science – Page 628 – Behind The Black

An update on the efforts to save Phobos-Grunt

November 24, 2011 8:52 am Robert Zimmerman

An update on the efforts to save Phobos-Grunt.

“The first pass was successful in that the spacecraft’s radio downlink was commanded to switch on and telemetry was received,” said Wolfgang Hell, ESA’s Service Manager for Phobos–Grunt. Telemetry typically includes information on the status and health of a spacecraft’s systems. “The signals received from Phobos–Grunt were much stronger than those initially received on 22 November, in part due to having better knowledge of the spacecraft’s orbital position.”

The second pass was short, and so was used only to uplink commands – no receipt of signal was expected. However, the following three passes in the early morning of 24 November proved to be more difficult: no signal was received from Phobos–Grunt.

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ESA antenna contacts Phobos-Grunt again, this time downloading telemetry data

November 23, 2011 4:50 pm Robert Zimmerman

An ESA tracking station has once again contacted Phobos-Grunt, this time downloading telemetry data.

“We have again established contact with the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, we obtained telemetry reports, they are being analyzed by our colleagues from the Lavochkin Research and Production Association,” ESA spokesman Rene Pischel said.

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India pushes for a sharing of intellectual property rights at Durban climate talks

November 23, 2011 9:40 am Robert Zimmerman

India pushes for a sharing of intellectual property rights at Durban climate talks.

If you ever had any doubts about the political goals behind the global warming movement, this headline and story should put those forever to rest. The advocates of climate change really don’t care about climate change. What they really want is to get their hands on other people’s success. Failing to get a deal that would limit the activities of the developed countries so that the developing countries would have an advantage in the free market, the effort is now aimed at attacking and even eliminating the property rights of private technology companies. What this has to do with climate change is beyond me.

That India is leading the way here is puzzling, however, as that country’s economic success in the past decade is solely due to its abandonment of communist ideals in favor of capitalism and the free market. You would think, with that experience, that India’s government would thus understand the importance of protecting property rights, not violating them.

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A team of Italian scientists have reviewed the earlier faster-than-light neutrino results and have rejected them.

November 22, 2011 9:53 pm Robert Zimmerman

Not so fast: A team of Italian scientists have reviewed the earlier faster-than-light neutrino results and have rejected them.

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‘Perfect black’ coating can render a 3D object flat, raises intriguing dark veil possibility in astronomy

November 22, 2011 12:27 pm Robert Zimmerman

A newly developed “perfect black” coating can render a 3D object flat, which raises an intriguing dark veil possibility in astronomy.

“The carbon nanotube forest can absorb very wide range of electromagnetic wave from ultraviolet up to terahertz,” Guo said, “and in principle it can be applied to an arbitrary sized object.” Just how large an object? Guo suggested an intriguing possibility—perhaps entire planets or even stars. “Since deep space itself is a perfect dark background, if a planet or star were surrounded by a thick, sooty atmosphere of light-absorbing carbon nanomaterial gases, it would become invisible due to the same principle,” Guo said. “It would become totally dark to our instruments that rely on the detection of electromagnetic waves.”

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Climategate 2

November 22, 2011 12:08 pm Robert Zimmerman

Having failed to clean up its act after the release of the climategate emails two years ago, the field of climate science is about to turned upside down all over again. Today there was another release of hacked emails, written by the same collection of global warming scientists. Once again, these emails show that these scientists are anything but scientists. Instead, they seem far more interested in campaigning for a certain result, regardless of the science. A few quotes:
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A new batch of hacked climategate emails have been released

November 22, 2011 10:17 am Robert Zimmerman

A new batch of hacked climategate emails have been released. More info, including some examples from the emails, can be found here and here.

Update: A quick scan by me of these, hardly finished, reveals this one email from Phil Jones, demonstrating beyond doubt how much fraud is involved in climate science: