Hubble takes its best image yet of Eta Carina
Preview of a someday supernova: Hubble takes its best image yet of Eta Carinae.
Tag: science
The sky is falling.
Over the last 10 years, the height of clouds has been shrinking, according to new research. The time frame is short, but if future observations show that clouds are truly getting lower, it could have an important effect on global climate change. Clouds that are lower in the atmosphere would allow Earth to cool more efficiently, potentially offsetting some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases.
A supernova twenty-five years later.
A supernova twenty-five years later.
SN 1987A, it turns out, was like a dust-bomb, with estimates of the total dust it threw into space, based on the infrared brightness of the dust … implying enough dusty material to build the equivalent of 200,000 Earth-mass planets. Mingled within the dust are elements as diverse as oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur, silicon, carbon and iron. This immense amount of dust has been beyond expectations and, if all supernovae spew out this much dust, it helps explain why young galaxies that we can see existing in the early Universe, which have high rates or star birth and death, are so dusty. The dust, however, isn’t a nuisance to be wiped away – this is the material that goes into building new planets, moons and even life. The iron in your blood and the calcium in your bones all came from supernovae like SN 1987A, as mostly did the oxygen we breath and the carbon in our constituent molecules.
“Science in the service of politics.”
Climate scientist Richard Lindzen of MIT spoke before a public meeting of the House of Commons in Great Britain yesterday. You can read his entire speech here [pdf]. Please do. He know his stuff. More important, he begins his presentation by immediately accepting these points:
- Carbon dioxide is increasing in the atmosphere.
- There is a greenhouse effect.
- There has been a doubling of CO2 in the past 150 years.
- There has probably been a warming of about 0.8 degrees Celsius in the past 150 years.
- Increasing CO2 alone should cause some warming.
He then notes that while none of these points are controversial among serious climate scientists, none of these facts are a cause for alarm.
The evidence is that the increase in CO2 will lead to very little warming, and that the connection of this minimal warming (or even significant warming) to the purported catastrophes is also minimal. The arguments on which the catastrophic claims are made are extremely weak – and commonly acknowledged as such. They are sometimes overtly dishonest. [emphasis mine]
Scientists have found a way to produce an anti-corresion coating made of graphene only one atom thick.
Scientists have found a way to produce an anti-corresion coating made of graphene only one atom thick.
The many moods of Titan
Tracking the debris washed out to sea by last year’s tsunami in Japan.
Tracking the debris washed out to sea by last year’s tsunami in Japan.
Two possible errors have been identified that might explain the faster than light neutrino results from last fall.
Two possible errors have been identified that might explain the faster than light neutrino results from CERN from last fall.
Scientists have found an iron-based crystal that can superconduct electricity at a new record high temperature of 48 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero.
Scientists have found an iron-based crystal that can superconduct electricity at a new record high temperature of 48 degrees Kelvin above absolute zero.
Peter Gleick’s “truly flabbergasting” lapse of judgement.
Peter Gleick’s “truly flabbergasting” lapse of judgement.
Gleick has done enormous damage to his cause and his own reputation, and it’s no good to say that people shouldn’t be focusing on it. If his judgement is this bad, how is his judgement on matters of science? For that matter, what about the judgement of all the others in the movement who apparently see nothing worth dwelling on in his actions?
When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right. And if one rogue member of the community does something crazy that provides such proof, I’d say it is crucial that the other members of the community say “Oh, how horrible, this is so far beyond the pale that I cannot imagine how this ever could have happened!” and not, “Well, he’s apologized and I really think it’s pretty crude and opportunistic to make a fuss about something that’s so unimportant in the grand scheme of things.”
After you have convinced people that you fervently believe your cause to be more important than telling the truth, you’ve lost the power to convince them of anything else. [emphasis in original]
As I’ve said repeatedly, until the climate community stops circling the wagons to protect the liars and frauds that pepper their field, no one is going to believe anything they say, even when they are right. Worse, their dishonesty is continuing to do serious harm to the field of science itself.
Buckyballs in space
Buckyballs in space. And they’re solid too!
Russian scientists have resurrected a plant from 30,000 years ago, using fruit tissues that had been frozen in the Arctic.
Russian scientists have resurrected a plant from 30,000 years ago, using fruit tissues that had been frozen in the Arctic.
Uncovering the underwater remains of HMS Investigator and the sailors who survived its loss in the Arctic ice to discover the Northwest Passage
Uncovering the underwater remains of HMS Investigator and the sailors who survived its loss in the Arctic ice to discover the Northwest Passage.
A world made of water
A world made of water.
And it ain’t in our solar system.
A transistor made from a single atom
A look at the universe’s dark side
A look at the universe’s dark side.
Mapping the surface of an extrasolar planet light years away.
Mapping the surface of an extrasolar planet light years away. From the paper’s abstract [pdf]:
We use archived Spitzer [Space Telescope] data of [the star] HD189733 … encompassing six transits, eight secondary eclipses, and a phase curve in a two-step analysis. The first step derives the planet-star system parameters. The second step investigates the structure found in eclipse scanning, using the previous planet-star system parameter derivation as Gaussian priors.
We find a 5-sigma deviation from the expected occultation ingress/egress shape for a uniform brightness disk, and demonstrate that this is dominated by large-scale brightness structure and not an occultation timing offset due to a non-zero eccentricity. Our analysis yields a 2D brightness temperature distribution showing a large-scale asymmetric hot spot whose finer structure is limited by the data quality and planet orbit geometry. [emphasis mine]
New evidence for recent earthquakes on Mars
Scientists have found new evidence for recent earthquakes on Mars.
India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2, faces possible launch delays
India’s second lunar probe, Chandrayaan-2, faces possible launch delays due to limitation in their rocket engine capabilities.
ISS to finally get an experimental centrifuge
At last! The ISS is to finally going to get an experimental centrifuge.
I have studied at length all the research done on all the space station ever launched, from Skylab, all the Russian Salyut stations, Mir, and now ISS, and from I could tell, only once was a centrifuge experiment put in space, by the Russians. Though the centrifuge was small and the results inconclusive, they suggested that even the addition of a truly miniscule amount of force could significantly mitigate the effects of weightlessness on plants and materials.
To finally get an experimental centrifuge on ISS is wonderful news. In order to build an interplanetary spaceship as cheaply and as efficiently as possible using centrifugal force to create artificial gravity we need to know the minimum amount of centrifugal force we need. Less energy will probably require less complex engineering, which should also require less launch weight to orbit, lowering the cost in all ways.