Author: Robert Zimmerman

New data from the Herschel Space Telescope suggests that the asteroid Apophis is bigger and less reflective than previous believed.

11:04 am

More Apophis news: New data from the Herschel Space Telescope suggests that the asteroid is bigger and less reflective than previous believed.

Instead of 900 feet across, they now estimate it has a diameter of about 1070 feet. And knowing that the asteroid has a lower albedo means that astronomers will be better able to gauge the effect of solar radiation on Apophis’s orbit.

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A new National Research Council report honestly admits the possibility that the Sun might be an important factor in climate change.

10:01 pm

Pigs fly! A new National Research Council report honestly admits the possibility that the Sun might be an important factor in climate change.

The article, from NASA, itself is a remarkably fair assessment of the field’s state of knowledge (which in truth is quite spotty since we really do not yet understand what is going on with the climate). This, as far as I can remember, is the first time in years, since the early 1990s before the global warming advocates took over the climate field and shut down debate, that an official article from a government organization like NASA has been so open about these issues and not toed the politically correct line that “fossil fuels and carbon dioxide are causing global warming and don’t you dare say anything different!”

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Want to learn something of the geology of the Grand Canyon?

2:10 pm

Want to learn something of the geology of the Grand Canyon? The Geological Society of America has just published a special volume of papers, with the introductory and afterword [pdf] chapters available online.

Those two chapters provide a very good layman’s summary of the geological state-of-the-art of the Grand Canyon. Very worthwhile reading if you plan to hike down in the near future.

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Scientists now think it is possible for there to be floating methane ice on the lakes of Titan.

11:56 am

Scientists now think it is possible for there to be floating methane ice on the lakes of Titan.

Up to this point, Cassini scientists assumed that Titan lakes would not have floating ice, because solid methane is denser than liquid methane and would sink. But the new model considers the interaction between the lakes and the atmosphere, resulting in different mixtures of compositions, pockets of nitrogen gas, and changes in temperature. The result, scientists found, is that winter ice will float in Titan’s methane-and-ethane-rich lakes and seas if the temperature is below the freezing point of methane — minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit (90.4 kelvins). The scientists realized all the varieties of ice they considered would float if they were composed of at least 5 percent “air,” which is an average composition for young sea ice on Earth. (“Air” on Titan has significantly more nitrogen than Earth air and almost no oxygen.)

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Bank of America arbitrarily froze the account of a firearms manufacturer because, in their words “We believe you should not be selling guns and parts on the Internet.”

4:40 pm

Facism: Bank of America arbitrarily froze the account of a firearms manufacturer because, in their words “We believe you should not be selling guns and parts on the Internet.”

Quite rightly, the owner of the company told them they had “no right to make up their own rules” and that he was going to take his business elsewhere. I think every gun owner in the country should do the same.

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The Kepler science team today revealed an additional 461 candidate exoplanets, with four being less than twice Earth’s size and in the habitable zone.

1:51 pm

Worlds without end: The Kepler science team today revealed an additional 461 candidate exoplanets, with four being less than twice Earth’s size and in the habitable zone.

Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars. The most dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively. The new data increases the number of stars discovered to have more than one planet candidate from 365 to 467. Today, 43 percent of Kepler’s planet candidates are observed to have neighbor planets.

Of these candidates, 105 have so far been confirmed to be exoplanets by other methods.

Note that these Kepler planets are in addition to the fifteen new exoplanets noted in my previous post.

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The Sun crashes

10:27 am

NOAA today released its newest monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle and, as I do every month, I have posted the latest graph, with annotation, below the fold.

The sunspot numbers for December were not only startlingly low, they actually plunged to levels not seen since May 2011, at a time when the Sun is supposed to be approaching sunspot maximum and the number of sunspots is supposed to be increasing.
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