Mean Mary James – Iron Horse
An evening pause: It is amazing how she makes that banjo sing like a train.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Astronomers discover galaxy with no dark matter
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have detected a galaxy about 250 million light years away that shows no evidence of any dark matter, a phenomenon that defies the accepted theories about dark matter.
The galaxy in question, AGC 114905, is about 250 million light-years away. It is classified as an ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy, with the name ‘dwarf galaxy’ referring to its luminosity and not to its size. The galaxy is about the size of our own Milky Way but contains a thousand times fewer stars. The prevailing idea is that all galaxies, and certainly ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxies, can only exist if they are held together by dark matter.
Galaxy AGC 114905The researchers collected data on the rotation of gas in AGC 114905 for 40 hours between July and October 2020 using the VLA telescope. Subsequently, they made a graph showing the distance of the gas from the center of the galaxy on the x-axis and the rotation speed of the gas on the y-axis. This is a standard way to reveal the presence of dark matter. The graph shows that the motions of the gas in AGC 114905 can be completely explained by just normal matter.
“This is, of course, what we thought and hoped for because it confirms our previous measurements,” says Pavel Mancera Piña. “But now the problem remains that the theory predicts that there must be dark matter in AGC 114905, but our observations say there isn’t. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is only getting bigger.”
The evidence for dark matter in almost all galaxies is the motion of gas and stars in the outer perimeter. Routinely they move faster than expected based merely on visible ordinary matter. To account for the faster speed, astronomers beginning in the late 1950s invented dark matter, an invisible material with a mass sufficient to increase the speeds of objects and gas in the outer regions of galaxies.
That increasingly astronomers are finding galaxies with no evidence of dark matter, based on rotation speeds, only makes this mystery all the more baffling.
Stop being afraid!
After almost two years the data continues to confirm the very first data in March 2020, showing the same thing time after time after time after time. COVID-19 is merely a variation of the ordinary flu, and the panic that has accompanied its arrival in early 2020 was never justified, not for one instant. Let me do a quick review of some recent data points:
First, the Wuhan flu is harmless to more than 99% of the population. If you are under 70 and healthy and get the virus, you are going to survive it. Period. And I say this from personal experience, as I am 68, have both asthma and a heart condition, and I just survived COVID. It wasn’t pleasant, but after two weeks it is over, and here I am.
More important, the numbers and data prove my anecdotal experience, as I noted in a detailed essay in October 26, 2021 — How deadly is COVID-19, really? — using numbers from the CDC as well as the New York Times. More than 99% of the population survives COVID-19, with no serious long term issues.
Since then the CDC has updated its estimates of the number of people who have been infected by the Wuhan flu, compared to the numbers who have died, as shown in the screen capture to the right. Based on these numbers, 146 million have been infected by COVID (a little less than half the country) and 921,000 have died, resulting in an overall survival rate for anyone who gets COVID-19 as a robust 99.37%.
And that number is deceiving, because the large bulk — almost all — of those in that 0.63% who died were elderly (average age 78) and very sick (with one to three morbidities). A very few were younger, but were generally in very poor healthy (obese or with diabetes).
If you were part of the general healthy population, COVID-19 was harmless to you. In fact, half the country already knows this, as they have been infected and are alive to tell about it. Most had minor symptoms, though many (like myself) got sick for several weeks and then recovered. All however survived, just like the flu.
COVID-19 simply does not merit any special actions, other than to protect that elderly and very vulnerable population. Ordinary people must stop being afraid of it. Take off the masks. Rip down the plexiglass. Hug your friends. Return to normal life.
And most important, stop being afraid!
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Yutu-2 continues its travels on Moon’s far side
An update on the Chinese lunar rover Yutu-2 has revealed that its science team has now decided to head towards a square boulder that the rover had recently spotted on the nearby horizon.
The photo from Yutu-2 to the right shows that boulder. The original update was at this Chinese-language website.
The boulder is presently about 260 feet away, which at pace Yutu-2 travels, about 100 feet per lunar day, will take about two to three lunar days to get there.
Yutu-2 has been traversing the floor of 115-mile-wide Von Kármán crater since January, 2019, a total of 36 lunar days, each about 14 Earth days long. The rover goes into hibernation during the lunar night, is then awakened each lunar morning to operate for about two-thirds of that lunar day, during which it travels about 100 feet, and is then returned to hibernation with the setting of the sun.
Arianespace launches two Galileo GPS-type satellites
Capitalism in space: Using a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket, Arianespace successfully launched two Galileo GPS-type satellites from its spaceport in French Guiana tonight.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
45 China
27 SpaceX
20 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
China still leads the U.S. 45 to 42 in the national rankings. This launch tonight was 116th successful launch in 2021, which is the most launches completed in a year since 1988. Based on the number of planned launched over the next three weeks, there is an outside chance that the global total will top 127, making this the second most active year ever in the history of space. Even if the numbers end up in the mid-120s, 2021 will be among the top eight years ever.
And I expect next year to easily top this year.
Another obvious hoax paper published by peer-review journal
Alan Sokal strikes again! Using fake names whose initials spell out SOKAL III, several anonymous scientists were successful in getting the peer-review journal Higher Education Quarterly to publish a completely fake paper, with numerous errors on every page, no data, absurd math, and whose authors gave themselves fake credentials.
Peer reviewers failed to perform basic due diligence on the paper submitted in April and approved in October, neglecting, for example, to verify that authors “Sage Owens” and “Kal Alvers-Lynde III” were UCLA professors as they claimed. Owens even used an encrypted email service for correspondence with the journal.
They didn’t check whether the conservative foundations named as active funders of higher education actually existed. The “Randy Eller Foundation” is made up, while the Olin Foundation shut down in 2005.
The author who goes by Owens told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the journal didn’t even ask to see their data: “Every page has some glaring errors.”
The paper was quickly retracted by the journal, but appears so fake that the entire editorial board of this journal should resign.
Alan Sokal by the way did this exact same thing in 1996, proving that most social and gender study journals were utter bunk. Not that his hoax accomplished much, as these brainless departments marched on until they have permeated all of academia with their nonsense, with Critical Race Theory now leading the way.
Read the whole article. Based on some comments by Owens, it is very possible that these hoaxers have gotten a slew of similar papers published, and are only waiting to pull the string.
SpaceX begins construction of Starship launchpad in Florida
Capitalism in space: Elon Musk yesterday announced that SpaceX has begun the construction of a Starship launchpad at its facility at Cape Canaveral, though no launch scheduled was revealed.
Musk implied that the Starship orbital launchpad is being built at Launch complex 39A. If so, it will pose some scheduling issues for SpaceX, as the company also uses that site for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. In fact, it is the only one it uses for Falcon Heavy.
NASA buys more Dragon manned flights
Capitalism in space: To give it some coverage because of continuing delays in Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule, NASA announced yesterday that it has awarded SpaceX contracts for three more manned Dragon manned flights to ISS.
NASA issued a contract notification announcing its plans to issue a sole-source award to SpaceX for three missions. Those missions would be in addition to the six “post-certification missions,” or PCMs, that SpaceX won as part of its $2.6 billion Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract in 2014. The announcement did not state the price of those three new missions.
This is money that would have gone to Boeing, if it had gotten its act together and gotten Starliner flying on schedule. Instead, SpaceX is making the profits.
There has been no updates from Boeing since October on the valve issue that now stalls Starliner. While Boeing claims it is aiming for an unmanned demo flight to ISS in early ’22, this remains entirely speculative at this moment.
BE-4 engine delayed until ’22
Capitalism in space: The CEO of ULA, Tory Bruno, admitted yesterday that the first production versions of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine, required for his company’s new Vulcan rocket, will not be delivered until until early ’22.
Bruno had previously said he expected the engines in late 2021 but on Friday he confirmed the BE-4s will not arrive until early 2022. “I was hoping to get those engines for Christmas. I had giant stockings at home waiting for them,” Bruno quipped in the CNBC interview.
“I’ll say it’s taking them a little longer to fabricate my production engines. They’re in the factory now being built at Blue Origin,” said Bruno. “The COVID epidemic has affected them and their supply chain and it’s just taking a little bit longer, but they’re doing very, very well,” he added. “There’s been no problems with them and in fact, we’re doing the final testing, or what we call certification testing. And that is just going really, really well.”
It appears that Blue Origin is dealing with the difficulties of production, not design, at this point, the same kind of issue that SpaceX recently revealed with its Raptor engine. Blue Origin needs to be able to manufacture these engines at a somewhat high pace, as both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket use it. It appears that in designing it Blue Origin didn’t think about the manufacturing until very late in the game.
Bruno also said that he plans on flying Vulcan twice in ’22. We shall see.
Black Pumas – Colors
An evening pause: Hat tip Tom Wilson, who notes that “they sound better live than on their CD, that shows talent.”
Sunspot update: Sun continues to be more active than predicted
Time for our monthly sunspot update, using NOAA’s most recent monthly graph of sunspot activity. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context. It covers all activity through the month of November.
The pattern for the past two years since the end of the solar minimum continues, with sunspot activity consistently exceeding the prediction of NOAA’s panel of solar scientists, as indicated by the red curve. The activity in November dropped very slightly from October, but remained more active than the prediction.
Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired for mistakenly confusing the names of two black students
Fordham: A Jesuit University where racism rules.
The new dark age of silencing: An English professor at Fordham University in New York, Christopher Trogan, was fired shortly after he made the unforgivable sin of accidently mixing up the names of two black students.
The name mix-up occurred on Sept. 24 in a Composition II class taught by Trogan. The two students whose names were mixed up sent Trogan an email after class expressing that they felt disheartened and disrespected, and believed the mistake occurred because they were both Black.
Later that day, Trogan sent an email addressing the situation to all of his students in both sections of his Composition II course. He referred to the name mix-up as an “innocent mistake” and said he had a “confused brain” because the two students arrived late while he was reading the work of another student at the lecturer podium. “The offended student assumed my mistake was because I confused that student with another Black student,” Trogan said in his email to students. “I have done my best to validate and reassure the offended student that I made a simple, human, error. It has nothing to do with race.”
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