From a session today at the 42nd meeting of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences: After thirteen years of searching, scientists have concluded that Mars has no active volcanic activity, including geysers, anywhere on its surface.
Sunspot activity in September clearly jumped, though it still remains far below predictions. Prepare for the weakest solar maximum since the 1810s!
Note also that today the Sun is blank, with no sunspots, the first time this has happened since August. At that time I speculated that this might “be the last time the Sun will be blank for years as it continues to ramp up to its next solar maximum.” Obviously not. The question now is whether today will be the finale in blankness for this minimum.
This video has been making the rounds on the web. Though I warn you that is somewhat graphic, it is essential that you watch it.
When I first saw this about a week ago, I didn’t quite know what to make of it. It was so vile and offensive I could not believe that it was legitimate. It obviously wants to pay some homage to Monty Python, but even Monty Python never went this far. How could anyone possibly think that killing small children in the name of environmentalism was in any way funny? And how could anyone ever believe that this video would persuade anyone to go along with the 1010 environmental campaign? If anything, the video does an excellent job of discrediting this organization and everyone involved with it.
Thus, despite what some bloggers were saying, I held back commenting, just to make sure the video was real and not a terrible prank meant to sabotage.
There is now no reason to hold back. Late last week, the 1010 organization itself issued an apology, admitting that this video was their handiwork. Before I continue, I think it is worthwhile for you to also read their apology, in all its venal glory. In many ways, it condemns them and their allies far more than the video did: » Read more
Having run out hydrogen coolant for its infrared cameras and with only a few more months of usable life, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has shifted its work from deep space astronomy to completing its last sweep of the solar system in a search for asteroids and comets.
Update: At a press conference going on right now at the 42nd meeting of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences, WISE scientists note that the mission extension will continue for one month. If that month is successful, the mission will continue until the end of January 2011 in order to complete its solar system sweep. After this the spacecraft will be put in hibernation, available for future work.
Summary of solar system results so far:
33,576 asteroids discovered of which 120 were Near Earth Asteroids.
Using the data gathered by Rosetta in its fly-by of the asteroid Lutetia in July, scientists have concluded that the 60 mile diameter asteroid is covered with a deep layer of dusty debris, as much as 2000 feet deep.
The Cassini image below, released today at the 42nd meeting of the AAS Division for Planetary Sciences, shows light reflecting off a lake on Titan’s northern hemisphere. According to the scientists who took the image, this is the first definitive confirmation of the presence of liquid in those lakes.
Barchans are crescent-shaped, with the horns of the crescents pointing downwind. One barchan is visible in the upper part of the image, with the Southeast (lower right) horns longer than the other. This trend, along with the position of the steep face of the dune on the South side, indicates that the predominant winds which formed the dunes came from the North.
There are a lot more great images on the websites above.
In another paper published today in the Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union, researchers have found, according to their computer model, that the increase in sea ice since 1970 in Antarctica cannot be explained by the ozone hole. (Note that the sea ice has been shrinking in the northern hemisphere while it has been growing in the south.) Key quote from paper:
It is presently unclear why the observed Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent trends are so different from those in the Northern Hemisphere. Previous studies have suggested that the cause might be related to atmospheric circulation changes induced by the stratospheric ozone hole. The results in this study are not consistent with this view and highlight the need for continued investigations of Antarctic sea ice extent trends.
A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union says that the general circulation climate models used by scientists today to predict things like global warming cannot predict past examples of similar sudden climate change. Key quote from abstract:
These [sudden] shifts are thus noise induced with very limited predictability, and early detection of them in the future might be wishful thinking.
A researcher at the University of Cambridge is posting audio recordings on the web of Babylonian poetry, myths, and other texts, so that everyone can hear what the ancient languages sounded like. Key quote:
“In many cases [the works] are the equivalent of Old English tales like Beowulf,” Dr. Worthington added. “Through them, we meet gods, giants, monsters and all sorts of other weird and wonderful creatures. As stories they are amazing fun.”
The view from Opportunity, September 16, 2010. Near the rover you can see the bedrock periodically exposed under windblown sand. The rock sitting on the sand in the distance is thought to be a meteorite, to which Opportunity is heading for a closer look. In the distance can be seen the rim of Endurance Crater, the rover’s eventual destination.
The European Space Agency has released some new data, including images and animations, of the asteroid Lutetia, which the spacecraft Rosetta flew past on July 10, 2010.
Time to update the state of the Sun, as seen by satellite data (the last update was in July). The graph below, posted today by Physikalisch- Meteorologisches Observatorium Davos (PMOD), shows the variation in the Sun’s Total Solar Irradiance since 1978. I have added a blue horizontal line to show that even now, two years after the Sun reached the lowest point in its most recent solar minimum, it has still not brightened enough to equal the lowest point in the two previous minimums. (Note that if we included the minimum from 1976, the Sun would still be below that as well.)
Once again, the evidence is building that the Sun might be heading towards the weakest maximum seen to two centuries. And when that happened, things got very cold on Earth.
Big news! Scientists have discovered the first rocky terrestrial planet orbiting its sun at a distance where life as we know it could form. The planet itself has a mass three to four times Earth, so no matter what, conditions on its surface would be very different than here. Nonetheless, this is a major discovery, and is only the first of many. Key quote:
The discovery suggests habitable planets must be common, with 10 to 20 per cent of red dwarfs and sun-like stars boasting them, the team says. That’s because Gliese 581 is one of just nine stars out to its distance that have been searched with high enough precision to reveal a planet in the habitable zone.
We won’t know if the Japanese probe Hayabusa actually brought asteroid materials back to Earth until spring 2011. Key quote from the project scientist:
Kawaguchi said his science team found “tens of particles” in Chamber A of the canister. The tiny particles are being removed one-by-one in an extraction process that is stretching longer than anticipated.
Note that they still have not opened Chamber B, which is thought to have had a better chance of capturing asteroid material because it was the chamber in contact with the asteroid Itokawa.
Back from the dead! A new study has found that scientists are significantly over-estimating the number of animal extinctions, with approximately one third of the so-called “extinct” species turning up alive. This quote makes one wonder if politics have been a factor:
The mistakes cannot be blamed on primitive technology or old fashioned scientific methods. “Mammals missing in the 20th century were nearly three times as likely to be rediscovered as those that disappeared in the 19th century.”
A new survey telescope, designed to scan the entire available sky approximately three times every month, has discovered its first potentially hazardous asteroid (PHO) , 150 feet in diameter and set to speed past the Earth at a distance of 4 million miles in mid-October. Key quote:
Most of the largest PHOs have already been catalogued, but scientists suspect that there are many more under a mile across that have not yet been discovered. These could cause devastation on a regional scale if they ever hit our planet. Such impacts are estimated to occur once every few thousand years.
Among the new images posted last week by the HiRise camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a picture showing the layered and looping ridgelines within Galle Crater. A close-up of these ridgelines revealed the precarious nature of those crumbling cliff tops.
Below is a low resolution version of the image, with a high resolution cropped inset below that, showing a close-up of the most interesting looking area. In the inset you can see that the top of the cliff has separated away. It almost looks as if several large pieces are about to break off. You can also see that the top of the cliff to the north is made up of hanging rocks that appear to almost float in the air. They too look as if they are about to break off.
What makes this even more intriguing is that there are no boulder piles at the bottom of any cliff. All we can see on the valley floor is a pattern of polygonal fractures, possibly “due to ground ice, or regional tectonic stresses.” If large pieces of these ridge lines are breaking off periodically, as they surely appear to be doing, where has the debris gone?
