Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

New exoplanets make astronomers long for a telescope to see them

2:39 pm

The plethora of new exoplanet discoveries has astronomers longing for a telescope that can see them up close.

Astronomers need either a giant space telescope equipped with a device for blocking starlight, or an interferometer, consisting of several telescopes flying in formation. NASA did develop a proposal for such a space telescope, called Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the European Space Agency hoped to fly a similar mission called Darwin. But budgetary constraints have left both missions in limbo, unlikely to advance to the front of either agency’s queue until well into the next decade. At the conference, Traub raised the issue. “People are not thinking deeply about the distant future. People are wrapped up with what they’re doing right now,” he says. “Clearly, I’m concerned.”

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Another ObamaCare glitch could result in some businesses being exempt from fines for not providing their workers with health insurance.

2:09 pm

Another ObamaCare glitch could result in some businesses being exempt from fines for not providing their workers with health insurance.

In reading the article I found its attempt to explain this situation to be quite incomprehensible. In fact, I wonder if anyone really understands this law, which helps explain why it has squelched the economy and should be repealed.

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White House Emails Reveal Major Obamacare Accounting Fraud

10:02 am

Repeal it: White House emails have revealed an effort by the Obama administration in 2009 to coverup the accounting failures of the CLASS program within Obamacare.

Emails show that the first warning about CLASS came in May 2009, from Richard Foster, head of long range economic forecasts for Medicare. “At first glance this proposal doesn’t look workable,” Foster wrote in an email to other HHS officials, some of whom were working with Congress to get CLASS into the health care law. Foster said a rough outline of the program would have to enroll more than 230 million people — more than the U.S. workforce — to be financially feasible. But work on CLASS continued, bolstered by a report for AARP that laid out scenarios for implementing the plan. The AARP study also raised financial concerns, although the seniors’ lobby supports CLASS.

In July, Foster tried again. After reviewing the latest information from Kennedy’s office, he wrote HHS officials: “Thirty-six years of (professional) experience lead me to believe that this program would collapse in short order and require significant federal subsidies to continue.” Too late. The Obama administration had decided to support CLASS. Documents and emails indicate that Foster was edged out of deliberations. [emphasis mine]

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Obama to propose $1.5 trillion in new taxes

9:06 am

Obama to propose $1.5 trillion in new taxes today.

A quick look at this proposal tells me that most of it is made of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors. The cuts are elusive, while the tax increases are real. More important, none of it actually appears to cut spending at all, merely reducing the rate that spending increases over the next decade.

Sadly, I don’t expect anything much better from the present Republican leadership.

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A Yellow Supergiant Progenitor of a Massive Star Supernova in M51

3:31 pm

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have determined that the star that went supernova in the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) in June — making it the nearest supernova in 25 years — was a yellow supergiant star, not an aging red supergiant as predicted by theory. From the preprint paper:

Despite the canonical prediction that Type II supernovae arise from red supergiants, there is mounting evidence that some stars explode as yellow supergiants. A handful of Type II supernovae have been observed to arise from yellow supergiants: supernovae 1993J, 2008cn, and 2009kr. The locations of the progenitors on the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram shows clearly that these stars are not located on the predicted end points for single star stellar evolution tracks. In addition, despite arising from supposedly similar yellow supergiant progenitors, these supernovae display a wide range of properties.

The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram is a graph mapping the color of stars against their luminosity. Because color and brightness change as the star evolves over time, the graph is used by astronomers to track the birth, growth, and death of stars. That these yellow supergiants don’t appear to be at “the predicted end points for single star evolution” on the diagram is a serious problem for the theorists who have tried to explain what causes this particular type of supernova.

Which also means astronomers are still unable to tell us what stars in the sky are most likely to go supernova in the future.

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Washington union held in contempt for terminal violence

10:04 am

Union civility: A union in Washington state has been held in contempt for the violence that took place during a protest at a grain terminal. Some testimony:

Security guard Charlie Cadwell, employed by Columbia Security for patrols at the Longview grain terminal for the past two months, told the judge of the harrowing experience: Every protester he saw that night was carrying a weapon – baseball bats, lead pipes, garden tools. “I didn’t see a longshoreman who didn’t have something in his hands,” he said.

He was was pulled out of his car by one longshoreman, and another man swung a metal pipe at him, he said. “I told him, ‘You have 50 cameras on you and law enforcement is on its way,'” Cadwell said. “He said, ‘(expletive) you. We’re not here for you, we’re here for the train.'”

In the meantime, someone drove off with his car and eventually ran it into a ditch. Cadwell said about 40 to 50 people were throwing rocks at him, and that he was hit between his eyes and in his knee.

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Akatsuki’s engine too damaged to put the probe into Venus orbit in 2015

9:23 am

The engine of Japan’s troubled Venus probe, Akatsuki, has been found too damaged to put the probe into Venus orbit.

JAXA conducted a test ignition of the probe’s main engine on Wednesday to prepare for another attempt to send it into orbit in 2015. But the thrust produced was only one-eighth the amount anticipated, the space agency said. The damage the engine suffered last December when JAXA ignited it in the initial attempt to send the probe into orbit around Venus appears to be more serious than thought, JAXA said.

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Soyuz crew returns safely to Earth, despite radio problems

9:16 am

One of the two three-man crews on ISS have returned safely to Earth, despite an unexpected communciations blackout during their descent.

In related news, the Russians have slightly delayed the launch dates for the next manned flights to ISS, which also means that the next test flight of Falcon 9/Dragon will have to be delayed until 2012. Moreover, the Russians are once again balking at allowing Dragon to dock with ISS on this first flight.

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Questions about White House pressure for campaign donor in GPS controversy

3:19 pm

A four-star Air Force general told a congressional committee last week that the White House pressured him to soften his testimony concerning the military’s opposition to the technology being used by the broadband company Lightsquared– a major Democratic campaign donor — because it interfered with GPS signals.

In a related update, LightSquared boss said Wednesday that the company is near an engineering breakthrough that will solve the technical issues that worry GPS users.

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Private Japanese weather company to launch satellite to track Arctic Ice

9:14 am

A private Japanese weather company plans to launch a satellite to track Arctic ice for use by shipping.

The satellite will transmit images and information about sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. Weathernews will combine the information with available data on sea currents, weather and wave height to provide consumers with a finished product enabling safe navigation along the northern route.

Though I know most people are skeptical of this idea, I think that all weather information should be gathered and sold by private companies, as Weathernews is doing above. For example, the Weather Channel makes its money providing weather information to the public. If they didn’t get the satellite data free from NOAA weather satellites, they would have every reason to launch their own satellites.

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