Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Eroding glacier on Martian slope?

June 9, 2023 12:21 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, enhanced, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 1, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels as “Rough Ground and Bright Exposures” on the flanks of a wide mountain range on Mars, whose highest point is about 4,400 feet higher to the northeast and about 30 miles away.

The arrow indicates the downhill grade. Notice the smooth flat areas that seem to only partially cover much rougher terrain below. To my eye this top layer resembles an Earth glacier that has partly sublimated or melted away, exposing the rougher bedrock below that has been ground and scraped by the glacier previously.

However, this is not on Earth, so assuming it is like an Earth glacier is dangerous.
» Read more

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NASA worried FAA launch permit delays to Starship/Superheavy will delay first lunar landing

June 9, 2023 10:36 am Robert Zimmerman

During a public meeting on June 7, 2023, a NASA official expressed concerns that the FAA’s slow launch permit process for SpaceX’s test program for developing Starship/Superheavy will end up seriously delaying the first Artemis manned lunar landing, presently targeting a December 2025 launch date.

The official, Jim Free, was very careful how he worded his comments, but the FAA issue loomed large in his mind.

Free said NASA met with the Federal Aviation Administration recently to discuss the importance of the Starship rocket to the space agency’s moon exploration plans. The FAA is overseeing SpaceX’s investigation into the problems encountered on the April 20 test launch, when the flight termination system took longer to destroy the rocket than expected. The destruct system is designed to terminate the flight before an errant rocket threatens populated areas.

The FAA is not expected to grant SpaceX another Starship launch license until the investigation is complete, and federal regulators are satisfied with changes to the rocket to address any public safety concerns. “They just have to get flying,” Free said of SpaceX. “When you step back and you look at (it), that’s a lot of launches to get those missions done, so our FAA partners are critical to that.”

For the FAA to treat SpaceX’s test program like ordinary launches, requiring a detailed investigation by it after every test flight, will likely delay the development of Starship/Superheavy by years.

Following the early suborbital tests of Starship, the FAA did not “oversee” the investigations. The FAA merely observed closely SpaceX’s investigation, and let it move forward when SpaceX was satisfied. Now the FAA wants to determine for itself when each launch will occur, even though there is no one at the FAA truly qualified to do that. The result will be endless delays and paperwork, and many fewer flights spaced many more months apart, none of which will do anything to aid the development.

NASA is obviously trying to get the FAA to see this, but we must remember that the change in policy at the FAA almost certainly came from the Biden administration, which doesn’t care as much for getting to the Moon as it does wielding its power to hurt Elon Musk, whom it now sees as a political opponent. Expect NASA’s pleas to fall on deaf ears.

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Firefly buys orbital tug company Spaceflight

June 9, 2023 10:21 am Robert Zimmerman

Firefly Aerospace announced yesterday that it has purchased the orbital tug company Spaceflight, and will now offer its Sherpa tug as part of its launch services.

Spaceflight Inc. was known as a leader in arranging launches of small satellites on small launch vehicles or as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles, deploying more than 460 payloads. Spaceflight had also developed its own series of orbital transfer vehicles called Sherpa, using a mix of chemical and electric propulsion systems.

Spaceflight has worked with a wide range of launch providers, although at one point it ran afoul of one of its largest partners, SpaceX. However, Firefly said that Spaceflight’s services will, going forward, be used only with Firefly’s vehicles.

Though Firefly will honor the contracts Spaceflight arranged for smallsats to be launched on other rockets, it appears it will be no longer be acting as a launch arranger. Instead, it will offer smallsats a package launch deal, including both its Alpha rocket and the tug. For this deal to pay off however Firefly has got to get Alpha operational. The two launches scheduled for this summer should do this, assuming they fly with no problems.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA contracts for six launches each

June 9, 2023 10:09 am Robert Zimmerman

As part of its long term launch agreement with SpaceX and ULA, the Space Force today awarded both companies contracts for six launches each, all to occur beginning in 2025.

According to the overall agreement, each company got five-year contracts to launch as many as 40 missions. ULA won 60% of the missions and SpaceX 40%. However, the delays to ULA’s Vulcan rocket will likely change those numbers:

In a report released June 8, the Government Accountability Office noted that the NSSL program office continues to order launch services from ULA and SpaceX amid concerns about Vulcan’s delays. “ULA delayed the first certification flight of the Vulcan launch system … to accommodate challenges with the BE-4 engine and a delayed commercial payload, nearly two years later than originally planned,” said GAO. “In the event that Vulcan is unavailable for future missions, program officials stated that the Phase 2 contract allows for the ability to reassign missions to the other provider.”

One of the reasons that ULA has not hurried its effort to make Vulcan reusable and more competitive with SpaceX is that is already has this guaranteed military launch commitment. It doesn’t need to be as competitive.

What needs to happen is a third or fourth company has to enter the market, giving the military other options. The military also has to cancel this long term launch agreement, which limits the number of companies it will do business with to just SpaceX and ULA. It would be much better to open the competition up to everyone. The ULA would be forced to compete.

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X-ray telescope on ISS develops light leak

June 9, 2023 9:59 am Robert Zimmerman

The NICER X-ray telescope on ISS has developed a light leak that now limits its use during daylight hours.

The team suspects that at least one of the thin thermal shields on NICER’s 56 X-ray Concentrators has been damaged, allowing sunlight to reach its sensitive detectors.

Pending any repair attempts, observations during the daytime are now restricted to objects in the sky opposite the Sun. Night observations remain unaffected.

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Study: Long periods of weightlessness caused changes in the brain

June 9, 2023 9:55 am Robert Zimmerman

Scientists studying the brains of 30 astronauts who spent from two weeks to one year on ISS have found that the longer a person stayed in weightlessness the greater the changes caused in the brain, and the longer it takes to recover.

Their findings, reported today in Scientific Reports, reveal that the brain’s ventricles expand significantly in those who completed longer missions of at least six months, and that less than three years may not provide enough time for the ventricles to fully recover.

Ventricles are cavities in the brain filled with cerebrospinal fluid, which provides protection, nourishment and waste removal to the brain. Mechanisms in the human body effectively distribute fluids throughout the body, but in the absence of gravity, the fluid shifts upward, pushing the brain higher within the skull and causing the ventricles to expand.

“We found that the more time people spent in space, the larger their ventricles became,” said Rachael Seidler, a professor of applied physiology and kinesiology at the University of Florida and an author of the study. “Many astronauts travel to space more than one time, and our study shows it takes about three years between flights for the ventricles to fully recover.”

You can read the paper here. The expansion of ventricles is a normal process due to aging, but I could not find any description in the paper noting its impact, for good or ill. Long periods of weightlessness brings it about quickly, but only temporarily.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket launches satellite

June 9, 2023 9:41 am Robert Zimmerman

China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket today successfully placed what its state-run press described as a “experiment satellite … to verify satellite communication and remote sensing technologies.”

The rocket lifted off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi desert. No word on where the rocket’s three lower stages crashed, or whether they did so near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 38, with SpaceX by itself now tied those other nations combined 38 to 38.

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Abbott & Costello – Modern Math

June 8, 2023 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: From their 1941 movie, In the Navy.

Hat tip sippin_bourbon, who “actually re-enacted this for a few classmates in 7th grade, then walked out
while they scratched their heads. The teacher, who had been watching caught me in the way out the door and told me not to do that on a test.” Sadly, a modern teacher today might consider this good math.

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Pushback: Racial quotas on corporate boards, imposed by California Democrats, struck down by court

June 8, 2023 1:33 pm Robert Zimmerman

The Democratic Party's long held support of racial hate
Segregation: The Democratic Party’s long held #1 goal,
then and now.

Pushback: A federal court has now struck down a 2020 law passed by the California legislature — run entirely by a Democratic Party super-majority — that required corporations to impose racial quotas on who they hired for their corporate boards.

In Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment v. Weber, [the court] struck down a state statute that required racial and gender-identity quotas for board members of publicly held corporations in California. The court ruled that this quota statute violates the U.S. Constitution as well as federal civil rights law.

The 2020 statute, AB 979, required California corporations to have as members on their board of directors individuals from supposedly “underrepresented groups,” including “an individual who identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, [or] gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

The number of directors needed to satisfy these quotas was determined by the size of the corporation, but a minimum of one to three members was required. This racist statute went so far as to impose fines ranging from $100,000 to $300,000 for noncompliance.

» Read more

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Ice-filled fissure on Mars?

June 8, 2023 12:14 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 15, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The science team labeled this a “Terrain Sample”, which suggests but doesn’t guarantee that it was to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain that camera’s proper temperature, and therefore was targeted at a relatively random but potentially interesting location.

What we see is a fissure canyon, about 250 to 300 feet deep with cliffs about 125 high, that appears surrounded and even filled with icelike features. Even the craters on the plateau above the canyon appear like they either impacted in ice, or have since been filled and eroded by that ice.

But is it ice?
» Read more

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Scientists claim to identify cause of Sun’s fast solar wind

June 8, 2023 9:59 am Robert Zimmerman

The uncertainty of science: Using data from the Parker Solar Probe, scientists now believe they have identified the cause of Sun’s fast solar wind that streams from the magnetic regions on the Sun that are dubbed coronal holes.

In a paper published June 7, 2023 in the journal Nature, a team of researchers used data from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe to explain how the solar wind is capable of surpassing speeds of 1 million miles per hour. They discovered that the energy released from the magnetic field near the sun’s surface is powerful enough to drive the fast solar wind, which is made up of ionized particles—called plasma—that flow outward from the sun.

The results depend a great deal on computer modeling, based on our presently limited understanding of magnetic field processes in environments like stars. It will need to be confirmed by more data from Parker as well as later probes.

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Webb’s first deep field infrared image reveals hundreds of very early galaxies

June 8, 2023 9:47 am Robert Zimmerman

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope to take a 32-day-long infrared exposure, scientists have obtained the deepest deep field picture of the universe’s earliest time period, within which they have found more than 700 galaxies, 717 to be exact.

The initial survey of these galaxies appear to reveal several facts.

About a sixth of early galaxies in the JADES sample are in the throes of star formation of a kind we don’t see in the nearby universe, Endsley explains, marked by extremely bright emission at certain wavelengths. “Stars within very early galaxies are forming in these super-compact clumps,” he adds, “forming hundreds, perhaps thousands of these very massive, young stars all at once, basically within the span of a couple millions of years.”

But they weren’t “on” all the time. The low fraction of galaxies with such emission suggests that individual clumps would suddenly light up with new stars and then rest for some time. This “bursty” mode of star formation could explain the unexpectedly bright galaxies announced by other astronomers — they were simply looking at the galaxies fired up with unexpectedly intense star formation.

However, while these findings explain too-bright galaxies, they don’t explain the too-massive galaxies, another early, albeit controversial find from JWST data. Endsley explains that even as hot, massive newborn stars light up their galaxy, they’re not necessarily associated with all that much mass. “We’re not really finding evidence of these over-massive objects within our JADES sample,” he states.

In other words, this data appears to contradict earlier data from Webb that other researchers said revealed galaxies that were too massive and developed to have formed that soon after the Big Bang.

All of this data remains somewhat uncertain, and is based on only tiny tidbits of information, gleaned from mere smudges of red-shifted infrared light. Much more research will be required, some not possible by Webb, before we have any solid answers, and even then there is going to be a lot of uncertainty.

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Boeing sued for stealing specialized tooling to assembly SLS

June 8, 2023 9:36 am Robert Zimmerman

A Colorado company, Wilson Aerospace, on June 6, 2023 filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming that the company conspired with Wilson’s direct competitors to steal the designs of its specialized tool for installing the core station engines on SLS.

According to the lawsuit, after some initial discussions, Boeing arranged for a “live” demonstration of Wilson’s torque device, during which participants could handle and operate it to verify the tool’s capability and performance. What Wilson claims it did not realize, however, is that some of the participants in this demonstration were not Boeing employees. “Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors,” the lawsuit states. “This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the ‘Bogus Boeing Employees’ into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee.”

The complaint alleges that Boeing subsequently used information from this demonstration, as well as proprietary drawings and designs, to work with Wilson’s competitors to develop a cheaper solution. “Boeing concealed these facts from Wilson as part of its scheme to defraud Wilson and to transmit Wilson’s IP to its direct competitors,” the lawsuit states.

The company is demanding a jury trial. If its charges are proved true, it will be another piece of evidence demonstrating the level of corruption that exists at Boeing.

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ULA completes dress rehearsal launch countdown and static fire test of Vulcan

June 8, 2023 9:31 am Robert Zimmerman

ULA yesterday successfully completed a full dress rehearsal launch countdown new Vulcan rocket, including a short 2-second static fire test of the rocket’s two first stage BE-4 engines.

A Vulcan rocket fired its two BE-4 engines in a static-fire test called the Flight Readiness Firing (FRF) at 9:05 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. The engine start sequence started at T-4.88 seconds, ULA said in a statement an hour after the test, with the engines throttling up to their target level for two seconds before shutting down, concluding the six-second test.

The test appeared to go as planned. “Nominal run,” Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, tweeted moments after the test.

This dress rehearsal had originally been scheduled for late May, but issues on the rocket required ULA to scrub the launch and return the rocket to the assembly building.

There appear to be only three issues remaining before that first launch can occur. First there is the hydrogen leak that caused the destruction of the rocket’s Centaur upper stage during a static fire engine test in March. The company has apparently still not determined what action — if any — must be taken on this.

Second is whether the rocket’s primary payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, is ready for launch. It appears it has completed all ground testing, but there were questions whether its software has been adjusted for a new landing site that NASA assigned it in February.

Third is scheduling. Peregrine’s monthly launch windows are only four to five days long each month. This limitation also has to be juggled with other ULA launches on the same launchpad, using its soon-to-be retired Atlas-5 rocket.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches its rocket for 2nd time

June 8, 2023 9:17 am Robert Zimmerman

The Chinese pseudo-company CAS Space yesterday successfully launched its rocket Lijian-1 rocket for second time, lifting off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert and carrying a record (for China) of 26 cubesats.

As was usual for China, its state-run press revealed almost nothing about the satellites. Nor did it provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages crash-landed in China, or if they did any damage or landed near habitable areas.

This pseudo-company is actually even more pseudo than other Chinese pseudo-companies, as it is a direct spin-off created by the government Chinese Academy of Sciences, with most of its investors directly linked to that academy.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 37, with SpaceX by itself beating those other nations combined 38 to 37.

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June 7, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

June 7, 2023 6:25 pm Robert Zimmerman

Embedded below the fold in two parts.

To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more

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Morgan James – Dream On

June 7, 2023 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: An Aerosmith cover with Postmodern Jukebox.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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Distorted floor of a Martian crater

June 7, 2023 1:15 pm Robert Zimmerman

Overview map

Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels “Mantle Layers in Southern Mid-Latitudes.”

I would be less vague. These strangely shaped features invoke the typical glacial features seen throughout the mid-latitudes of Mars. The knobs and outcrops suggest some underlying breakdown that the top layers of glacial material has covered. They also suggest some form of sublimation or erosion process to the glacier itself.

The white rectangle inside the inset on the overview map above marks this location, covering the floor of an unnamed 10-mile-wide crater in the cratered southern highlands at 41 degrees south. In this region all the craters show some evidence of this sublimation, all suggesting that there is a near-surface underlying ice layer that when exposed vanishes to leave depressions or hollows. Here however it appears that ice layer is mostly intact, the knobs and ridges indicating the shape of the bedrock and large breakdown below.

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Who blew up the dam in the Ukraine?

June 7, 2023 12:14 pm Robert Zimmerman

Taken from ISW’s report on June 6, 2023. Click for original.

Since the news broke yesterday that someone had blown up the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro River, there has been endless speculation by numerous pundits attempting to pin the blame. It seems that half say Russia, and half say the Ukraine.

Let me provide my readers the answer right up front: We as yet haven’t got the foggiest idea who did it.

Why am I so sure? Because in reviewing all the information I can glean from many different sources, it appears both sides had good reasons to do it, as well as good reasons to not want it to happen at all. Let’s list those reasons.
» Read more

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Astronomers downsize their proposal for rebuilding Arecibo

June 7, 2023 9:45 am Robert Zimmerman

Faced with little interest from the National Science Foundation to spend the half a billion dollars required for their initial proposal to rebuild the Arecibo radio telescope, astronomers have now downsized their proposal significantly.

[I]n 2021 Anish Roshi, the observatory’s head of radio astronomy, unveiled a proposal to replace the telescope with a phased array of 1112 parabolic dishes each 9 m in diameter, placed on a tiltable, plate-like structure. This new facility, with an estimated cost of $454m, would provide the same a collecting area as a 300 m parabolic dish. “It would have a much wider sky coverage and would offer capabilities for radio astronomy, planetary, and space and atmospheric sciences,” Roshi says. “It would be a unique instrument for doing science that competitive projects couldn’t do.”

A lack of support from the NSF, however, has forced researchers to go back to the drawing board to make the array “more cost-effective both for construction and operation” as Roshi puts it. In the revised proposal, submitted to arXiv late last month, his team now envisions a downsized version of the original concept. Dubbed NGAT-130, it would consist of 102 dishes each 13 m in diameter that would in combination have a collecting area equivalent to a single 130 m dish.

No cost estimates are as yet available for this new proposal. Nor has the NSF expressed any opinion on whether it is even interested. At the moment its only action at Arecibo has been to propose converting the observatory into an education center, one that is located far from anything, is hard to reach, and will likely see few students or visitors.

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Gemini telescope in Hawaii fixed, captures nearby supernova

June 7, 2023 9:36 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

The Gemini telescope in Hawaii, which was damaged in 2022 during normal maintenance operations, has now been fixed and resumed observations, beginning with a spectacular image of the newly discovered supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy, only 20 million light years away.

The Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, has returned from a seven-month hiatus literally with a bang, as it has captured the spectacular aftermath of a supernova, a massive star that exploded in the large, face-on, spiral Pinwheel Galaxy (Messier 101). The supernova, named SN 2023ixf [as indicated by the arrow], was discovered on 19 May by amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki.

Since its discovery, observers around the globe have pointed their telescopes toward Messier 101 to get a look at the burst of light. Over the coming months, Gemini North will allow astronomers to study how the light from the supernova fades and how its spectrum evolves over time, helping astronomers better understand the physics of such explosions.

As one of the closest supernova to occur in years, SN 2023ixf has become a major target by astronomers. This type of supernova signals the collapse and death of a star 8 to 10 times the mass of the Sun. Since the life cycle of such massive stars is not yet fully understood, this nearby supernova provides a great opportunity for astronomers to learn more.

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Firefly delays NASA launch to August

June 7, 2023 9:16 am Robert Zimmerman

According to papers filed with the FCC, Firefly’s July launch attempt of its Alpha rocket, carrying a set of NASA cubesats, has now been delayed one month to August.

Meanwhile, a second launch by Firefly for the Space Force is presently tentatively scheduled for June, and the company says it is wrapping up preparations for that launch. That contract’s prime focus is to demonstrate to the military the ability to launch with only a 24-hour notice.

If so, then this new rocket company, which has only launched twice before, with the second launch barely reaching orbit, will be launching twice in only a matter of weeks, both times from its launchpad at Vandenberg.

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OneWeb offers its satellite constellation broadband service to the maritime industry

June 7, 2023 9:06 am Robert Zimmerman

With its full constellation of 634 satellites in orbit, OneWeb has now made its satellite constellation broadband service available to the maritime industry.

With 634 OneWeb operational satellites now in orbit, the OneWeb constellation is complete and fully operational down to 35 degrees latitude. OneWeb will have the final ground stations completed and operational requirements in place, ensuring the company remains on track to deliver full global maritime services by the end of the year. Now OneWeb will start selling services to the maritime industry, via its specialist maritime distribution partners.

OneWeb and its partners have also developed a range of hardware terminal products which are available from trusted maritime communications providers Intellian and Kymeta. Offering hardware terminal products from two established providers with different form factors enables greater choice for customers.

More information here.

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NASA names winners in annual student rocket competition

June 7, 2023 9:01 am Robert Zimmerman

NASA yesterday named the winners in its annual student rocket launch competition, which took place at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on April 15, 2023.

The live stream of the competition is available here, cued to when the rockets begin launching.

The number of awards is a bit too many, making it seem that NASA wanted to make sure every team got some form of participation award. Nonetheless, these students demonstrated that they will soon be building real rockets, as part of the new and emerging rocket industry.

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Space Show appearance rescheduled for June 8, 2023

June 7, 2023 1:44 am Robert Zimmerman

David Livingston has solved the technical issues that caused the cancellation of my appearance last night, June 6, 2023, on the Space Show, and we have rescheduled that show for tomorrow, June 8, 2023, starting at 7 pm (Pacific).

I hope my readers listen in and call in. There is a lot to talk about in the world of space.

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Heart – Crazy on You

June 6, 2023 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: I posted this same song in 2022 from a different performance during the same 1977 tour. This version however was recorded as part of a documentary and includes some backstage footage that is definitely worth watching.

Has tip Rex Ridenoure, who notes that “Heart was the first rock band with female leads who also wrote all their own songs.”

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On the radio-CANCELLED

June 6, 2023 4:50 pm Robert Zimmerman

UPDATE: Due to technical problems outside of David Livingston’s control, the show tonight had to be cancelled. We will try to reschedule for another show within a week or so.

Original post:
——————
Tonight I will be doing another long appearance on the Space Show with David Livingston, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific). Please feel free to call in, as it is always more fun to talk to someone directly than to answer email questions.

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The explanation as to why Democrats today are fearless in proposing insane policies

June 6, 2023 1:58 pm Robert Zimmerman

How the change in Don Lemon in the past ten years reveals why Democrats are no longer afraid to propose insane policies
Don Lemon unwittingly reveals the Democrats’
assumed grip on power

A recent post at ZeroHedge made a big deal about how Don Lemon’s positions so drastically changed in less than a decade. As the article correctly noted, the positions Lemon took in 2013 would have had Don Lemon in 2023 label himself a white supremacist.

The video [from 2013] shows Lemon talking about what the black community should do to fix its problems, including stop littering, and encouraging kids to try harder in school. The host also extols the virtues of marriage, and warns about the problem of absent fathers, asserting “just because you can have a baby doesn’t mean you should.”

Lemon even tells young black men to stop using the N word and to pull up their pants and stop walking around with their asses hanging out looking like prison bitches.

If you dare say these things now you are called a racist and a white supremacist (no matter your skin color) exerting your white privilege. The Don Lemon of 2023 himself has done this exact thing.

What the article found most shocking however was the speed in which these things changed. As noted by this tweet:

It’s terrifying how fast society fell off the cliff

10 years ago Obama, Hillary, and Biden were defining marriage as “a man and a woman”

10 years ago Don Lemon was telling black people “pull your pants up”

10 years ago Dems only supported “safe, legal, and rare” abortions

Why? How did it become okay for Democrats and leftists to suddenly in less than a few years go from defending normal sex and marriage to supporting the genital mutilation of young children and to support cross-dressing men changing in women’s locker rooms? Why have inner city Democratic Party politicians gone from trying to arrest shoplifters in order to at least maintain a semblance of law to passing laws making illegal for any employees at a retail store from stopping shoplifting in any way, while simultaneously advocating “defunding the police” and routinely releasing murderers and criminals without charge?

How is any of this even possible in a democratic society? Shouldn’t Democrats be worried that their insane policies might be offending the vast majority of normal people who vote?

The answer lies in a false assumption most conservatives and ordinary people still have about our nation. » Read more

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Martian dust devil where none had been before

June 6, 2023 11:24 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

Today’s cool Mars image is especially cool because it is of the exact same place on Mars I had featured in a picture only a little more than one month ago. I return to this spot only a month later because the location was yesterday’s featured captioned image from the high resolution camera team of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The difference is that this time the camera captured a dust devil there that wasn’t there previously. From the caption:

The dust devil is casting a shadow, which can be used to estimate its height. This image is part of ongoing monitoring activities by HiRISE of seasonal activities on Mars.

Over the years, HiRISE has observed many dust devils. Just like on Earth, dust devils develop when the Sun heats up the ground such that it warms the air directly above it. When air heats up its density decreases causing it to rise up while colder air sinks down driving local convection.

If the region is windy, the wind my end up rotating the “convection cells” caused by the vertical motion of air leading to development of a dust devil. Since the main requirements for development of such features are the presence of dust and a warm ground, we focus our monitoring of dust devils in regions on Mars that are known to be dusty (like Syria Planum), and during the late spring and summer time, when we expect the ground to be warm.

» Read more

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Hubble snaps picture of another jellyfish galaxy

June 6, 2023 10:05 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for original image.

Astronomers today released another picture of a jellyfish galaxy taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, with that picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. From the caption:

The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colourful star-forming disc surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of bright stars with criss-cross diffraction spikes stand out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 lies over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius.

This image is the sixth and final such photograph in this survey. You can view all of these images here. The study has found that star formation does not seem to be significantly different inside the galaxy versus the tentacles that stretch out beyond due to pressure from the intergalactic material. This suggests that the influence of this intergalactic material on the formation of stars is relatively minor.

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Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.