Tag: science

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of Opportunity’s landing on Mars, the journal Science publishes a special section of the newest findings from Mars.

1:03 pm

In celebration of the tenth anniversary of Opportunity’s landing on Mars, the journal Science has published a special section of the newest findings from Mars.

The main conclusion of all this research is that Mars was once potentially habitable, though there is no evidence so far to show that anything actually inhabited it. The data obtained however is now giving scientists clues on the best places to look for the remains of that ancient life, should it exist.

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For more information about that newly discovered supernova in the nearby galaxy M82 go here and here.

9:50 am

For more information about that newly discovered supernova in the nearby galaxy M82 go here and here.

The first link notes that the supernova has brightened to 11.5 magnitude and could get even brighter in the next two weeks. Though still too dim for the naked eye, it is easily bright enough right now for most amateur telescopes and binoculars. How much brighter it will get remains a question.

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Astronomers have detected water vapor spurting from Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid.

9:41 am

Using the Herschel Space Telescope astronomers have detected water vapor spurting from Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid.

Herschel’s sensors spied plumes during three of the four observation periods. The strength of absorption varied over a matter of hours, a trend probably caused by relatively small sources of water vapour rotating in and out of view of Earth, the researchers say.

Data gathered in March 2013 suggest that the plumes originated from two widely separated, 60-kilometre-wide spots in the dwarf planet’s mid-latitude regions. Together, these spots ejected about 6 kilograms of water vapour into space each second. Neither ground-based observations nor images from the Hubble Space Telescope are keen enough to identify the as-yet-mysterious areas, says Küppers. “We don’t know what these features are, we just know that they’re darker than their surroundings,” he notes.

The NASA probe Dawn will arrive at Ceres early next year, and take a good look at these plumes. Should be exciting.

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The fraud in global warming science

10:56 am

You might have noticed a plethora of stories in the last couple of days, reporting claims by NASA and NOAA that 2013 was one of the hottest years ever on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday released its global temperature figures for 2013. The average world temperature was 58.12 degrees (14.52 Celsius) tying with 2003 for the fourth warmest since 1880. NASA, which calculates records in a different manner, said Tuesday that 2013 was the seventh warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.3 degrees (14.6 Celsius).

How can this be, if there has been a pause in global warming for the past 17 years, as has been admitted by the UN’s IPCC and climate scientists everywhere?

The answer, in my opinion: outright fraud.
» Read more

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A new study outlines the problems British researchers had in their 2012 attempt to drill down into a buried Antarctic lake.

9:33 am

A new study outlines the problems British researchers had in their 2012 attempt to drill down into a buried Antarctic lake.

The project had been under development for ten years, and yet:

According to the paper, problems started when the boiler that was intended to melt large quantities of snow to provide hot water for the drill failed to work properly because of short-circuiting in its control panel. More severe problems followed. The two parallel drills — one to drill the main borehole to reach the lake, and one to create a reservoir cavity to recirculate drilling water — ran too slowly. Other failures, including of components designed to ensure vertical drilling, exacerbated the problems.

“The drilling was essentially undertaken blindly,” says Siegert. Probably because one or both holes were not drilled vertically, the cavity failed to link with the main borehole. Water also leaked into the cavity drill and froze the hose in the drill hole. Attempts to remove the hose failed, so it had to be cut. At that point, and with not enough fuel left to reach the lake, Siegert gave up.

Seems to me that these problems — some very basic engineering design errors — are a good example of some basic incompetence. If I was providing financial backing to this project I would probably demand that a lot of people be fired before I would give them anymore money.

The report also has this interesting detail which confirms the doubts about the Russian drilling effort:

In 2012, Russian scientists broke into Lake Vostok, by far the largest of Antarctica’s hidden lakes, using a kerosene-fuelled drill. But their samples are spoiled with drill fluid and the bacteria they contain are probably contaminant species.

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To environmentalists no warming and more bears means global warming and an endangered species

9:20 am

A U.S. Geological Survey science team has determined that the grizzly bear population has recovered enough that the bear can be taken off the endangered species list.

A report delivered in November by the US Geological Survey’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team describes a resilient and healthy bear population that has adapted to the loss of pine nuts by eating more elk and bison, keeping fat stores at levels that allow the bears to survive and reproduce. For Christopher Servheen, a biologist who oversees grizzly-bear recovery efforts at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula, Montana, that is not surprising. “Bears are flexible,” he says. “It’s easier to say what they don’t eat than what they do eat.”

Not surprisingly, environmental activists don’t like this decision. They claim that, wait for it, global warming threatens the bear enough that it should not be delisted.
» Read more

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A donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of the Mars rover Opportunity.

10:18 am

A donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of the Mars rover Opportunity.

NASA announced the discovery of the rock at an event at Caltech in Pasadena this past Thursday night, dubbing the rock “Pinnacle Island.” “It’s about the size of a jelly doughnut,” NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres told Discovery News. “It was a total surprise, we were like ‘wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t be right. Oh my god! It wasn’t there before!’ We were absolutely startled.”

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After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

4:10 pm

After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

The craft at the heart of ESA’s €1-billion (US$1.4-billion) comet-hunting mission was shut down in 2011 to save energy while travelling in deep space. Rosetta successfully re-established communications with Earth on 20 January.
With an alarm pre-set for 10:00 GMT, a signal was expected at any time from 17:30 GMT, once the spacecraft had warmed up and turned its antenna towards Earth. But Rosetta kept everyone guessing, with the first sign that everything had gone to plan only arriving around 40 minutes later.

ESA’s European Space Operations Centre erupted in cheering and hugging as small spikes appeared in radio signals received at NASA deep-space communications centres in Canberra and in Goldstone, California.

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A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

9:32 am

The uncertainty of science: A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

Look especially at the charts at the link. While carbon dioxide emissions increased at a higher rate than predicted, the global temperature — predicted to increase from 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit — has instead remained completely flat.

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Astronomers have discovered the first exoplanets orbiting a star almost identical to the Sun.

2:13 pm

Astronomers have discovered the first exoplanet orbiting a star almost identical to the Sun.

Astronomers have used ESO’s HARPS planet hunter in Chile, along with other telescopes around the world, to discover three planets orbiting stars in the cluster Messier 67. Although more than one thousand planets outside the Solar System are now confirmed, only a handful have been found in star clusters. Remarkably one of these new exoplanets is orbiting a star that is a rare solar twin — a star that is almost identical to the Sun in all respects.

This discovery is interesting in that some astronomers have proposed that our Sun itself was born in M67, the open galactic star cluster where these exoplanets were found. My March 2012 cover story for Sky & Telescope was on this very subject.

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