May 24, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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Author: Robert Zimmerman
Dave Grohl – Everlong
An evening pause: Grohl, of the Foo Fighters, begins by describing in detail how this song was created, a most interesting story.
Hat tip Rex Ridenoure.
Martian ridge sticking up out of a lava flood plain
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 9, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was featured today as this camera’s picture of the day. As today’s caption notes:
This observation focuses a ridge that is standing above the old lava surface of the floor of Echus Chasma. What is this ridge doing here? Is it preexisting material surrounded by lava? Is it material pushed up at a restraining bend? If the ridge is not lava, it may have colorful flanks.
The overview map below shows that this location in Echus Chasma is even more interesting, as some scientists believe it once also held a large lake.
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Pushback: Total victory for The Federalist against attempt by Biden’s Labor Board to silence it
Ben Domenech at The Federalist
Another past blacklisted American has come away with a triumph for freedom! In April 2022 I reported how the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) under the Biden administration and working with two leftist lawyers was attempting to silence the conservative news outlet The Federalist because of a very lame Twitter joke sent out by its publisher, Ben Domenech.
In his tweet, Domenech had joked that if any of his six employees dared considering unionizing “I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine.” The NRLB claimed absurdly this was an example of “unfair labor practice.”
Domenech had hired the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) to defend him. At first it worked out a settlement whereby all charges would be dropped if Domenech would simply delete his tweet.
Domenech refused. As he said in explaining this decision to fight:
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Scientists: Plow the solar system through a dense-enough interstellar cloud and the heliosphere would no longer protect the Earth
The uncertainty of science: Using a computer simulation, scientists have determined that if the solar system had two million years ago passed through one of the known nearby interstellar clouds within the relatively empty Local Bubble of space, it would have shrunk the Sun’s heliosphere enough so that the Earth would no longer be inside it, thus exposing the planet to interstellar space.
The image to the right comes from that simulation, and is figure 1 of the scientist’s paper [pdf]. The red line marks the Earth’s orbit (tilted sideways slightly to make it obvious), the yellow blob the shrunken heliosphere.
From the paper’s abstract:
There is overwhelming geological evidence from 60Fe and 244Pu isotopes that Earth was in direct contact with the ISM [interstellar medium] 2 million years ago, and the local ISM is home to several nearby cold clouds. Here we show, with a state-of the art simulation that incorporate all the current knowledge about the heliosphere that if the solar system passed through a cloud such as Local Leo Cold Cloud, then the heliosphere which protects the solar system from interstellar particles, must have shrunk to a scale smaller than the Earth’s orbit around the Sun (0.22).
Using a magnetohydrodynamic simulation that includes charge exchange between neutral atoms and ions, we show that during the heliosphere shrinkage, Earth was exposed to a neutral hydrogen density of up to 3000cm-3. This could have had drastic effects on Earth’s climate and potentially on human evolution at that time, as suggested by existing data.
This model is just one possible explanation of the presence of 60Fe and 244Pu isotopes on Earth. Another popular hypothesis is that a supernova occurred about 30 light years away, close enough to expose the Earth to interstellar space but not so close as to cause the total extinction of life.
With both theories, the event could also be an explanation for the significant climate changes two million years ago — such as the beginning of the most recent and now-ending ice age (no SUVs required) — as well as major evolutionary changes that occurred at that time among the ancestor species of humanity.
All is uncertain however. The scientists have no evidence the Earth actually entered a local dense cloud two million years ago. All they are doing is postulating that if such a thing happened, the dense cloud could shrink the heliosphere so much the Earth would be exposed to the interstellar medium.
Since we also do not yet have evidence of a specific nearby supernovae event either, neither theory can be favored. In fact, both could have been happened at different times in the past. Or neither.
Hat tip to reader Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
Chinese scientists plant seeds bred on Tiangong space station
The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have now planted on Earth some of the 12,000 seeds that were bred on China’s Tiangong space station for six months and brought back to Earth in April.
The seeds, including alfalfa, oats and fungi, were selected by multiple research institutions last year. They were brought back to Earth by the Shenzhou-13 on April 16. Space breeding refers to the process of exposing seeds to cosmic radiation and microgravity during a spaceflight mission to mutate seed genes and then send them back to Earth to generate new species.
The goal is to see which seeds survive best in the harsh environment of space, which would thus make them better candidates for transport to other planets for planting.
While some of the results of this research will be published, much will not. China tends to keep what it learns close to the vest.
U.S. and Japan agree to send Japanese astronaut to Gateway and the Moon
In a deal negotiated for signing this week while President Biden was in Japan, the United States and Japan have agreed to send a Japanese astronaut on a mission to the Lunar Gateway station, as well as begin planning for a Japanese astronaut to land on the Moon, all part of the Artemis program.
The agreement also confirmed the exchange of material from the countries’ two sample return asteroid missions, Hayabusa-2 and OSIRIS-REx.
None of this is a surprise. Not only was Japan one of the first to sign the Artemis Accords, Japanese subcontractors are already providing some of the life support equipment for Gateway.
Finding ways to clean ISS and future interplanetary spaceships
According to multiple studies (see here, here, and here), a whole range of microorganisms, from bacteria (some dangerous) to fungi, have been found prospering on ISS.
The photo to the right shows a typical example of fungi growing on one of ISS’s older surfaces.
A European Space Agency (ESA) project is attempting to developing new coatings that will not only protect surfaces but act to clean them as well.
“With astronauts’ immune systems suppressed by microgravity, the microbial populations of future long-duration space missions will need to be controlled rigorously,” explains ESA material engineer Malgorzata Holynska. “So ESA’s Materials’ Physics and Chemistry Section is collaborating with Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, IIT, to study antimicrobial materials that could be added to internal cabin surfaces.”
The IIT team has begun work on titanium oxide, also known as ‘titania’, used for example in self-cleaning glass down here on Earth, as well as in hygienic surfaces. When titanium oxide is exposed to ultraviolet light, it breaks down water vapour in the air into ‘free oxygen radicals’, which eat away whatever is on the surface, including bacterial membranes. “Bacteria gets inactivated by the oxidative stress generated by these radicals,” says Mirko Prato of IIT. “This is an advantage because all the microorganisms are affected without exception, so there is no chance that we increase bacterial resistance in the same way as some antibacterial materials.”
The application however is not as simple as painting the surface. Right now they wish to keep this coating as thin as possible (“50 to 100 nanometres, millionths of a millimetre”) so that it could even be applied to clothing, which requires using complex techniques similar to those used to make semi-conductors.
Though hand cleaning would likely be much simpler and cheaper, there are issues. First, it isn’t as easy to scrub a surface by hand in weightlessness. Second, in a closed environment like ISS cleaning materials pose a greater hazard to both the occupants and the equipment. Better if the surfaces of equipment and clothing are designed to stay clean, on their own.
Software issues delay Psyche launch seven weeks
Engineers preparing to stack the Psyche probe on top of its Falcon Heavy rocket for an August 1, 2022 launch have been forced to delay that launch at least seven weeks until September 20th at the earliest because of a software issue.
Technicians unboxed the Psyche spacecraft and moved it to a handling fixture for a series of hardware and software tests to make sure the probe survived the cross-country trip from California.
But a technical issue interrupted the test campaign, and will delay the launch of the Psyche mission at least seven weeks.
“An issue is preventing confirmation that the software controlling the spacecraft is functioning as planned,” NASA said in a written statement, responding to questions from Spaceflight Now. “The team is working to identify and correct the issue.”
Assuming no further delays, the spacecraft will still reach Psyche in January 2026.
Blondie – The Tide Is High
An evening pause: Performed live 1997.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Mars: Are these eroding glaciers or impacts in lava?
Click for original image.
Cool image time and a mystery! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 29, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of an 18-mile-wide crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars. The full picture, dubbed “Steep Cliff,” was taken apparently to get a good view of the crater’s northern rim. The rim’s steepness suggests that the floor of the crater is significantly filled.
More intriguing however are the scattering of strange depressions about six miles south of the rim. What caused them? The crater’s location is in a part of Mars where it is not unusual to find both glacial features as well as flood plain lava. In fact, the crater’s northeast and southwest rims appear to have been buried by what appears to be flood lava. The northern rim’s shallowness also suggests the crater is well filled with flood lava.
However, the crater is also at 38 degrees south latitude, a latitude where planetary scientists have found lots of glacial features. Much of this crater fill could be glacial.
The overview map below illustrates this mystery.
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Pushback: Professor fired for having opinions wins total victory
University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
Bring a gun to a knife fight: In January 2021 (in one of my first blacklist columns and just after Biden assumed power), I described how professor Charles Negy was fired from the teaching job he had had at the University of Central Florida for 22 years, merely because he had stated some obvious facts about BLM and affirmative action on his twitter feed.
The school claimed it did not fire him for these tweets (an obvious lie based on the events), but because of a supposed pattern of inappropriate classroom behavior obtained through anonymous tips, tips instigated by Negy’s tweets that by the way did not match any of the school’s previous assessments of his teaching.
Negy fought back, demanding his case be reviewed by an independent arbitrator, and has now won his case.
In the ruling on Monday, the arbitrator, Ben Falcigno, found that the university had failed to show “just cause” when it fired Dr. Negy because it had not given him a chance to change his conduct in the classroom or, alternatively, to show that he was incapable of changing his behavior.
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