Year: 2015

Hole in observatory door was not caused by bullet

10:26 am

Curiouser and curiouser: In a statement to the press the Subaru Telescope has said that the hole in its door was not caused by a bullet this past weekend but has been known about for months and was caused by wind banging the door against a piece of equipment.

But on Monday, the observatory said in a statement the hole was caused by strong wind swinging a metal door into an instrument fixture attached to a wall. “We at Subaru Telescope are relieved that this is the case and regret the confusion caused by earlier reports,” the statement said.

A detective investigated Monday and determined the hole from the bolt on the wall was there about six months, police said. The observatory’s statement says the day crews knew about the hole from a severe winter storm earlier this year. The observatory didn’t immediately explain why someone reported it to police Saturday night.

The contradictions between the story released today and what was revealed yesterday is quite stark. My guess would be that someone at the telescope, unaware of the hole previously, saw it this weekend and panicked, thinking it caused by a bullet and fearful because of the illegal presence of protesters on the road to the mountain. It is also possible that someone at the telescope saw the hole for the first time and wanted to smear the demonstrators. It is also possible that the rumor was spread by a demonstrator who wanted to smear the astronomers, knowing that the false story would be quickly uncovered.

I could speculate for hours, pointlessly. The bottom line is that the lack of good will from the demonstrators is successfully spreading the ill will to all sides.

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Parks and Recreation – “Thoughts For Your Thoughts”

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For anyone who has ever listened to NPR, it will be hard to distinguish the satire here from reality, since the skit so well captures public radio’s often empty-headed blather disguised as profound intellectualism, framed by a strong desire to promote anything the government wants done.

Hat tip to John Harman.

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Parachute problems again for NASA’s flying saucer

5:06 pm

In its second flight today NASA’s engineering vehicle for testing Mars landing technologies, dubbed a flying saucer by the press because of its shape, had a similar problem as in its first flight, with its parachutes failing to inflate properly during landing.

More here. This test was not only to check out landing technologies, it was to check out the redesigned parachute that had failed in the previous test last year.

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Want a law passed? Bribe your Senator!

12:30 pm

Good work if you can get it: A survey of the Senators who voted for the secret fast track trade legislation — whose language has still not been published for the public to read — has found that they all received huge donations in the past few months from businesses that support the legislation, while the law was being written and voted on.

Some were Democrats who held back until they got a lot of cash donations, then voted yes. Some were Republicans who took the money up front and then wrote the legislation. All told more than a million dollars in bribes were handed over to senators to guarantee their “yay” votes.

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Ramp down to solar minimum continues

12:11 pm

On Sunday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in May. As I have done since 2010, I am posting it here, with annotations to give it context.

May 2015 Solar Cycle graph

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.

Sunspot activity once again increased in May, though it continues to remain below the 2009 prediction of activity. Though it is still early in the ramp down, a look at the present pattern suggests that (as I also noted last month) sunspot activity is declining much faster than normal. In the past, the ramp down after solar maximum was long and drawn out, while ramp up was much faster. This ramp down seems much more precipitous than past solar cycles.

I should add that in early April Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations (SILSO) had declared that the peak of the solar maximum had occurred in April 2014, and that they could now sum up the overall weakness of this maximum.

Cycle 24 proves to be 30% weaker than the previous solar cycle, which reached 119.7 in July 2000, and thus belongs to the category of moderate cycles, like cycles 12 to 15, which were the norm in the late 19th and early 20th century. Compared to strong cycles, such cycles typically feature a broader maximum, with a 3-year plateau on top of which two or more surges of activity can produce sharp peaks of similar height.

I had missed this announcement when it was first posted. It is worth noting however, especially since their discussion in April is interesting to read in the context of what has happened since.

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TSA fails to find links to terrorism of airport workers

10:46 am

Does this make you feel safer? An audit of the TSA has found that the agency failed to uncover the terrorist connections of 73 aviation workers when it did background checks of them.

According to TSA data, these individuals were employed by major airlines, airport vendors, and other employers. TSA did not identify these individuals through its vetting operations because it is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related categories under current interagency watchlisting policy,” the redacted report reads. “TSA acknowledged that these individuals were cleared for access to secure airport areas despite representing a potential transportation security threat,” it added.

The new audit comes on the heels of another damaging Inspector General report on TSA’s security measures, which found the aviation security body was unable to detect fake bombs and weapons in 95 percent of trial runs. Revealed last week in an ABC News report, the OIG’s findings resulted in the Acting TSA Administrator, Melvin Carraway’s, removal from the post.

The TSA is nothing more than childish feel-good theater used to convince Americans that the government has the right to sexually abuse them, if it wants. It does little to prevent hijackings or terrorist attacks. The smartest thing we could do is to shut it down, close down the security posts, and simply let Americans be armed on planes. Trust me, terrorists — being cowardly bullies who look for easy targets — would stay away, and no gun shots would ever get fired.

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Problems at Stratolaunch

10:29 am

In the heat of competition: Stratolaunch and Orbital ATK have quietly parted ways as problems have developed in building Stratolaunch’s giant first stage aircraft.

The company went with a radical engineering idea — using a giant airplane as their first stage — which might turn out great but could just as easily become a disaster and failure. Such ideas are by their nature filled with many unknowns.

In a sense, this story validates SpaceX’s approach to developing new space technology, which is to take known engineering and to upgrade it while refining the production methods for building it to lower costs. With this approach, you lower risks by reducing the number of unknowns you have to deal with.

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Bullet hole found in Mauna Kea observatory

10:20 am

Even as protesters continue to block the roads to the top of Mauna Kea to prevent construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), workers at the Subaru Telescope at the mountain have reported a bullet hole in one door that had been put there sometime over the weekend.

No one knows who did it, or even if the hole was caused by a bullet, though that is what it looks like. The leader of the protests has of course denied any participation and condemned it.

I found this quote from the first link above (which spends a lot of time describing the heroic protesters who have been camping on the road) to be very revealing about this whole affair:

In an email Saturday, DLNR spokeswoman Deborah Ward said the area is not permitted for camping but did not respond to the Tribune-Herald’s questions about why the department has allowed the protesters to remain at the site. “Both state and county officials are monitoring the situation,” she wrote.

Gee, don’t we all remember how government officials turned a blind eye to tea party protests? Not! They did however allow illegal trespassing for Occupy Wall Street. In all these cases, the government officials reveal whose side they are on.

I personally think the astronomy community should organize a boycott of tourism to Hawaii. If their island is so sacred that outsiders shouldn’t be there, maybe we should hold them to their word. We would then find out how serious they really are about the island’s sacredness.

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LightSail successfully deploys solar sail

9:58 am

Engineers have confirmed that the cubesat prototype LightSail has successfully deployed its solar sails.

This is I think only the second time a solar sail has successfully deployed in space. More significant to me is the fact that it is the first time this kind of complex engineering test has been tried using a cubesat. If cubesats can begin to handle these kinds of tasks, unmanned satellite technology is going to take a gigantic leap forward.

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Dawn makes a movie of Ceres

9:28 am

Cool image time! Using images that Dawn has accumulated since it entered orbit around Ceres, scientists have created an animation showing the dwarf planet as it rotates.

Video below the fold. Note that this is an animation. They have filled in the gaps between images to make the rotation smooth, exaggerated the scale two times to bring out details, and added a background of stars that is not visible in the original images. Even so, this video is scientifically useful, as it shows Ceres in its entirety. It is also very spectacular.
» Read more

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