Category: Behind The Black

Hole in observatory door was not caused by bullet

10:26 am

Curiouser and curiouser: In a statement to the press the Subaru Telescope has said that the hole in its door was not caused by a bullet this past weekend but has been known about for months and was caused by wind banging the door against a piece of equipment.

But on Monday, the observatory said in a statement the hole was caused by strong wind swinging a metal door into an instrument fixture attached to a wall. “We at Subaru Telescope are relieved that this is the case and regret the confusion caused by earlier reports,” the statement said.

A detective investigated Monday and determined the hole from the bolt on the wall was there about six months, police said. The observatory’s statement says the day crews knew about the hole from a severe winter storm earlier this year. The observatory didn’t immediately explain why someone reported it to police Saturday night.

The contradictions between the story released today and what was revealed yesterday is quite stark. My guess would be that someone at the telescope, unaware of the hole previously, saw it this weekend and panicked, thinking it caused by a bullet and fearful because of the illegal presence of protesters on the road to the mountain. It is also possible that someone at the telescope saw the hole for the first time and wanted to smear the demonstrators. It is also possible that the rumor was spread by a demonstrator who wanted to smear the astronomers, knowing that the false story would be quickly uncovered.

I could speculate for hours, pointlessly. The bottom line is that the lack of good will from the demonstrators is successfully spreading the ill will to all sides.

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Parks and Recreation – “Thoughts For Your Thoughts”

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For anyone who has ever listened to NPR, it will be hard to distinguish the satire here from reality, since the skit so well captures public radio’s often empty-headed blather disguised as profound intellectualism, framed by a strong desire to promote anything the government wants done.

Hat tip to John Harman.

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Parachute problems again for NASA’s flying saucer

5:06 pm

In its second flight today NASA’s engineering vehicle for testing Mars landing technologies, dubbed a flying saucer by the press because of its shape, had a similar problem as in its first flight, with its parachutes failing to inflate properly during landing.

More here. This test was not only to check out landing technologies, it was to check out the redesigned parachute that had failed in the previous test last year.

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Want a law passed? Bribe your Senator!

12:30 pm

Good work if you can get it: A survey of the Senators who voted for the secret fast track trade legislation — whose language has still not been published for the public to read — has found that they all received huge donations in the past few months from businesses that support the legislation, while the law was being written and voted on.

Some were Democrats who held back until they got a lot of cash donations, then voted yes. Some were Republicans who took the money up front and then wrote the legislation. All told more than a million dollars in bribes were handed over to senators to guarantee their “yay” votes.

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Ramp down to solar minimum continues

12:11 pm

On Sunday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in May. As I have done since 2010, I am posting it here, with annotations to give it context.

May 2015 Solar Cycle graph

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.

Sunspot activity once again increased in May, though it continues to remain below the 2009 prediction of activity. Though it is still early in the ramp down, a look at the present pattern suggests that (as I also noted last month) sunspot activity is declining much faster than normal. In the past, the ramp down after solar maximum was long and drawn out, while ramp up was much faster. This ramp down seems much more precipitous than past solar cycles.

I should add that in early April Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations (SILSO) had declared that the peak of the solar maximum had occurred in April 2014, and that they could now sum up the overall weakness of this maximum.

Cycle 24 proves to be 30% weaker than the previous solar cycle, which reached 119.7 in July 2000, and thus belongs to the category of moderate cycles, like cycles 12 to 15, which were the norm in the late 19th and early 20th century. Compared to strong cycles, such cycles typically feature a broader maximum, with a 3-year plateau on top of which two or more surges of activity can produce sharp peaks of similar height.

I had missed this announcement when it was first posted. It is worth noting however, especially since their discussion in April is interesting to read in the context of what has happened since.

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TSA fails to find links to terrorism of airport workers

10:46 am

Does this make you feel safer? An audit of the TSA has found that the agency failed to uncover the terrorist connections of 73 aviation workers when it did background checks of them.

According to TSA data, these individuals were employed by major airlines, airport vendors, and other employers. TSA did not identify these individuals through its vetting operations because it is not authorized to receive all terrorism-related categories under current interagency watchlisting policy,” the redacted report reads. “TSA acknowledged that these individuals were cleared for access to secure airport areas despite representing a potential transportation security threat,” it added.

The new audit comes on the heels of another damaging Inspector General report on TSA’s security measures, which found the aviation security body was unable to detect fake bombs and weapons in 95 percent of trial runs. Revealed last week in an ABC News report, the OIG’s findings resulted in the Acting TSA Administrator, Melvin Carraway’s, removal from the post.

The TSA is nothing more than childish feel-good theater used to convince Americans that the government has the right to sexually abuse them, if it wants. It does little to prevent hijackings or terrorist attacks. The smartest thing we could do is to shut it down, close down the security posts, and simply let Americans be armed on planes. Trust me, terrorists — being cowardly bullies who look for easy targets — would stay away, and no gun shots would ever get fired.

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Problems at Stratolaunch

10:29 am

In the heat of competition: Stratolaunch and Orbital ATK have quietly parted ways as problems have developed in building Stratolaunch’s giant first stage aircraft.

The company went with a radical engineering idea — using a giant airplane as their first stage — which might turn out great but could just as easily become a disaster and failure. Such ideas are by their nature filled with many unknowns.

In a sense, this story validates SpaceX’s approach to developing new space technology, which is to take known engineering and to upgrade it while refining the production methods for building it to lower costs. With this approach, you lower risks by reducing the number of unknowns you have to deal with.

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Bullet hole found in Mauna Kea observatory

10:20 am

Even as protesters continue to block the roads to the top of Mauna Kea to prevent construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), workers at the Subaru Telescope at the mountain have reported a bullet hole in one door that had been put there sometime over the weekend.

No one knows who did it, or even if the hole was caused by a bullet, though that is what it looks like. The leader of the protests has of course denied any participation and condemned it.

I found this quote from the first link above (which spends a lot of time describing the heroic protesters who have been camping on the road) to be very revealing about this whole affair:

In an email Saturday, DLNR spokeswoman Deborah Ward said the area is not permitted for camping but did not respond to the Tribune-Herald’s questions about why the department has allowed the protesters to remain at the site. “Both state and county officials are monitoring the situation,” she wrote.

Gee, don’t we all remember how government officials turned a blind eye to tea party protests? Not! They did however allow illegal trespassing for Occupy Wall Street. In all these cases, the government officials reveal whose side they are on.

I personally think the astronomy community should organize a boycott of tourism to Hawaii. If their island is so sacred that outsiders shouldn’t be there, maybe we should hold them to their word. We would then find out how serious they really are about the island’s sacredness.

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LightSail successfully deploys solar sail

9:58 am

Engineers have confirmed that the cubesat prototype LightSail has successfully deployed its solar sails.

This is I think only the second time a solar sail has successfully deployed in space. More significant to me is the fact that it is the first time this kind of complex engineering test has been tried using a cubesat. If cubesats can begin to handle these kinds of tasks, unmanned satellite technology is going to take a gigantic leap forward.

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Dawn makes a movie of Ceres

9:28 am

Cool image time! Using images that Dawn has accumulated since it entered orbit around Ceres, scientists have created an animation showing the dwarf planet as it rotates.

Video below the fold. Note that this is an animation. They have filled in the gaps between images to make the rotation smooth, exaggerated the scale two times to bring out details, and added a background of stars that is not visible in the original images. Even so, this video is scientifically useful, as it shows Ceres in its entirety. It is also very spectacular.
» Read more

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Jets on Comet 67P/C-G now persist into the night

9:18 am

jets from Comet 67P/C-G

Cool image time! Rosetta’s high resolution camera is now finding that, due to increased activity as Comet 67P/C-G approaches the sun, jets of material now continue to evaporate off the surface even after sunset.

“Only recently have we begun to observe dust jets persisting even after sunset”, says OSIRIS Principal Investigator Holger Sierks from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. In the past months, the comet’s activity originated from illuminated areas on the day side. As soon as the Sun set, these jets subsided and did not re-awake until after the next sunrise. (An exception poses an image from 12 March, 2015 showing the onset of a dust jet on the brink of dawn.)

According to OSIRIS scientists, the jets now occurring even after sunset are another sign of the comet’s increasing activity. “Currently, 67P is rapidly approaching perihelion in mid-August”, says Sierks. At the time the image was taken, comet and Sun were only 270 million kilometers apart. “The solar irradiation is getting more and more intense, the illuminated surface warmer and warmer”, Sierks adds.

Because the jets are now remaining active into the night, it is allowing us to see more precisely their points of origin on the surface, which can then be studied more closely in daylight. Previously it was difficult in daylight to pinpoint the exact spot where the jets began.

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LightSail deploys its solar sails

10:48 pm

Though full confirmation will not come until later tonight, telemetry from LightSail suggests that its solar sails have successfully begun deployment.

Telemetry received on the ground showed motor counts climbing to the halfway point before LightSail traveled out of range. Power levels were consistent with ground-based deployment tests, and the spacecraft’s cameras were on. “All indications are that the solar sail deployment was proceeding nominally,” wrote mission manager David Spencer in an email update.

They will have to wait until the cubesat comes back in range at 2:46 am (Eastern) to see if the deployment completed successfully, as well as download images.

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Turkey’s Islamists lose Parliament in elections today

3:25 pm

Some good news: The increasingly authoritarian Islamic-controlled party of President Erdogan of Turkey was soundly defeated in elections today.

Turks went to the polls today in parliamentary elections, and the era of single-party Islamist rule appears to be over. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been counting on the continued rule of his AKP party to change the country’s constitution after these elections, consolidating his already increasingly authoritarian rule into something even more dastardly. But a 2/3 majority of AKP in parliament is needed to change the constitution.

Today, the Islamist party walked away with only 41 percent of seats. That’s an eight percent drop from 2011.

AKP still holds the most seats of any party, but it appears their effort to make the country more Islamic caused many people to go to the polls and vote against them. The result will likely be a coalition of other parties now controlling Parliament.

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Bee die off hasn’t happened

11:39 am

The uncertainty of science: Despite numerous claims by environmentalists and scientists in the past decade that the bee population was dying off, new data from the Agriculture Department suggests that bee populations are now at a 20 year high.

The reason? It appears that beekeepers have been very innovative and creative when faced with disease or other problems that hurt bees. Driven by the profit motive and competition and free to act, they have come up with solutions.

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State Department proposes fines for writing about guns without permission

11:31 am

New regulations being proposed by the Obama administration would require anyone writing on the web about guns to get approval first from the State Department or face serious fines.

In their current form, the ITAR do not (as a rule) regulate technical data that are in what the regulations call the ‘public domain.’ Essentially, this means data ‘which is published and which is generally accessible or available to the public’ through a variety of specified means. These include ‘at libraries open to the public or from which the public can obtain documents.’ Many have read this provision to include material that is posted on publicly available websites, since most public libraries these days make Internet access available to their patrons.

The ITAR, however, were originally promulgated in the days before the Internet. Some State Department officials now insist that anything published online in a generally-accessible location has essentially been ‘exported,’ as it would be accessible to foreign nationals both in the U.S. and overseas.

With the new proposal published on June 3, the State Department claims to be ‘clarifying’ the rules concerning ‘technical data’ posted online or otherwise ‘released’ into the ‘public domain.’ To the contrary, however, the proposal would institute a massive new prior restraint on free speech. This is because all such releases would require the ‘authorization’ of the government before they occurred. The cumbersome and time-consuming process of obtaining such authorizations, moreover, would make online communication about certain technical aspects of firearms and ammunition essentially impossible. [emphasis mine]

In your wildest dreams did you ever think we’d come to a time in the U.S. where the federal government thought it acceptable to require citizens to get their permission before they could publish something?

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Obamacare bureaucracy threatens doctors who speak out

11:23 am

Finding out what’s in it: Doctors are finding that they better not criticize Obamacare in public or they will face retribution from its bureaucracy.

For physicians in this position, public advocacy against the ACA could be in violation of employment contracts or could be a source for dismissal. Most doctors’ contracts also include a two-year noncompete clause that essentially requires the doctor to move out of town once he or she leaves a specific job. So, running afoul of your employer by criticizing the ACA could result in not just losing your job but also forcing you to leave your hometown.

And that’s not all. Many doctors are also afraid of losing insurance contracts. The vast majority of doctors who are still private-practice owners are dependent on a handful of large insurance contracts for revenue. Speaking out against insurance companies — which were complicit in the ACA’s passage and are some of its primary beneficiaries — can result in cancellation of those contracts.

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“There’s certainly something ironic about watching thousands of people watching three hundredweight of circuitry and metal trying to sort out a doorknob.”

9:32 am

The 2015 Darpa Robotics Challenge (DRC) is underway, and you can watch!

The quote in the title gives a bit of the flavor, but this is cool engineering that will definitely have important applications in both disaster recovery as well as exploration in extreme environments.

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LightSail back in business?

8:57 am

The Planetary Society’s solar sail engineering test called LightSail has re-established communications with the ground, allowing for the possibility that it can finally achieve its solar sail deployment, the main purpose of the mission.

I had previously reported that the sails had deployed, but a commenter correctly noted that only the panels have deployed, not the sails themselves, which need full battery power. The communications problem has been related to a battery charging problem. They are hoping that the batteries will get charged by mid-day today when they will try to deploy the sails.

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