Tag: science

Europe targets 2031 for the first mission of its own lunar lander

10:48 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a target date of 2031 for the first mission of its own unmanned lunar lander, dubbed Argonaut, and launched on the most powerful version of the Ariane-6.

On 16 July, the agency published a call for Argonaut Mission 1 Phase A/B1 development aimed at demonstrating the technical and programmatic feasibility of the Argonaut mission concept. The call included a proposed launch date of 2031 for the first Argonaut mission to the Moon.

The Argonaut lunar lander will be launched aboard an Ariane 64 rocket. Once operational, ESA envisions it being used for a wide variety of applications, from cargo logistics to acting as an in-situ resource utilization plant. The agency has already completed pre-phase A studies for what it calls the European Charging Station for the Moon. This system would be launched aboard an Argonaut lunar lander and would essentially act as a gas station on the Moon that would be used to support crewed missions on the surface of the Moon.

As I’ve noted previously, ESA routinely sets a glacial pace on all its government-run projects. Do not expect this government lander to fly on this schedule. More likely by 2031 there will be many cheaper and available options from the private sector, and European companies wanting to put payloads down on the Moon will turn to those, especially because Argonaut is apparently being forced to use the expensive expendable Ariane-6 rocket. The cost for going on Argonaut is simply going to be too high.

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Martian taffy terrain

11:08 am

Martian taffy terrain
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on April 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical area of what scientists have labeled “taffy terrain,” a landscape made up of strangely twisted bands that look like someone was pulling the ground repeatedly, just like taffy.

Based on the lower crater count found here, taffy terrain is thought to be relative young, formed around three billion years ago. While the exact formation process is not yet understood, scientists theorize that it was caused by some type of “viscous fluid” that settled into localized depressions.

The location is 40 degrees south latitude, so it is entirely possible we are seeing some form of glacial material, ice in these low spots that has no place to go but is warped over time by the same kind of tidal and rotational planetary effects that cause waves and tides in the oceans on Earth.
» Read more

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A blob in space

9:47 am

A blob in space
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the dwarf galaxy NGC 5238.

Its unexciting, blob-like appearance, resembling more an oversized star cluster than a galaxy, belies a complicated structure which has been the subject of much research by astronomers. Here, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is able to pick out the galaxy’s countless stars, as well as its associated globular clusters — the glowing spots both inside and around the galaxy that are swarmed by yet more stars.

NGC 5238 is theorised to have recently — here meaning no more than a billion years ago! — had a close encounter with another galaxy. The evidence for this is the tidal distortions of NGC 5238’s shape, the kind produced by two galaxies pulling on each other as they interact. There’s no nearby galaxy which could have caused this disturbance, so the hypothesis is that the culprit is a smaller satellite galaxy that was devoured by NGC 5238.

Astronomers are hoping to use this image to detect the two different populations of stars within this blob that come from those once interacting galaxies.

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Webb infrared spectroscopy detects differences between morning and evening on tidally-locked exoplanet

9:36 am

Webb spectroscopic data
Click for original image.

Astronomers using Webb Space Telescope’s infrared spectroscopy have now detected distinct differences in the morning and evening atmosphere of a tidally-locked gas giant exoplanet.

The graph, cropped, reduced, sharpened, annotated to post here, shows the differences. From the caption:

Researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have finally confirmed what models have previously predicted: An exoplanet has differences between its eternal morning and eternal evening atmosphere. WASP-39 b, a giant planet with a diameter 1.3 times greater than Jupiter, but similar mass to Saturn that orbits a star about 700 light-years away from Earth, is tidally locked to its parent star. This means it has a constant dayside and a constant nightside—one side of the planet is always exposed to its star, while the other is always shrouded in darkness.

Using Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph), astronomers confirmed a temperature difference between the eternal morning and eternal evening on WASP-39 b, with the evening appearing hotter by roughly 300 Fahrenheit degrees (about 200 Celsius degrees). They also found evidence for different cloud cover, with the forever morning portion of the planet being likely cloudier than the evening.

The actual temperatures of each terminator are quite hot, approximately 1,150 and 1450 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Computer modeling suggests “the prevailing winds are likely moving from the night side across the morning terminator, around the dayside, across the evening terminator and then around the nightside,” with wind speeds thousands of miles per hour.

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A penguin and egg, as seen by Webb and Hubble

11:32 am

A penquin and egg compared
Click for original images.

Cool image time! The two pictures to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, were taken by both the Webb and Hubble space telescopes of the same unusual galactic object, officially called Arp 142 but nicknamed by astronomers the Penquin and the Egg.

Both of these objects are galaxies. The Penquin’s strange shape is caused by the presence of the Egg, which is an elliptical galaxy that is twisting and distorting the Penquin’s original spiral galaxy whirlpool as it flies past. From the caption:

Like all spiral galaxies, the Penguin is still very rich in gas and dust. The galaxies’ “dance” gravitationally pulled on the Penguin’s thinner areas of gas and dust, causing them to crash in waves and form stars. Look for those areas in two places: what looks like a fish in its “beak” and the “feathers” in its “tail.”

Surrounding these newer stars is smoke-like material that includes carbon-containing molecules, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which Webb is exceptional at detecting. Dust, seen as fainter, deeper orange arcs also swoops from its beak to tail feathers.

In contrast, the Egg’s compact shape remains largely unchanged. As an elliptical galaxy, it is filled with aging stars, and has a lot less gas and dust that can be pulled away to form new stars. If both were spiral galaxies, each would end the first “twist” with new star formation and twirling curls, known as tidal tails.

Another reason for the Egg’s undisturbed appearance: These galaxies have approximately the same mass or heft, which is why the smaller-looking elliptical wasn’t consumed or distorted by the Penguin.

The differences between the two pictures also reveal many aspects of the Penguin. The Hubble optical image at the top captures the lanes of dust in the foreground, while the Webb infrared image at the bottom looks right through this dust to better trace the now-distorted spiral arms where star formation is presently taking place.

Astronomers estimate that these two galaxies are about 100,000 light years apart, comparable to the width of the Milky Way. In comparison, the Andromeda galaxy is around 2.5 million light years away, and will not begin interacting with our galaxy in this manner for an estimated four billion years. The Egg and Penguin however began their warped dance about 50 million years ago.

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Europa Clipper mission threatened by faulty transistors

9:31 am

Engineers have learned that transistors installed on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission were not built to the right specifications and could fail in the harsh environment surrounding Jupiter.

The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, an industry alert was sent out to notify users of this issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts in order to better understand the risk of using these parts on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July.

This issue could be disaster for the mission, which has a launch window that opens on October 10, 2024. If it is impossible to replace the bad transistors, NASA will be faced with two choices, neither great. It could launch regardless and hope for the best. It could delay the mission to fix the problem, which might involve a delay of years waiting for a new launch window.

This story appears to illustrate once again the decline in quality control that appears to be happening across much of American industry. The technology for building radiation-hardened equipment has been standard for decades. For a company to deliver equipment below standard now suggests incompetence or fraud, neither of which speaks well for it and the entire industry.

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Archeologists find the musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War

9:33 pm

Archeologists digging at Concord discover what they think are five musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Archeologists believe five musket balls unearthed in Concord’s Minute Man National Historical Park were fired by colonial militia in the famed battle moments that sparked the Revolutionary War. The 250-year-old musket balls were discovered in an area inside the park where historians believe British troops faced colonial forces at the North Bridge.

Analysis of the artifacts indicates they were fired by colonial militia members from across the river, and not dropped from British weapons when troops were reloading.

Since the Minute Men fired over a period of time, routing the British troops, there is no way to know if these musket balls were the first fired, or among the later rounds. Nonetheless, these artifacts are an actual piece of a moment of history that literally changed all of human history.

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A ridge that runs right over a Martian mesa

2:42 pm

A dike in a mesa
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 5, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have cropped it to focus on the geological feature that likely attracted the interest of the scientists who requested this photo, the mesa that has a ridgeline running over it as if the mesa was not even there.

The mesa is about 80 feet high on its west side, but on its east the ground continues to drop away more than 500 feet as you move 2.5 miles to the east. Based on how the MRO science team interprets the colors [pdf] in the color strip, the orange areas are likely dust while the greenish surface suggests coarser sand and boulders. This conclusion is reinforced if you look at the parallel dunes south of the mesa. The dunes are yellow-orange (dust) while the ground between is yellow-green (sand), exactly what you expect with the larger coarser material settling in lower elevations.

The overview map provides the context, which might help explain the ridgeline.
» Read more

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Reanalysis of Apollo seismic data finds 22,000 previously undetected quakes

2:50 pm

By taking a new look at the data from the seismometers placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo missions during the 1970s, Keisuke Onodera of the University of Tokyo was able to find approximately 22,000 previously undetected quakes, almost tripling the rate of seismic activity on the Moon. From the paper’s abstract:

In the 1970s, two types of seismometers were installed on the nearside of the Moon. One type is called the Long-Period (LP) seismometer, which is sensitive below 1.5 Hz. The other is called the Short-Period (SP) seismometer, whose sensitivity is high around 2–10 Hz. So far, more than 13,000 seismic events have been identified through analyzing the LP data, which allowed us to investigate lunar seismicity and its internal structure.

On the other hand, most of the SP data have remained unanalyzed because they include numerous artifacts. This fact leads to the hypotheses that (a) we have missed lots of high-frequency seismic events and (b) lunar seismicity could be underestimated.

To verify these ideas, I conducted an analysis of the SP data. … I discovered 22,000 new seismic events, including thermal moonquakes, impact-induced events, and shallow moonquakes. Among these, I focused on analyzing shallow moonquakes—tectonic-related quakes. Consequently, it turned out that there were 2.6 times more tectonic events than considered before. Furthermore, additional detections of shallow moonquakes enabled me to see the regionality in seismicity. Comparing three landing sites (Apollo 14, 15, and 16), I found that the Apollo 15 site was more seismically active than others. These findings can change the conventional views of lunar seismicity.

The data also suggests the northern hemisphere is more active than the southern.

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Astronomers: A black hole weighing 8,200 solar masses likely sits at the center of the Milky Ways’ largest globular cluster

2:39 pm

Omega Centauri
Click for original image.

By analyzing the motion of seven fast moving stars at the center of the globular cluster Omega Centauri, the largest such cluster in the Milky Way and located about 18,000 light years away, astronomers now think they have detected evidence of an intermediate-sized black hole weight at least 8,200 solar masses.

You can read the published paper here. [pdf] The picture of Omega Centauri to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was created from more than 500 images taken over two decades by the Hubble Space Telescope. The inset, figure 1b of the paper, shows those seven fast-moving stars in pink, each having an arrow indicating the distance they are expected to move in a 100 years. The dashed circle marks the region where the black hole is believed to reside, with the dark blue cross in its upper left quadrant the most likely position of the black hole based on calculations.

From the caption for the larger Omega Centauri Hubble image:

Omega Centauri is visible from Earth with the naked eye and is one of the favourite celestial objects for stargazers in the southern hemisphere. Although the cluster is 17 700 light-years away, lying just above the plane of the Milky Way, it appears almost as large as the full Moon when seen from a dark rural area.

Though such intermediate-sized black holes have been theorized as existing inside globular clusters, I think this is the first real evidence of one.

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Radar movie produced of 500-foot-wide asteroid

9:44 am

Movie of asteroid

Cool image time! Astronomers have created a movie of radar images of a 500-foot-wide asteroid, dubbed 2024 MK, as it flew past the Earth on June 30, 2024 only 184,000 miles away, using two different radar dishes that are part of NASA’s Deep Space Network normally used for communications with planetary missions.

That movie is to the right.

The Deep Space Network’s 230-foot (70-meter) Goldstone Solar System Radar, called Deep Space Station 14 (or DSS-14), was used to transmit radio frequency signals to the asteroid, and the 114-foot (34-meter) DSS-13 received the reflected signals. The result of this “bistatic” radar observation is a detailed image of the asteroid’s surface, revealing concavities, ridges, and boulders about 30 feet (10 meters) wide.

This is not the first time an asteroid has been observed in this manner using radar, but it illustrates how the technique is becoming increasingly sophisticated, capable of producing images of surprising resolution.

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Webb: An exoplanet in the habitable zone with a possible nitrogen/CO2 atmosphere and water ocean

8:51 am

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have obtained new transiting spectroscopy of a “mini-Neptune-sized” exoplanet that circles in the habitable zone a red dwarf star about 48 light years away and have concluded that it appears to have a nitrogen/carbon dioxide atmosphere and even a water ocean.

While it is still only a tentative result, the presence of a nitrogen-rich atmosphere on LHS 1140 b would suggest the planet has retained a substantial atmosphere, creating conditions that might support liquid water. This discovery favors the water-world/snowball scenario as the most plausible.

Current models indicate that if LHS 1140 b has an Earth-like atmosphere, it would be a snowball planet with a vast “bull’s-eye” ocean measuring about 4,000 kilometers in diameter, equivalent to half the surface area of the Atlantic Ocean. The surface temperature at the centre of this alien ocean could even be a comfortable 20 degrees Celsius [68 degrees Fahrenheit]. [emphasis mine]

You can read the preprint of the paper here [pdf].

The highlighted phrase must be noted. These results contain a lot of uncertainties and assumptions. However, the data is tantalizing, to say the least, and justify more observations using Webb. The scientists argue in their paper that because there are only about eight transits of the exoplanet per year — requiring several years of observations to pin down this data more precisely — and because Webb has a limited life expectancy as an infrared observatory, this star should get observational priority.

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A jumble of blocks in the middle of a Martian flood lava plain

11:25 am

A jumble of blocks on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

This is one of what I like to call “What the heck?” images. The broken up blocks resemble ice floes on the edge of the Arctic ice cap that have broken off and have begun floating away.

The problem with this theory is many fold. First, this is on Mars and not on Earth. Second the “sea” these blocks are supposedly “floating” in is actual solid lava. There is no water or ice here, on the surface or even underground. This is in the dry tropics of Mars, where little or no near-surface ice has so far been detected.

The overview map below provides some context, and possibly an explanation.
» Read more

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Webb: Hot Jupiter exoplanet has atmosphere with the smell of rotten eggs

9:20 am

Using spectroscopy from the infrared Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have measured some of the molecules in exoplanet HD 189733 b, one of the first hot Jupiter exoplanets ever discovered, and found it has an atmosphere rich in hydrogen sulfide, which emits a smell like rotten eggs.

In addition to detecting hydrogen sulfide, the team analyzed the planet’s oxygen and carbon content, pinpointing water, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as major components of the planetary atmosphere. Measuring these heavy elements allows astronomers to compare the composition of exoplanets to that of gas giants in our solar system like Jupiter and Uranus.

The exoplanet, about 64 light years away, has an orbit lasting only about two Earth days, with atmospheric temperatures has hot as 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit.

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Study: Mortality rates higher for those who got the COVID jab

12:50 pm

According to a new study [pdf] of death rates from all causes in a province in Italy, mortality was greater for those who got the jab versus those who did not.

From the paper’s conclusion:

We found all-cause death risks to be even higher for those vaccinated with one and two doses compared to the unvaccinated and that the booster doses were ineffective. We also found a slight but statistically significant loss of life expectancy for those vaccinated with 2 or 3/4 doses.

As noted in the second link above,

“The main point of the paper is that COVID-19 vaccination did not ‘save lives’ as so many in Washington have proclaimed without evidence,” commented epidemiologist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough on his Substack Courageous Discourse. “The trend was for multiple vaccine doses to increase COVID-19 mortality and there was an important signal for increased all-cause death with one or two doses.”

We should therefore not be surprised that several thousand doctors and scientists have signed a declaration called the Hope Accord, calling for all governments worldwide to ban COVID mRNA shots.
» Read more

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A drainage gully on Mars?

11:25 am

A drainage gully on Mars?
Click for original image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The picture above, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 18, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a gully that cuts down from the western rim of a 21-mile-wide unnamed crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars.

The small rectangle on the overview map to the right marks the location, with the inset providing a close-up of this crater, with the white bar indicating the area covered by the photo above. The overall elevation loss from the rim on the left down to the crater floor on the right is about 3,800 feet.

The first high resolution picture of this gully was taken in 2016, with subsequent pictures taken in 2021 and 2022. In comparing the newest picture above with the 2016 photo I can detect no changes, but I am not looking a the highest resolution available. In addition, both of these pictures were taken during the Martian spring. The 2021 and 2022 pictures were taken during the Martian summer, and in both the north-facing wall where the gully is beginning to narrow seemed brighter.

It is likely the researchers are looking to see if any frost — either ice or dry ice — appeared during the winter and then sublimated away in the summer. Such a change could cause some of the erosion that produced this gully.

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Centrifuge research on ISS suggests some artificial gravity can mitigate negative effects of weightlessness

1:30 pm

Two of the three centrifuges on ISS

When I appeared on the Space Show last month I stated something about centrifuge research that was wrong. I had been under the false impression that no such research had yet been done on ISS, and our only data came from one experiment performed by the Soviets on one of their early space stations decades ago.

Charles Lurio, who writes the very respected Lurio Report newsletter on space matters, called me afterward to correct me, and then followed up by sending me a link to a paper describing research on ISS in the past few years using rats inside three different small centrifuges (two of which are shown in the picture to the right). For this information I thank him.

You can download the paper here [pdf]. The research is significant because it suggests that the medical problems of weightlessness can be solved by creating an artificial gravity far less the Earth’s 1g environment. From the paper’s abstract:
» Read more

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Geology on Mars is not always what you think it is

12:49 pm

The Martian tropics versus the Martian south pole
For the original images go here and here.

Today’s cool image is actually a comparison of two different high resolution images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), both of which illustrate why it is very dangerous to come to any conclusions about such images without knowing a lot more about them.

The top image to the right, cropped to post here, was a terrain sample image taken on March 30, 2024. Such images are usually taken not to complete any particular research project, but are taken to fill a gap in the schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. When the camera team has to do this, they attempt to pick a spot that might have some geological interest. Sometimes they get something surprising. Often however the features in the picture are boring.

In this case they spotted a place where the ground appears appears to be eroding away in a random pattern.

The bottom image, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on March 24, 2024 and was part of planned research. It shows a section of the Martian south ice cap, specifically the area where scientists believe there is a residual permanent small cap of dry ice on top of a thick underlying water ice cap.

Like the top image, the features here suggest some sort of erosion process eating away randomly at the ground’s upper layers.

The two images illustrate the difficulty of interpreting orbital images. At first glance the geological features of both appear very similar. Yet the top image is located in the very dry equatorial regions of Mars, and in fact is inside the Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest field of volcanic ash on the red planet. The layers here are likely ash, and the erosion that carved out the hollows likely came from wind. If there ever was near-surface ice at this location, it was many eons ago.

The bottom image however likely shows the sublimation process that is slowly eating away at the residual dry ice cap at the south pole. The Martian north pole does not have residual permanent cap of frozen carbon dioxide, and the reasons why the two caps are different in this way are complex and not completely understood.

Both images show erosion that produces features that look similar. But the materials involved and the causes are completely different.

Remember this when you look at any orbital picture taken of Mars, or any other planetary object. Without the larger context (location, make-up, known history), any guess about the nature of the features there is nothing more than a wild guess, no different than throwing darts at a wall while wearing a blindfold.

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Webb takes false-color infrared image of bi-polar protostar nebula

10:02 am

Hourglass nebula as seen in infrared by Webb
Click for original image.

Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope have now produced a new false-color infrared image of the bi-polar hour-glass-shaped protostar nebula dubbed L1527.

That image is to the left, created from data from Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) and cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. While it is not quite a pretty as a prevous Webb infrared image taken in 2022 by its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), it provides new information about the make-up of materials within this nebula. From the caption:

The areas colored here in blue, which encompass most of the hourglass, show mostly carbonaceous molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense blanket of dust and a mixture of gases that surround it are represented in red. (The sparkler-like red extensions are an artifact of the telescopes’s optics). In between, MIRI reveals a white region directly above and below the protostar, which doesn’t show as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mixture of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and thick dust, which shows that the protostar propels this matter quite far away from it as it messily consumes material from its disk.

Previous to Webb, this object had mostly been studied in 2012 using radio and submillimeter wavelengths (see the papers here and here), but those papers determined this is possibly the youngest known protostar, less than 100,000 years old.

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Sixteen Nobel economists once again prove that our “expert” class is expert at nothing

1:57 pm

Our modern intellectual class
Our modern intellectual class

Earlier this week a group of sixteen Nobel laureate economists issued a public letter endorsing Joe Biden’s economic agenda and claiming that a return of Donald Trump to the White House would lead to economic ruin.

“We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy,” the economists write in the letter. “Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.”

You can read their letter here. It was signed by the following (the date of their Nobel award in parenthesis):

George A. Akerlof (2001), Sir Angus Deaton (2015), Claudia Goldin (2023), Sir Oliver Hart (2016), Eric S. Maskin (2007), Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Paul R. Milgrom (2020), Roger B. Myerson (2007), Edmund S. Phelps (2006), Paul M. Romer (2018), Alvin E. Roth (2012), William F. Sharpe (1990), Robert J. Shiller (2013), Christopher A. Sims (2011), Joseph Stiglitz (2001), and Robert B. Wilson (2020).

What is hilarious about their letter is how it exposes these so-called economic giants as partisan hacks. A dive into their campaign contributions finds that eleven are donors to Joe Biden or the Democrats, while the remaining five have all previously endorsed Biden publicly. Before the 2020 election two of these sixteen economists signed a similar letter, calling for Joe Biden’s election, claiming he would “…build an economy that works for all Americans.” In 2021 thirteen of these same economists then followed up with another letter, endorsing all of Biden’s spending proposals then before Congress (costing an expected $1.9 trillion).

A comparison between the claims in all three letters and what actually happened also reveals how little these economists know about economics. As noted at this City Journal article by James Piereson:
» Read more

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China: Chang’e-6 collected more than four pounds of material from Moon

9:11 am

According to China’s state-run press today, its Chang’e-6 sample return mission collected 1,953.2 grams, more than four pounds, from the Aitkin Basin on the far side of the Moon.

Based on preliminary measurement, the Chang’e-6 mission collected 1,935.3 grams of lunar samples, according to the CNSA. “We have found that the samples brought back by Chang’e-6 were more viscous compared to previous samples, with the presence of clumps. These are observable characteristics,” Ge Ping, deputy director of the CNSA’s Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, who is also the spokesperson for the Chang’e-6 mission, told the press at the ceremony.

Researchers will then carry out the storage and processing of the lunar samples as planned and initiate scientific research work.

If all goes as plans, they will be ready to begin distributing samples for study to Chinese researchers in about six months.

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Juno infrared data confirms existence of at least eleven lava lakes on Io

11:53 am

Cartoon describing Io's lava lakes
Click for original image.

Using infrared data from the Jupiter orbiter Juno, obtained during a close fly-by in May 2023 of the moon Io, scientists have identified what appear to be at least eleven active lava lakes, all filled with liquid magma under a surface crust and having a stable perimeter that apparently does not overflow the rim.

You can read the research paper here. The graphic to the right is figure 6 from the paper, describing two models for explaining why the lava in these lakes never rises high enough to pour out.

Unlike the April fly-by, which got as close as 10,777 miles and produced some amazing imagery, the May fly-by only got within 22,000 miles, but its course allowed Juno’s infrared instruments to collect good global data for six hours.

The JIRAM data reveal a common set of thermal characteristics for at least ten patera, with bright “thermal rings” around the perimeter of their floors. Loki, Surt, Fuchi, Amaterasu, Mulungu, Chors, and Dazhbog paterae, two unnamed paterae (here referred to as UP1 and UP2), and two other potential additional paterae (not discussed further because the spatial resolution is poor), all show the same pattern of surface temperatures.

That data suggested that each patera was a hot lava lake, with a stable rim in which little magma ever overflowed. As the scientists conclude in their paper, “Present findings highlight Io’s abundant lava reserves, resembling lava lakes on Earth in some ways, yet distinctly different from any other phenomena observed in the Solar System.” The scientists also note that no missions are being planned right now to get a better look at Io.

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Engineers revive instrument on Perseverance

10:41 am

Engineers in the Perseverance science team have successfully gotten a stuck cover moved so that it no longer blocked a camera and spectroscopic instrument mounted on the rover’s robot arm from gathering data.

The cover had gotten stuck partially closed in January 2024.

Analysis by the SHERLOC team pointed to the malfunction of a small motor responsible for moving the protective lens cover as well as adjusting focus for the spectrometer and the Autofocus and Context Imager (ACI) camera. By testing potential solutions on a duplicate SHERLOC instrument at JPL, the team began a long, meticulous evaluation process to see if, and how, the lens cover could be moved into the open position.

Among many other steps taken, the team tried heating the lens cover’s small motor, commanding the rover’s robotic arm to rotate the SHERLOC instrument under different orientations with supporting Mastcam-Z imagery, rocking the mechanism back and forth to loosen any debris potentially jamming the lens cover, and even engaging the rover’s percussive drill to try jostling it loose. On March 3, imagery returned from Perseverance showed that the ACI cover had opened more than 180 degrees, clearing the imager’s field of view and enabling the ACI to be placed near its target.

Because the cover could no longer be moved, focusing was no longer possible. They then had to use the robot arm to do a long sequence of careful focus tests to determine the best distance for sharp imagery, which was found to be about 1.58 inches.

As is usual for all Perseverance press releases from NASA, this one starts out with the lie that the purpose of this instrument is to “look for potential signs of ancient microbial life.” That is false. While finding such things would be possible with SHERLOC, its real purpose is to study close-up the geology of Mars. To claim its purpose is to look for microbial life is sheer blarney.

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Chang’e-6 sample return capsule opened in China

10:27 am

According to China’s state-run press, the return capsule carrying samples from the far side of the Moon was opened yesterday “during a ceremony at the China Academy of Space Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation in Beijing.”

No other details were released. The pictures at the link appear to show engineers removing an internal capsule from inside the return capsule, which makes sense. For many scientific reasons the actual samples must be kept sealed from the Earth’s atmosphere in order to make sure they are not contaminated. The actual lunar material will not be exposed and touched until it is placed inside a very controlled environment.

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An island of hundreds of scour pits in Mars’ largest volcanic ash field

2:05 pm

An island of scour pits
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the left, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 25, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what the science team labels a “scour pit island,” an area about 13 miles long and 3.5 miles wide where the ground is covered by these pits.

Your eye may play tricks on you, reversing the elevations. These are all pits, with most having a central peak or ridgeline. To help, note that the sunlight is coming from the west. The arrow on the center left of the picture sits on a plateau above these pits.

According to this paper [pdf], the pits are slowly dug out by the wind coming from the southeast blowing to the northwest, as indicated by the arrows. The central peaks or ridges are thought to be a hint of the original topography, with the wind only able to pull ash from the terrain around these peaks.
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More garbage science about wildfires and global warming from Nature

12:31 pm

Nature: the science journal that no longer does real science
The science journal which no longer
understands how real science is done

The once highly respected science journal Nature continues its descent into propaganda and bad science, all because it bows unskeptically before the altar of global warming and leftist science fantasies.

Today’s example is an article this week entitled “You’re not imagining it: extreme wildfires are now more common,” describing a new Nature paper that attempted to use satellite data to prove that the intensity of wildfires has increased in the past two decades.

For the current study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on 24 June, Cunningham and his colleagues scoured global satellite data for fire activity. They used infrared records to measure the energy intensity of nearly 31 million daily fire events over two decades, focusing on the most extreme ones — roughly 2,900 events. The researchers calculated that there was a 2.2-fold increase in the frequency of extreme events globally in 2003–23, and a 2.3-fold boost in the average intensity of the top 20 most intense fires each year.

We’re all gonna die! As is usual for these crap climate-related studies, the entire goal is to drum up some manufactured new crisis that justifies the claim that the climate is warming. This study is no different, as the article eagerly notes:

Although the study doesn’t directly connect the fire trend to global warming, Cunningham [the study’s lead author] says “there’s almost certainly a significant signal of climate change”. Research has shown that rising temperatures are drying out ecosystems — such as coniferous forests — that are naturally prone to fire. This provides fuel that can boost the fires’ size and longevity. The latest study also found that the energy intensity of the fires increased faster during the night-time over the past two decades than during the daytime, which aligns with evidence4 that rising night-time temperatures are contributing to fire risk.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times immediately jumped on the bandwagon with its own article that accepts the conclusions of this research with utter naivety.

What junk. First, Cunningham fails to note this minor fact mentioned in the abstract of his own paper:
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Scientists surprised by new Webb data of the upper layers of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

9:33 am

Jupiter's Great Red Spot, as seen in infrared
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Using the Webb Space Telescope, scientists have obtained infrared data of the upper layers of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, revealing that it is far more complicated that predicted by researchers.

The upper atmosphere of Jupiter is the interface between the planet’s magnetic field and the underlying atmosphere. Here, the bright and vibrant displays of northern and southern lights can be seen, which are fuelled by the volcanic material ejected from Jupiter’s moon Io. However, closer to the equator, the structure of the planet’s upper atmosphere is influenced by incoming sunlight. Because Jupiter receives only 4% of the sunlight that is received on Earth, astronomers predicted this region to be homogeneous in nature.

The Great Red Spot of Jupiter was observed by Webb’s Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (NIRSpec) in July 2022, using the instrument’s Integral Field Unit capabilities. The team’s Early Release Science observations sought to investigate if this region was in fact dull, and the region above the iconic Great Red Spot was targeted for Webb’s observations. The team was surprised to discover that the upper atmosphere hosts a variety of intricate structures, including dark arcs and bright spots, across the entire field of view.

You can read the published research paper here. The image to the right is figure 4 from that paper, with each panel showing different infrared wavelengths indicated by the different colors, and thus the complex structures and physical properties.

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Chang’e-6 brings back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side

9:10 am

Engineers inspecting and opening Chang'e-6 return capsule
Engineers inspecting and opening Chang’e-6’s
sample return capsule after landing today.
Click for original image.

According to China’s state-run press, the sample return capsule of its Chang’e-6 lunar mission successfully landed today in the inner Mongolia region of China, bringing back the first lunar samples from Moon’s far side.

Under ground control, the returner separated from the orbiter approximately 5,000 km above the South Atlantic. The capsule entered the Earth’s atmosphere at about 1:41 p.m. at an altitude of about 120 km and a speed of nearly 11.2 km per second. After aerodynamic deceleration, it skipped out of the atmosphere and then began to glide downwards, before re-entering the atmosphere and decelerating for a second time.
At around 10 km above the ground, a parachute opened, and the returner later landed precisely and smoothly in the predetermined area, where it was recovered by a search team.

The returner is set to be airlifted to Beijing for opening, and the lunar samples will be transferred to a team of scientists for subsequent storage, analysis and study, said the CNSA. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is important. China has now successfully flown this atmospheric skip maneuver twice on returning from the Moon. Though both missions were unmanned, the technical knowledge gained from these flights is critical for their plans to send astronauts to the Moon in the next few years.

I have embedded China’s broadcast of the landing below. The sample capsule will now be carefully opened and the samples distributed first to Chinese scientists and later to China’s various partners in its lunar base project. The samples themselves came from a small mare region on the edge of Apollo Crater inside South Aitken Basin, one of the largest impact basins on the Moon. It is thus hoped that the samples were excavated from deep within the Moon during the impact, and will provide new data on the Moon’s make-up and history.
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Are Chang’e-6’s lunar samples on the way back to Earth?

9:30 am

In Friday’s June 21, 2024 quick links, changes to lunar orbit of China’s Chang’e-6 sample return spacecraft were detected by ham operators. As I noted, “It isn’t clear whether this was the previous orbit adjustment, a new one, or the burn that would send the sample return capsule back to Earth.”

According to Space News today, the spacecraft with the samples is on its way back to Earth, based on additional information detected by amateurs. China however has released no information on the status of the spacecraft.

Upon return to Earth, the reentry capsule is expected to touch down at Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia during an half-an-hour long window opening at 1:41 a.m. Eastern (0541 UTC) June 25. The information is according to airspace closure notices. CNSA has not openly published timings of mission events in advance.

Earlier reports (which I can’t find now) had said the return was tentatively scheduled for June 25, 2024, so this Space News report makes sense. The lack of information from China is par for the course.

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China launches gamma-ray space telescope

9:50 am

China today successfully launched the Space-based Multi-band Variable Object Monitor (SVOM) gamma-ray space telescope, a 20-year-long joint Chinese-French project to monitor astronomical gamma ray bursts.

SVOM was placed in orbit by a Long March 2C rocket lifting off from China’s Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages — which use very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China. UPDATE: See this video from China. Apparently one stage landed close to homes, spewing that orange hypergolic fuel.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

64 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 75 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 64 to 53.

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