Year: 2023

Today’s blacklisted American: California city harasses Rabbi for having guests over for dinner

1:20 pm

Beverly Hills: Where Jews are forbidden to pray
Beverly Hills: Where Jews are forbidden to pray

They’re coming for you next: The headline above is literally true, though you need to know a bit about Judaism, especially Orthodox Judaism, to understand what I mean exactly.

The story is this: Because Rabbi Levi Illulian, like all Orthodox Jews, routinely invites friends and acquaintances to join his family for Friday night dinner and Saturday lunch at his home during the weekly Saturday Sabbath, officials in Beverly Hills in California sent him a “notice of violation” on June 12, 2023, telling him that these dinners must cease, and ordered him to “terminate all religious activities” that included any “non-residents.” It also threatened him with civil and criminal proceedings if he didn’t stop praying with friends in his home.

It appears that the city’s actions were instigated by the complaints of one unnamed neighbor. As described in the letter [pdf] sent by Illulian’s lawyers to the city in response to its notice of violation, after receiving those two complaints in February and March about parking, trash, and noise, the city instituted an investigation that involved stake-outs of Illulian’s home and the use of drones over his property (without a warrant) in which city officials “not only tallied the number of individuals and cars coming and going from the Home, but also photographed Rabbi Illulian’s guests.”
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The inexplicable behavior of Martian dust devils

11:49 am

The inexpicable behavior of Martian dust devils
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates the puzzling inclination of Martian dust devils to strongly favor specific regions on the Martian surface, for reasons that at present no one can confidently explain.

The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 28, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a plethora of dust devil tracks, almost all of which have an east-west orientation. Moreover, the tracks seem uninfluenced by the surface topography, continuing on their path without deviation, even as they cross cliffs, craters, and mounds. The orientation tells us the direction of the prevailing winds, though I don’t know if those winds blow to the east or to the west.

What makes this image revealing is that a gathering of such dust devil tracks is seen so rarely in other MRO high resolution photographs. I look at a lot of MRO pictures, and though dust devil tracks are not rare, most images don’t show this many. Apparently, there are specific conditions on Mars that cause a lot of tracks to appear in specific locations, either because atmospheric conditions create a lot more dust devils, or the ground conditions allow the tracks to become more visible.
» Read more

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Ball Aerospace purchased by BAE Systems

9:57 am

BAE Systems today announced it has purchased from Ball Corporation its aerospace division, Ball Aerospace, for $5.6 billion.

It appears that the Ball corporation wants to focus its business plan around its “circular aluminum packaging for global beverage and household brands,” rather than aerospace. This sale essentially concludes the company’s slow transition away from its long time space business, which began just prior to Sputnik in 1956. It is essentially out of that business now, and instead has returned entirely to its packaging roots from the late 1800s.

BAE meanwhile strengthens its focus on space, both in the commercial and defense markets, with the addition of the Ball Aerospace division, which has been in the space business for decades.

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The ups and downs of capitalism in space

9:44 am

Two stories today illustrate how allowing freedom and capitalism to rule in the development of America’s aerospace industry carries with it the potential for wonderful achievements as well as depressing failures.

First the potential failure. Despite having successfully flown several missions demonstrating its orbital tug and service module for cubesats, the company Momentus has been forced to lay off 30% of its staff because of dwindling cash reserves.

Momentus reported a record quarterly revenue of $1.7 million in the second quarter, the first time it reported revenues of more than $1 million in a quarter. However, the company reported a net loss of $18.8 million and ended the quarter with $21.6 million of cash and equivalents on hand.

The company is presently scrambling to find new sources of investment capital, as it does not expect its income to grow sufficiently in the next year to keep itself above water, even though it should successfully fly more flights of its Vigoride orbital tug as well as a new service module version.

Next we have the potential achievement: The financial status of the startup satellite company Terran Orbital appears healthy and strong, mostly because of a $2.6 billion contract to build 300 satellites for the wireless communications company Rivada Space Networks. The first $180 million payment under that contract is expected this year.

At the same time, there are storm clouds in the distance, as there remain unanswered questions about whether Rivada has the resources sufficient to fulfill the contract.

During Terran Orbital’s Aug. 15 earnings call, H.C. Wainwright & Co analyst Scott Buck said Rivada’s vagueness about its plans for financing the constellation has caused “investor hesitation around the contract.”

Terran Orbital has already a number of successes building satellites for others, with its most significant achievement the CAPSTONE lunar orbiter it built for NASA. If the Rivada contract falls through I suspect the company will still be able to garner plenty of customers to survive.

For Momentus the situation is more dire, especially because it already faces strong competition from a number of other orbital tug companies.

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Scientists: Neptune’s clouds appear to ebb and grow in conjunction with sunspot cycle

9:24 am

Graph showing correlation between Neptune's clouds and the sunspot cycle

Scientists have now discovered what appears to be a link between the coming and going of clouds on Neptune to the Sun’s 11-year-long sunspot cycle, despite Neptune receiving only 1/900th the sunlight of the Earth.

To monitor the evolution of Neptune’s appearance, Chavez and her team analyzed images taken from 1994 to 2022 using Keck Observatory’s second generation Near-Infrared Camera (NIRC2) paired with its adaptive optics system (since 2002), as well as observations from Lick Observatory (2018-2019) and the Hubble Space Telescope (since 1994). In recent years the Keck Observatory observations have been complemented by images taken as part of Keck Observatory’s Twilight Observing Program and by Hubble Space Telescope images taken as part of the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.

The data revealed an intriguing pattern between changes in Neptune’s cloud cover and the solar cycle – the period when the Sun’s magnetic field flips every 11 years, causing levels of solar radiation to fluctuate. When the Sun emits more intense ultraviolet (UV) light, specifically the strong hydrogen Lyman-alpha emission, more clouds appear on Neptune about two years later. The team further found a positive correlation between the number of clouds and the ice giant’s brightness from the sunlight reflecting off it.

“These remarkable data give us the strongest evidence yet that Neptune’s cloud cover correlates with the Sun’s cycle,” said de Pater. “Our findings support the theory that the Sun’s UV rays, when strong enough, may be triggering a photochemical reaction that produces Neptune’s clouds.”

The graph to the right shows the correlation between the clouds and the sunspot cycle. The paper is available here.

This conclusion remains uncertain because of the overall sparseness of the data. Yet, it is intriguing, and also underlines the importance of the Sun on the Earth’s climate. If the solar cycle can impact Neptune’s climate so significantly from 2.8 billion miles away, it certainly must have a major impact on the Earth’s climate at only 100 million miles distance.

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Chandrayaan-3’s Vikram lander separates from its propulsion module; Luna-25 in lunar orbit

9:08 am


Click for interactive map.

The two probes aiming to land in the high southern latitudes of the Moon in the next week are now both in lunar orbit and preparing for their planned landings.

First India’s Chandrayaan-3: With its propulsion module having completed the job of getting Chandrayaan-3 from Earth to lunar orbit, the Vikram lander today separated from that module in preparation for firing its own engines on August 23, 2023 and landing on the Moon.

Vikram needs to make several orbital adjustments before that landing attempt.

Second, Russia’s Luna-25 probe entered lunar orbit yesterday, where it will spend the next few days making its own orbital adjustments before attempting its landing on August 21st.

Vikram carries a small rover, Pragyan. Luna-25 is only a lander, though it has a scoop and will do analysis of the lunar soil below it. Neither is landing “near the south pole”, as most news sources are saying. They are landing at latitudes comparable to landing in the Arctic on Earth, on the northern coast of Alaska. As such, neither will find out anything about the question of remnant ice in south pole’s permanently shadowed regions.

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SpaceX launches another 22 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral

8:59 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites into orbit. its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 11:36 pm Eastern.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 10th and 11th flights, respectively. As of posting the satellites had not yet deployed.

SpaceX has another launch scheduled only hours hence, at midnight (Pacific) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, aiming to put another 22 Starlink satellites in orbit using a first stage flying for its fifteenth time.

Until that second launch, the leaders at this moment in the 2023 launch race are as follows:

56 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

In successful launches, American private enterprise now leads China 64 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 64 to 57. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 56 to 57, but this will become a tie if the second launch occurs as planned.

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Two-thirds of all approved cancer drugs do nothing for patients

4:26 pm

A long term study in Sweden of 22 cancer drugs that its government had approved for rapid use before being tested fully has found that two-thirds provided absolute no benefit to patients.

The Gothenburg team examined 22 cancer drugs approved for reimbursement in Sweden over the last 10 years, examining studies that tested their ability to improve quality of life or lengthen lifespans. On average, these reports examined the drugs for 6.6 years.

Results revealed only seven of the 22 drugs had at least one study which showed a clear benefit for cancer patients. Randomized controlled trials on the other 15 failed to show any tangible benefits for people with cancer. Only one drug in the study showed an ability to both improve the quality of life and extend lifespans for patients.

“We have shown that the majority of the drugs launched with limited evidence still lack clear evidence of how they actually affect survival and quality of life in patients,” says Gabriella Chauca Strand, a doctoral student at Sahlgrenska Academy at the University of Gothenburg and the lead author of the study, in a university release.

This sentence from the university’s press release was even more striking:

Only one of the drugs had scientific evidence of both increased life expectancy and improved quality of life for its indication.

Essentially, 95% of these approved drugs were failures. Most did nothing and were worthless, despite the Swedish government paying huge amounts of money buying them. A few either improved the quality of life (but failed to keep the patient alive) or kept the patient alive longer (but made their lives miserable).

Does this sound familiar? Doesn’t make you wonder about the drug approval process in the U.S., especially after the disaster of the emergency approval of the COVID shots that we know now not only failed to prevent infection, were actually very harmful to many.

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August 16, 2023 Quick space links

3:14 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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West Virginia University: to save money it eliminates 32 majors instead of its bloated overhead

1:15 pm

West Virginia University logo
West Virginia University: An example of bankrupt academia?

Bankrupt academia: The bankruptcy of intellectual thought in modern American academia is finally beginning to percolate down to the bankbook, at least in West Virginia. On August 11, 2023 the administration at West Virginia University released a report proposing the elimination of 32 majors while also eliminating 169 faculty positions.

The preliminary recommendations, released Friday afternoon, said 12 of those programs are undergraduate majors and 20 are graduate-level majors. Other programs were told to reduce their faculty size — 169 faculty jobs are on the line for cuts.

Programs marked for discontinuation included: master’s and doctorate in Mathematics; master’s and doctorate in Higher Education Administration; master’s of Public Administration; master’s of fine arts in Creative Writing; and a bachelor’s in Recreation, Parks and Tourism Resources. The Department of World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, which includes Spanish, Russian and Chinese studies, was marked to be completely dissolved.

You can read the full report here. It is important to look closely at it, as it reveals some stark facts about how bankrupt academia remains. » Read more

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