Tag: science

An update on the efforts to save Phobos-Grunt

8:52 am

An update on the efforts to save Phobos-Grunt.

“The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft’s radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received,” said Wolfgang Hell, ESA’s Service Manager for Phobos–Grunt. Telemetry typically includes information on the status and health of a spacecraft’s systems. “The signals received from Phobos–Grunt were much stronger than those initially received on 22 November, in part due to having better knowledge of the spacecraft’s orbital position.”

The second pass was short, and so was used only to uplink commands – no receipt of signal was expected. However, the following three passes in the early morning of 24 November proved to be more difficult: no signal was received from Phobos–Grunt.

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India pushes for a sharing of intellectual property rights at Durban climate talks

9:40 am

India pushes for a sharing of intellectual property rights at Durban climate talks.

If you ever had any doubts about the political goals behind the global warming movement, this headline and story should put those forever to rest. The advocates of climate change really don’t care about climate change. What they really want is to get their hands on other people’s success. Failing to get a deal that would limit the activities of the developed countries so that the developing countries would have an advantage in the free market, the effort is now aimed at attacking and even eliminating the property rights of private technology companies. What this has to do with climate change is beyond me.

That India is leading the way here is puzzling, however, as that country’s economic success in the past decade is solely due to its abandonment of communist ideals in favor of capitalism and the free market. You would think, with that experience, that India’s government would thus understand the importance of protecting property rights, not violating them.

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‘Perfect black’ coating can render a 3D object flat, raises intriguing dark veil possibility in astronomy

12:27 pm

A newly developed “perfect black” coating can render a 3D object flat, which raises an intriguing dark veil possibility in astronomy.

“The carbon nanotube forest can absorb very wide range of electromagnetic wave from ultraviolet up to terahertz,” Guo said, “and in principle it can be applied to an arbitrary sized object.” Just how large an object? Guo suggested an intriguing possibility—perhaps entire planets or even stars. “Since deep space itself is a perfect dark background, if a planet or star were surrounded by a thick, sooty atmosphere of light-absorbing carbon nanomaterial gases, it would become invisible due to the same principle,” Guo said. “It would become totally dark to our instruments that rely on the detection of electromagnetic waves.”

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Climategate 2

12:08 pm

Having failed to clean up its act after the release of the climategate emails two years ago, the field of climate science is about to turned upside down all over again. Today there was another release of hacked emails, written by the same collection of global warming scientists. Once again, these emails show that these scientists are anything but scientists. Instead, they seem far more interested in campaigning for a certain result, regardless of the science. A few quotes:
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A new batch of hacked climategate emails have been released

10:17 am

A new batch of hacked climategate emails have been released. More info, including some examples from the emails, can be found here and here.

Update: A quick scan by me of these, hardly finished, reveals this one email from Phil Jones, demonstrating beyond doubt how much fraud is involved in climate science:

Basic problem is that all models are wrong – not got enough middle and low level clouds.

Stay tuned for more bombshells.

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Uncertainty rules the day

2:53 pm

The press reports have been unanimous:

Unfortunately, if you read the actual IPCC panel summary report, you find that, though the majority of the press stories accurately describe the report’s worst scenarios and predictions, all of them downplay the most important point of the report, that the uncertainties are gigantic and that the influence of human activity on the increase or decrease of extreme weather for the next few decades will be inconsequential. To quote the report:
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The CERN experiment that appeared to see faster-than-light neutrinos has repeated its results, except that not everyone on the team agrees

9:37 pm

The uncertainty of science: The CERN experiment that appeared to see faster-than-light neutrinos has repeated its results, except that not everyone on the team agrees.

The new tests, completed 6 November, did away with the statistical analysis by splitting each pulse into bunches just 1- to 2-nanoseconds long, allowing each neutrino detected at Gran Sasso to be tied to a particular bunch produced at CERN. These tests were carried out over 10 days and provided 20 events. The researchers confirmed that the neutrinos arrived 60 nanoseconds early, with an uncertainty of about 10 nanoseconds, comparable to that of the initial result. The collaboration has also checked its original statistical analysis, but today’s decision to submit the results to a journal was not unanimous. “About four people” among the group of around 15 who did not sign the preprint have signed the journal submission, according to a source within the collaboration, while “four new people” have decided not to sign. That leaves the number of dissenters at about 15, compared with about 180 who did sign the journal submission.

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The Winds of Mars

9:04 pm

changing martian dunes
Images taken 1363 days apart.

In two different papers published in two different journals in the past month, scientists have concluded that — despite the thinness of the planet’s atmosphere — the dunes and sands of Mars are being continually shaped and changed by its winds. In both papers the data from which this conclusion was drawn came from high resolution images taken by the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

What is especially interesting about this conclusion is that the climate models that had been developed for the Martian atmosphere, combined with wind measurements gathered by the various Martian landers, had all suggested that the kind of strong winds necessary to move sand were rare. To quote the abstract of the paper published on Monday in the journal Geology, Bridges, et al,

Prior to Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter data, images of Mars showed no direct evidence for dune and ripple motion. This was consistent with climate models and lander measurements indicating that winds of sufficient intensity to mobilize sand were rare in the low-density atmosphere.

Similarly, the second paper, Silvestro, et al, published on October 22 in Geophysical Research Letters, stated that

results from wind tunnel simulations and atmospheric models show that such strong wind events should be rare in the current Martian atmospheric setting.

Yet, both studies found significant evidence that such winds do occur on Mars, and are moving sand in many different places.
» Read more

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Congress has slashed the budget of John Holdren’s White House Science Office

4:22 pm

The Senate/House final deal for the White House Science Office has slashed its budget by one third.

Frustrated that White House officials [i.e. John Holdren] have ignored congressional language curtailing scientific collaborations with China, legislators have decided to get their attention through a 32% cut in the tiny budget of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

See this story for more background.

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Bronze artifact found in Alaska

11:32 am

A bronze artifact, resembling the remains of a buckle and a thousand years older than the house being excavated, has been found by archeologists in Alaska.

One Asia archaeologist suggested the piece may have been part of a harness or horse ornament. The researchers are looking for an East Asia expert to confer with on the bronze piece. Mason said it’s not likely the bronze piece was washed ashore after being dropped by a Russian explorer or a whaler. “That’s totally unlikely, in fact nearly impossible, considering where it is,” he said.

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Russian space agency head says there is still a chance to save Phobos-Grunt

8:27 am

The head of the Russian space agency said yesterday that there is still a chance to save Phobos-Grunt.

“The probe is going to be in orbit until January, but in the first days of December the window will close” to re-programme it, he told Russian news agencies at Russia’s Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

He also said that the probe will not pose a threat, and will burn up in the atmosphere if it should fall to Earth.

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