You may not realize it my skeptical friends, but you are part of a vast army that hates Christmas. You are an unconscious agent, quietly activated every year, as part of the well known liberal conspiracy to hate Christmas cooked up decades ago: [Read more…]
Climate change is affecting the Arctic more than any place on earth and scientists now say that change may be irreversible, thanks to polar amplification, at least on human time-scales: [Read more…]
Once the super committee failed the House and Senate were boxed in tight. Usually, legislation has to be passed for tax increases and cuts to kick in. But this deal was set up differently, taxes go up and cuts kick in automatically unless ledge is passed. Those tax increases affect half the population, including the very wealthy, and the cuts affect sacred cows, including the DoD. Which means the Senate in particular is hoisted by their own filibuster petard: [Read more…]
The Hypernova model of a gamma ray burster, click image for more GRB info
On July 2, 1967 two top secret US survelliance satellites, Velas 3 and 4, spied an alarming phenomenon. The Vela sats were designed to detect the telltale radiation of nuclear tests by the USSR. But on that day these two picked up a flash of gamma rays from the other direction, not here on earth, but rather out in space. Soon more flashes were seen, astrophysicists were called in, sworn to secrecy, and allowed to examine the data. They determined these gamma flashes weren’t commie nuke tests in space, the flashes lasted too long and faded too slowly, this was something else, something new. And as the data accumulated scientists realized they were witnessing the brightest, most energetic events since the Big Bang. Gamma Ray Bursts, referred to as GRBs, burst onto the cosmic scene like an atomic bomb, pardon the pun, and a new field of astronomy was born. Last year that field found itself looking at one of the most mysterious GRB’s ever seen [Read more…]
Solar noon marked over the course of a year. The figure-eight pattern is called an Analemma
Believe me, if you grew up in Texas, where summer heat tops the century mark for weeks on end and even the morning lows offer little relief, you’d feel December was pretty damn magical. This month dawn and dusk stretch out, as the sun marches steadily to the Winter Solstice. The solstice was a magical time for our ancient ancestors, too, the sun looked like it was going away and they were afraid it might keep going! So after the shortest day of the year, anywhere from Dec 20 to 23 on our calendar, a returning sun was cause for celebration indeed. You might think the shortest day of the year would have the latest sunrise and earliest sunset. But here in Texas and throughout the temperate section of the northern hemisphere, it actually doesn’t work out that way. [Read more…]
When danger reared its ugly head, he bravely turned his tail and fled
Michelle Bachmann made an ass out of herself again today, this time bragging that if she were President, and Iranians over ran the US embassy the way they did the British embassy this week, she’d wouldn’t pussy-foot around. No siree, she’d shut that facility down. Because nothing says courage quite like running away. What made it hilarious is Bachmann and company were apparently not up to speed on one widely reported fact: [Read more…]
Ginger White, the former fitness instructor and single mother of two, spoke on Good Morning America this morning and she sounded damn credible to me: [Read more…]
So there I was, summer 2006, Las Vegas baby, sitting on stage next to PZ Myers with General Wesley Clark praising evolution and climate science in front of a standing room only crowd. I distinctly remember the cameras pointing at us, lit up, reminding me of rows of LAW rocket launchers zeroed in on an enemy position about to be shredded. It was weird, just a few months earlier I had been another obscure commenter on an early incarnation of Pharyngula and Ed Brayton’s Dispatches, and suddenly I’m there, complete with hammering pulse and a mouth drier than grandma’s premo Thanksgiving stuffing. [Read more…]
An amateur astronomer using a homemade 25 cm (10 inch) telescope has recorded an exquisite image of a nearby star and surrounding planetary disk. Beta Pictoris is 63 light-years away and resembles a slightly more massive, hotter version of our sun and primeval solar system in the early stages of planetary formation. The New Zealand star-gazer, named Rolf Olsen, posted the image along with a brief explanation of his technique which has rocketed around the science cyber-sphere:
(Link) — For the last couple of years I have been wondering if it was possible for amateurs to capture this special target but have never come across any such images. The main difficulty is the overwhelming glare from Beta Pictoris itself which completely drowns out the dust disc that is circling very close to the star. Images of the disc taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and from big observatories, are usually made by physically blocking out the glare of Beta Pictoris itself within the optical path.
Beta Pictoris looks like a relatively normal, hot young star through most telescopes.
An optical image courtesy of the ESO of Beta Pictoris reveals a relativey normal, young, blue-white star.
Closer examination in the 1980s indicated the star was in the middle of a wide ring of debris. In 2003 Hubble snapped the fascinating images below clearly showing the disk[s] edge on.
Beta Pictoris and debris disk as seen by Hubble. Image credit NASA/JPL, click to embiggen
Other images show what appears to be at least one large planet or brown dwarf forming closer in and possibly clearing debris out of that wide ring in the process.
Beta Pictoris A and the much smaller Beta Pic B. B is thought to be an early stage large planet or a brown dwarf. Image credit ESO
What might the busy system look like to Star Trekkers sailing into it for the first time from the vantage point of say, where Neptune or Pluto might be in our own solar system? Above the vast plain of debris, lit by BetaP’s brilliant light, it would be gorgeous.
A collision between asteroids as they orbit Beta Pictoris. Observations have pinpointed three dusty belts orbiting this star, along with a possible planet. Image credit: ISAS/JAXA
In 2006 NASA found prodigeous amounts of carbon gas in the ring. CO2 gas and ices could perhaps lend the system a golden sheen that would put Saturn to shame.
NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer, or FUSE, detected vast quantities of carbon gas. Image credit NASA/FUSE
Lots of carbon means at least one of the building blocks of life — or perhaps scaffold of life would be more accurate — is present in large quantities in the BetaP system. Some planetary astronomers speculate that diamond planets could form in such a place. A hypothetical diamond world is illustrated below, where the looser carbon dust and soot have been eroded away by small impacts, exposing a layer of diamond bedrock polished by micrometeors swept up from the debris ring, all shining softly under dancing aurora energized by BetaP.
Bed "rock" exposed on a hypothetical diamond world circling a distant, ringed gas giant. Image credit Karen Wehrtsein
Great article, in Forbes of all places, about the latest hatchet job underway to portray climate scientists as evil cackling conspirators and the fossil fuel industry as feeble victims pilloried by infinitely powerful conspirators. I especially liked this part regarding FOI requests:
(Forbes) — First, FOI laws generally apply to official communication between government officials – not to private mails, and not to early drafts of research papers. That’s especially important to researchers, whose deepest fears involve publishing something that has a fundamental error in it – a fear that Wingnuts and, unfortunately, most journalists, seem immune to. They avoid this by first incubating ideas in private or in brainstorming sessions, then showing them to a few peers, testing them, refining them, and only then exposing them to the formal process of peer review. This is a grueling enough process without them having to justify their every utterance to some crackpot in the backwoods of Alabama who wants to talk about sunspots and the Apocalypse.