Author: Robert Zimmerman

A preliminary cause for the Russian launch failure has been found

9:19 am

Good news: The Russians have pinned down a preliminary cause for the Progress launch failure last week.

Solving this quickly appears essential, as the space station was not really designed to fly unmanned.

Past NASA risk assessments show there is a one in 10 chance of losing the station within six months if astronauts and cosmonauts are not onboard to deal with any critical systems failures. The probability soars to a frightening one in two chance — a 50-percent probability — if the station is left without a crew for a year.

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Al Gore and the silencing of debate

3:48 pm

Yesterday I posted a link to a story about Al Gore claiming that any expression of skepticism about global warming is to him no different than racism. Here again is what Gore said,

“There came a time when friends or people you work with or people you were in clubs with — you’re much younger than me so you didn’t have to go through this personally — but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won. We have to win the conversation on climate.”

More than at any other time, Gore here has very successfully illustrated the differences between how climate skeptics debate the scientific questions of climate change versus how global warming advocates do it.
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Power still out

11:43 pm

Update: Power finally returned at about 11:50 pm Sunday.

Power is still out here in DC (as of 11:43 pm Sunday), so my posting must remain light.

Why it takes Pepco so long to restore power to our area, and why this seems to happen ever time there is a storm of any kind, remains a very annoying mystery to me.

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Al Gore calls for treating climate skeptics like racists

12:11 pm

Al Gore calls climate skepticism the same as racism and calls for treating skeptics the same.

“There came a time when friends or people you work with or people you were in clubs with — you’re much younger than me so you didn’t have to go through this personally — but there came a time when racist comments would come up in the course of the conversation and in years past they were just natural. Then there came a time when people would say, ‘Hey, man why do you talk that way, I mean that is wrong. I don’t go for that so don’t talk that way around me. I just don’t believe that.’ That happened in millions of conversations and slowly the conversation was won. We have to win the conversation on climate.”

In other words, no expression of skepticism is to be permitted, in any conversation.

I’ll have more to say about this later today or tomorrow.

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Hunkering down during the hurricane

9:30 pm

Update: We lost power at around 12:30 am, and as of mid-morning Sunday the power was still not back. Thus, my posting will be light today. At the moment we are out at a local restaurant that has power (and food!), so I am using my laptop to post.

As I sit here waiting for Hurricane Irene to speed past Washington, DC, leaving behind a lot of water, some fallen trees, and the likelihood of a power outage, I thought I’d mention that I will be doing a special 30 minute appearance tonight on the nationally syndicated John Batchelor radio show at 9 pm (Eastern). Should be fun, with New York City shut down and me possibly doing the interview in the dark, with no power.

Update and bumped. The hurricane where I live here in the DC area has so far been quite mild, with only a few short bursts of heavy rain and hardly any wind. However, John Batchelor had so much fun with our discussion at 9 pm that I am coming back for another half hour at 11:30 pm (Eastern).

One more note: I consider the decision of Mayor Bloomberg in New York to shut down the subway and buses for the weekend to be downright madness. The subway should run until the last minute, in case people need to leave. Closing it so the government employees can get out is like a captain deserting his ship ahead of the passengers.

Unfortunately, this kind of political overreaction is what you get when you cede too much power to politicians. They have to act, if only to appear as they are doing something.

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Archeologists may have found King Arthur’s round table in Scotland

4:13 pm

Archeologists may have found King Arthur’s round table in Scotland.

The new survey — funded by Historic Scotland and Stirling City Heritage Trust — used the latest scientific techniques to showing lost structures and features up to a metre below the ground. It also revealed a series of ditches south of the main mound, as well as remains of buildings, and more recent structures, including modern drains which appear at the northern end of the gardens.

Mr Harrison, who has studied the King’s Knot for 20 years, said: “It is a mystery which the documents cannot solve, but geophysics has given us new insights. “Of course, we cannot say that King Arthur was there, but the feature which surrounds the core of the Knot could explain the stories and beliefs that people held.”

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Sponge in space

2:38 pm

Hyperion

On August 25 Cassini did a close fly-by of the small Saturn moon Hyperion, getting as close as 15,500 miles. The mission has just released images from that fly-by.

Looks like a sponge, doesn’t it? This moon is small, only 168 miles across, which makes it about half the size of the asteroid Vesta that Dawn is presently orbiting. Why it is so peppered with craters is of course the big science question. I would guess this has something to do with the environment around Saturn, with its rings and the innumerable particles that come from it. Yet, other moons of Saturn are not as crater-filled, so there is obviously more to this than meets the eye.

This fly-by was the second closest of Hyperion that Cassini has done, the first passing over the the moon’s surface by only 310 miles. Because the irregularly-shaped moon’s rotation is more like a chaotic tumble, scientists could not predict what part of the surface they would see. To their luck the new images captured new territory.

Another fly-by is scheduled in only three weeks, on September 16, 2011. This time, however, the spacecraft won’t get as close, passing at a distance of about 36,000 miles.

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The closest supernovae in almost 25 years

7:56 pm

Astronomers have spotted the closest supernovae in almost 25 years, only 21 million light years away.

The supernova, dubbed PTF 11kly, occurred in the Pinwheel Galaxy, located in the “Big Dipper,” otherwise known as the Ursa Major constellation. It was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which is designed to observe and uncover astronomical events as they happen. “We caught this supernova very soon after explosion. PTF 11kly is getting brighter by the minute. It’s already 20 times brighter than it was yesterday,” said Peter Nugent, the senior scientist at Berkeley Lab who first spotted the supernova. Nugent is also an adjunct professor of astronomy at UC Berkeley. “Observing PTF 11kly unfold should be a wild ride. It is an instant cosmic classic.”

Astronomers expect the supernova to continue to brighten over the next two weeks, when it should be visible to anyone using binoculars.

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