Tag: science

The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit so much like the Earth’s that astronomer’s expect it back next year.

7:42 pm

Duck! The orbit of a 150 foot wide asteroid that zipped past the Earth in February, has an orbit that will bring it past the Earth again on February 15, 2013 by less than 15,000 miles.

The team use several automated telescopes to scan the sky, and the discovery came somewhat serendipitously after they decided to search areas of the sky where asteroids are not usually seen. “A preliminary orbit calculation shows that 2012 DA14 has a very Earth-like orbit with a period of 366.24 days, just one more day than our terrestrial year, and it ‘jumps’ inside and outside of the path of Earth two times per year,” says Jaime.

While an impact with Earth has been ruled out on the asteroid’s next visit, astronomers will use that close approach for more studies and calculate the Earth and Moon’s gravitational effects on it.

Because this newly discovered asteroid passes so close and frequently to both the Earth and Moon, astronomers will need a lot more data before they can pin down its orbit precisely, and thus predict the chances of a collision in the near future.

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Have researchers found Leonardo da Vinci’s lost “The Battle of Anghiari” fresco, hidden for the past six centuries behind a wall?

2:15 pm

Have researchers found Leonardo da Vinca’s lost “The Battle of Anghiari” fresco, hidden for the past six centuries behind a wall?

The painting, considered a masterpiece by contemporaries, had never been finished by da Vinci because he had used an experimental technique to paint it, and that technique had failed. Thus, the painting was painted over fifty years later. The only reason we have a good idea of what the painting looked like is that several artists were so impressed by it that they produced copies while it was still visible.

The research suggests the painting was not painted over, but that a false wall was built in front of it. If so, this would be truly exciting discovery. The painting would probably not be in very good shape, but to actually see it would be wonderful.

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Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

8:38 am

Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

There had been hints of this discovery in an earlier report, but today’s paper is the first published science on the subject.

The results are not only important for finding out the medical challenges of weightlessness. They illustrate once again the need to do long extended flights on ISS. Without that research we are never going to be able to fly humans to other planets.

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The blistering hot exoplanet where it snows

4:13 pm

The blistering hot exoplanet where it snows.

These results have led to a suggestion that [HD 189733b] could continually experience silicate snow. In the lower atmosphere of [the exoplanet], magnesium silicate sublimates, that is, it passes directly from a solid into a gas. But we know there are small silicate particulates in the upper atmosphere. Formation of these particulates requires that the temperature be lowered, and so must have been formed at a temperature inversion in the atmosphere. The generally windy conditions would help some of the tiny particulates grow into respectable snow crystals.

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Lord Monckton tries to educate a college professor and his students.

8:59 am

Lord Monckton tries to educate a college professor and his students about the science of climate change.

This is why:

“We shall lose the West unless we can restore the use of reason to pre-eminence in our institutions of what was once learning. It was the age of reason that built the West and made it prosperous and free. The age of reason gave you your great Constitution of liberty. It is the power of reason, the second of the three great powers of the soul in Christian theology, that marks our species out from the rest of the visible creation, and makes us closest to the image and likeness of our Creator. I cannot stand by and let the forces of darkness drive us unprotesting into a new Dark Age.”

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An up and down Sun

11:52 pm

close-up

Late last week NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center released its monthly update of the ongoing solar cycle sunspot activity, covering February 2012. Though I am slightly late in posting it, as I do every month, you can now see the full graph below the fold. I have also created a close-up of the graph’s relevant area, shown on the left, because it is hard to decipher what is happening on the full graph.

Since the Sun began it ramp up to solar maximum back in 2009, the pattern has been consistent, two steps forward, one step back. First there are several months in a row in which the number of sunspots show a steep rise, followed immediately by several months in which the sunspot numbers decline just as steeply, though by not as much. All told, since 2009 we have seen this pattern repeat four times.

February’s numbers have continued that pattern.
» Read more

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smaller planets are preferentially found in low-eccentricity orbits.

9:24 am

More Kepler results: From the abstract of a preprint paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph website:

The mean eccentricity of the Kepler candidates decreases with decreasing planet size indicating that smaller planets are preferentially found in low-eccentricity orbits.

In other words, the smaller a planet is, the more likely its orbit will be circular like the Earth’s. This result is encouraging news for the search for life on other worlds. Before Kepler, astronomers had found that the orbits of most exoplanets were far more eccentric than the orbits of the planets in our solar system, a condition that scientists thought was unfriendly for the development of life. These new results counter that conclusion. The orbits of the planets in our solar system might not be as unusual as first thought.

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When a solar storm slammed into both the Earth and Mars in January 2008, scientists were able to directly measure the importance of the Earth’s magnetic field in protecting our atmosphere from oxygen loss.

9:22 am

When a solar storm slammed into both the Earth and Mars in January 2008, scientists were able to directly measure the importance of the Earth’s magnetic field in protecting our atmosphere from oxygen loss.

They found that while the pressure of the solar wind increased at each planet by similar amounts, the increase in the rate of loss of martian oxygen was ten times that of Earth’s increase. Such a difference would have a dramatic impact over billions of years, leading to large losses of the martian atmosphere, perhaps explaining or at least contributing to its current tenuous state. The result proves the efficacy of Earth’s magnetic field in deflecting the solar wind and protecting our atmosphere.

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Chinese physicists have discovered a key measurement that helps explain why and how can neutrinos magically oscillate between three different states.

9:12 am

Chinese physicists have discovered a key measurement that helps explain why and how neutrinos can magically oscillate between three different states. Moreover, the data

implies that there could be a slight asymmetry between neutrinos and antineutrinos—called CP violation—a slight asymmetry that might help explain why the universe evolved to contain so much matter and so little antimatter.

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Comparing all the global warming climate models for the past twenty years with the actual data.

9:15 pm

A scientist compares all the global warming climate models developed during the past twenty years with the actual data:

We’ve checked all the main predictions of the climate models against the best data. The climate models get them all wrong. … Therefore:

  • The climate models are fundamentally flawed. Their assumed threefold amplification by feedbacks does not in fact exist.
  • The climate models overestimate temperature rises due to CO2 by at least a factor of three.

Read the whole article. Not only does Evans outline the failures of all the climate models, he also clearly and distinctly describes the actual debate that has been going on in the climate field for the past three decades. It isn’t the effects of carbon dioxide that climate scientists have been arguing about, but, as Richard Lindzen explained to the UK Parliament last week, whether other climate factors, called feedbacks, will amplify or suppress the warming produced by CO2.

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Dissecting the bad arguments on both sides of the climate debate.

1:33 pm

Dissecting the bad arguments on both sides of the climate debate.

What I find intriguing about Singer’s analysis is that the bad arguments from the global warming camp seem to come from noted scientists writing for the IPCC, while the bad arguments on the skeptical side mostly come from non-scientists on the fringes.

In either case, they remain bad arguments, but it is tragic that so many scientists participate in it.

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JPL has issued a press release “reality check” on the impact possibilities of asteroid 2011 AG5 in 2040.

9:37 am

JPL has issued a press release “reality check” on the impact possibilities of asteroid 2011 AG5 in 2040.

“In September 2013, we have the opportunity to make additional observations of 2011 AG5 when it comes within 91 million miles (147 million kilometers) of Earth,” said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It will be an opportunity to observe this space rock and further refine its orbit. Because of the extreme rarity of an impact by a near-Earth asteroid of this size, I fully expect we will be able to significantly reduce or rule out entirely any impact probability for the foreseeable future.” Even better observations will be possible in late 2015.

In other words, we really will not know anything more about these possibilities until late next year.

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Astronomers have discovered a five hundred foot wide asteroid that has a 1 in 600 chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

6:35 pm

Astronomers have discovered a five hundred foot wide asteroid that has a 1 in 600 chance of hitting the Earth in 2040.

“2011 AG5 is the object which currently has the highest chance of impacting the Earth … in 2040. However, we have only observed it for about half an orbit, thus the confidence in these calculations is still not very high,” said Detlef Koschny of the European Space Agency’s Solar System Missions Division in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

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New evidence suggests that Stone Age hunters from Europe reached the New World ten thousand years before their Asian counterparts.

5:38 pm

New evidence suggests that Stone Age hunters from Europe reached the New World ten thousand years before their Asian counterparts.

A remarkable series of several dozen European-style stone tools, dating back between 19,000 and 26,000 years, have been discovered at six locations along the US east coast. Three of the sites are on the Delmarva Peninsular in Maryland, discovered by archaeologist Dr Darrin Lowery of the University of Delaware. One is in Pennsylvania and another in Virginia. A sixth was discovered by scallop-dredging fishermen on the seabed 60 miles from the Virginian coast on what, in prehistoric times, would have been dry land. …

What’s more, chemical analysis carried out last year on a European-style stone knife found in Virginia back in 1971 revealed that it was made of French-originating flint.

None of this is really surprising. Once we humans became the creatures we are, it became second nature for us to spread out quickly across the globe. In the case of these first European settlers, however, they came in too small numbers, and were thus eventually overwhelmed by the later settlers coming from Asia.

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