Tag: science

Strange eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars

12:20 pm

Eroded glacial flows in unnamed crater on Mars
Click for full resolution image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a series of strange glacial-like flows coming off the western slopes of the central peak of a 40-mile-wide unnamed crater, located smack dab in what I call Mars’ glacier country, that 2,000 long mid-latitude strip where almost every image shows evidence of glaciers.

The cropped section to the right doesn’t really do these strange flows justice. Make sure you click on the image to see the full resolution version. There are numerous separate flows coming off that central peak. Each appears to show that as time passed, each flow traveled a shorter distance down the mountain, leaving a moraine behind at higher and higher points.

The overview map below provides the context.
» Read more

0 comments

Hubble resumes full science operations

2:35 pm

Engineers have now successfully reactivated the Hubble Space Telescope’s second spectrograph, so that the telescope is now fully operational for the first time since it went into safe mode on October 25th.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph on Monday, Dec. 6, and is now operating with all four active instruments collecting science. The team has still not detected any further synchronization message issues since monitoring began Nov. 1.

The team will continue work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations even if they encounter several lost synchronization messages in the future. The first of these changes is scheduled to be installed on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph in mid-December. The other instruments will receive similar updates in the coming months.

Essentially, they are modifying the telescope’s software so that it will not shut down should it “encounter several lost synchronization messages.” As the engineers have never fully explained this issue, I suspect this is a work-around to ignore an issue that in the past they would have taken more seriously. Now they are doing a cost-benefit analysis, and have decided that ignoring some of these messages is better than fixing them. It might even be impossible to do so.

1 comment

Astronomers discover galaxy with no dark matter

3:46 pm

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have detected a galaxy about 250 million light years away that shows no evidence of any dark matter, a phenomenon that defies the accepted theories about dark matter.

The galaxy in question, AGC 114905, is about 250 million light-years away. It is classified as an ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy, with the name ‘dwarf galaxy’ referring to its luminosity and not to its size. The galaxy is about the size of our own Milky Way but contains a thousand times fewer stars. The prevailing idea is that all galaxies, and certainly ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxies, can only exist if they are held together by dark matter.
Galaxy AGC 114905

The researchers collected data on the rotation of gas in AGC 114905 for 40 hours between July and October 2020 using the VLA telescope. Subsequently, they made a graph showing the distance of the gas from the center of the galaxy on the x-axis and the rotation speed of the gas on the y-axis. This is a standard way to reveal the presence of dark matter. The graph shows that the motions of the gas in AGC 114905 can be completely explained by just normal matter.

“This is, of course, what we thought and hoped for because it confirms our previous measurements,” says Pavel Mancera Piña. “But now the problem remains that the theory predicts that there must be dark matter in AGC 114905, but our observations say there isn’t. In fact, the difference between theory and observation is only getting bigger.”

The evidence for dark matter in almost all galaxies is the motion of gas and stars in the outer perimeter. Routinely they move faster than expected based merely on visible ordinary matter. To account for the faster speed, astronomers beginning in the late 1950s invented dark matter, an invisible material with a mass sufficient to increase the speeds of objects and gas in the outer regions of galaxies.

That increasingly astronomers are finding galaxies with no evidence of dark matter, based on rotation speeds, only makes this mystery all the more baffling.

19 comments

Stop being afraid!

11:30 am

After almost two years the data continues to confirm the very first data in March 2020, showing the same thing time after time after time after time. COVID-19 is merely a variation of the ordinary flu, and the panic that has accompanied its arrival in early 2020 was never justified, not for one instant. Let me do a quick review of some recent data points:

First, the Wuhan flu is harmless to more than 99% of the population. If you are under 70 and healthy and get the virus, you are going to survive it. Period. And I say this from personal experience, as I am 68, have both asthma and a heart condition, and I just survived COVID. It wasn’t pleasant, but after two weeks it is over, and here I am.

More important, the numbers and data prove my anecdotal experience, as I noted in a detailed essay in October 26, 2021 — How deadly is COVID-19, really? — using numbers from the CDC as well as the New York Times. More than 99% of the population survives COVID-19, with no serious long term issues.

CDC estimates as of October 2021

Since then the CDC has updated its estimates of the number of people who have been infected by the Wuhan flu, compared to the numbers who have died, as shown in the screen capture to the right. Based on these numbers, 146 million have been infected by COVID (a little less than half the country) and 921,000 have died, resulting in an overall survival rate for anyone who gets COVID-19 as a robust 99.37%.

And that number is deceiving, because the large bulk — almost all — of those in that 0.63% who died were elderly (average age 78) and very sick (with one to three morbidities). A very few were younger, but were generally in very poor healthy (obese or with diabetes).

If you were part of the general healthy population, COVID-19 was harmless to you. In fact, half the country already knows this, as they have been infected and are alive to tell about it. Most had minor symptoms, though many (like myself) got sick for several weeks and then recovered. All however survived, just like the flu.

COVID-19 simply does not merit any special actions, other than to protect that elderly and very vulnerable population. Ordinary people must stop being afraid of it. Take off the masks. Rip down the plexiglass. Hug your friends. Return to normal life.

And most important, stop being afraid!
» Read more

38 comments

Another obvious hoax paper published by peer-review journal

11:13 am

Alan Sokal strikes again! Using fake names whose initials spell out SOKAL III, several anonymous scientists were successful in getting the peer-review journal Higher Education Quarterly to publish a completely fake paper, with numerous errors on every page, no data, absurd math, and whose authors gave themselves fake credentials.

Peer reviewers failed to perform basic due diligence on the paper submitted in April and approved in October, neglecting, for example, to verify that authors “Sage Owens” and “Kal Alvers-Lynde III” were UCLA professors as they claimed. Owens even used an encrypted email service for correspondence with the journal.

They didn’t check whether the conservative foundations named as active funders of higher education actually existed. The “Randy Eller Foundation” is made up, while the Olin Foundation shut down in 2005.

The author who goes by Owens told The Chronicle of Higher Education that the journal didn’t even ask to see their data: “Every page has some glaring errors.”

The paper was quickly retracted by the journal, but appears so fake that the entire editorial board of this journal should resign.

Alan Sokal by the way did this exact same thing in 1996, proving that most social and gender study journals were utter bunk. Not that his hoax accomplished much, as these brainless departments marched on until they have permeated all of academia with their nonsense, with Critical Race Theory now leading the way.

Read the whole article. Based on some comments by Owens, it is very possible that these hoaxers have gotten a slew of similar papers published, and are only waiting to pull the string.

37 comments

Sunspot update: Sun continues to be more active than predicted

12:45 pm

Time for our monthly sunspot update, using NOAA’s most recent monthly graph of sunspot activity. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context. It covers all activity through the month of November.

The pattern for the past two years since the end of the solar minimum continues, with sunspot activity consistently exceeding the prediction of NOAA’s panel of solar scientists, as indicated by the red curve. The activity in November dropped very slightly from October, but remained more active than the prediction.

» Read more

14 comments

Weird storms on Jupiter

9:03 am

Storms on Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken during Juno’s 38th close fly-by of Jupiter. It was enhanced and released yesterday by citizen scientist Kevin Gill to bring out the storm details, both of the large white storm at the bottom of the photo and the oblong eddy in the center.

Note the white puffy clouds sticking up from both larger cyclones. These tiny thunderheads are probably about the size of a very large Earth storm, but I am guessing. I don’t know the scale, but I suspect the Earth would fit within this image.

The oblong storm is actually an eddy that is swirling around the white and more stable storm below it.

4 comments

Ingenuity’s images from 16th flight on November 21st

11:18 am

Ingenuity color image from 16th flight
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was the first color image taken by Ingenuity during its 16th flight on Mars on November 21st. The picture was taken about fifteen seconds after take-off, and I think looks west toward the rim of Jezero Crater in the distance.

The flight itself was relatively short, essentially a quick hop about 380 feet to the north to land at the edge of the rough area dubbed Seitah. The team is going to slowly take the helicopter back to its initial landing field, Wright field, over several hops. This was the first.

If you want to peruse all 113 images from the flight, go here and set the sol range from 268 (November 20) to 274 (November 26). That will show all 113 images taken during the November 21st flight.

3 comments

Mars Express successfully relays data from Zhurong to Earth

10:21 am

The European Space Agency’s Mars Express orbiter has successfully been used to relay data from China’s Zhurong Mars rover to Earth and then to China.

In November, ESA’s Mars Express and CNSA’s Zhurong teams carried out a series of experimental communication tests in which Mars Express used this ‘in the blind’ mode to listen for signals sent to it by the Zhurong Rover.

The experiments culminated in a successful test on 20 November. “Mars Express successfully received the signals sent by the rover, and our colleagues in the Zhurong team confirmed that all the data arrived on Earth in very good quality.” says ESA’s Gerhard Billig.

Apparently, normal communications would first involve “handshake” communications between the two, but that requires communications frequencies Zhurong does not use. Mars Express instead had to grab the data on the blind. The test was a success, which means the ESA will likely act as another communications relay for Zhurong, in addition to China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter, as the rover’s mission on Mars continues.

0 comments

Sculptured lava south of Olympus Mons?

10:51 am

Sculptured lava?
Click for full image.

Time for a cool image! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 8, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a region of strangely sculptured terrain located several hundred miles south of Olympus Mons.

It appears the prevailing winds are to the west. The question is whether the wind is shaping a hard lava surface, over eons, or is shaping instead layers of dust or volcanic ash quickly and seasonally. At this location either is possible. In fact, we might even be seeing evidence of both at the same time.

The overview map below shows that the location is just outside the Medusae Fossae Formation, the largest volcanic ash deposit on Mars.
» Read more

6 comments

Data: Vaccines don’t stop COVID, but COVID is not that dangerous

1:03 pm

UK COVID numbers in late October 2021

The graph to the right was created from the data produced by the United Kingdom Health Agency covering the period from October 25, 2021 to November 21, 2021. It shows the percentages of the vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals who became infected with COVID, were hospitalized by it, and even died from it.

As you can clearly see, it apparently makes no difference anymore whether you received no shots, one shot, two shots, or three shots. Your chances of getting infected with COVID is just as likely if you are vaccinated than if you are not. The shots don’t protect you.

The graph is part of a long article detailing how in the UK, COVID appears to no longer be a virus of the unvacccinated, but in fact is now a virus of the vaccinated. Apparently, you stand a higher chance of getting sick from COVID if you have been vaccinated than if you have not.

The story however distorts the truth badly, since it exaggerates the danger. This graph was produced based on these numbers:

The report reveals that there were 833,332 recorded Covid-19 cases, 9,094 Covid-19 hospitalisations and 3,700 Covid-19 deaths from October 25th to November 21st.

When we run the actual number of deaths against the number of people infected with COVID, whether vaccinated or not, we find that 99.5% easily survive the illness. This confirms previous numbers I have cited covering the entire United States. COVID, like the flu, is relatively harmless to almost the entire population. Only the elderly, the sick, and the chronically ill are threatened seriously by it.

So, what take-away should we take from this information?

1. All vaccine mandates are irrational. They do nothing to reduce the risk of COVID. To impose such rules based on this data suggests that the Biden administration is completely divorced from reality in its policy making.

2. The virus itself is not a serious threat and never was. 99.5% of everyone survives it. Since we now know that the lockdowns, the mask mandates, the vaccines, the installation of plexiglass everywhere, and the social distancing rules did nothing to limit its spread, we should stop all these crazy irrational policies now. Return to normal life, and let the virus finally spread through the population in a way that will allow natural immunity to build up. Only then can we finally choke this thing off for good.

I think the public is finally ready. I think that most everyone is sick and tired of stupid rules and irrational policies and will resist strongly any attempts at new rules. You might see them imposed in fascists states like California and New York, but in general the country, even the world, is ready to tell power-hungry politicians to go jump in a lake.

31 comments

Engineers recover a third Hubble instrument

2:39 pm

Engineers have now reactivated a third instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope, bringing the telescope very close to full operations again with only one instrument, a spectrograph, still in safe mode.

The Hubble Space Telescope team recovered the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph instrument on Sunday, Nov. 28, moving the telescope further toward full science operations. Three of Hubble’s four active instruments are now collecting science data once again.

The team also continued work on developing and testing changes to instrument software that would allow them to conduct science operations even if they encounter several lost synchronization messages in the future. Those changes would first be installed on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph once they’re completed and tested within a few weeks. Hubble’s other instruments would also receive similar changes. The team has not detected further synchronization message issues since monitoring began Nov. 1.

0 comments
1 … 205 206 207 208 209 … 729