What could go wrong? The American Geophysical Union is going to announce tomorrow a public campaign by 700 scientists to attack any skepticism of global warming.
More on the continuing eruption of Mount Merapi in Indonesia. Key quote:
The Volcano Mitigation and Geological Disaster Agency warned of worse in store as magma pushed towards the surface from depths of 6-8km, compared with a maximum 2km deep when the mountain previously erupted in 2006. “This is the scenario I dislike the most, because the deepest magma is pushing up now,” said the agency’s chief, Surono. “The eruptions haven’t stopped, the tremors are getting stronger and one big explosion could be the result. I’ve never seen it act like this. We don’t know what to expect.”
Cassini went into safe mode on Tuesday, November 2nd. At the moment engineers expect it to take at least another week to get the spacecraft back to normal.
Here are the first images of Deep Impact’s flyby of Comet Hartley 2. The first is a montage, the sequence in time going clockwise. The second is a close-up of the second image.
The feature that I find most intriguing is the narrow smooth waist of the comet’s dogbone shape. The whole thing looks almost like a piece of taffy that’s being pulled apart.
In a paper posted tonight on the Los Alamos astro-ph website, an astronomer is proposing an early warning system for asteroid impact. Key quote from the abstract:
This system, dubbed “Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System” (ATLAS), comprises two observatories separated by about 100km that simultaneously scan the visible sky twice a night, and can be implemented immediately for relatively low cost. The sensitivity of ATLAS permits detection of 140m asteroids (100 Mton impact energy) three weeks before impact, and 50m asteroids a week before arrival. An ATLAS alarm, augmented by other observations, should result in a determination of impact location and time that is accurate to a few kilometers and a few seconds.
First close-up photos of Comet Hartley 2 reveal a space peanut.
What will the global warming scientists do? The new chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee calls for “strong oversight . . . in key areas including climate change, scientific integrity”.
Watch the Deep Impact flyby of Hartley 2 this instant (11:06 AM eastern)! The images are incredible. Update: The fly-by is over, but the live stream is still available (as of 11:30 am Eastern), showing some of the images taken. The comet itself is a peanut-shaped object about two miles long, with a jet of water coming out one end.
A do-it-yourself photo of the Sun that looks as good as any taken from space. And it’s art too!
NASA has completed a significant upgrade of its Deep Space communication system. These unheralded antennas and the engineers who maintain them make it possible for scientists to communicate with the far flung planetary probes in orbit around Venus, Mars, and Saturn, as well as the spacecraft visiting comets or traveling beyond the edge of the solar system.
Opportunity’s long journey across the desert plains of Mars to reach Endeavour Crater is now more than half completed. Below is the most recent mosiac of its view heading east towards the crater, with the crater’s rim visible on the distant horizon, still five miles away.
A UN conference in Japan today approved the extremely broad language that I had noted earlier this week, banning all “climate-related geoengineering activities that may affect biodiversity . . . until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities.” You can read some reactions here. Key quote from the ETC group, a Canadian non-profit organization which supports the language:
The agreement, reached during the ministerial portion of the two-week meeting which included 110 environment ministers, asks governments to ensure that no geoengineering activities take place until risks to the environment and biodiversity and associated social, cultural and economic impacts have been appropriately considered. The CBD secretariat was also instructed to report back on various geoengineering proposals and potential intergovernmental regulatory measures.
If the broad language of this policy is accepted by the United States government, it will effectively shut down almost all new construction and development, as practically anything people do “may affect biodiversity.”
Scientists have discovered in China the first complete skeleton of an early ancestor of the gigantic sauropod dinosaurs.
Evidence of subsurface water has been found by the Mars rover Spirit at the location where the rover remains stuck.
Astronomers have discovered the most massive neutron star ever, twice the mass of the Sun and far heavier than any theory had ever predicted.
Buckyballs, or carbon molecules called fullerenes, have been discovered all throughout the Milky Way as well as in another galaxy.
Deadly monkey virus jumps from monkey to scientist.
Treaty language being written at a United Nations conference on biodiversity is so vague it threatens to bar almost all new development. Here is the language, via Science:
8 (w) Ensure, in line and consistent with decision IX/16 C, on ocean
fertilisation and biodiversity and climate change, in the absence of science-based, global, transparent and effective control and regulatory mechanisms for geo-engineering, and in accordance with the precautionary approach and Article 14 of the Convention, that no climate-related geoengineering activities (1) that may affect biodiversity take place, until there is an adequate scientific basis on which to justify such activities and appropriate consideration of the associated risks for the environment and biodiversity and associated social, economic and cultural impacts, with the exception of small scale scientific research studies that would be conducted in a controlled setting in accordance with Article 3 of the Convention, and only if they are justified by the need to gather specific scientific data and are subject to a thorough prior assessment of the potential impacts on the environment.(1) Without prejudice to future deliberations on the definition of geo-engineering activities, understanding that any technologies that deliberately reduce solar insolation or increase carbon sequestration from the atmosphere on a large scale that may affect biodiversity (excluding carbon capture and storage from fossil fuels when it captures carbon dioxide before it is released to the atmosphere) should be considered as forms of geoengineering which are relevant to the Convention on Biological Diversity until a more precise definition can be developed. Noting that solar insolation is defined as a measure of solar radiation energy received on a given surface area in a given hour and that carbon sequestration is defined as the process of increasing the carbon contact of a reservoir/pool other than the atmosphere. [emphasis mine]
This language is so broad that, if agreed to by the United States, it could easily put almost any activity that affects the environment, including technology, business, property, recreation, or practically anything at all, under the control of UN regulators.
But wait, there’s more. The goal of this UN conference, to quote their own webpage, is to achieve “a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on Earth.” Obviously, this UN group is not merely interested in protecting the biodiversity of life on Earth, but to also redistribute the wealth so as to help poorer nations.
God help us if our government agrees to this.
Scientists released additional Kepler results [pdf] today, this time describing what they are learning about the stars being observed rather than any planets that might be orbiting them. In studying each star’s minute variations of light, the astronomers can track how the star itself is oscillating like a bell ringing. From this they can do a kind of stellar seismology, finding out a great deal about what is going on inside the star. The data has thus:
Hubble data used to look 10,000 years into the future.
Paul Spudis provides a very detailed analysis of the recently released LCROSS lunar results. Key quote:
The Near-IR spectrometers on the LCROSS shepherding satellite detected abundant water (H2O) but also hydrogen sulfide (H2S), ammonia (NH3), methanol (CH3OH), methane (CH4), ethylene (C2H4) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The uv-vis spectrometer found carbon dioxide (CO2), sodium, silver, and cyanide (CN). Aboard the distant LRO spacecraft, the ultraviolet LAMP imager detected hydrogen (H2), nitrogen, carbon monoxide (CO), sodium, mercury, zinc, gold (!), and calcium. But water, present in quantities between 5 and 10 weight percent, is the most abundant volatile substance present.
Wikipedia bans global warming propagandist. Key quote:
Through his position, Connolley for years kept dissenting views on global warming out of Wikipedia, allowing only those that promoted the view that global warming represented a threat to mankind. As a result, Wikipedia became a leading source of global warming propaganda, with Connolley its chief propagandist. His career as a global warming propagandist has now been stopped, following a unanimous verdict that came down today through an arbitration proceeding conducted by Wikipedia.
Scientists have detected Venusian lava flows possibly only decades old.
Let’s all sit in a dark room and contemplate our navel! Atmospheric scientists claim that space tourism will cause . . . global warming!
More archeology news: A Bulgarian archeologist has discovered a rock stove, dating from the third or fourth century AD, cut into the rock wall of fortress.
A Bronze Age burial site has been uncovered at the planned location of supermarket and gas station in Scotland.
New results from the LCROSS impact on the Moon’s south pole: It’s cold and wet at the Moon’s south pole.
Update: Other elements detected in the impact plume included silver and mercury.
Using a deep field image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have identified one galaxy in that image as the most distant ever seen, with a record-setting redshift of 8.6 and thus an rough distance of about 13 billion light years, only about 600 million years after the Big Bang.
Whoops! Last sentence corrected, thanks to my readers.
