The strange link between samurai swords and Japan’s nuclear reactors.
First results from the Hayabusa asteroid samples.
A preliminary analysis of asteroid samples returned last year by Japan’s Hayabusa probe show evidence the dust grains have a similar composition to stony meteorites that commonly fall to Earth. . . . The initial research also shows the samples inspected so far contain no organic molecules. Scientists also say the analysis confirms the rocks at Itokawa were formed 4.6 billion years ago at the dawn of the solar system.
Check out this detailed engineering explanation of what has happened, is happening, and will happen at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan. Key quote:
The point is that the nuclear fuel has now been cooled down. Because the chain reaction has been stopped a long time ago, there is only very little residual heat being produced now. The large amount of cooling water that has been used is sufficient to take up that heat. Because it is a lot of water, the core does not produce sufficient heat any more to produce any significant pressure. Also, boric acid has been added to the seawater. Boric acid is “liquid control rod”. Whatever decay is still going on, the Boron will capture the neutrons and further speed up the cooling down of the core.
An evening pause: Part one of a four part documentary about Richard Feynman.
“To know when you know and when you don’t know, and what is it you know, and what is it you don’t know.”
Right on! A protest to reinstate Pluto as a planet.
This ain’t good: A nuclear meltdown appears to have occurred at the quake-damaged Japanese power plant.
The uncertainty of science: a paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters has concluded that the the long term random variations of the climate, sometimes lasting as long as three or four decades, are large enough to hide any actual changes to the climate. In the quote from the abstract below, the term “random walk” is jargon for a long term random fluctuation having nothing to do with climate change.
This result indicates that the shorter records may not totally capture the random variability of climate relevant on the time scale of civilizations, for which the random walk length is likely to be about 30 years. For this random walk length, the observed standard deviations of maximum temperature and minimum temperature yield respective expected maximum excursions on land of 1.4 and 2.3°C and over the ocean of 0.5 and 0.7°C, which are substantial fractions of the global warming signal.
In other words, it might simply be too soon to be making predictions about the climate, based upon the presently available data.
The earthquake moved Japan’s coast eight feet while shifting the Earth’s axis about four inches.
NASA has concluded that it will cost an additional $30 million to fix the degradation problem on the James Webb Space Telescope’s scientific instruments.
Continue budget problems at NASA: Two climate missions each face a one year schedule slip.
The kapton tape used on the next Mars rover, Curiosity, releases enough methane of its own that it could mess up the rover’s other science.
No, the “supermoon” didn’t cause the Japanese earthquake.
Hawaii and Pacific islands brace for killer tsunami waves to strike across thousands of miles of ocean.
More here about the situation in Japan.
Video:
Putting ISS to use. Key quote:
Under consideration is using the entire station and its six-person crew as an analog for a deep-space human exploration vehicle en route to Mars. An internal team is studying the feasibility and value of such an exercise in the summer of 2012. “We might start with a small window, like a 30-day window, with actual time delays with what we’d expect with a Martian communications system,” Gerstenmaier says. “We may freeze our consumables on station, in the sense of saying that we’ve started our voyage to Mars, and see how well we do in our predictions.”
What the academic community must do to bring tolerance of ideas back to colleges: First, recognize the problem.
Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano erupts.
Earlier this week NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center published its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle. As I do every month, I’ve posted the newest graph below, showing the continuing slow rise in sunspots (blue/black lines) in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009 (red line).
» Read more
Astronomers from the University of Hawaii have taken new images of the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis in an effort to refine their understanding of its orbital path.
Got a few hundred thousand you can spare? Why not build a doomsday bomb shelter?
It’s not the crime it’s the cover-up: According to Science, Michael Mann of the climategate scandal did not advocate the illegal deletion of emails that had been requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as reported earlier by the Daily Caller. All he did was forward an email by Phil Jones, also part of the climategate scandal, that requested that emails should be deleted. He is therefore innocent.
This is getting absurd. That a journal like Science would try to justify this idiotic argument puts a serious stain on almost everything they publish. Michael Mann was requested by Phil Jones to contact Eugene Wahl and ask him to delete emails illegally. Mann took the easiest approach, and simply forwarded Jones’s email. Without question he was complicit in this illegal act.
If the scientific community doesn’t wake up soon and honestly deal with this scandal, they are going to destroy a four hundred year track record of honesty. Worse, they are going to find it increasingly difficult to get funds from anyone for their research.
A mature galaxy cluster has been found by astronomers at a time when the universe is thought to be only a quarter of its present age.
This discovery could be very significant, since astronomers think mature galaxy clusters need time to form, and shouldn’t exist in the early universe. “If further observations find many more [of these clusters] then this may mean that our understanding of the early Universe needs to be revised.”
NASA scientists have published a paper warning that there is growing evidence that the melting at the polar caps is accelerating. From the press release:
The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they did the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with a year-over-year acceleration rate three times smaller than that of the ice sheets.
Several things to note after reading the actual paper:
There was a hearing in Congress today on climate science, though it apparently changed nothing: the Republican leadership in the committee is going to proceed with legislation to try to roll back the EPA regulations relating to carbon dioxide imposed by the Obama administration.
The most interesting detail I gleaned from the above article however was this quote, written by the Science journalist himself, Eli Kintisch:
The hearing barely touched on the underlying issue, namely, is it appropriate for Congress to involve itself so deeply into the working of a regulatory agency? Are there precedents? And what are the legal and governance implications of curtailing an agency’s authority in this way?
What a strange thing to write. If I remember correctly, we are a democracy, and the people we elect to Congress are given the ultimate responsibility and authority to legislate. There are no “legal or governance implications.” If they want to rein in a regulatory agency, that is their absolute Constitutional right. That Kintisch and his editors at Science don’t seem to understand this basic fact about American governance is most astonishing.
Here’s some detailed analysis by scientists of the meteorite fossil paper.
Once again, there is a great deal of skepticism, most of which appears reasonably and justified. Though a number of scientists have applauded his work, it really looks like Hoover does not have sufficient evidence to claim his samples are alien biology. However, this quote stands out:
It appears likely that Hoover’s study may soon be ignored by the majority of the scientific community, instead of enjoying a healthy debate such as that raised by McKay’s 1996 paper on the Mars meteorite. Redfield says that a microbiologist that she knows refused to read it. [emphasis mine]
That hardly seems the right response from an open-minded scientist.
More evidence that Penn State’s investigation of IPCC climate researcher Michael Mann was a whitewash.
The key point is that the Penn State investigators never interviewed a principal who was able to confirm or deny a key charge against “Hockey Stick” lead author of “Hide the Decline” infamy Michael Mann. This individual has now been interviewed, and what he told federal investigators has indicted Mann and Penn State.
I have noted this already, the very week the Penn State report was issued, but it is nice to see there is further evidence to confirm my conclusions.
The tiger stripe fissures on Saturn’s moon Enceladus have turned out to be far hotter than predicted.
