Syracuse, you still there?

Of course you are, but maybe you didn’t notice the meteor that tried to kill you. I have to say, though, that the news report is full of admirable scientific detail.

This meteor was so bright that it was captured by a NASA satellite that monitors lightning. The bits of debris scattered after the meteor exploded could likely be seen on National Weather Service radar. And the sonic boom was detected in Ontario by a seismograph, the instrument that records earthquakes.

When the meteor finally got hot enough to explode, Cooke said, it released as much energy as 66 tons of dynamite.

“When it broke apart it produced a shock wave that produced the sonic boom that people heard,” he said.

The meteor was just under 3 feet across and weighed about 1,800 pounds, NASA estimated. That’s hefty as meteors go: The shooting stars seen in annual meteor showers are not bigger than small pebbles or golf balls.

Wednesday’s meteor crashed into the atmosphere at 56,000 mph.

“That’s slow for a meteor, actually,” Cooke said. “Some, like the Leonids, move at 150,000 mph.”

The relatively sluggish speed indicates that the meteor probably broke loose from the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, about 92 million miles from Earth. That’s as far from Earth as the sun is.

As the meteor pushed through Earth’s increasingly thickening atmosphere, it reached an estimated temperature of 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit. For comparison, the surface of the sun is a little less than 10,000 degrees.

Cooke said the rock – technically called a meteoroid before it hits the Earth’s atmosphere and becomes a meteor — was the color of pencil lead. As it burst into a fireball, it emitted light 100 times brighter than a full moon.

So, Syracuse, how’s it feel to have not been destroyed by an 1800 pound rock traveling at 56,000 mph, exploding with the force of 66 tons of dynamite, that has been traveling for millions of years to get you? You should feel special.

Birds are cowards

I was out for a walk, and what did I see? Flocks of birds running away (OK, flying away, to be precise) from our little winter.

OK, I’m being a little unfair, #notallbirds. There are these little black-capped chickadees that hang around my house, and they’ll be here all winter. Those are #bravebirds. But geese? Big bullying cowards that hang around the parks pooping all over the place, and fleeing south at the first little cold snap.

Sean Bean did it

Those catastrophic hijinks atop the telescope, and the explosions, couldn’t have been good for the structure.

Seriously, and sadly, the Arecibo radio telescope has collapsed. It’s done.

A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century collapsed on Tuesday, officials said.

The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet below.

The US National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100ft gash on the 1,000ft-wide (305m) reflector dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.

Rather than blaming Sean Bean, though, I should note that this is another example of the decay of our scientific infrastructure on Donald Trump’s watch. You don’t he really cares about a radio telescope, or Puerto Rico, do you?

If television presenters can get to it, where are the archaeologists?

Tantalizing. I keep seeing news about the discovery of a massive cliff face in a remote part of central Colombia that is covered with ancient rock art. This would be really cool, except that I’m feeling suspicious and skeptical. But look at this image! I want it to be true.

There are a few reasons I’m dubious right now. I don’t doubt that the rock art is there, but I’m seeing claims that it’s between 20,000 (as reported in 2015) and 12,500 years old. What I’m not seeing is citations to the scientific literature. The recent surge in interest seems to be fueled by the upcoming release of a television program on UK Channel 4. For all I know, that could be equivalent to an announcement that it’s going to be on the History channel, which would tell me it’s garbage and hype. Does anyone know if there is a paper in an archaeology journal about it?

I just like the idea of seeing more art by witnesses to Giant Ground Sloths.

Jordan Peterson is a woo-merchant

Lately, on my YouTube channel, I’ve been plagued with Peterson fanatics suddenly popping up on old videos and leaving weird, unfocused comments like “Strawman!” and “Fallacies!”, without bothering to tell me what I’ve strawmanned or what my fallacy was. But then, if you’re a Peterson cultist, you’ve probably already got serious logical deficits. So anyway, for this week’s Bad Science Sunday (it’s early, but calendars are merely a social construct anyway), I decided to infuriate them even more. It was fun.

As usual, I end with a plea to subscribe to my channel, or to sign up for my Patreon, but also with a request that everyone pray to Skaði, Goddess of Winter, because it’s almost the end of November and we have no snow on the ground, and it’s freaking me out.

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An irresistible headline

It really makes you want to read the whole thing, doesn’t it?

Except, when you actually read the story, it’s not that interesting. The “rise from graves” is just masses of shallowly buried mink corpses bloating and bulging up to the surface. Unpleasant, yes, but these are not zombie mustelids stalking Denmark. The “mutated form” bit is also not a big deal — viruses are constantly mutating. The real concern isn’t even mentioned in that story. The mutation is just a useful marker, as near as I can tell, that allows them to trace patterns of infection, and 12 people have been found to be infected with COVID carrying the same marker. That suggests that we could have zoonotic transmission from mink to humans (or vice versa). Also, about a fifth of the Danish mink farms have the disease among their animals, which says it’s spreading fast among the captive mink, and now we’re seeing infections and death in mink farms in Utah and Wisconsin. It also seems the virus is deadly to mink.

The Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (UVDL) completed necropsies on several dead animals from the two mink farms after the mink operations reported unusually high mortality rates in their mink populations. The samples were tested at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory at Washington State University. From there, the samples were sent to the National Veterinary Services Laboratories for final conformational testing. The affected mink farms have been completely quarantined to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2.

Denmark is going to kill 15 million mink to contain the virus. It sounds like a catastrophe for the ethical treatment of animals, but I would remind you that all 15 million were already doomed — they were raised to be slaughtered for their fur, so this is only accelerating their death…and depriving mink farmers of their profit. On the bright side, it may lead to the demise of a particularly brutal kind of animal abuse.