Category: Behind The Black

“Yeti” DNA found to come from bears and dogs

8:59 am

Scientists analyzing DNA samples said to come from either the legendary yeti in the Himalayas or sasquatch in North America have found that all come from known ordinary animals, mostly bears.

Of the nine “yeti” samples, eight turned out to be from bears native to the area, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The other sample came from a dog. Similar studies of hair samples supposedly related to North America’s big hairy hominid, the sasquatch (aka Bigfoot), have revealed that those fibers came from bears, horses, dogs, and a variety of other creatures—even a human.

Debunking aside, the new study also yielded lots of scientifically useful info, Lindqvist says. The analyses generated the first full mitochondrial genomes for the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) and the Himalayan black bear (Ursus thibetanus laniger), for example. That could help scientists figure out how genetically different these rare subspecies are from more common species, as well as the last time these groups shared maternal ancestors in the past.

While we must always recognize the uncertainties of science, we must also recognize when it provides us clarity. This is an example of the latter.

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North Korea launches another ICBM

2:42 pm

North Korea today launched another ICBM, landing it in the Sea of Japan.

The Department of Defense said that initial assessments indicated the missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In a news conference, Japan’s defense minister also said it seemed to be an ICBM. The missile went higher than any shot North Korea had previously taken, according to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

This was North Korea’s first launch in a couple of months.

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Wind eating away the Martian terrain

9:44 am

Yardangs on Mars

Cool image time! The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) image on the right, cropped and reduced in resolution to post here, shows the transition zone between the lower flat plain to the north and the higher but rougher region to the south. What makes it interesting is the north-south aligned mesas. These are yardangs, a geological feature that actually acts like a weather vane.

Yardangs are composed of sand grains that have clumped together and have become more resistant to erosion than their surrounding materials.

As the winds of Mars blow and erode away at the landscape, the more cohesive rock is left behind as a standing feature. (This Context Camera image shows several examples of yardangs that overlie the darker iron-rich material that makes up the lava plains in the southern portion of Elysium Planitia.) Resistant as they may be, the yardangs are not permanent, and will eventually be eroded away by the persistence of the Martian winds.

For scientists observing the Red Planet, yardangs serve as a useful indicator of regional prevailing wind direction. The sandy structures are slowly eroded down and carved into elongated shapes that point in the downwind direction, like giant weathervanes. In this instance, the yardangs are all aligned, pointing towards north-northwest. This shows that the winds in this area generally gust in that direction.

Crater splash

The wind comes from the southeast and blows to the northwest, and is slowly wearing down the southern rougher terrain. Why some of these yardangs are surrounded by dark material remains a mystery, as noted I noted in a previous post.

Meanwhile, the northern plain is not as boring as it seems. Only a short distance to the north is an unusual crater, cropped from the full image to show here on the right. To my eye, when this impact occurred it literally caused a splashlike feature of compressed and more resistant material. Over time, the prevailing wind has eroded away the surrounding less resistant regolith to better reveal that splash, leaving behind a mesa with a crater in its center.

Why the impact created this splash tells us something about the density and make-up of the plain. It suggests to me a surface that was once muddy and soft that over time has hardened like sandstone.

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Worms on Mars!

9:09 am

Scientists growing plants on Earth using a simulated Martian soil have found that earthworms like it.

These slimy invertebrates play a key role in making Earth soil healthy by digesting dead organic matter and excreting a potent fertilizer that helps release nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Their constant burrowing also helps lighten up the soil, allowing air and water to seep through better.

That’s an important improvement for the simulated Mars soil, which water struggled to soak through in previous tests. Altogether, the tests showed that the combination of worms and pig slurry helped the plants grow in Martin soil, and the worms not only thrived but reproduced. “Clearly the manure stimulated growth, especially in the Mars soil simulant, and we saw that the worms were active,” says Wamelink. “However, the best surprise came at the end of the experiment when we found two young worms in the Mars soil simulant.”

Obviously, we do not know yet how the worms would respond to the lower Martian gravity, but it sure would be a significant experiment to see them reproduce there.

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SpaceX raises another $100 million in investment capital

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: In its current round of stock sales SpaceX had raised another $100 million in investment capital.

In August, the space exploration company sold $349.9 million worth of shares, a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing showed. That amount has now risen to $449.9 million, a new filing showed on Monday, adding an extra $100 million onto the current fundraising effort.

The latest injection of cash values SpaceX at $21.5 billion, according to Equidate, a platform that facilitates the trading of shares in private technology firms. SpaceX was not immediately available for comment on the valuation when contacted by CNBC.

If I was a big money investor I too would be interested in buying some SpaceX stock. Meanwhile, Aviation Week is reporting that the first Falcon Heavy launch has slipped to 2018. I am not surprised, but I have also not seen any other news reports on this, so I am withholding judgement.

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Second Soyuz launch from Vostochny a failure

8:50 am

The second Soyuz rocket launch from Russia’s new spaceport in Vostochny ended in failure this morning due to a problem with the rocket’s upper stage

It is presently unclear what happened. One Russian news report suggests “human error,” though I do not understand exactly what they mean by that. Either way, all 19 satellites, including a new Russian weather satellite and 18 smallsats, were lost.

For Russia, this failure comes at a bad time. Roscosmos had been striving to recover from last year’s recall of all rocket engines due to corruption at one of their factories. A new launch failure, especially if it is due to another engine issue, will not encourage sales from the international market. Worse, the lose of the 18 smallsats on this launch will certainly make future smallsat companies more reluctant to fly on a Russian rocket.

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Europe finally begins to realize that reusability cuts costs

11:19 pm

Capitalism in space: Faced with stiff and increasing competition from SpaceX, European governments are finally beginning to realize that their decades of poo-pooing the concept of rocket reusability might have been a big mistake.

In what was likely an unexpected question during a Nov. 19 interview with Europe 1 radio, French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was asked if SpaceX meant the death of Ariane.

“Death? I’m not sure I’d say that. But I am certain of the threat,” Le Maire said. “I am worried.” Le Maire cited figures that are far from proven — including a possible 80% reduction in the already low SpaceX Falcon 9 launch price once the benefits of reusability are realized. “We need to relfect on a reusable launcher in Europe, and we need to invest massively in innovation,” Le Maire said.

Then there was a report out of Germany that has concluded that SpaceX commitment to reusability is about to pay off.

The article also cites those in Europe and with the U.S. company ULA that remain convinced that they can compete with expendable rockets. In reading their analysis, however, I was struck by how much it appeared they were putting their heads in the sand to avoid facing the realities, one of which has been the obvious fact that SpaceX has been competitively running rings around them all. This is a company that did not even exist a decade ago. This year it very well could launch more satellites than Europe and ULA combined.

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New report says WFIRST is “not executable”

11:05 pm

Another Webb! New NASA report has declared the agency’s next big telescope following the James Webb Space Telescope, dubbed the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is “not executable” and is significantly over budget.

“The risks to the primary mission of WFIRST are significant and therefore the mission is not executable without adjustments and/or additional resources,” the report states. It estimated the cost of the project at $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, significantly above the project’s $3.6 billion budget.

Produced by an independent and external team to review the technical aspects of the program, its management, and costs, the report is critical of a series of key decisions made by NASA. The addition of a coronagraph and other design choices have made for a telescope that is “more complex than probably anticipated” and have substantially increased risks and costs, according to the report.

It also offered a scathing review of the relationship between NASA headquarters and the telescope’s program managers at Goddard Space Flight Center. “The NASA HQ-to-Program governance structure is dysfunctional and should be corrected for clarity in roles, accountability, and authority,” the report states.

Did you ever get a feeling of deja-vu? This is the same story that we saw with Hubble, and with Webb. It’s called a buy-in. The agency purposely sets the budget too low to begin with, gets it started, which then forces Congress to pay the big bucks when the budget inevitably goes out of control.

From my perspective I think this is the time to shut the project down. Since Hubble astronomers have apparently begun to take NASA’s cash cow for granted, and need to relearn the lesson that they don’t have a guarantee on the treasury. Once they get over the shock of losing WFIRST, they might then start proposing good space telescopes that are affordable and can be built relatively quickly, instead of these boondoggles that take forever and ten times the initial budget to build.

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Another Evergreen employee resigns to protest college policies

9:25 am

Fascist and corrupt: Another Evergreen employee has resigned to protest policies at the leftist college, including some of which appear to violate state law.

Michael Radelich, who left the Washington state public college earlier this month, told The College Fix the Writing Center had been using financial aid money intended for students to hire non-student workers….According to documents given to The Fix by Radelich, the Writing Center spent 73 percent of its budget on items other than student salaries during the 2016-2017 academic year. Of that amount, 55 percent was spent on non-student temporary assistants and 18 percent on non-student elements of Inkwell, the annual magazine it produced.

…According to the exit survey that Radelich filled out and submitted when he left, “the college’s financial policy makers” told Yannone “every year” that she needed to spend at least 90 percent of her budget on student salaries. “She was always told you can’t be hiring temporary workers that are paid with student funds. There was no oversight from stopping her from doing that,” Radelich said in the interview near WWU.

In addition, the article describes how Radelich wanted out because of the college’s unbearable leftist politically correct culture.

Why anyone is sending their children to this college baffles me. The last thing anyone would accomplish there is to learn how to think.

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Russia astronauts have found bacteria living on the outside of ISS

8:42 am

Russia astronauts have found bacteria that was not intentionally brought into space living on the outside of ISS.

They are being studied on Earth but most likely they don’t pose any sort of danger, Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov told TASS on Monday. According to him, during spacewalks from the International Space Station under the Russian program, the cosmonauts took samples with cotton swabs from the station’s external surface. In particular, they took probes from places where the accumulation of fuel wastes were discharged during the engines’ operation or at places where the station’s surface is more obscure. After that, the samples were sent back to Earth.

“And now it turns out that somehow these swabs reveal bacteria that were absent during the launch of the ISS module. That is, they have come from outer space and settled along the external surface.”

I suspect it is a bit of hyperbole to say the bacteria came from outer space. It more likely came from either the station itself, or later spacecraft docking with the station. At the same time, the article is vague about what has been discovered. For example, it says nothing about the bacteria itself.

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California cities charge citizens massive prosecutions fees for minor violations

8:48 pm

Fascist California: Two California cities fine citizens for minor offenses, then force them to pay the exorbitant bills of the lawyers who prosecuted them.

The cities of Indio and Coachella partnered up with a private law firm, Silver & Wright, to prosecute citizens in criminal court for violations of city ordinances that call for nothing more than small fines—things like having a mess in your yard or selling food without a business license.

Those cited for these violations fix the problems and pay the fines, a typical code enforcement story. The kicker comes a few weeks or months later when citizens get a bill in the mail for thousands of dollars from the law firm that prosecuted them. They are forcing citizens to pay for the private lawyers used to take them to court in the first place. So a fine for a couple of hundred dollars suddenly becomes a bill for $3,000 or $20,000 or even more.

In Coachella, a man was fined $900 for expanding his living room without getting a permit. He paid his fine. Then more than a year later he got a bill in the mail from Silver & Wright for $26,000. They told him that he had to pay the cost of prosecuting him, and if he didn’t, they could put a lien on his house and the city could sell it against his will. When he appealed the bill they charged him even more for the cost of defending against the appeal. The bill went from $26,000 to $31,000.

There’s more, including the fact that when challenged it appeared that the officials of one of theses cities were actually proud of what they are doing.

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A mission to interstellar object Oumuamua?

11:31 am

A private company and a volunteer group dedicated to promoting interstellar travel have written a paper [pdf] exploring the possibility of launching a mission to fly past the interstellar object Oumuamua, now speeding out of our solar system.

As they note in the paper’s abstract,

Can such objects be intercepted? The challenge of reaching the object within a reasonable timeframe is formidable due to its high heliocentric hyperbolic excess velocity of about 26 km/s; much faster than any vehicle yet launched. This paper presents a high-level analysis of potential near-term options for such a mission. Launching a spacecraft in a reasonable timeframe of 5-10 years requires a hyperbolic solar system excess velocity between 33 to 76 km/s for mission durations between 30 to 5 years. Different mission durations and their velocity requirements are explored with respect to the launch date, assuming direct impulsive transfer to the intercept trajectory. Several technology options are outlined, ranging from a close solar Oberth Maneuver using chemical propulsion, and the more advanced options of solar and laser sails. To maximize science return decelerating the spacecraft at ’Oumuamua is highly desirable, due to the minimal science return from a hyper-velocity encounter. It is concluded that although reaching the object is challenging, there seem to be viable options based on current and near-term technology.

The paper even considers the use of SLS or SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket.

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Beer on Mars

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: Budweiser’s goal to eventually brew beer on Mars will take its next step with the launch to ISS of a beer experiment in December.

To get the ball rolling, the famous beer brand is partnering with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, which manages the ISS U.S. National Laboratories, and Space Tango, a payload development company that operates two commercial research facilities within the National Laboratory.

Working with Budweiser’s innovation team, the group will send two barley-based experiments to the ISS as part of the next SpaceX cargo supply mission, scheduled for December 4. Budweiser’s barley seeds will stay in orbit for around a month before returning to Earth for analysis.

Seems right to me.

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Nobel laureates demand Iran release scientist sentenced to death

8:57 am

Seventy-five Nobel laureates have written and signed a letter to the Iranian government demanding it release the Iranian scientist who it convicted of espionage and sentenced to death.

The group wrote to Gholamali Khoshroo, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, on 17 November, and the letter was made public on 21 November. The Nobel laureates express their concern for the conditions of Djalali’s detention; they deem his trial “unfair” and “flawed”, and they urge the Iranian authorities to let him return to Sweden, where he lived.

The list includes prominent names such as Harold Varmus, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health, now at the Weill Cornell Medicine institute in New York, and Andre Geim, a physicist based at the University of Manchester, UK. They wrote: “As members of a group of people and organizations who, according to the will of Alfred Nobel are deeply committed to the greatest benefit to mankind, we cannot stay silent, when the life and work of a similarly devoted researcher as Iranian disaster medicine scholar Ahmadreza Djalali is threatened by a death sentence.”

The scientist, Ahmadreza Djalali, lived in Sweden and was accused by Iran of spying for Israel. He in turn said the conviction was revenge for his refusal to spy for Iran.

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This week in fascist academia

3:14 pm

Time for another update on the sad state of freedom on American campuses. As always, I make sure the university name is listed so you know where you don’t want to send your kids, or your money.

The first story highlights how little college administrations respect, or even understand, the most basic legal rights of their students. Rather than follow the law, college administrators nationwide have been quite willing to set up kangaroo courts to punish students for sex crimes without the slightest due process. The result has been that many colleges find themselves being sued, and losing those suits. May many of them find themselves bankrupt for this abuse.

The last two stories are about the same event. Robert Spencer, a thoughtful and accurate scholar on Islam who is not afraid to talk about its violent traditions and history, was invited to give a speech at Stanford. The administration there did everything it could to squelch attendance. As he says, “It’s not a university anymore. It’s just an Antifa recruitment center.”

Not all the news is bad. At Macomb Community College in Michigan the college was forced to change its restrictive speech policy when it was sued by a conservative student organization.

In April, members of a campus chapter of Turning Point USA — a conservative organization whose website says it promotes “the principles of freedom, free markets and limited government” — wanted to tell students about the importance of fossil fuels. One member even donned a Tyrannosaurus rex costume for the occasion.

But while pointing out “the value of fossil fuels to human flourishing currently outweighs environmental concerns,” Turning Point was shut down by campus police “because at MCC public expressive activity is strictly prohibited without prior permission and a permit from the administration,” according to a federal lawsuit Turning Point filed against the school in August in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. “Public colleges, far from being immune to the obligations of the First Amendment, are supposed to be ‘the marketplace of ideas,’ where students can freely exchange ideas with one another, learning how to respectfully debate and dialogue with those whose views differ from their own,” the suit said.

On Wednesday, the college announced it would change its “expressive activity policy,” and the lawsuit would be dismissed.

Overall, the culture on today’s campuses remains oppressive, with the thuggish behavior coming from students, teachers, and administrators. What they are finding, however, is that this bad behavior is now being challenged, and since American culture and law is deeply hostile to such fascism, they are finding themselves increasingly on the losing side. To cite another example, the woman who stole a man’s “Make America Great Again” hat and whose ignorance and outright hate was highlighted by me in a previous report now faces serious criminal charges for her illegal actions.

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A spot on Mars, as seen by different orbiters over the past half century

9:29 am

Mars as seen over the past half century

The science team of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have assembled a collection of images of the same location on Mars that were taken by different Martian orbiters, beginning with the first fly-by by Mariner 4 in 1965 and ending with MRO’s HiRise camera. The image on the right, reduced in resolution to post here, shows these images superimposed on that location, with resolutions ranging from 1.25 kilometers per pixel (Mariner 4) down to 50 meters per pixel (MRO).

This mosaic essentially captures the technological history of the first half century of space exploration in a single image. Mariner 4 was only able to take 22 fuzzy pictures during its fly-by. Today’s orbiters take thousands and thousands, with resolutions so sharp they can often identify small rocks and boulders.

The mosaic also illustrates well the uncertainty of science. When Mariner 4 took the first pictures some scientists thought that there might be artificially built canals on Mars. Instead, the probe showed a dead cratered world much like the Moon. Later images proved that conclusion to be wrong as well, with today’s images showing Mars to be a very complex and active world, with a geological history both baffling and dynamic. Even now, after a half century of improved observations, we still are unsure whether life there once existed, or even if exists today.

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XCOR bankruptcy leaves behind $27.5 million in debt

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: XCOR’s bankruptcy has revealed that the company owed $27.5 million to creditors, the largest of which are government agencies that gave the company money in the hope its operations would bring business to their regions.

Space Florida is the largest secured credit at $3.6 million. The state-run agency’s has a “blanket security interest in personal property.” XCOR had made a deal to manufacture and operate its Lynx suborbital space plane from Florida.

XCOR estimates it spent $25 to $30 million developing the unfinished Lynx. An additional $15 to $20 million would be required to complete the vehicle, according to the documents.

Midland Development Corporation (MDC) has $10 million in unsecured claims. The funding was provided to XCOR to move from its base in Mojave, Calif., to the West Texas city, a process the company did not complete before it filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.

In addition, a private spacesuit company, Orbital Outfitters, appears to have gone of business in connection with this bankruptcy.

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Robbie the Robot sells for $5.3 million in auction

8:59 am

The science fiction movie prop Robbie the Robot has sold at auction for $5.3 million, making it the second most expensive movie prop in history.

The complete Robby suit, control panel, his jeep, numerous spares, alternate original “claw” hands, and the original wooden stage shipping crates, were sold yesterday (November 21, 2017 ) by Bonhams in New York for US$5,375,000 including buyers premium.

The only purpose-built movie prop to have ever sold for more is Marilyn Monroe’s “subway dress” from The Seven Year Itch (1955) which was sold by Profiles in History for $5,520,000 (inc. buyers premium) in 2011.

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New technology for future missions to Venus

8:55 am

Link here. The article begins by focusing on new hardened computer chips that can survive the harsh conditions of the Venusian surface, then moves to discussing our state of knowledge of the Earth’s sister planet, and the possibilities of future missions.

The article is definitely worth reading, but it tends I think to exaggerate how close the technology might be for building landers and rovers that can survive for long periods on Venus. This paragraph, describing the hardened chip that survived a simulated Venus environment for 60 days, highlights this:

A modern silicon chip can contain 7 billion transistors; each of the chips running in the Venus chamber has 175. Neudeck also uses an old-school transistor design, long since abandoned in conventional microelectronics. It’s basically a hyperexpensive, obtuse pocket calculator. But a pocket calculator running on Venus could be valuable indeed. “This is already the complexity of many of the early scientific missions flown back in the ’60s and ’70s,” Neudeck says, and more powerful than the chips on Apollo flight computers. “You really can do science.”

Exploring Venus is essential and necessary for us to truly understand how planets form and evolve. Developing technology that can survive that harsh environment is equally necessary, as it will make all future space exploration easier and more capable. This engineering work appears to be taking the first steps in this direction.

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India proposes new oppressive space law

12:03 am

India’s government has proposed a new space law that essentially places all control of future space projects under the control of the central government.

The proposed law, which is open for comment for the next month, can be read here [pdf]. I’ve read it, and it astonishes me in its oppressiveness and hostility to private enterprise. This clause, one of many similar clauses, sums this up quite well:

Any form of intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the Central Government.

The law would also require anyone who wants to launch a space project to get a license from the government, and gives the government the power to control that license in all aspects, including the power to cancel it for practically any reason.

If this law passes I expect that India’s burgeoning space industry will suffer significantly, especially because it will make it difficult to attract investment capital. Instead, it will be the central government that will run the business, and in the long run such government businesses always do badly.

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Samantha Whates – Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who tells this story about the song’s origin: ” Future country music star, Jeannie Seely, worked as a secretary at Liberty and Imperial Records in 1963. The producer for the record company, Eddie Ray, was looking for a new song for Rythm & Blues legend, Irma Thomas.

“After each day’s work, Seely would work on her own compositions on the studio piano. One day, Seely was asked to attend an Artists and Repertoire meeting by Ray. She came to the meeting with her stenography pad but was told, no, he wanted her to sing that song she was writing the night before.

“‘Anyone Who Knows What Love Is’ became a 1964 hit for Irma Thomas in both the R&B and Pop charts. It was the first song Seely had published.”

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