually fairly common for people to exploit that "live" tag. I see it all the time with space stuff, there were "live" videos of most of the SpaceX Starship tests days after they met there "missed it by that much!" ends. I believe you can still find "live" video of Starman and his Tesla roadster. And of course youtube doesn't care, because they get the lion's share of any ad revenue generated.
Posted by: David at Sun Feb 21 21:49:52 2021 (aT8ji)
Meanwhile: At Alpha Centauri
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?
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.
1
Damnit, I was hoping that it might be the real life equivalent of Ellis from 2300AD - a habitable planet orbiting around a red dwarf that is oddly not tide-locked, and where Americans can move to without being trapped in a high tech security state.
Posted by: cxt217 at Sat Jan 9 12:46:59 2021 (4i7w0)
2
So if they've been listening all this time, what happened 8.8 years ago that prompted their "head up" dial tone?
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Sat Jan 9 13:30:53 2021 (QMNdN)
3
At the time, I suggested over at another website that the signal is a homing beacon from kids annoyed that Santa hasn't visited.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sat Jan 9 16:52:35 2021 (Bkp4m)
So if they've been listening all this time, what happened 8.8 years ago that prompted their "head up" dial tone?
Radio astronomers are generally looking for interesting astronomical phenomena (phenomenae?) They point their radio telescopes at interesting things and Alpha Centauri consists of basic bitch versions of G,K, and M class stars, which are themselves basic bitch versions of stars.
Also, SETI does not have a lot of funding in comparison to other aspects of astronomy which get billions of dollars to spend on space origamis. SETI is full of serious researchers, but I get the impression that it is mostly professional astronomers who are basically pursuing their hobby. Not a lot of grants come to those who find nothing year after year and I imagine that the research doesn't generate a lot of peer-reviewed research.
" Having reviewed Professor Skippy's analysis suggesting that he'd heard nothing, we have concluded that, in fact, he heard nothing."
Also, Radio Astronomy and SETI in particular listen to a small chunk of the sky at any given time and since Radio Astronomy was a thing there has always been a LOT of radio signals to filter out. A lot of the work with SETI and RA in general is just trying to eliminate all the Top 40 and CB broadcasts. That takes time.
Finally, I suspect it is a matter of geography. Most radio telescopes are in the northern hemisphere. The constellation Centarus, despite being named by the Greeks, is now only visible from the southern hemisphere year round and south of Florida in the Summer.
So there was a star system, that was not interesting except because of its location, that wasn't really viewable with the best equipment, and a signal that was hard to filter out from the background noise and sounds like a dial-tone or radio test.
It's still probably nothing, but given how odd the signal is, whatever it is should at least be amusing.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Jan 9 17:32:19 2021 (5iiQK)
Mars, some asteroid, or Callisto would be a better bet.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sat Jan 9 17:35:54 2021 (5iiQK)
6Mars, some asteroid, or Callisto would be a better bet.
Unless terraforming technology gets a LOT better, I rather a place that is both far away and whose residents will not be immediately vulnerable due to their life support systems being destroyed by planetary bombardment (a la what happened to Hochbaden in the 2300AD setting - yes, I have been reading old gaming modules.).
Posted by: cxt217 at Sun Jan 10 14:47:29 2021 (4i7w0)
7
Terraforming is outre' tech to be sure, but FAR less so than traveling 4.6 light years. In contrast to the Hochbaden scenario you mention, most any space settlements aside from Spaceports are going to be buried, either in asteroids or underground, presenting any attackers with the thorny issues the Earth faced in Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Hochbaden was, IIRC, a Bavarian vanity project with the pressurized habitats all exposed for reasons of artistic whimsy, and big open windows the size of football fields to facilitate tourism. In 2300, most other closed-ecosystem colonies were much more sound architecturally.
Even assuming that orbital bombardment is not a consideration, and frankly its not high on the list of realistic design concerns, mitigation of radiation and meteors is going to require subterranean placement of most habitable areas, with periscopes bringing light in for farming.
Sunlight looses the bandwidths necessary for terrestrial photosynthesis past the Trojans, so, Jupiter is probably a hard limit on how far out we could go in the absence of fusion power. Jupiter is also the extreme limit of practical solar power (see Juno).
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Sun Jan 10 17:48:09 2021 (5iiQK)
1
I've been seeing those 1" cubes in a lot of videos lately, I wonder where they come from?
There's also a 4" Tungsten cube that's been making the rounds of the GunTubers and others.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Nov 30 00:10:11 2020 (Ix1l6)
2
Search for "density cubes"; they're all over Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc. I think they're for teaching ranged combat to homeschooled kids. :-)
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Mon Nov 30 00:46:49 2020 (ZlYZd)
3
My mother works at a place called "The Institute for Physics of High Pressures", which is basically centered around a giant press. They were the first to make synthetic diamonds, long time ago. These days they're trying to create a metallic hydrogen. Basically scientists were so preoccupied with the question if they could, they forgot to ask if they should. Metal hydrogen is not a quantum state, so who cares? Maybe they should start a Youtube channel too.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Nov 30 00:51:39 2020 (LZ7Bg)
4
A friend of mine, Rex S., is a leading seller of some kind of "model cube". He was a teacher in a high school and started it as a hobby after he had a brain cancer and became unable to teach due to seizures. He was selling all sorts of garbage, like miniature steam engines, polished stones, and geodes, until one day he sold these cubes to some industrial place. I think he makes them mostly out of tungsten.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Mon Nov 30 00:55:35 2020 (LZ7Bg)
5
I'm just sad that the earbuds didn't get tested too.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Nov 30 07:56:45 2020 (PiXy!)
We've discussed Apophis before, but not recently...we were still on Blogspot back then. Basically Apophis is an Earth crossing asteroid that someone decided to tempt fate by naming after an Egyptian god of destruction. In late 2005 there was some speculation that it would impact the Earth in 2036, but subsequent calculations indicated that was not actually the case.
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.
I Suppose Delta Airlines is Particularly Enthusiastic
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.
Theres a concept video on YouTube...
...which is WAY more impressive looking than the actual event.
But the test is not CGI. It's actual engineering. There's more on this at New Atlas. Which notes that the baseline for the 20% fuel savings claim is the Airbus A350-900 and that unlike most flying wing proposals, a Flying V would have the same or smaller wingspan. This would solve the achilles heel of most flying wing airliner proposals, the notion that airports would have to be massively rebuilt for the new planes. With this they wouldn't.
All this assumes that the thing actually scales up well, which is far from a sure thing. Still, it's nice to see innovative and frankly futuristic looking designs being looked at...it being the 21st century and all.
Once finished, the robot will feature an incredible 24 degrees of freedom, meaning this thing will be able to walk.
The thing is supposed to be fully operational by October, and while its schedule was thrown into chaos by CoronaChan, it appears that they have now caught up and an October debut is a real possibility.
1
Just as long as it's not the future where a space colony is crashed into Sydney.
Posted by: Pete Zaitcev at Tue Jul 28 14:56:53 2020 (LZ7Bg)
2
I'm sure that if any space colonies declare themselves to be a ArchDuchy, Pixy will move.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Tue Jul 28 15:20:56 2020 (5iiQK)
3
Given that a couple years later after Operation British, yet another space colony crashed into North America...Maybe Ace's much touted 'Sweet Meteorite of Death' will actually come true.
Incidentally, one positive thing that happened on Youtube this year - they started officially posting the soundtracks from the various Gundam titles the same way they post music from labels.
Posted by: cxt217 at Tue Jul 28 23:29:44 2020 (4i7w0)
1
That's really cool, and undoubtedly a lot more fun than climbing a ladder. But you can't carry much if any gear with you, any hostiles would have great fun shooting you out of the air, and I can't imagine those things are much good in the foul weather/high seas that go with a lot of Coast Guard activity. But as a way to get the first person aboard to evaluate a situation, perhaps take the helm, receive a messenger line, etc., it could be quite nice. I'm not sure about inspections, you'd have to take the gear off and leave it on deck while you poked around.
Posted by: David at Sun May 24 13:30:10 2020 (UmjNG)
The planet has an anomalously large percentage of helium 3 in its clouds and a bunch of cool icy moons which seem quite comparable to Ceres.
The system is far enough out to keep the pesky tourists at bay.
Interestingly though, Matter Beam's article has an idea for a potentially interesting "killer app" that could make the the two "ice giants" quite useful in the far future.
Scientists examining a meteorite think they have discovered a protein inside it. This is significant because, while amino acids have been found in space rocks, proteins had not. The researchers are reasonably sure that the protein is not due to terrestrial contamination due to its isotope signature and the fact that the protein is like nothing ever seen before.
The hemolithin protein found by the researchers was a small one, and was made up mostly of glycine, and amino acids. It also had oxygen, lithium and iron atoms at its ends—an arrangement never seen before.
"Hemolethin appears to be a new word invented just for this protein. but that's not NEARLY as important as the validating fact that one actually CAN find protein in space!"
1
Extraterrestrial proteins being discovered at exactly the moment that a highly infectious virus is sweeping the globe seems like excellent grist for grade-Z science fiction movies.
Posted by: Canthros at Sun Mar 8 22:54:34 2020 (mToqK)
A Few Viral Videos (Updated)
Ben Kavanaugh, An English-teacher from Ireland goes to buy groceries in Wuhan.
The bit about the goggles is probably good advice.
This below seems to be the full version of "The Nurse's Video"; the video that caused much of the online hysteria yesterday. Epoch Times has a slant to be sure, but they don't (to the best of my knowledge) make things up whole cloth. It's unclear why she would give the interview in a hazmat suit. I don't know who she is and even if I did I've seen enough Downfall parodies to know that I'd want someone with a good knowledge of Mandarin I trust to translate this.
Nevertheless, the uncertain provenance notwithstanding, nothing she says is out of line with what we know about the bug and it jives well with the analysis of experts in the U.K. The wildly divergent numbers with respect to the ones provided by the C.C.P.
might not be remarkable either if the C.C.P. numbers are confirmed cases and the numbers 'Mystery Nurse' provides are of those estimated to be infected but not symptomatic yet.
Styxhexxenhammer has thoughts on the matter:
As he notes above, It is reported here (via U.K.Channel 4) this morning by the Chinese Government that the virus is getting "stronger" though it's unclear if that means in lethality or virulence (or both).
Regarding the suspicions in some quarters about the fact that there is a
government bio-research lab studying the most .dangerous pathogens in
the middle of 'City Zero' ; Well, it turns out that serious concerns were raised about the then-under-construction Wuhan lab in 2017. Note too that there were 2 earlier containment failures with the less dangerous SARS virus in a Beijing lab about a decade ago.
One involved a protocol issue and one involved an attempted live virus
vaccine that had not, in fact, been rendered fully safe. None of this is
strictly relevant to the current situation, it doesn't matter if the virus came
from a botched experiment, a snake, a bat, genetic recombination at the
local bathhouse, or the crashed satellite from project Scoop. It exists and appears to be real despite some obvious hype.
The thing is, we don't know what we don't know, about the actual
mortality rate, and transmissability, though the latter seems to be
alarmingly high given the measures taken by the powers that be. These quarantines are not taken lightly after all. This
could be, in ascending levels of undesirability: hype, SARS, a bad flu
season, 1918, or North America 1545-1610.
I'm betting on a bad flu season none of us has the shot for, so I'd suggest having a lot of canned goods and buying some mas....oh.
As we approach the third decade of the 21st century we should not be surprised to see science fiction become science fact...but we at Brickmuppet Blog express our consternation that instead of flying cars, our scientists are pursuing Monolith Monsters.
Meanwhile, in the Constellation of Orion
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."
Hush.
If theories about these things are correct there is a possibility that the star
will erupt in a supernova...soon.
A super Nova of Betelgeuse is not unexpected as the star has long been thought to be near the end of its life, though that being measured in millions of years the notion that we'd see it in our lifetimes was (and still is) considered remote. However, if it does explode sometime in the next few months or years, the death of Betelgeuse could have profound effects on earth.
Such "profound effects" might include having every hysterical click-baity doomsayer prattling on about the end of the world ad-nauseum, as well as speculation in the media that the obliteration of Orion's shoulder is due to Russian collusion or global warming and celebrations in certain quarters of the replacement of the previous ableist constellation with a more diverse one.
However, at 430 light years away (give or take 100LY) Betelgeuse is far too distant to provide a radiation hazard from a super nova. The non-secondary effects are likely to be limited to having the star be
much brighter than a full moon for several weeks or months resulting in
near daylight at midnight at certain times and presenting two suns in the
daytime sky during others. If it transpired, we will notice it but on the off chance that it actually goes all 'splody the only dangers it would pose are likely to be people walking into trees while looking at it.
Of course, whatever transpires from this, it will have already happened...330-530 years ago.
That orange thing in the upper left (our left, not Orion's left )...it's going away...someday.
Great Discoveries are Sometimes Unacknowledged When They Happen
One of the Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes takes a moment to tell us that John Michael Godier has a 45 minute interview with Dr. Patricia Ann Straat, who was in charge of the detect life experiment in the Viking Landers in '75/76. She and her team thought they'd found life then but after some initial enthusiasm it was declared a false positive and then pretty much ignored after the new NASA leadership took over in '77. She and others have recently pointed out that the experiments alleged to debunk her team's claims were improperly done and she's got a very strong case that Martian life was detected in 1976.
But wait. There's more!
"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.
1
We need more info for anything to be conclusive, probably. One bit of information is far too small for all the things we would want to know about life on Mars, if it exists.
As a grad student, it was amazing how hard it was to get repeatable, reliable results from an experiment when you could open up the chamber and fix things, restart things, kick things, resolder bad connections, etc. (In my case, I got a negative result for what I was searching for.)
For something that's millions of miles away on a robot probe with limited manipulators, it's amazing they got results that could even be classified as "positive" or "negative" instead of "huh?". It's amazing they could propulsively *land* the thing with the technology of the time.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Nov 25 10:57:09 2019 (K+Kza)
2
Could still be an inorganic reaction with an oxidizing chemical in the soil. The heated soil test seems like they controlled for that, but they could also have baked out the active inorganic chemical too in the low pressure atmosphere.
Need more testing. Need a robot with microscopes and slides. Need moar info.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Mon Nov 25 11:06:05 2019 (K+Kza)
Follow-Up to an Earlier Post
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.
From the set of plans drawn up from the wreck and historical records at the Library of Congress
Sadly, reliable dive tables were not available until the early 20th century and this condemned the crew to an early grave despite everything else being done right. Unknown unknowns are among the most dangerous of things, but are inevitable when exploring new frontiers.
1
"Unknown unknowns," they are called. My over-degreed & credentialed pharmacy colleagues are discovering they are not construction project managers...
Similarly, when Musk drops his volunteers onto Mars (and I would still gladly put my name in) they will encounter things that all of us brights who read Brickmuppet's blog could never imagine.
Death, rarely, is sometimes the only way forward. The next colony will build upon the first's lessons. And their memories and bones.
Posted by: Clayton Barnett at Sat Nov 2 20:28:48 2019 (ug1Mc)
50 Years Ago Today ...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.”
And ARPANET, the first crude iteration of the internet was operational.
This has led to a myriad of advances, some amazingly good and some with terrifying implications.
1
> what we'll be using this technological wonder for during this evening's celebration is providing seasonally appropriate cheesecake on your computer monitor
It's what Vint Cerf would have wanted.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tue Oct 29 22:31:20 2019 (PiXy!)
Chariklo and the Importance of Reading the WHOLE Page Before Linking it
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.
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.
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.
1
" a layman with a mere Bachelor of Arts degree."
LOL.
Posted by: Rick C at Wed Oct 2 09:08:36 2019 (Iwkd4)
2
I am reminded of a very old Non Sequiter daily comic, where a professor is welcoming his new course-worth of students to Astronomy, and one of them asks about the difference between astronomy and astrology. The reply of 'Lots and lots of math' clears the room.
As in many/most things, Wiley and Non Sequiter was channeling real life with that one.
Posted by: cxt217 at Wed Oct 2 16:44:04 2019 (LMsTt)
3
A select few astrology mavens can actually turn out useful, if you are a deep enough classics nerd to need info about Greek and Roman astrology. Some crazy astrology guy did some really beautiful translations of Latin and Greek astrological works, which was helpful for the paleoastronomy people.
Especially since it's weird to have to explain, "Of course I don't believe this, and I'm just translating it," whereas nobody has to explain their position that there are obvious deficiences in an early science or agriculture text.
Of course, it's much more entertaining to read footnotes written by an ag guy for an ag book, or a veterinarian for a veterinary book. "We still do this" and "this is crap" footnotes often directly parallel the format of the original old book!
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Oct 15 14:44:38 2019 (sF8WE)
While We Weren't Looking
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.
In the above interview, Dr. Alcubierre is quite up front that this is a dubious prospect as negative mass is not something that one encounters...it is simply not forbidden to exist, we're not talking about anti-matter...we're talking about "stuff" with a value of less than nothing.
So unless someone invents/discovers "negative mass" this is basically at the intersection of physics, mathematics, special pleading and vapourware.
"Unless..."
Now, one of The Brickmuppet's Crack Team of Science Babes points us to this post at Next Big Future which offhandedly mentions that scientists from The University of Rochester generated negative mass last year and further poking around reveals that Scientists in Washington did so in 2017.
Seems a rather LARGE thing to have avoided news coverage, but it does appear to be legit. This is not to say that the Alcubierre Drive is imminent, or even practical, but it is just a tad more possible.
Scientists now know a little more of what they don't know and that is actually progress.
If negative mass can be produced in any quantity (and there are formidable issues with that) then even if there is no practical result to the warp drive research, the negative mass has some interesting (potential & theoretical) applications that border on Clarke-Tech.
And even if the Warp Drive is possible, it's likely that we'll never see anything like FTL in our lifetime, but the fact that scientists are discovering things like negative matter point to a very bright future indeed, if we can avoid some dystopian speedbumps on the road to tomorrow.
1
Negative matter or anti-mass, or something similar seems to be a key ingredient in many FTL schemes, not just this warp drive.
Robert Forward explored some of the more bizzare consequences of having negative matter in some of his science-fiction. It turns out that if you have anti-mass, then entirely in keeping with the conservation laws of mechanics, you can generate arbitrary amounts of positive and negative energy, and you can construct self-accelerating objects. (Two related to momentum-energy conservation). That lets you get away with just about every soft sci-fi trope.
While this may seem like a mathematical absurdity, solid-state physicists have managed to come up with massy pseudoparticles (little excitations of a physical medium driven by light impinging on the medium), some of which have positive and negative effective mass. A non-linear interaction governed by lattice vibrations then coupled them together and demonstrated the self-accelerating behavior predicted by Forward. While it's not free-space negative mass, it's a suggestive physical model.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Sat Sep 28 18:32:51 2019 (K+Kza)
2
Nevermind, I think you're pointing to the same work (Univ of Rochester). I believe they're talking about quasi-particles that have "negative mass" within the context of their background medium.
Some sort of free-space particle in the wild demonstrating negative mass would be the holy grail.
Posted by: MadRocketSci at Sat Sep 28 18:38:25 2019 (K+Kza)
Borisov Intercept ProposalIn 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.
The paper is using the SLS as it's baseline launch vehicle, and not the larger and more powerful and more or less existing Space-X Super Heavy.
However, this paper by actual rocket scientists, points out that the rather significant detail that the launch window for a conventional intercept of this thing was actually a bit over a year ago. Borisov is coming no closer to the Earth than Mars before it speeds off into the void.
Instead, the scientists are looking at a high energy, multiple slingshot trajectory and is proposing a launch in 2030, and an intercept in 2045, which gives plenty of time to work things out in a more conventional manner.
Interestingly, it also notes that a mission to Omuamua, using a New Horizons class probe is still possible. Which is quite awesome.
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