The latest monthly update the ongoing sunspot cycle of the Sun has been published today by NOAA. Once again, the trend suggests that the Sun’s ability to produce sunspots is fading, and fading fast.
I have posted this latest graph, covering the month of October, below the fold, with additional analysis.
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Curiosity has found evidence showing how Mars lost its atmosphere.
Meteorite hunters in Poland have found Eastern Europe’s larges meteorite, weighing almost 700 pounds.
More evidence of past glaciers on Mars.
The twenty most bizarre scientific experiments of all time.
Though bizarre, some of these experiments produced profound results. See especially numbers 2, 7, 13, 18, and 19.
The B612 foundation has signed its first contract for building Sentinel, its private infrared space telescope designed to find asteroids that might impact the Earth.
Weirdness at the edge of the solar system.
Chicken Little report: A house-sized asteroid will zip past the Earth in February at a distance less than 14,000 miles.
The asteroid, referred to as 2012 DA14, has a diameter of approximately 45m and an estimated mass of 130,000 tonnes. It was discovered at the start of 2012 and is set to travel between the Earth and our geostationary communication satellites on 15 February 2013. At a distance of just 22,500km this will be the closest asteroid ‘fly by’ in recorded history. Asteroid and comet researchers will be gathering at the University of Central Florida (UCF) in Orlando, U.S., to watch the event, but experts say there is no chance of a collision – this time.
The claim that this is the closest “fly by” in recorded history sounds bogus to me, but because of the size of this asteroid the fly-by will nonetheless be quite interesting. Scientists should be able to get a very good look at 2012 DA14 as it goes by.
The marshes of Mexico and their similarities to Gale Crater.
Sugru: the story of the invention of this ultimate repair tool.
The uncertainty of science: Meteorite experts now think the rock that hit a pastor’s house could be a piece from last week’s San Francisco fireball.
At first they said, “Yes it was from space,” then they said “No it is not from space.” Now they think yes.
The uncertainty of science: A new study suggests that the exoplanet orbiting the star Formalhaut that was supposedly imaged and then later theorized to be nothing more than a dust cloud might be a planet after all.
The after effects of the giant storm on Saturn.
Singing sand dunes. With video.
False alarm: The rock found on Sunday is not part of the meteor that fell over San Francisco last week.
The comet that vanished.
When you try to sell government policy based on crisis, and that crisis doesn’t take place as predicted, and in fact is shown to be based on fraud and dishonesty, the sales job will eventually fail. Thus, better to forget the whole thing and make believe it never happened.
The first mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope has been completed.
This is the first of seven. It is also the largest single mirror ever polished, at 8.4 meters, or 27.5 feet across. When completed the GMT’s segmented mirror will be 25 meters across, or more than 82 feet.
Using modern technology scientists think they have a chance of decoding the oldest known undeciphered writing.
In a room high up in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, above the Egyptian mummies and fragments of early civilisations, a big black dome is clicking away and flashing out light. This device, part sci-fi, part-DIY, is providing the most detailed and high quality images ever taken of these elusive symbols cut into clay tablets. This is Indiana Jones with software. It’s being used to help decode a writing system called proto-Elamite, used between around 3200BC and 2900BC in a region now in the south west of modern Iran.
The first piece of a meteor that fell over San Francisco on Wednesday has been found.
The 2.2-ounce meteorite hit the roof of Rev. Kent and Lisa Webber on St. Francis Avenue on Thursday night, but they didn’t realize at the time what it was, according to Novato Patch.
An evening pause: In honor of Martin Gardner’s birthday today. To find out the connection, make sure you also watch part 2.
The first analysis of the water from Lake Vostok, buried deep under the Antarctic icecap, has shown no evidence of life.
Bulat and his colleagues counted the microbes present in the ice sample and checked their genetic makeup to figure out the phylotypes. They counted fewer than 10 microbes/ml — about the same magnitude they would expect to find in the background in their clean room. And three of the four phylotypes they identified matched contaminants from the drilling oil, with the fourth unknown but also most likely from the lubricant.
The scientists note that this is a preliminary result. Further drilling for new deeper samples will take place in 2013.
The mysterious shiny particles uncovered by Curiosity’s scoop are from Mars, not the rover.
After last week’s plastic encounter, Curiosity’s science team worried the new particles might be man-made. Since they turned up in scoop holes, however, the granules must have been buried in the subsurface. They likely came from larger minerals that broke down. They might also represent the product of some geological soil process that generates a bright but unknown mineral.
These are not the same mysterious objects first seen when the rover began science operations. Those particles were on the surface, and looked like bits of plastic that might have come off the rover or its descent stage.
The science team for New Horizons is considering shifting the spacecraft’s Pluto flyby away from the planet to avoid orbital debris.
“We’ve found more and more moons orbiting near Pluto — the count is now up to five,” Stern said. “And we’ve come to appreciate that those moons, as well as others not yet discovered, act as debris generators populating the Pluto system with shards from collisions between those moons and small Kuiper Belt objects.”
Astronomers now have the technology to observe Io’s volcanoes erupt, from Earth.
More exoplanet news: The problems of Kepler.
The article outlines the status — both good and bad — of Kepler in its hunt for Earthlike exoplanets.
I have already reported on Kepler’s failed reaction wheel. It no longer has a backup and needs every reaction wheel it has to keep it pointed in so precise a manner. Thus, the loss of one more wheel will shut the telescope down.
However, I had not been aware that the scientists now need more than twice as much time, eight years instead of three, to do their work, because they have discovered that sunlike stars are far more variable than expected. To quote the article,
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