Tag: science

Asteroid 2012 DA14 might experience seismic activity when it zips pass the Earth tomorrow.

2:57 pm

Asteroid 2012 DA14 might experience seismic activity, an asteroid quake, when it zips pass the Earth tomorrow.

[MIT scientist Richard] Binzel imagines what an astronaut floating alongside such an asteroid might see: “The surface could slowly sway or rock by a few centimeters. Other things to look for would be puffs of asteroid-dust rising from the surface and gentle avalanches on the steepest slopes of craters.” In rare cases, “rubble pile” asteroids might break apart during the encounter and then re-form as Earth recedes into the distance.

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William Shatner proposes naming Pluto’s two unnamed moons Romulus and Vulcan.

2:52 pm

William Shatner proposes naming Pluto’s two unnamed moons Romulus and Vulcan.

Astronomers running the Pluto moon naming campaign accepted Vulcan, adding it to the list a day after Shatner suggested it, but Romulus didn’t make the cut. “Mr. Shatner’s second suggestion, Romulus, has a bit of a problem because it is already the name of a moon,” Mark Showalter, an astronomer involved with the competition, wrote in a blog on the Pluto Rocks website on Tuesday. “Romulus, along with his brother Remus, are the names of the moons of the asteroid 87 Silvia. They were discovered by a team led by my good colleague Franck Marchis, now a senior scientist at the SETI Institute.”

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A 150 foot wide asteroid will buzz the Earth tomorrow at a distance of only 17,000 miles.

10:08 am

Chicken Little report: A 150 foot wide asteroid will buzz the Earth tomorrow at a distance of only 17,000 miles.

There have been numerous news articles about this fly-by for the last two weeks, all hyping the dangers of an impact that in this case simply won’t happen. A threat of an impact from an asteroid is real and should be dealt with, but the reporting here has at times been somewhat silly. Asteroid 2012 DA14 is not going to hit us as it goes by. All that will happen is that scientists will have take advantage of this opportunity to look at it.

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The founder of the green movement sees the light.

8:57 am

The founder of the green movement sees the light.

I am an environmentalist and founder member of the Greens but I bow my head in shame at the thought that our original good intentions should have been so misunderstood. We never intended a fundamentalist Green movement that rejected all energy sources other than renewable, nor did we expect the Greens to cast aside our priceless ecological heritage because of their failure to understand that the needs of the Earth are not separable from human needs. … Although well-intentioned it is an erosion of our freedom and draws near to what I see as fascism.

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The weak solar maximum continues

3:30 pm

On February 4, NOAA released its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle, covering the period of January 2013. As I do every month, I have posted the latest graph, with annotation, below the fold.

Not surprisingly, the sunspot numbers in January showed a recovery and rise from the steep plunge in December. What is surprising, however, is that the rise is not very much, barely bringing the sunspot number for the month back to the weak numbers we’ve seen for most of 2012.
» Read more

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Kepler is back in operation after a ten day rest to safe the mission.

9:26 pm

Kepler is back in operation after a ten day rest to save the mission.

When Kepler launched in March 2009, it had four reaction wheels — three for immediate use, and one spare. But one wheel (known as number two) failed in July 2012, so a major problem with the currently glitchy wheel (called number four) could spell the end of the $600 million Kepler mission. It’s unknown at the moment if the 10-day rest period will bring wheel number four back into line. “Over the next month, the engineering team will review the performance of reaction wheel #4 before, during and after the safe mode to determine the efficacy of the rest operation,” Hunter wrote.

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Norwegian scientists admit that the climate has shown no warming since 2000.

10:28 am

Norwegian scientists admit that the climate has shown no warming since 2000.

They then spend a lot of time trying to explain this — and failing — in the context of the theory of global warming. The bottom line remains, however. All the predictions and models of the global warming advocates have been shown to be wrong. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise, without causing any increase in global climate temperature.

Or to put it plainly: We don’t know what’s going on.

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The seasons change on Mars.

3:14 pm

The seasons change on Mars.

With three years of data in hand the researchers report on the sequence and variety of changes that take place over the spring, including outbursts of gas carrying sand, polygonal cracking of the ice on the dunes, sandfalls down the slipface of the dunes, and dark fans of sand propelled out onto the ice. Gas escaping from under the seasonal layer of dry ice erodes channels in the dunes, reminiscent of the erosion that carves more permanent “spider” channels in the southern hemisphere polar region.

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Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.

11:15 am

Bad news: Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.

The importation of the virus into Egypt is another setback for the global program, which has finally been making significant progress in the past 2 years, with polio cornered in just three endemic countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. (India has now gone 2 years without a single case of polio.) Of the three, Pakistan was doing especially well in knocking out the virus, but the program there has recently been disrupted by the targeted assassination of nine polio workers in December and early January. Those killings, widely condemned, have stoked fears the virus will regain strength in Pakistan and then reinfect polio-free countries. “This is proof positive of long-distance importation from Pakistan, and there may be more,” Aylward says.

But don’t worry: the Muslim Brotherhood have us covered! “Experts are worried, Bari says, because Egypt has scaled back its national polio vaccinations campaigns from twice to once a year during the turmoil of the revolution.” [emphasis mine]

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A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.

11:12 am

A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.

Once the beacon had sounded, a U.S. LC-130 aircraft was sent to the crash site, but it was unable to establish radio contact with the Twin Otter, while a thick layer of low-lying clouds prevented those onboard from seeing the plane. Later, a DC-3 aircraft spent hours circling above the crash site, but it also came away empty-handed.

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NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

9:17 am

The check is in the mail: NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

And why should Europe have any expectation that NASA will follow through? Europe’s ExoMars project was screwed badly when NASA pulled out last year. Nor was that the first time the U.S. government reneged on a deal with Europe.

Considering the fragile nature of the U.S. federal budget, I wouldn’t depend on anything from NASA or any U.S. government agency for the foreseeable future. And this includes the various private space companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences that are using NASA subsidies to build their spaceships. Get those things built, and quickly! The government money could disappear very soon.

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A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.

8:43 am

Crash! Boom! A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.

If the bar [of gas] is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the [star’s] outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12 500 years later.

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The judge who sentenced seven earthquake scientists/officials in Italy to prison has released a detailed explanation for his verdict.

2:45 pm

The judge who sentenced seven earthquake scientists/officials in Italy to prison has released a detailed explanation for his verdict.

The judge’s perspective is worth reading. It is not as foolish as some wish to make it appear. For one thing, he makes it very clear that

the trial was not against science but against seven individuals who failed to carry out their duty as laid down by the law. The scientists were not convicted for failing to predict an earthquake, something [Judge Marco] Billi says was impossible to do, but for their complete failure to properly analyse, and to explain, the threat posed by the swarm.

At the same time, I still think it very bad for the law and government to interfere in this kind of situation. For example, I think the actions of the climategate scientists were as improper (though they did not lead to anyone’s direct death). Yet, the last thing I want is for the government to prosecute them. Rather, I want the scientific community to condemn them instead, so that their careers as scientists suffer. Imprisonment is an over-reaction, and instead serves merely squelch open debate and honest scientific work, something I expect to happen now in Italy.

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Data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter now suggests that a lake in a Martian crater had filled from groundwater coming up from below.

9:43 am

Data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter now suggests that a lake in a Martian crater had filled from groundwater coming up from below.

This is an important discovery, as it demonstrates that an underground water table had existed on Mars, at least at this location. With such a water table, it is possible for all kinds of interesting biological things to have taken place, underground.

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Kepler shut down for ten days to save the mission.

9:27 am

Uh-oh: Kepler has been shut down for ten days to save the mission.

The spacecraft was launched with four so-called reaction wheels that spin to help keep the telescope pointing at its target fields of stars. One of these, reaction wheel No 2, failed in July 2012, leaving three to do the maneuvers, including a quarterly roll to a new orientation. Now reaction wheel No 4 has shown early indications that it might fail, prompting its NASA controllers to attempt some long-distance maintenance. They hope that by resting the wheels, their lubricant will spread to ease increased friction.

If this wheel fails permanently, the Kepler mission would be over, as it would be impossible to orient the spacecraft with enough precision with only two wheels.

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