September 5, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also provided me the link to the Chinese launch posted earlier.
- Video outlining an alternative theory that dismisses the need for either Dark Matter or Dark Energy
The theory, MOND, was first proposed in the 1990s, but because of the desire to squelch and suppress any skepticism of the Big Bang, it has been routinely been ignored by all press services and poo-poohed by cosmologists. I tried several times to propose articles about it when I still wrote for magazines, and was consistently shot down. It could be it is finally getting more play because of the data from Webb.
- ESA officials admit Ariane-6 won’t fly until mid-2024, and even that depends on results of September-October static fire tests
If you want to listen to the entire briefing, go here. This delay means Ariane-6 is only four years behind schedule, and that Europe will be without a large launch rocket for at least one year.
- Russia reveals plan to launch a new mission to Mars’ moon Phobos
Not only do few proposed Russian space projects ever happen, those that do take decades to get built, and sadly too many fail once launched. The last Phobos mission, Phobos-Grunt, never got out of Earth orbit, crashing to Earth shortly after launch in 2012. Russia announced a replacement mission shortly thereafter, with a target launch date of 2018. No launch ever occurred. This new proposal is likely not to fly for decades yet, if ever.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also provided me the link to the Chinese launch posted earlier.
- Video outlining an alternative theory that dismisses the need for either Dark Matter or Dark Energy
The theory, MOND, was first proposed in the 1990s, but because of the desire to squelch and suppress any skepticism of the Big Bang, it has been routinely been ignored by all press services and poo-poohed by cosmologists. I tried several times to propose articles about it when I still wrote for magazines, and was consistently shot down. It could be it is finally getting more play because of the data from Webb.
- ESA officials admit Ariane-6 won’t fly until mid-2024, and even that depends on results of September-October static fire tests
If you want to listen to the entire briefing, go here. This delay means Ariane-6 is only four years behind schedule, and that Europe will be without a large launch rocket for at least one year.
- Russia reveals plan to launch a new mission to Mars’ moon Phobos
Not only do few proposed Russian space projects ever happen, those that do take decades to get built, and sadly too many fail once launched. The last Phobos mission, Phobos-Grunt, never got out of Earth orbit, crashing to Earth shortly after launch in 2012. Russia announced a replacement mission shortly thereafter, with a target launch date of 2018. No launch ever occurred. This new proposal is likely not to fly for decades yet, if ever.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Although Russia is going to fail, because brain-drain, at least they’re aiming right. At least someone over there figured out enough English literacy to read Winchell Chung.
Deimos is the place to go and settle. Mars is … ugh. An airless desert, with poison in the soil and radiation from the sky.
MOND adherent myself
Well, there really isn’t any doubt about “the Big Bang”. The universe at the beginning was very hot and very small. That’s the Big Bang.
Where the various theories differ, is in explaining what exactly has happened since then. And how does gravity work?
So I don’t think it is correct to call MOND (for example) “skepticism of the Big Bang”. More properly you could call it “alternative theories of gravity” or perhaps “an alternative model of how the Big Bang worked”.
Dark matter has never made any sense to me. It’s like I go to the bank and try to withdraw $1000, but I’m told I have only $800 available.
When I protest that my checkbook indicates I have $1000 in my account, they say “Oh, you DO have $1000, but $200 of it is Dark Money that you can’t use!”
When I ask to see my $200 in Dark Money, they say “Nobody can see it.” When I ask how then they can know it’s there, they patiently explain that since my checkbook and their records both agree that I have $1000, but we can only see $800, this proves that there is $200 in Dark Money in my account!
This is also exactly how they “prove” that Dark Matter exists!
There is a nice post about the Wide Binary results at tritonstation.com, the blog of Dr Stacy McGaugh. The entire blog is an excellent source for MOND and Dark Matter. There are some laws of galactic dynamics (the Radial Acceleration Relation, the Baryonic Tully Fischer Relation, the Mass Discrepancy Relation) that relate galactic dynamics to baryonic (i.e. “ordinary”) matter, essentially precluding the existence of any dark matter in galaxies. Note that these are empirical relationships that do not depend on MOND.
Unfortunately at the scale of galaxy clusters it appears there may be a need for Dark Matter or another version of gravity beyond MOND, and the CMB together with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis suggests that there must be more matter in the universe than accounted for by baryonic matter.
At least, all of that is my understanding – this is an area of interest for me but I am certainly not an expert. Personally I suspect that the CMB interpretaions and other aspects of cosmology are in need of correction, but the question of course is how.
Ray Van Dune wrote: “This is also exactly how they ‘prove’ that Dark Matter exists!”
Pretty close, but the words that I have heard are closer to: ‘We can’t find any other explanation, so it must be true.’
Your example reminds me of a time when a company I was on the Board of Directors of had floated some bonds in order to do seismic upgrades to the buildings. The bank underwriting the bond only allowed us 80% of the bond money raised, and the other 20% was held in something resembling escrow, just in case we were unable to repay the bonds, so that the bond holders would still get something back. Thus, while the stated interest rate was one value, the real interest rate was somewhat higher (would have been 25% higher, but the “escrow” paid some amount of interest).
I think I have a slight idea of how the universe must be feeling, if it can only use 15% of its actual matter. What a waste of 85%.